A review published in WORD

Word

ISSN: 0043-7956 (Print) 2373-5112 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwrd20

Reviews Raimo Anttila, Raimo Anttila, AD Backus, M. Lionel Bender, Patrick J. Duffley, James Fife, Anthony P. Grant, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Victor H. Mair, Victor H. Mair, Mirta Martes, Donn O'Meara, Edgar C. Polomé, Jean-François Prunet, Leonard Rolfe, Jyh Wee Sew, John Stonham & William J. Sullivan To cite this article: Raimo Anttila, Raimo Anttila, AD Backus, M. Lionel Bender, Patrick J. Duffley, James Fife, Anthony P. Grant, Alan S. Kaye, Alan S. Kaye, Victor H. Mair, Victor H. Mair, Mirta Martes, Donn O'Meara, Edgar C. Polomé, Jean-François Prunet, Leonard Rolfe, Jyh Wee Sew, John Stonham & William J. Sullivan (1999) Reviews, Word, 50:2, 211-294, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1999.11432489 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1999.11432489

Published online: 15 May 2015.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 182

View related articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rwrd20

REVIEWS

AHARON DOLGOPOLSKY, The Nostratic macrofamily and linguistic palaeontology, with an introduction by Colin Renfrew. (Papers in the Prehistory of Languages). Cambridge: The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, 1998. xxii + 116 pp.

Reviewed by RAIMO ANTTILA

Renfrew, the director of the McDonald Institute, tells in his "Introduction: the Nostratic Hypothesis, Linguistic Macrofamilies and Prehistoric Studies" (vii-xxii) that this is a glimpse into the current research project of pushing the frontiers of knowledge in this area (with thanks for the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation for a generous grant). In this new series the Institute wants "to seek to generate informed discussion of the present short monograph by circulating it widely, and by inviting qualified linguists and others to submit comments, which, it is hoped, will form the basis for a symposium or conference, to be held probably in 1998, to evaluate the current standing of the Nostratic hypothesis" (viii).

It is hardly possible that such a time frame would work out. It is not true that this work "presents for the first time a full and rich illustration, with a large vocabulary, of the central tenet of the Nostratic hypothesis ..." (viii), because clearly Illich-Svitych's work did it with richer evidence.

It is true, though, that Illich-Svitych and Dolgopolsky have both been the main momenta for the hypothesis. Renfrew's general tone is that if the hypothesis holds, exciting vistas open for neighboring disciplines, and this is certainly right. Renfrew relies on D's personal communication about the nature ofProto-Uralic culture, rather than taking to the actual rich literature on it. Similarly, he cannot really place Proto-Uralic 211

212

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

(-Yukaghir) on the map (xv), and no effort is made to utilize the literature on the topic. Actually he pleads for the combination of linguistics, archaeology, and population genetics as tools.

Dolgopolsky's own share of the book is labeled as above. It starts with a list of the language families (and the languages within them) (5-8) and transcription signs and other symbols (11-16). The book ends with the Nostratic phoneme inventory (101) and the sound correspondences (102-105). There is a two-page bibliography mainly forD's own work ( 109-11 0), with frequent references throughout the book to fuller evidence in his forthcoming Nostratic dictionary (to be published by the same institute) (Renfrew's bibliography [xx-xxii] is by far more useful here). The very end is a list of the Nostratic reconstructions mentioned (113-116). This, curiously, repeats the exact numbered order in the book, so it must be meant as a quick visual survey for those who already know the material. What now remains is the treatment itself: "The Linguistic Palaeontology of the Nostratic Macrofamily" (17-98). The material is organized according to thematic semantics: where?, when?, hunter-gatherers, food, technology, anatomy, kinship, and the realm of the supernatural-with numbered paragraphs of the evidence (the dictionary entries, in the style of Illich-Svitych's dictionary). These dictionary entries are mainly his own work, and not lifted out from other treatises. As the evidence is expected to speak for itself, D needs to add very little discussion between the dictionary entries, in fact, not moFe than ten pages, which leaves about a good half page for each cluster. It is likely that the strain for the normal linguistic reader will be enormous, and the expected evaluation will not be easy.

So what conclusions does D draw from his 124lexical entries? His dictionary supports subtropical climactic conditions ( 19), and if subtropical, it must be southern Europe or Southwestern Asia (24 ). The two items, *Sah[i]bV'saline earth, desert' and *HilWa (or *talwa) 'cold season, rain' decide in favor of southwestern Asia (25, 26). This is rather meager evidence, of course, when one remembers the "classical case" of the Navaho inherited snow terms referring to desert and sand (Sapir 1936), and it does not jibe well with the Proto-Uralic situation (Carpelan 1997); we do, however, get warnings about the dangers of using the protolexicon (xiii). There are no words that unequivocally point to sowing and plowing or animal husbandry, or milk as food (26, 28), and hence we end up with hunters and gatherers. Thus we do not have neolithic culture (30, 33). Would one not have guessed this anyway, if Proto-Indo-European was that? Next D asks whether bows and arrows as well as fishing nets tell us something, as these are generally considered mesolithic

REVIEWS

213

achievements (33). As it turns out, 'sinew' and 'bend' give 'bow' easily enough, and the same is true of 'arrow', and we get no handle on chronology (36, 38). Now American archaeologists Olga Soffer and James Adovasio have found clear evidence for fabrics and hunting nets around Dolni Vestonice and environs on Czech grounds from the palaeolithic (i.e., 29,000--22,000 years ago) (Der Spiegel 15/6.4.98:200-4).

Thus the uncertainty (D: "I do not know", p. 33) remains, and gets bigger. D's guess about the protolanguage is the late palaeolithic (17), and Renfrew agrees: the upper palaeolithic or 15,000 B.C. (viii-ix, x). It now becomes rather baffling that Renfrew pushes his agriculture dispersal model strongly, since the dispersal would have happened well before tilling the soil. Killing game (38, 41) and collecting, pounding, and baking nuts etc. does not give a big surprise (55), nor do the basic activities of bending, twisting, boring, peeling, rubbing, scratching, cutting, and so on (64). And the implements were not only stone-we also have wood, rods, sinew, thorns, teeth, bark, and there is also a sharp piercing tool without special reference to its material, *piXIYYA (65) (Finnish pii). Anatomical terms of course support the above (80); otherwise their value for culture and chronology is questionable. Last come supernatural notions, casting spells, magic, and so on (95), with not much yield, but certainly fitting the culture that emerges. D's closing words are (98): In the framework of one book it is hardly possible to refer to the Nostratic perspective in all aspects of life and culture. If there are any desiderata as to specific questions or fields, I shall be happy to do my best to satisfy the readers' interests.

This certainly sounds like the hoped-for first stage in this new assessment (viii).

Renfrew quotes (xviii) Bernard Sergent's statement that the solidest part in the Nostratic hypothesis is that between Indo-European and Hamito-Semitic. I think it has generally been that between Indo-European and Uralic-even a doubter like Warren Cowgill thought that the best evidence was in that link. In 61 cases out of 124 there is no Uralic evidence here, and it is understandable in connection with southern plants and animals. There is a pronounced difference of opinion here between inheritance (from N) and borrowing (from IE), and this book does not address this issue, and hence does not further the consideration of that problem at all. The Nostraticists take Uralic *wete and *nime (traditional reconstructions identical with the modem Finnish stems, but now *weti and *nimi; Sammallahti 1988) from N *wetV 'water' and *nim?V 'name' (17), whereas Jorma Koivulehto considers them loans.

214

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

A good example is N *goki 'track' (38) which would give Oralie *koke 'check a trap'> Finnish koke- 'idem, experience'. In this case Koivulehto has presented strong evidence that we have here reflexes of the PIE 'eye'-word: *hpkw-(ye/o-) (1991:44-47, 102), with powerful phonotactic arguments for borrowing in the light of the newest Oralie findings.

D finds it important for the homeland argument that Oralie does not have any Indo-European loans (18), and this position certainly looks untenable. On the other hand, since the grammatical morphemes and pronouns match so well, the borrowing hypothesis does not carry the whole day. The fact that there are differences between the "Finnish, Russian, and Hungarian schools" works of course against our confidence in believing everything we see. Note e. g. the differences between Dolgopolsky's Oralie (traditional) reconstructions vs. Juha Janhunen's and Sammallahti's: *ylintli 'sinew, tendon' (34) vs. *jlinti 'bowstring', *yoi](k)se 'bow' vs. *jil]si 'bow', and *nole 'arrow' vs. *nixli 'arrow' (for the latter, Sammallahti 1988:483). D's lists forms like Oralie *slsoywa 'clay' (under *Sah[i]bV) with a lateral *s not known in the traditional inventory (24). Problems ofthe kind listed are perhaps more pronounced in the other families (beyond Indo-European).

