Book Reviews 747

tales for “changes in content and stress in varying cultural milieus” (p. 454). He makes
a few remarks along these lines as it is, e.g., he notes that the spirits in Ulithian tales
seem more friendly than those in tales from Yap and Ponape, “where the present in-
habitants are aggressive,” in contrast to the benign Ulithians (p. 169). However,
elsewhere Lessa implies an opposition between genetic and other explanations of folk-
tale content-e.g. his discussion of psychoanalysis versus diffusion on p. 449-and
takes the diffusionist side. He contends that “Ulithian culture is a conglomerate with
not too distinctive a character. The folktales clearly indicate this” (p. 2). This is
probably a natural conclusion, given the primary objective of searching for plausible
cognates of Ulithian tales. Yet if one were to build on Lessa’s study by taking a few
of the cognate tales he has identified, concentrating on the differences, and investigat-
ing thoroughly the associated sociocultural background, I suspect that a sharper char-
acterization of Ulithian folktales in terms of values or ideal personality might be pos-
sible.

The Types of the Folktale: A Classijcatioit and Bibliography. ANTTI AARNE. Second
revision translated and enlarged by STITHTHOMPSON. (FF Communications Vol.
LXXV, No. 184.) Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1961. 588 pp., bibli-
ography, index. 3000 mk (paper bound); 3300 mk (cloth bound).
Reviewed by KATHARINE
LUOMALA,
University of Hawaii
This book cannot be reviewed in any ordinary sense of the word. Who, from a
narrow base of acquaintance with relatively few tales of the Europe-to-India tradition,
can review an encyclopedic reference work founded on knowledge and perspective
gained from surveying hundreds of collections, published and unpublished, in that
traditional as well as analyses of specific tales? T h e Types of the Folktale is a production
to be greeted with hosannas and with humble gratitude and warm congratulations to
Dr. Stith Thompson for undertaking and completing so successfully his second revision
of Antti Aarne’s Verzeichnis der Marchentypen (FFC 3, Helsinki, 1910). To share in
the satisfaction of the accomplishment is a core of colleagues whose contributions,
sparked and kept glowing by Dr. Thompson’s leadership, skill, persistence, and pa-
tience, cannot be overlooked or underestimated.
What makes the publication even more noteworthy is that it is only three years
since the appearance of the sixth and last volume of Thompson’s revision and enlarge-
ment of his Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Bloomington, Ind., 1955-1958). Also during
these last few years he has published with joint authorship other catalogues of motifs
and of tale-types relating specifically to India. Work on these and other studies has
been carried out despite Dr. Thompson’s busy schedule in retirement as guest professor
in folklore in more than one university in the United States and as lecturer and guide
to folklorists in his travels outside the country.
Reference works like these indexes of motifs and tale-types are of fundamental
importance to any scholar with scientific interest in orally transmitted narratives. They
can also be both timesavers and sources of information to anyone, who, curious about
a given tale or motif, wonders where else it is known and where to look for what may
have been learned about it.
As with any reference work, one must make a little effort to understand any of
these folkloric guides as to the purpose of each, its organization, and the kind of infor-
mation it can reasonably be expected to provide. The point is worth stressing in a
periodical like the AMERICANANTHROPOLOGIST because a surprising number of “old
748 American Anthropologist [65, 19631
hands” in our discipline and perhaps consequently many younger students have not
even heard of these guides or, if they have, respond negatively to learning how to use
these major tools which relate to a cultural universal. Do they reject other systems of
classification like that of Linnaeus in biology or of Dewey or of the Library of Congress
in library resources? T o do so would in the first instance lead to inventing an idio-
syncratic system understood only by oneself and in the second instance to hunting
through many floors filled with thousands of books and manuscripts, each with many
pages, to find what one seeks. Each great system leaves room for growth and change.
Both the motif-index and the tale-type index have already been put to the test of
time. Each revision has used the original system to add material from new collections
and to revise the classification of any given motif or tale-type when justified by addi-
tional research.
