Burchfield after the magnum opus

Press, 5 October 1985, Page 20

Burchfield after the magnum opus

The English Language. By Robert Burchfield. Oxford University Press, 1985. 194 pp. Index. $35. (Reviewed by Glyn Strange) My first dictionary was a Concise Oxford Dictionary whose acronym (COD) fittingly suggested something bigger than a POD (Pocket Oxford Dictionary). The world seemed full of certainties, but then came the rude discovery that there was a much larger version called . the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. If it was much larger than my COD, why was it called “Shorter”? And why didn’t they retain the symmetry and call it a SOD instead of SOED? At that time I had not heard of the Oxford English Dictionary (than which the Shorter is shorter), and I feebly surmised that there ought, by rights, to be a Greater Oxford Dictionary which would be the daddy of them all. Becoming cynical in later years, I learned there is no GOD, but nearest to that status, in the world of British dictionaries at least, is Dr Robert

Burchfield, once (who knows?) Head Prefect of Wanganui Tech, now Chief Editor of the OED. With his chief work, the enormous Supplement of the OED almost completely off his hands, presumably he has plenty of time for other matters. His latest effort is this book in the OPUS series. A thorough search of its pages fails to reveal what OPUS stands for. Another source, however, reveals that it means Oxford Paperbacks University Series, which explains, since this is no paperback, why the acronym, was not explained. Burchfield’s book succeeds Logan Pearsall Smith’s study with the same title, in the same series, and is similarly an introduction to the subject of the development of our language, compiled mainly for students and the general reader. As such it is not surprising that there is little that is innovative or daring, and it does not seem to deserve the mighty praise from Anthony Burgess (“brilliant book . . . scholarly and

human... compels wonder”) that is splashed across its front cover. In, one way, however, Burchfield does show a kind of daring: he is prepared to offer opinions at the drop of a hat without feeling a need to substantiate them. For example, he finds the modern love of acronyms such as ANZAC or NATO (one might almost add OPUS), to be a “questionable” method of wordformulation, but does not say why. Yet he is easygoing about grammatical errors such as split infinitives and using the construction “different to” rather than “different from,” commenting merely that such errors will become acceptable in time. The book, like its author’s opinions, is uneven. Expectedly, for a man in his position, Burchfield is good on subjects such as the development of vocabulary and the emergence of dictionaries. Elsewhere he is disappointing, most particularly in the final chapter, entitled ‘“Dispersed Forms of English.” Ever champion-seeking, we New Zealanders will naturally expect from

him here some clever insights into our use of language, but apart from a few routine references, he has little to say. At one point he mentions the weta, saying that it lives luxuriantly in our “forest-covered islands.” This indicates his problem. If he thinks these islands are forest-cbvered, it would appear that he has been away so long he is out of touch. All of which is not to say this is a bad book. If your interest extends to pottering about among the quirks of language, and especially if you have not done it much before, this remains a good introduction. If you know your onions already, it will seem rather elementary.