Of course, it has been standard in Oralie to have reconstruction with rather unspecified vowels, etc., but this kind of a base will have further repercussions in Nostratic, where indeterminacy gets multiplied. Thus e.g. *nlri.ultisV or *nlri.ultisyV 'woman', or 'woman of the other moiety' (85, 89-90) and *KVIRVIHplpV 'footwear' allow for a lot of leeway, since the barl indicates choice on either side (and further diacritics are added to this in the index), capitals cover various unspecified classes (e.g. the *S we saw above covers eight sibilants), and V = V= any vowel (and [i] above means i or nothing). Actually only 9 of the items go like *goki without an indeterminacy margin. This is the kind of thing that does not create confidence in outsiders, although this is still better than total random distribution, and is part of the game at this stage. Otherwise Hebrew (and Aramaic, Syriac), Arabic, Old Church Slavic, Russian, and Greek (and even Tigre) are cited in the original script with transliteration (the Greek font is rather anemic), and some Oralie and Altaic languages within Russia sometimes sport Cyrillic orthography, alone, or with Roman. D distinguishes between phonemic and allophonic transcriptions (as well as reconstructions) which are quoted in a narrow thin angular font, and transliterations that render the traditional orthographies come in a square font of the same character (and both are bigger than the normal font). Only the Latin classificatory names are italized, and the entry headings (reconstructions) are given in boldface, and language

REVIEWS

215

names are not abbreviated. The appearance of the entries is thus quite motley, but logical. Misprints are not many. The quality of the paper used in the book is unusually good, but unfortunately the same cannot be said for the glue that binds the pages together.

Although it is not likely that this volume will make new converts, the show must go on, because logically distant relationship is a must, whatever the difficulties of getting solid results or convincing the field are. Since the selection of items here is only about 6% of the promised dictionary, we have to wait for it.

Department of Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 90095-1543 anttila@ ucla.edu

REFERENCES Carpelan, Christian. 1997. "Where do the Finns come from? Finfo 12.97. Helsinki: Ministry for Foreign Affairs.

Koivulehto, Jorma. 1991. Uralische Evidenzfiir die Laryngaltheorie. Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Sammallahti, Pekka. 1988. "Historical phonology of the Uralic languages, with special reference to Samoyed, Ugric, and Pennie." The Uralic languages: Description, history and foreign influences. Ed. Denis Sinor Leiden: Brill. Pp. 479-554.

Sapir, Edward. 1936. "Internal linguistic evidence suggestive of the northern origin of the Navaho."

American anthropologist 39.224-35.

JAMES P. MALLORY and DOUGLAS Q. ADAMS, eds., Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture. London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1997. xl vi+ 828 pp.

Reviewed by RAIMOANTTILA

This work is a conceptually arranged encyclopedia of Indo-European lexicon and culture, and thus notions like 'pus', 'gnats', 'weevils', 'fart', etc., of course belong to "culture". Mallory, a rare archeologist in that he can also handle language material, had started the project alone

216

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

in 1990 with 17 contributors and two other advisers. In 1993 he added Adams as a coauthor and editor, and this seems to have been a very wise and felicitous decision. With such a crew there will of course remain inconsistencies, as the authors freely admit. The book begins with instructions on how to use the encyclopedia (xiii-xiv), then come abbreviations and technical vocabulary (xv-xxv), good phonetic definitions (xxviixxix), an alphabetic list of the entries (xxxi-xxxv), thereafter grouped thematically, also with a list at the beginning (xxxvii-x1 vi). The excellent language indices, in four columns (661-793 ), likewise start with an alphabetic survey (659-60), followed by a general index, in three columns (795-823). The book ends with figure acknowledgements (825-29); all figures have been redrawn. Since the volume is the size of a thick stack of typing paper, we can imagine how extensive and helpful the indices are.

The major subgroups, called stocks, get on the average 5 pages, not counting the portrait of Proto-Indo-European itself, the only one with some grammar (11.5 pp., by Adams) and the run-down of the IndoEuropean languages (4 pp., by Martin Huld). The stock reports are by the editors, the lion's share going to Indo-Iranian (8 pp.), Greek next (6.5 pp.), and the bottom end occupied by Albanian (2.5 pp.), with Slavic next (3.5 pp.), the rest being 4 or 5 pages. All these contain a map or two of the stock and a one-page table of phonological correspondences from PIE to the stock in question (as the encyclopedia is essentially a dictionary). Other features are just briefly mentioned, since the information centers on attestation and speculation about the origins.

Minor languages like Illyrian, Messapic, Phrygian, etc., get a page or two; no tables of correspondences are possible, but maps are provided, except for Picene (to be found on the Italic map), which gets a text and illustrations of artifacts instead. Then languages of Anatolia (Lycian, Lydian, Carian) are listed within Anatolian, Armenian, and Indo-European Languages. There is also an entry on Reconstruction and a longer one on Subgrouping, with 8 different diagrams/attempts over the history of the field. Schleicher's Tale and its subsequent versions are nicely portrayed.

The numerous maps of culture and language locations (in the case of the former, accompanied by illustrations of grave goods and/or archeological reconstructions) are excellent. The maps are predominantly about 8 em x 12 or 18 em, leaving ample margin beyond the target zeroed in on. E.g., the map on the single site <;atal Htiytik in southern Anatolia reaches as far as the Baltic (95), and that of the Baltic languages (46) reaches as far as the eastern coast of England, mid Lapland, most of

REVIEWS

217

the Volga-Kama river system, and northern Italy. Because of this one knows immediately where one is. The archaeological culture portraits are highly useful for the non-archeologist, and really to anybody. This is not only true of the known names like Andronovo Culture, La Tene Culture, etc., but also of all kinds of "small-dot" entities. It is fascinating to read of many such around the Aral Sea to the area of the Tarim basin, e.g., Yaz (653), Chust (107), Sintashta (520), Vakhsh (617), Bishkent (69), Swat (558), all in places one would think rather bleak today (of course, good climate for preservation). And then one finds a "Dry Gulch" (Golasecca) Culture south of Lake Como in the Milano area!

The Indo-European homeland question (290-9) gets a sequence of 8 maps and one diagram, and the famous beech argument sports a nice map (59). Similarly, physical anthropology clines in population genetics ala Cavalli-Sforza are exemplified with maps (420-3).

Social structure entries utilize Kim McCone's work on the agegroup war-bands and we get a modern aspect not yet much utilized in English-language literature. Although various views on mythology are given, there is a clear tendency to bias it all (and social structure) toward Dumezil's tripartition grid of priests, warriors, and farmers. The highest liturgy on this goes: "IE 'comparative mythology' demands strict attention to the ramifications of theory, and specifically of the theoretical structure broadly conceived by Dumezil. No criticism of this scholar has been able to finally and absolutely shatter and replace the complex image ofiE 'ideology' he established [Dean Miller, Mallory]." This reminds one of Chomskyans in linguistics who have always maintained that Generative Grammar is a theory that can only been proven right, never wrong! Of course there always were scholars (see e.g. Bernfried Schlerath in Kratylos 40.1-48, 41.1-67) who proved Dumezil wrong with principles of scholarship, but religious aspects are another matter.

And in fact, Dumezil himself conceded (on French TV) before his death (in 1986) that he had perhaps been wrong, but that did not matter, because his output was very interesting as science fiction.

The vocabulary items run through the book, of course. Under the entry FIELD 7 of them are given (200-1 ), each one in its own paragraph (as throughout the book). Let us single out a shortish one as a typical example in the work: *haegros 'field, pasture'. [lEW 6 (*ag-ro-s); Wat 1 (*agro- ); GI 600 (*Hak'ro-), Buck 8.12; BK 396 (*hae-!hae-)]. Lat ager 'field', ON akr 'field', OE tecer 'field' (> NE acre), OHG ackar 'field', Goth akrs 'field', Grk agr6s 'field', Arm art 'field', Olnd

218

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

ajra- 'plain'. Widespread and old in IE. A derivative of *h2 eg'drive (cattle)' and thus originally 'pasture'.

and then at the end of the total FIELD entry: See also AGRICULTURE; DEATH BELIEFS; DRIVE; GRASS; PLow. [D.Q.A.] The reconstructed form is followed by a basic gloss, whereupon square brackets contain references to other standard books and their reconstructions: Pokorny's dictionary (1959), Watkins' American heritage dictionary supplement (1985), Garnkrelidze and Ivanov's Indo-European and Indo-Europeans (1995), Buck's Synonyms (1949), and Bombard and Kerns' The Nostratic macrofamily (1994). (The inclusion of Nostratic like this is an important addition to the field.) Then follows the actual evidence (Old Indic for Sanskrit is rather weird nowadays in English), and note that the repetition in glossing does not allow any fuzziness for the reader ('field' also on p. 8). Wider etymological connections close the paragraph (and here correctly so with 'drive', exactly as on p. 201 under FIGHT one of the 5 items is *haeg-, also a variant of 'drive' [by Polome]). At the very end we have cross-references and the author( s) of the entry [Adams].