Resistance to the use of the indexes is sometimes coupled with the belief that the
cataloguers expect all folklorists to join the ranks of the indexers. This feeling of being
steamrollered probably arises because the indexers have for many years been the most
numerous, most energetic, and most systematic of the students working on the ex-
tensive folklore collections of the world. Although I have not been an indexer, the
indexes are helpful guides to source material as I try first one path, then another, in
hopefully travelling toward some comprehension of the nature and meaning of oral
narrative art and the culture of which i t is a part. I have heard Dr. Thompson speak
in favor of a broadly based education for those who would specialize in folklore and
refer with regret to those who do not see that the work of indexers, like himself, is
but one part of the total study of folklore. The indexes like any reference works are
tools of the trade.
The full description of the system of cataloguing tale-types and its history are
given by Aarne in his preface of 1910 which Thompson translated from German into
English and incorporated into his first revision, that of 1928, with his own “Translator’s
Preface” on the growth of collections and the need for revisions of the original tale-
type index. In the light of the great labor involved in his second revision, that of 1961,
one can, in only the smallest voice, murmur that one wishes that Dr. Thompson had
written either a more encompassing preface or had added to the brief preface he has
a reprinting of both Aarne’s and his prefaces from the 1928 edition. Now it means that
if one wants knowledge of the system and its history one must go back to the 1928
edition, which must then be kept a t hand with the 1961 edition. The latter edition
has a preface which talks only to those who already know all about the system and want
to know what has happened since 1928 to lead to the revision. In other words the index
as a tool for others than those who have used it during the last fifty years or the last
thirty years is lost sight of. This ignoring of newcomers to the index is also evident in
the fact that cross-references are made to the motif-index but i t is not listed in the
bibliography or anywhere else though it is mentioned, but not with full citation, in
the preface. Some of the specialist’s forgetting that even what is ridiculously obvious
to him can be a puzzle to the newcomer is evident in the 1928 edition also in regard to
the abbreviation “Mt.” which sometimes precedes a reference to a tale-type number.
The abbreviation stands for “Marchentypen”-obvious once you learn it but not
when you encounter it first in an account written in English.
From its inception a t the turn of this century the tale-type index was a cooperative
enterprise of the “FF” (Folklore Fellows or Folkloristischer Forscherbund) with
Antti Aarne as the coordinator to implement the FF plan to publish, as Aarne wrote,
“catalogues, arranged according to contents, covering the collections of folk-literature
in various lands, not only those in print, but especially those existing solely in manu-
 Book Reviews 749
script” (Thompson, Stith, The Types of the Folk-Tale. A Classijication and Bibliograpky.
Antti Aarne’s Verzeicknis der Marckentypen Translated and Enlarged. Folklore Fellows
Communications, No. 74, Helsinki, 1928, p. 8). Catalogues were only part of the FF
purpose to advance the scientific study of folklore, but the great need felt by scholars
working on the massive Finnish, Scandinavian, and German collections already in
existence spurred this phase. With the tale-type index a scholar would be able quickly
to determine whether and in what quantity a collection contained the material he
needed a t the time. If the material was still in manuscript he could by reference to the
tale-type number it had been given write to the archive for a copy and not have to
go there in person to hunt through thousands of unclassified pages as was the case
before the index was devised and each archivist had applied it to the collections in his
keeping.
Aarne with his colleagues had to work out a common system of classifying the
varied types of folktales presented in these northern collections. The system had to be
such that it could be expanded as additional collections revealed additional types. I t
also had to be possible as research advanced to modify existing classifications either by
splitting a type into several types or by combining types originally classed as one.
Every collector and analyst, working wherever these tale-types occurred, was en-
couraged to use this system and to give notice when he felt modifications and additions
were in order. The success of this recommendation and the impressive degree of coopera-
tion among the folklorists may be judged from Thompson’s first revision of Aarne’s
original index in which Thompson determined which of the recommendations to
accept into the formal structure of the index and which to reject as being, for example,
limited to only one small region and therefore out of place in an international index.
The area surveyed in the three editions of the tale-type index should properly give the
index the title of “The Types of the Folk-Tale of Europe, West Asia, and the Lands
Settled by These Peoples” (Thompson 1961:7).