Often of course there is more discussion, and also actual bibliographical references might be given (Further Readings), about 2 per page, on the average (with a slight and expected bias. toward Englishlanguage works). Language portraits and archeological descriptions are more likely to carry Further Readings, and such entries often do not sport lexical-item paragraphs. Barring such (rich) material there seem to be about 5 actual word entries per page.

One of the 3 HUNT words is *haegreha- (284 [Polome, Adams]).

The judgment that this is another 'drive' -word, although there are problems, is very modern and to the point. But the authors do not use the right literature and cannot reach back to agr6s and compounds with -agros 'seizing, grasping'. This means that 'pasture' is not the oldest meaning of agr6s. In an earlier hunting and gathering economy it must have been 'gathering', supported also by *agro-no-m *'the gathered stuff' in Germanic acorn (not "Gmc *agron"[63], but Gmc *akrana-), and this is where the berry and fruit words belong, in spite of the centum/sat::>m problem in them. The same *agro- is also the basis for Greek agefro 'gather' (and its derivatives), and not *hJ';,z-ger- *'in group' (35, 217; with question, it is true). Further, *haegos 'he-goat' "would appear to be a rather banal derivative ... of *haeg-'drive, lead'. However, the seman-

REVIEWS

219

tic specialization to 'he-goat' (through '± bell-wether'?) is obscure" (229). 'Banal derivative' is a term often used, and always correctly, although in this case I suggest that a more accurate term, etymologically, is trite. I will soon justify in another context that the goat as a driver actually meant 'copulating male'. Note that here the editors list, among the six other GOAT words, *ktipros 'he-goat' from *kap[ 'penis' (cf.

Finnish dial. kullisika [prick-swine] 'boar'). The romantic Isle of Capri and capers show that semantic bleaching is a palatable fact.

The question is not whether it is possible to disagree in the deep details-it always is-but whether the encyclopedia is a broad and reliable enough modem combination of past achievements and a basis for further "progress", as the editors intend it (ix). It is.

The Encyclopedia takes a stance against PIE *a (e.g., 498; salt is *seha-(e)l-), but in the correspondence tables this is just *sal-, and most of the -a-words are listed the same way in them. Even otherwise an a-shape is oft~n listed, and 14 a-words start the PIE index (661). The *(-)a-avoidance stance leads to the four laryngeals, *h 1 , *h 2 , *h 3 , and *h4 , and when 2 and 4 cannot be decided between, the label is *ha, and when the evidence cannot differentiate between any of them, we get *hx.

We saw above the *haeg- - *h 2eg- alternation for 'drive' (8, 200), and for most laryngealists it is indeed the latter. It all depends on the analysis of Hittite ak(k)- 'die' (343, 463), and since Adams takes it from *h 1eg-'lack', it does not affect the 'drive' -reconstruction. I myself think that the best connection is with *ag- 'drive' after all, and thus the root would be *h 4 eg- and not *h 2eg-.

The laryngeal notation will be hairy and scary for many users, and will not enhance unity with other (older) handbooks. It will also at times block or slow down the use of the index of reconstructed words, but in such a case there are the other language indices at hand. One item where scholars generally have overdone the laryngeal tricks is NAME, also in this book: *h 1n6m1}- hlnh3m1}- h 1nehp1} (390; Polome and Mallory); Adams in fact stays with the first form, and his *h 16m1} (468) must be a slip. There is really no need to go beyond *nom-1}/*l}m-en- (GI 732, Cowgill). Laryngeal juggling le~ds sometimes to inconsiste~cy, e.g., 'sharp' both *h 3ek'- (194) and h2ek'- (509), and then also *hxehk'us (194). Note that *demhx-- *demha- 'tame, build' (565) is not inconsistent, just a different level of detail. Now, *poh 1imen- 'herdsman' with *pohii)- 'watch (after cattle)' (268) refers to FEED and PROTECT, and under the former we get *peh 2- 'guard, protect, cause to graze' (the fodder/pasta/pastor bit) (198), but curiously not under the latter (548). Here the herdsman is now *poh2 imen-, and we also find *p6h 2yu 'flock of sheep', not listed under HERD (268). Under FIELD we find *p6hxy-

220

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

weh2 - 'open meadow': "Perhaps related to *peh 2 - 'nourish, herd, cause to graze'" (200). Again, the *hx- *h 2 is not a big problem, but the *h 1 *h2 is (all these entries by Adams). It is a pity that Jorma Koivulehto's works on the reflexes of PIE laryngeals in loans in Oralie have not been utilized. And the term is not listed in the general index; it can be found in the sizeable Abbreviations and Technical Vocabulary (xv-xxv). Koivulehto's idea of unpalatalized Proto-Indo-Iranian *ketstro- 'spindle' in Finnish kehrii occurs on p. 309, so we can assume that it has been communicated by Asko Parpola (x). The 'eye' -word occurs as *hpkw throughout, except for once as *h3ekw- in a verb entry (505). No such egrade, nor a direct *h3 , is actually attested, true also of *h 1es- 'to be'.

Here Koivulehto's koke- 'to experience' and kesii 'summer' (top. 504) from Finnish (as loans from PIE) would have added considerable "depth" (but, then, note *h2eg- to aja- and not *kaja-).

The volume must have been a proof-reading nightmare. Surprisingly little in such an undertaking remains to catch the eye, e.g., Finnish parsas for porsas 'pig' (correct in the index). About the worst is perhaps the adjective *trennom 'tin(ny)' (587); it is not recoverable what was meant. The bibliographical references, which reach 1995 and sometimes even 1996, contain a few mistakes, e.g., Bynan, Historical languages, for Bynon and linguistics (480). Surprisingly few mistakes lurk in accents and diacritics.

Cavils are easy. This encyclopedia is a very useful tool, and there was a need for it.

Department of Linguistics University of California, Los Angeles Los Angeles, California 90095-1543 anttila@ucla.edu

DELIA HAUST, Codeswitching in Gambia. Eine soziolinguistische Untersuchung von Mandinka, Wolof und Eng Iisch in Kontakt. (Sprachkontakt in Afrika, Band 1.) Koln: RUdiger Koppe Verlag, 1995. xv + 372 pp.

Reviewed by AD BACKUS

This dissertation describes codeswitching (CS) patterns in urban Gambia, where Mandinka and Wolof are both used in everyday conversations and both play host to a great number of English words and expressions.

REVIEWS

221

Chapters 1 and 2 are introductions to the literature on CS. Delia Haust (H.) singles out two sociolinguistic models (Auer's Conversational Analysis and Myers-Scotton's Markedness Model) and two grammatical models (Poplack's Variationism and Myers-Scotton's Matrix Language Frame, MLF, Model). This fair description lays the groundwork for the discussion in Chapter 2, which identifies two important parameters in CS research: the alleged distinction between CS and borrowing, and the basic dichotomy between insertion and alternation as the two main types of CS found in all multilingual communities around the world. These two chapters equip the reader with some basics necessary to understand both the content and the spirit of the description of Gambian data that is to follow in the next chapter. This is a classical description of a CS corpus: in-depth description of the various kinds of CS which occur, dealing almost exclusively with the lexicon (i.e. CS is defined as the use of morphemes from two or more languages in the same conversation) and with the here and now; structural borrowing is not often discussed in conjunction with CS (but see, e. g., Johanson 1993 and Savic 1996), making possible links to diachronic change hard to investigate. The topic does slip in at some places in the discussion, e. g. where English word order is said to accompany a switch of an English adjective in a Wolof sentence (p. 74), but in general, H. concludes on p.

246, that change induced by CS is not attested in her data.

I found H.'s treatment of the "CS vs. borrowing" debate very clear and fair. She starts off by pointing out that phonological integration, though often a good indicator, is a notoriously unreliable criterion for loanword status, as every language has completely entrenched but nevertheless phonetically unadapted borrowings. Similar problems are pointed out for morphological and syntactic integration, as such integration is often not 100% and subject to variation. In addition, words like conjunctions, which are commonly borrowed, are often impossible to adapt morphologically to a recipient language. H. attaches more importance to the methodologically trickier, but probably much more promising, distinction between cultural and core loans.

Chapter 2 also introduces H.'s classification scheme. Rather than adopting one of the current models of CS, she has devised her own descriptive model, as was customary in CS research until very recently in the absence of clear, easy-to-use taxonomies. Her model resembles Myers-Scotton's (1993) Matrix Language Frame Model, but allows for finer descriptive distinctions. Instead of the 7 categories which the MLF Model provides (ML + EL Constituents, bare forms, mixed constituents with EL order, double morphology, Internal EL Islands, EL Islands and

222

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

Inter-CP CS), H. comes up with 12 categories. Below, I will point out the similarities where appropriate.

Chapter 3 gives the basic background information on the data, including short descriptions of the languages involved (Mandinka, Wolof and English) and a characterization ofthe set of speakers that yielded the spontaneous speech data. On p. 103, a handy table gives the basic quantitative data, which are discussed in minute detail in Chapter 4.

The structures H. uncovers are very similar to what is usually reported for CS studies all around the world. There is a lot of insertional CS, with a clear asymmetry between the matrix languages (ML) Mandinka and Wolof and the embedded language (EL) English. Also familiar is the finding that most insertions are nouns and that most, but not all, are completely adapted morphosyntactically to the matrix language.

In addition, there is much of what is traditionally called intersentential CS, or alternation. In this latter type, asymmetry plays no role, so that it doesn't make much sense to talk ofMLs and ELs. As soon as the reader zooms in on the data in Chapter 4, he/she will find an unusually rich and dazzling array of CS examples, which can be added to the growing stock of examples from various language pairs the literature on the subject now contains. The types distinguished by H. are the following: ( 1) EL insertions without ML integrating morphology (this includes what Myers-Scotton (1993) calls bare forms, i.e. insertions that are not completely integrated morphosyntactically, but also what one could call grammatically bare forms, which indeed do not need any overt integrating morphology); (2) EL insertions with ML integrating morphosyntax (the type of insertion, mostly of nouns and verbs, that predominates in most CS data sets, and corresponds to standard mixed constituents in Myers-Scotton's framework); (3) EL insertions with EL morphology (this usually concerns EL plurals, as it does elsewhere in the literature); (4) EL insertions with double morphology (also mostly involving plural marking); (5) EL discourse markers; (6) EL function words without synchronic function in the clause (many of these are also known as "ragged switches"; this category serves to distinguish unsystematic switches that often look like performance errors from the next category); (7) EL function words that do have a function in the clause (mostly conjunctions, which H. pointedly argues are almost predestined to play a major role in CS, p. 163); (8) EL constituents (EL Islands in MLF terminology); (9) inserted mixed constituents (a very handy category that partly covers what Myers-Scotton calls Internal EL Islands, but is defined more broadly as mixed constituents that contain at least two EL elements); (10) sentence-internal ML change (this is ar-

REVIEWS

223

guably the most challenging category for any theory of CS, as it breaks loose from the asymmetrical relationship we are so accustomed to in insertional CS. H. has found several examples, often due to the psycholinguistically interesting phenomenon of triggering); (11) intersentential CS and (12) inter-tum CS. Interestingly, H. shows that the same word can sometimes be completely integrated (Cat. 2) and sometimes be a bare form (Cat. 1) in the speech of one and the same speaker. This is pretty damaging evidence against one of the current concerns of CS research, the Nonce Loan hypothesis (see Meechan and Poplack 1995), which predicts that these forms behave exactly like established loans, and thus exactly like any word in the borrowing language.

For me, the most interesting categories were (6), (7) and (10). The first two generally confirm Myers-Scotton's claim that some morphemes traditionally classified as function words are not system morphemes, in the way she defines them. However, close introspection of these categories does reveal some counterexamples. H. sees conjunctions as occupying a position in between Content and System Morphemes (p. 156), a position I endorse, but which may not be compatible with the dichotomous nature in which these two terms are defined in the MLF Model. The presentation has many other interesting little details, too numerous to list here.

Chapter 5 quantifies the data and collapses the nine insertional categories into two groups, one containing ML functional elements (categories 2, 4, 7 and 9), and the other containing EL elements only (the others). The basic picture is the same: insertional CS mainly concerns the use of EL content words in ML (here Mandinka or Wolof) speech, as it does in so many language pairs. Other common types of insertional CS, though less frequent, involve discourse markers, constituents and functional elements. At least the content elements are predominantly integrated into the host morphosyntactic system. The distinction between the two groups clouds this fact a little bit, as Category 1 includes "grammatically bare" switched English words (they occur in positions where the ML doesn't require any marking anyway), and Category 7 would be expected to be part of the non-integrated group, since its integration only involves putting it in the right position (i. e. its integration is syntactic, as opposed to morphosyntactic ). H. is aware of this effect (p. 217), but I think the argument for the predominance of morphosyntactic integration would have been clearer without the collapsed classification.

An interesting observation H. makes is that Mandinka or Wolof insertions tend to be less well integrated morphosyntactically. In most of

224

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

these cases, the ML is the other African language, but the frequency of this type of CS overall is dwarfed by the frequency of insertional CS involving English content elements. H. explains the propensity of unintegrated Mandinka-Wolof CS to the lack of socio-political asymmetry between the two, but it should be borne in mind here that most of these insertions are discourse markers and conjunctions, which, as we saw, do not require much integration.

When it comes to alternational CS (Categories 10, 11 and 12), the division of labor between the three languages is very different. English is still very much the dominant language among the category 10-type switches, which illustrates that this category might be intermediate between insertion and alternation, but it has a small role to play in the other two categories. Category 10, containing EL chunks that put a lot of strain on the host grammar, is very interesting data for anyone interested in syntactic constraints on the phenomenon. Usually, the grammars involved are obeyed, which indicates that the Equivalence Constraint (Poplack 1980) may play a role here. The main alternational subtype, however, is CS at turn boundaries.

The data can be summarized as showing that the linguistic situation in urban Gambia is such that English mainly donates content words in standard insertional CS from a Mandinka and sometimes Wolof base.

Intersentential CS is very common too and mainly involves the two African languages.

Chapter 6 finally presents the results of a sociolinguistic analysis, in which H. tried to find out which speakers tended to produce which kinds of switches. The factors considered were sex of the speaker, degree of education, profession, degree to which Mandinka and Wolof were used by the speaker in daily life, L1 of the speaker, the speaker's English proficiency, and interlocutors. Somewhat surprisingly, sex of the speaker turned out to be a significant factor, with CS, especially of the insertional type, more a male than a female style of interaction. This type of CS is also associated with the higher levels of education, and, not surprisingly, with high proficiency in English. The others switch too, but relatively less in an insertional style. Intersentential CS between Mandinka and Wolof, for example, is found relatively often among those who don't use a lot of English "nonce borrowings". The background factors that matter tend to work in tandem. Profession, language use, L 1, and, with some reservations, interlocutor, did not turn out to be a significant factor.

An interesting finding is that speakers who have Wolof as their L1 or as their main language of daily communication, still mainly switch when they are speaking Mandinka. This suggests that the local variety of

REVIEWS

225

Mandinka, more than Wolof, is conventionalizing as a mixed lect, on a par with Urban Wolof in Dakar (Swigart 1993) or Nairobi Swahili (Myers-Scotton 1993 ). The fact that interlocutor dido 't matter that much can be interpreted as pointing in the same direction. Incidentally, the analysis pointed out that one informant was a particularly prolific switcher, something that is also typically found in CS studies but which doesn't always get a lot of attention (p. 266).

Chapter 7 is a summary, which also provides some discussion of a few matters that remained implicit in the previous discussion. There is, for instance, an account of how similar and how different H.'s approach is from the MLF Model. A topic that perhaps deserves more attention is her assertion that intersentential CS can instantiate unmarked CS, something which she can back up empirically, but which is alien to the spirit of many approaches to this type of CS, which is often assumed to be predominantly used to express certain discourse functions (pp. 303-4).

All in all, this is a very nice addition to the growing literature on CS. Apart from the wonderful collection of data H. makes available, she also provides some interesting theoretical contributions. In fact, it is a pity that some of the discussions aren't pursued a little further, specifically the discussions of ragged switching (p. 184), triggering (p. 194), and the difference between insertion of English and ofWolof constituents in that the former are fluent insertions and the latter are flagged, thus reflecting the differing statuses of these two languages in the speech community (p. 173). This gives us something to look forward to, as it will most definitely stimulate the author to pursue some of her own leads in future work.

Tilburg University POBox 90153 5000 LE Til burg The Netherlands A.M.Backus@kub.nl

REFERENCES Johanson, Lars. 1993. "Code-copying in immigrant Turkish.'" Immigrant languages in Europe. Eds. Guus Extra and Ludo Verhoeven. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters. Pp. 197-221.