Aarne, as he worked out the tale-typing system, anticipated the classification of
separate episodes and motifs of a tale, and in some instances had to treat material in
this way, but mainly he avoided this procedure. Usually a complete tale was the basis
for each type. Each type was assigned a number (most of his original numbers are still
used) and secondarily a name. The numbering system was continuous for the entire
index which was made up of three groups of tales, each with subgroups. They were the
“regular folktales,” humorous tales, and animal tales. Cross-references indicated when
a given tale might have been grouped differently. The system had certain inconsist-
encies, Aarne pointed out, but the chief goal was its practical usefulness. The major
value, he emphasized, was its use as a tool. He recognized that the arrangement and
classification of the tales into types was significant, but the tale-typing as such was
secondary to providing a working catalog to collections. The implication of kinship in
tales classified as one type and of the presence of a definable folklore area was second-
ary. These and other problems are left for other folklorists or for the indexers when they
wear a different hat.
It was Thompson’s experience in classifying, or in trying to classify, tales of regions
outside the area covered by the tale-type index begun by Aarne, which led him to
devise the motif-indexing system which can be applied to the folklore of any part of
the world. His work on American Indian tales was a decisive factor in trying to over-
come the limitations of the tale-type index. I n its attempt to define and classify the
smallest independent units of a tale, the motif-index recalls the anthropologists’ ele-
ment lists. Boas and his students working in folklore noted, it will be recalled, that the
American Indian tales did not as readily diffuse as narrative wholes as did tales in the
750 A m e r i c a n Anthropologist [65, 19631
Old World. Thompson had this impressed upon him even in his classification of the
European tales which Indians had adopted. Through the motif-index he provided a
system of classification useful for European, American Indian, Oceanic, or any other
geographical area. His pioneer work in motif-indexing, still in manuscript when he
revised Aarne’s tale-type index in 1928, was used for cross-reference in the type index,
and he has again cross-referenced to the motif-index in this most recent revision of the
type index.
For convenience, folklorists usually refer to the tale-type index as the “Aarne-
Thompson” index and thereby acknowledge Aarne’s pioneer contribution and Thomp-
son’s extensive additions and revisions. And even as we wholeheartedly admire the
devotion and cohesion of the folklorists who have aided Thompson in the two monu-
mental indexes of motifs and tale types we must salute him as the leader whose un-
selfish and singlehearted dedication and industry to the Herculean labor have put
amateur and professional folklorists the world over into his everlasting debt.
LINGUISTICS
Psycholinguistics: A Book of Readings. SOLSAPORTA
(ed.) Prepared with the assistance
of JARVIS R. BASTIAN.New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1961. xv, 551 pp.,
figures, references, tables. $7.50.
Reviewed by SUSANERVIN, University of Calijornia, Berkeley
A reader in a new field has two functions. It conveniently compiles the best com-
pleted research and theoretical articles; in its choice of domains it defines and influences
the scope of the field. Uneven development leads to a conflict between these two func-
tions, yet omission of germinating areas may prejudice future research even more.
During years when research on the psychology of language was quiescent, selections
from Whorf and Lee appeared in Readings in Social Psychology. For a decade of grad-
uate students, interest in language was sustained, but in terms of language and thought,
as viewed by these two writers. How well does Psycholing2listics serve the twin func-
tions of accurate description and sensitive prediction?
The term “psycholinguistics” came into use as a result of two conferences spon-
sored by the Committee on Linguistics and Psychology of the Social Science Research
Council, the second conference producing a monograph under that name. Saporta’s
reader bears the marks of this history: the excellent guidance of the committee, and a
distribution of topics quite similar to that in the monograph. Since Saporta has been
a silent editor, his work must be judged purely in terms of selections included. His
definition of psychology, and hence of psycholinguistics, is narrow, omitting the phys-
iological, species-comparative, and social aspects of language.
As in the monograph, a t the outset there is an introduction to three approaches to
language-linguistics (Bloomfield and Chomsky), communication theory, and a func-
tional approach represented by Skinner. The rest of the reader includes a large number
of papers which anyone would consider basic. It covers a wide domain from psycho-
acoustics to philosophy, but the articles are sufficiently advanced so that scholars and
graduate students will find even those in their own specialty to be valuable-a rare
property in interdisciplinary works. There are some treasures, such as Lashley’s essaj
on serial order, which are unlikely to be in the libraries even of psycholinguists. The
technical material seems to have been chosen with a n audience of social scientists in
mind-the treatment of communication theory, for example, is Hockett’s interpretation
in a review for linguists.
There is an excellent treatment of recent work on psychoacoustics, including par-