Meechan, Marjorie and Shana Poplack. 1995. "Orphan categories in bilingual discourse: Adjectivization strategies in Wolof-French and Fongbe-French." Language variation and change 7:169-94.

Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993. Duelling languages. Grammatical structure in codeswitching. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

226

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

Poplack, Shana. 1980. "Sometimes I'll start a sentence in English y termin6 en espaiiol." Linguistics 18:581-616.

Savic, Jelena. 1995. "Structural convergence and language change: Evidence from Serbian/English code-switching." Language in society 24:475-92.

Swigart, Leigh. 1992. "Two codes or one? The insiders' view and the description of codes witching in Dakar." Journal of multilingual and multicultural development 13:83-102.

PENNY LEE, The Whorf theory complex. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, 1996. xix + 323 pp.

Reviewed by M. LIONEL BENDER

In my view, the greatest contribution of this important book is documenting the work of Benjamin L. Whorf by drawing on his extensive correspondence and unpublished papers, especially the "Yale Report" (which has a fair amount of input from George Trager). Through this documentation, the book also clarifies Whorl's own thinking and intentions regarding the Linguistic Relativity Principle (LRP). There is a lesser function, one which the author probably sees as primary: that of making a case for a comprehensive Whorfian theory of language, in which the notorious Principle plays a part, and which might have developed into a school of linguistics if Whorf had not died of cancer so tragically young (age 44 in 1941). More on this below.

Oceans of ink have been spilled-most of it wastefully in my opinion-on what has become known as the "Sapir-Whorf" or "Whorfian" Hypothesis. 1 The topic is one which has fascinated linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers, and even the high-brow public. Irecall as a college student receiving from a scientific book club the 1956 volume of Whorf papers edited by John Carroll. As one not yet fully committed to the linguistic profession, I recall being puzzled more than illuminated by the collection. Soon, conferences, papers, and books devoted to the topic began to pile up. A dichotomy developed between two positions: the "strong" view that "language determines thought" and the "weak" one that "language influences (habitual) thought" (p. 85). A nice alternative version of the weak view is that of Hockett (in Hoijer 1954:122): "Languages differ not so much as to what can be said in them, but rather as to what it is relatively easy to say".

One day as I was driving a familiar route, I suddenly realized that I

REVIEWS

227

was on the way not to my intended destination, but to my office, where I usually drove at this time of day. This made me realize that preconceptions of all kinds sometimes have such strong influences on our behavior that we have to make a conscious effort to break free of them. Of course this applies to habitual linguistic patterns (at some levels) also: it would be absurd to think otherwise. Thus the weak form of linguistic relativity is surely true, but it is not very interesting. 2 The strong form is surely false since it is disconfirmed in many ways: for example, the possibility of translating effectively from language to language, even being able to communicate about linguistic relativity across language boundaries!

So linguistic relativity turns out to be a tempest in a teapot. The mystique is gone and one wonders why there was such a semi-popular commotion about it. Trying to determine the nature and limits of the phenomenon may still hold some interest.

Whorf himself referred to linguistic relativity as a principle, not a hypothesis (pp. xiv and xviii, where Lee notes that Whorf first used the term "relativity" in accessible writings only 18 months before his death).

I believe that Sapir is responsible for the strong view of relativity and that Whorf in fact did not subscribe to it. There are many striking references to relativity in Sapir's various writings. A brief one is found in my note 2 and I quote here also this famous one (from the 1929 Language article "The status of linguistics as a science", also quoted by Lee, p.

237): "The fact of the matter is that the 'real world' is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group." This statement strikes me as more characteristic of various mystical sects or subjectivist philosophical schools 3 than of a scientist! But Sapir makes it clear that his setting off the "real world" in quotes is to be taken seriously as he continues: "No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same world with different labels attached" [my italics in foregoing quote]. I think a . good case can be made that Sapir's conclusion is unwarranted: that in fact, the same world with a different system of labelling is quite a good way to characterize what is going on. 4 Compare the above to the following extended quote from Whorf, given here in full because it can be taken as a summary ofWhorf's thinking on the LRP. This is from Yale Report 2. Interpretation of Coordination and Parallelism between Language and (Non-Linguistic) Culture.

(The non-historical aspect) as given by Lee, pp. 266-7. Details about this 1938 document are the subject of Lee's chapter 3. The italics in the following are my emphases.

228

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

a. General considerations. [The] way in which language interlocks with the culture is a fit subject for linguistics in its broader sense, although it may be held by some to fall outside of "straight" linguistics (configurational linguistics). Hitherto neglected, except by Sapir, partly because "straight" linguists have not been interested in cultural anthropology and cultural anthropologists have been the same with respect to linguistics. Moreover, field admittedly holds a certain fascination for the more fantastic and romantic theorizers, with "Volksgeist" ideas, notions of inherent superiority of certain languages, of a language molding the culture, of stages of cultural "evolution" arid what not. This feature should no longer repel properly qualified investigators. The very persistence of such notions as Volksgeist may indicate certain bases of reality, or certain partial glimpses of truth never properly worked out or thought through. It is necessary, then, first to sound Sapir's note of caution: "We shall do well to hold the drifts oflanguage and culture to be non-comparable and unrelated processes-Attempts to connect linguistic morphology with certain states of cultural development are vain. Rightly understood, such correlations are rubbish". There is no causal connection, in either direction, between language and (non-linguistic) cultural features. The plea for more correlated study of a given language and study of the culture of its community does not rest on such consideration, but on the fact that language itself is culture, and that language and the rest of culture (with language extracted from it) belong together as really inseparable parts of great whole-the culture in a broad sense.

It seems that Whorf was not a Whorfian !This astonishing paragraph makes me wonder what Whorf would have thought of the content of the conferences, papers, books, chapters in introductory anthropology textbooks, and the like, dedicated to the LRP. The italicized phrases certainly seem inconsistent with the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothe!!is", even in its weak form. 5 If the relationship between language and culture is not causal in either direction, then what is it? Presumably language and the culture of which it is part grow up together with the community in question: thus the causality is pushed back to the historical particulars which made the Hopi nation, or France, or whatever a community. This puts the matter out of the reach of the linguist or culturologist.

One must keep in mind that language is modular. I think confusion has been created by scholars who have not been clear about this (or even, incredibly, deny it). Culture and the underlying formal code of a given language are not related: Whorl and Sapir both say this in the paragraph above and it is also what Sapir meant by Plato walking with the Macedanian swineherd and Confucius walking with the Assamese headhunter (Sapir 1921:234). But certainly there is a causal connection between culture and the pragmatic module, e. g. in deference and use of honorifics. The Whorfian preoccupation with matters such as verbal sub-

REVIEWS

229

categorization in Hopi indicates that Whorl considered culture and the semantic module to be especially closely related. It is hard to believe that Whorl did not see some role of causation here. 6 Returning to the question of whether Whorf might have founded a linguistic school if he had lived long enough, I think the answer is "no".

I think he would have joined Trager, Hockett, Gleason, and other leading practitioners of the American Structuralist School, the predominant paradigm for the decades of the 1940s and 1950s. The ideas which so occupied Whorf at the time (e.g. "points in the pattern", covert categories, Gestalt and "figure-background") were already becoming part of the new paradigm. It might be said that the impact that Whorl actually had was both good and bad: good in sensitizing linguists to the different ways of categorizing in languages, bad in encouraging the extreme particularism which soon developed (languages can vary without limit and each language must be described in its own terms).

Fortunately some of the more bizarre Whorfian ideas did not catch on. Lee (37-40) reports with very little skepticism Whorf's attempt to blend scientific relativity and "Eastern Philosophy". 7 This has become a fad in recent years with such nonsense as the "Tao of Physics" and trying to extend quantum mechanics from the sub-atomic world to the macro-world. The whole enterprise is illegitimate: science is a method based on observation, experimentation, and the possibility of disconfirmation, and Eastern philosophy is a system based on belief without evidence. I also cannot recommend the attempt by Lee (especially pp.

48-54) to link up Whorf's ideas to some of the vague "cognitive-science" concepts such as "connectionism", "holography", and Hockett's "resonance theory". 8 Briefly, the outline of the book is: Preface (xiii-xix); 1. Introduction and Overview (1-33); 2. Linguistic Thinking: Points, Pattern, Linkage, and Rapport (34-83); 3. The Logic and Development of the Linguistic Relativity Principle (84-159); 4. Of Covert Categories, Cryptotypes, and the Internalized Linguistic System (160-92): 5. Abstractive Processes and the Question of Linguistic Universals (193-223); 6. Metalinguistics: The Intercalibration of Agreement through Linguistic Awareness (224-50); Appendix: "The Yale Report" (251-80); References (281-300); Index of Names (301-3); Index of Subjects (305-23).

The heart of the book for those interested in the LRP is the Preface and the beginning of Ch. 3, especially pp. 84-9. I really cannot recommend the long, almost incomprehensible sections of the book which deal with Whorl's speculations and speculations about Whorl's ideas

230

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

(Ch. 2, the latter part of Ch. 3, most of Chs. 4, 5, 6). The Appendix, "The Yale Report", is a sketch of anthropological linguistics as Trager andespecially Whorf saw it while teaching their course on it at Yale in 1937-8.

It is a valuable historical document for itself and for the light it casts on the historiography of linguistics of the time.

Two other matters remain. The title is vague: before I saw the book, I interpreted it to mean the various interpretations of the LRP, not the setting of the LRP within the context of all of Whorf' s writings. 9 It is hard to come up with an apposite but more accurate title; perhaps something like The linguistic relativity principle and Whorj's linguistic theory. In the first chapter, Lee helpfully draws up a list of 12 elements of the "theory complex". Most of these I find derivative (e.g. "point and pattern" from Saussure), obscure, or circular, while the last four are an appeal to increased multilingual and multicultural awareness (also the subject of Ch. 6 of the book), a good thing in itself, but it seems to be Lee's own extension ofWhorf's ideas. The seventh element approaches the question I raised above: if the relationship of language and culture is not causal, how does it happen that they are so parallel (if one accepts the LRP)? But Lee's answer is unsatisfactory and circular: "prior agreement about meanings".

The author steadfastly does not use hyphenated compound adjectives (perhaps because of computer justification of lines). Compound adjectives are especially abundant in this book and sometimes can give the reader pause, e. g.last line ofp. 97: " ... Whorf's gestalttheory based reasoning". There are many typographic errors in the book, even in quotes from other authors. Three examples: p. 10, line 7: "dealt with in detail [in] the next chapter ..."; p. 14, line 2: "regret[t]ing"; p. 23, line 15 "much previously commentary" [sic]. There are also outright errors, e. g. in the Contents, Index of Subjects is listed as beginning on p. 304 rather than 305. Although Joshua Fishman is correctly cited elsewhere, on p. 240, line 2 is the howler "Joseph A. Fishman".

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures Southern lllinois University at Carbondale Carbondale, lllinois 62901-4521

ENDNOTES 1 For documentation of the oceans of ink, see pp. 17ff. and 84ff. and Lee's impressive 20 pages of References (281-300). For the transmutation of the LRP into a "Hypothesis", see pp. 84ff.

2 Lee (p. 85) points out that it has often been noted that weak interpretations of the LRP are un-

REVIEWS

231

interesting theoretically. There are numerous approaches to a definition or clarification of LRP in Lee's book: pp. 40,85-9,91, Ill, 121, 124, 166, 201-2amongothers. The last is a quote from Sapir which ends with" ... the tyrannical hold that linguistic form has upon our orientation in the world".

3 Recently "constructivism", the philosophy which emphasizes knowledge as created by each individual rather than having its source in the physical world, has become popular and has led to such monstrosities as "creative spelling" and guesswork mathematics.

4 When I was a teenager, I thought it would be fascinating but difficult to learn a really different language such as Chinese, which has different words (labels) for each English equivalent.

Of course I did not realize that learning a new set of labels was just the beginning: this would be easy compared with the real complexity of learning a new labelling system, phonology, syntax, etc.

5 Tbe attentive reader will note that Whorf's quote includes a quote from Sapir in which Sapir also strongly rejects the strong form of relativity! But Sapir seems to have forgotten this in practice as shown by his many statements about the strong hold language supposedly has on cognition. Andy Holling reminds me (p.c.) that we are dealing with a triad: language-thought-culture, and that the relativity principle refers to language affecting thought, not culture. But I see culture as a mental construct underlying behavior and the production of artifacts: culture is a manifestation of the habitual thought of the community so that it is possible to adopt the shortcut of talking of the language-culture rell!tionship as an immediate one. I am grateful to Andy for his comment and others which have been incorporated. He is not responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation in this review.

6 Presumably speakers of different languages will be influenced by their languages to categorize material or social artifacts in the world in differential ways. Various experiments designed to (dis )confirm this are difficult to design for ethical and practical reasons: for example, controlling for variables such as intelligence, and prior experience. The results have been mixed, but as I noted earIier, the weak form of the LRP is true and it would be surprising if weak experimental results cannot be obtained on occasion.

7 Lee says that Whorf was influenced by Theosophy, although the extent has not been "traced with any finesse" (pp. 21-22), but on p. xvii, she says" ... as a theosophist, Whorf ..."

8 Interestingly, although Lee speaks of "resonance theory" approvingly (there are ten references to it in the index), she does not define it, so the reader will have to go to Hockett 1987 for a definition. I did and found that Hockett does not give an explicit definition: it seems that resonance includes the "fuzzy-logic" relationship of "almost [the] same" as well as accidental resemblances (ibid. 88, 98).

9 Lee (p. 2) defines the theory complex as "a set of theories about the way language operates in cognition as a product oflinguistic enculturation with far reaching ramifications into individual and social behavior".

REFERENCES Carroll, John B., ed .. 1956. Language, thought, and reality (Selected writings of Benjamin Lee Whorf). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Hockett, Charles. 1987. Refurbishing our foundations (Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 56).

Philadelphia: Benjamins.

Hoijer, Harry, ed. 1954. Language in culture (Coriference on the Interrelationships of Language and Other Aspects of Culture). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Sapir, Edward. 1921. Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace.

232

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

HEIDRUN DORGELOH, Inversion in modern English. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997. 224 pp.

Reviewed by PATRICK J. DuFFLEY

Inversion in modern English is a broad-ranging study of the various forms of subject-verb (called "full inversion" or Fl) and subject-auxiliary inversion (SAl) in contemporary English declarative sentences. The framework used is a discourse-oriented functional approach, which sees inversion as a speaker-based reordering decision within a rigid word order system. Accordingly, the functional and semantic claims made about Fl and SAl are tested against a corpus of naturally-occurring instances of inversion, taken from various genres represented in the Lancaster/Oslo-Bergen and Brown Corpora. This allows the author to show how inversion functions within a real text as a marker of interpersonal meaning and a tool for discourse organization.

For the purposes of the analysis Dorgeloh utilizes the three-layered Hallidayian model of sentence meaning, which distinguishes between representational, interpersonal and thematic levels. The first level involves "semantic categories that derive from the real world" (p. 12), i.e. 'process', 'participants in process', 'circumstances associated with process', and so is not significant for the analysis of inversion, as the latter has no effect on the representation of the experience. The second level concerns the use of language for the exchange of information; on this level an utterance is analyzed as a proposition made up of 'subject' (something by reference to which the proposition can be affirmed or denied), 'finite' and 'residue'. Although inversion does not change the status of the subject as that of which the finite verb and its complements are predicated, Dorgeloh argues that this word order nevertheless changes the interpersonal meaning of a clause. The third level is that of the textual function of language as creating a message with a theme/rheme structure, and here inversion, in that it affects the theme or starting-point of the message, alters the latter's thematic structure.

While the impact of inversion on the textual level comes through very clearly in Dorgeloh's discussion of this phenomenon, there is some confusion however regarding the second level of analysis. Dorgeloh points out quite rightly that Fl constructions do not seem to express the same propositions as their canonical word order (CWO) equivalents, as the former normally cannot be negated (p. 72). Moreover, there are FI sentences which have no CWO counterparts, such as:

(la) Here comes a time of great challenge for this country.

REVIEWS

233

( 1b) *A time of great challenge for this country comes here. (p. 70) This state of affairs is attributed to the fact that in a CWO sentence like ( 1b) the adverbial specifies a physical location of the subject or a property belonging to the outside world (i.e. it fulfils a representational function), whereas in the FI construction the adverbial is anchored within the text or speech event itself, thus giving rise to different truth conditions for the two constructions. This is not always the case however; in both (2a) and (2b) below the adverbial has situational reference, and yet only (2b) can be negated: (2a) Around the comer came Mary.

(2b) Mary came around the comer.

The different propositional status of the FI sentence has to do with the fact that the speaker is doing other things on the level of organizing the discourse besides simply making a predication, but the two levels are not mutually exclusive, in spite of the impression given by the author's formulation that deictic presentative full inversion "expresses speakerbased discourse organisation and produces a meaning of deictic adverbs that is only subjectively given." [my italics] (p. 72). The more general claim that "while a CWO sentence containing a deictic adverb can be attributed a truth-value, i.e. can be unequivocally true or false, a comparable FI is 'made true' solely by virtue of being used by the speaker" (p.

72) forgets that the truth-value of any sentence containing a deictic depends on the context in which it is used by a speaker. The explanation for the resistance of FI structures to negation must therefore lie elsewhere.

One might speculate that there would seem to be an inherent contradiction between an "existential scale" construction such as FI, whose function is to express the appearance/existence of a phenomenon on a scene (cf. p. 72), and negation of the verb performing the dynamic function of expressing appearance/existence on this scene. Negation thus stands in opposition to the presentational function of the construction.

The choice of a discourse-functional approach to the problem of inversion is highly appropriate nevertheless, as this syntactic pattern often has the same truth-conditions as the SVO word order sentence and consequently must obey different imperatives than the mere expression of propositional content. This is not really the place to go into a general discussion of the problem, but one could question the assumption made by the author that there is such a thing as "canonical" or "grammaticalised"

234

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

word order in English, with constructions such as inversion representing a "deviation from the norm" (p. 1). This presumes that the basic or canonical function of language is the mere expression of propositions with no reference to the subjectivity of the speaker, whereas in actual fact this situation corresponds to only certain fairly restricted types of language usage. It would be more accurate to say that SVO is the word order used when an English speaker wishes merely to assert a proposition, and even then it should be pointed out that SVO is not confined to this function since it can also be found in utterances which are meant as orders, requests, etc.

Dorgeloh is certainly justified however in treating inversion as involving more than the mere assertion of a propositional content. He proposes to treat it as a discourse marker whose semantics must be defined in terms of viewpoint and speaker subjectivity. From this point of view it is also justified to treat both FI and SAl together, even though these two word-ordering devices are extremely different in many respects from both a structural and a discourse-semantic point of view. Subjectauxiliary inversion has two functions (cf. p. 190): to indicate that the speaker is emotively affected by the fronted item (as in negative inversion of the type Never again did he touch my car) or to indicate how the speaker relates predications to one another (as with so and nor). Full inversion, on the other hand, always involves some kind of localisation, the most common case being that of situating a new or re-introduced topic with respect to other discourse entities in its use to structure a text, with the descriptive function of presenting a scene from a certain vantage point being somewhat less frequent (p. 192). Both are signals of subjectivity and the intervention of the speaker in the discourse, although in different ways.

While one can only applaud the conclusions of the author as to the discourse function of inversion on the level of its role as a signal of the speaker's subjectivity and text-structuring activity, this study still leaves a number of questions unaddressed which would be needed for a complete linguistic approach to this phenomenon, i.e. an approach which seeks to explain the use of all of the linguistic signs involved in inverted constructions. Dorgeloh's work focusses exclusively on the role of word order, more precisely on the function of first position in the sentence as a signal that an item is being used by the speaker as a discursive or de- . scriptive scene-setter to introduce some other entity (FI) or as a signal of the prominence of some aspect of a proposition or its logical relation to another proposition (SAl). There are other linguistic devices associated with both of these types of inversion however, an understanding of

REVIEWS

235

which would certainly cast greater light on the nature of inverted constructions as a whole. One such sign is the pronominal forms which occur in Fl. If Penhallurick ( 1984: 36) points out that pronouns are generally unacceptable with full inversion, this may be because he is thinking only of the nominative forms /, he, she; common-case forms seem quite possible, as in: (3)

And then, all of a sudden, out came him.

The occurrence of the common-case form is certainly telling us something about the relation of the final item of this construction to the resta question which remains to be explored however, as Dorgeloh does not even evoke it at all in the study. As for SAl, no explanation is attempted for the appearance of do- auxiliary in constructions with inversion when the corresponding non-inverted sentences contain no do: (4)

I never spoke to that man again.

(5)

Never again did I speak to that man.

In this case inversion also has a sentence-internal impact (the appearance of do), which is not accounted for by a vague reference to the subjectivity of the speaker. In all fairness to the author, however, these aspects were not his prime concern in the book. Nevertheless it should be pointed out that, even though this research constitutes a major contribution to the field, the last word has not yet been said on inversion in English.

I end with some more specific points where the analysis of particular uses seems to require rectification. The example of FI given in (5) on page 68 (Now is the time to consider the future of how Britain should be governed) is not a case of FI, but rather of now being used in the function of subject (cf. Yesterday is gone, only now exists). Another case of mistaken identification of a subject occurs in (28), p. 83 (First stop is still the second-hand shops where the men intently rifle through the racks of children's and women's clothing). According to the author's own criterion of subject-verb agreement (note 2, chapter 3),first stop is the subject in this sentence and not the second-hand shops.

On page 83, sentence (21c) is marked as unacceptable (Of greater concern to many proliferation experts there is the political braindrain of thousands of former Soviet nuclear scientists); this sentence would be perfectly conceivable to me however and would suggest 'if you are won-

236

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

dering whether there are things of greater concern to proliferation experts, there is this problem (the political braindrain)'. Of course, the context in which the sentence with there would be used is not the same as the FI construction, but to say that there-insertion would be unacceptable is not accurate. I also found a few more cases of questionable judgments of nonacceptability. Example (71 b) (= I had to hide the book because in came my father) is quite acceptable, particularly if one adds again. This confirms Dorgeloh's own caveat concerning the whole discussion about inversion being excluded from embedded clauses: 'judgements of acceptability are a particularly vulnerable issue here" (p. 102). Greater caution in accepting the acceptability judgments of Kuno 1987 would have been in order regarding sentences (75a) and (75c), given as (6) and (7) below, with the question mark indicating doubtful acceptance of (75a): (6)

(?)A boy sneaked into the room and was immediately hit on the head by John.

(7)

Into the room sneaked a boy and was immediately hit on the head by John.

I find (7) distinctly odd without adding the pronoun he before was; on the other hand, (6) as it stands would not cause me to bat an eyelash.

On pages 86-87, the author echoes Ward and Birner's (1992:578) claim that inverted constructions with fronted present participles are semantically static and locative rather than imperfective because, due to the absence of a competing preterit form, they lack the implicature of imperfectiveness. This implies a view of the semantic value of verbal forms as being completely defined by oppositions between sentences in parole rather than between positions in a verbal system in langue. Moreover the claims made by these authors do not correspond to the dynamic meaning of Dorgeloh's example (33), reproduced below as (8), a fact which is brought out even more clearly by the clearly dynamic and imperfective meaning of my example (9): (8)

Also being treated are Houston, Bleekley, Tift Turner and Dodge Counties, Blasingame said.

(9)

Romping around on the rec room floor were two-year-old Bobby and Luke.

REVIEWS

237

Granted, the overall effect of the fronted expression is locational, but this does not preclude the evocation of an activity in the location used as a reference point for introducing the backed element of the clause.

A point regarding the classification of examples with the verb be such as (46) and (47), p. 90 (46 =So great is the apathy that the Government could probably go in or stay out without vitally offending either its own followers or the country). Since the verb be behaves like an auxiliary in all of its uses, these should be classified as subject-auxiliary inversion rather than full inversion, as confirmed by the fact that auxiliary do would have to be used in such a structure with a lexical verb, as shown by Dorgeloh's example (48) on the same page.

In conclusion, Inversion in modern English represents an important contribution to the uncovering of the discourse conditions giving rise to inversion in English. The conclusions are based on real data and the functional approach chosen is appropriate for dealing with a construction which has more than a mere proposition-assertive function. One might fault the. analytical framework for assuming that the representational (i.e. experiential) level is actually part of the meaning of the sentence (if meaning is taken as referring to that which is evoked directly by the linguistic sign), which leads to accepting, like Bresnan 1994, the existence of a "mismatch between various levels of sentence structure" in inverted constructions (p. 195). Nevertheless, the conclusions proposed on the level of the contribution of inversion to textual organisation are both significant and well-founded.

Departement de langues et linguistique Universite Laval Quebec G 1K 7P4 Canada Patrick. Dufftey@ lli.ulaval.ca

REFERENCES Bresnan, Joan. 1994. "Locative inversion and the architecture of universal grammar." Language 70: 72-137.

Kuno, Susumu. 1987. Functional syntax: Anaphora, discourse and empathy. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Penhallurick, John. 1984. "Full-verb inversion in English." Australian journal of linguistics 4:3356.

Ward, Gregory L. and Betty J. Birner. 1992. "VP inversion and aspect in written texts." Cooperating with written texts: Pragmatics and comprehension of written texts. Ed. Dieter Stein.

Berlin: Mouton. Pp 575-88.

238

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

GARETH KING, Intermediate Welsh: A grammar and workbook. London: Routledge 1996. x + 156 pp.

Reviewed by JAMES FIFE

There has been a veritable explosion of new materials for teaching Welsh in recent years, 1 and Gareth King has been one of the main forces behind this trend. In addition to the current work, he has been responsible for a companion volume on Basic Welsh, a complete course of colloquial Welsh and a comprehensive learner's grammar. A learner-oriented dictionary of Welsh by King will also appear soon. It's a bit of a nineday's wonder why there has been this upsurge in language learning material for Welsh. It may be due simply to past neglect of a market potential that always existed, or it may be that the resurgence is merely a manifestation of the general demographic phenomenon about Welsh that its greatest growth in recent years has been precisely among traditionally non-Welsh-speaking communities (see Fife 1996). For one reason or another, a lot of people who never thought of learning Welsh are doing so now, and publications such as the present book have a beneficial, synergistic effect in promoting and assisting that welcome spread of interest.

One of the most welcome ofthe trends which grammar-writers such as King have initiated is the sweeping out of cobwebs from the musty attic of Welsh grammar. Until the seventies, but really not until this recent round of publications, Welsh grammars (scholarly and pedagogic alike) were among the most canard-ridden in print. The piscrepancy between fact and grammatical fiction was shockingly wide in some cases.

The reason for this stems primarily from the gulf between traditional written and spoken Welsh (see Fife 1986). But the combined effects of strongly synchronically-oriented linguistics and of the language defence movement in Wales led to a re-evaluation of the grammar-writing ethos toward a more natural, colloquial approach. The first attempt at colloquializing Welsh instruction was the infamous Cymraeg Byw ("Living Welsh") movement, which promoted an amalgamated version of Welsh spoken forms as a spoken standard. Arguments raged (rage) on either side of the Cymraeg Byw controversy, but now de facto one camp of anti-Cymraeg Byw language teachers seems to have won out. Judging from works such as King's, the current trend is toward a more "natural" version of Welsh, even if that means plumping for specific dialect forms rather than ironing out the bumps and inconsistencies into a homogenous standard.

In that light, King's book is not only an excellent text for intermediate level Welsh learners, but also represents another stone thrown in the

REVIEWS

239

battle over what form of Welsh is to be taught. Throughout his series of recent publications, King has endeavored to describe Welsh as a naturally spoken language, including the warts and pimples arising from dialectal variation, English influence, change in progress, and loss of speech community and continuity. This has produced a series of books designed primarily for learners, but of singular interest to the linguist because here one can see more of the unvarnished language than we are used to seeing in textbooks for beginning or even intermediate students.

King does not consign such variation to footnotes or cultural side-bar boxes; he teaches them up front and without apology. It is refreshing in conception and has the secondary benefit of producing pedagogic work suitable for gaining insight into the real language.

In Intermediate Welsh, King continues this practice of remaining true to the data. It is literally exciting to see a book that teaches learners the forms and usages which occur most naturally in everyday spoken Welsh. King acquaints his readers with such typically spoken structures as the inflected future forms, aspect phrases, auxiliary preterit forms using gwneud/ddaru 'do/happen', colloquial subordinate forms of bod 'be', the cael 'get' passive, stative passives, and the colloquial range of the initial mutations. My favorite is his inclusion of the negative particles simo/sa (p. 83), which are very hard to find discussed even in the most comprehensive descriptive grammars, let alone taught to learners!

Inclusion of these forms serves the very important purposes of avoiding filling the student's head with expressions or structures that mark him or her as a learner, as well as helping destigmatize the spoken language in the eyes of native speakers. Welsh speakers tend to devalue natural spoken norms as beneath their venerable literary traditions. Enshrining these everyday forms in a textbook can help elevate them toward the status of a "legitimate" version of Welsh alongside the literary standard.

Despite his avowed preference for natural, spoken forms over the ossified literary canons, King does not make a fetish of any particular register of Welsh. He introduces "literary" forms precisely where they are found as part of the everyday spoken repertoire of average speakers.

Thus alongside a lesson teaching the typically colloquial aspect phrases using newydd, heb and ar (pp. 25-7), King provides a unit describing the inflected present and past impersonal forms of the verb (-ir and -wyd), which are touchstone literary forms (pp. 68-70). King does this, not as was done formerly, because the impersonal forms are "proper Welsh", but because "in written Welsh, and particularly in the newspapers and media [including television}, a different, more concise method is used" for the equivalent of passivization. But so that no misconceptions are created in the minds of learners about the poshness of these forms, King

240

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

reminds readers that "[these endings] are much favoured in the media ... In speech, however, -iris unknown and -wyd rare." (p. 69) Indeed, the last five units are all devoted to Literary Welsh forms, acting as a bridge for the advanced learner who will perforce need these forms to gain access to traditional literature.

In addition to an Introduction, the book contains 40 units, each with one or more sets of fairly simple exercises, a key to the exercises, a glossary of grammatical terms, and two vocabulary lists. The ~tructures and vocabulary seem well suited to the target audience of intermediate learners. The book is billed as a grammar and workbook, but is rather more of the former than the latter. "Workbook" suggests more exercises and a greater variety of tasks than are actually provided; it is not something an instructor could use as the sole, or even primary, source of classroom activities and drills. The exercises are more suitable as supplementary work or as self-examination. It is therefore not a complete intermediate course in its own right. The book would serve better as a supplementary reference work or self-instructional aid than as the main text for a course, but in its proper role, the book I think will work very well. The grammatical descriptions are understandable and common-sensical, with a minimum of terminology and a commendably non-legislative attitude toward linguistic behavior.

It is regrettably rare that a basic language textbook holds as much of value for the investigative professional as for the naive learner, but that is just what is here in Intermediate Welsh. The documentation of vernacular and dialectal structures and the very principle it implements of doing away with "cooked" language for learners are both of interest to linguists at large. It and the other recent contributions to this trend are valuable models of how a language textbook should be oriented, even for languages without the same history of controversy over what form of the language to teach. With works such as this, Welsh pedagogical grammar catches up with the state of modern linguistic science, and maybe even forges a little bit ahead.

P.O. Box 90355 San Diego, CA 92169 BTJP89A @prodigy.com

ENDNOTE 1 Listingjust the more substantial learners' grammars and workbooks published in the last five years, there have been comprehensive grammars (King 1993, Thomas 1996, Thorne 1993, Davies

241

REVIEWS

1993), partial or complete courses (Gruffudd 1998; King 1995, 1996; Rhys Jones 1993), and pedagogic lexicographic works (Klingebiell994, Lewis 1993, and King [In press]).

REFERENCES Davies, J. 1994. Welsh language. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Fife, James. 1986. "Literary and colloquial Welsh: Some problems of definition." WORD 37:141-151.

- - . 1996. Review of A geography of the Welsh Language /96/-/991, by J. Aitchison and H. Carter. WORD 47:452---{i.

Gruffudd, H. 1998. Beginners' Welsh. New York: Hippocrene Books.

King, Gareth. 1993. Modern Welsh. London: Routledge.

King, Gareth. 1995. Colloquial Welsh. London: Routledge.

King, Gareth. 1996. Basic Welsh. London: Routledge.

King, Gareth. In Press. The Oxford dictionary of Welsh usage. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Klingebiel, K. 1994. 234 Welsh verbs. Van Nuys, CA: Ford and Bailie.

Lewis, E. 1993. Welsh dictionary. London: Teach Yourself Books.

Rhys Jones, T. 1993. Teach yourself Welsh. London: Teach Yourself Books.

Thomas, P. 1996. Gramadeg y Gymraeg. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Thorne, D. 1993. A comprehensive Welsh grammar. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

JOHN H. McWHORTER, Towards a new model of creole genesis. (Studies in Ethnolinguistics, 3.) New York: Peter Lang, 1997. xiii + 199 pp.

Reviewed by ANTHONY P.

GRANT

This book is a revised version of the author's doctoral dissertation, written at Stanford in 1993 under the supervision of John R. Rickford. It touches many of the "hot topics" within creolistics, for instance the Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, and the possibility of Afrogenesis-the idea that English and French-lexifier creoles were formed in the slave forts of West Africa rather than in the Caribbean. It revisits a number of the linguistic battlegrounds familiar to creolists, of which verb serialization in Saramaccan Creole English is probably the most salient one.

The structure of the book is cumulative. M sketches out his ideas and the framework in which he is going to prove them, and then furnishes evidence, topic by topic, each feeding from previous discussions, in order to prove his claim that Saramaccan, like other forms of creolized English used in the Caribbean, has its origins in a restructured English originally used on the Lower Guinea Coast among speakers of Kwa Ian-

242

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

guages in the seventeenth century. The first chapter (1-20) is therefore introductory in nature, setting the scene, explaining what Saramaccan is, and where it fits in relation to Sranan and other creole Englishes. Chapter 2 (21-53) discusses serial verbs in Saramaccan, demonstrating that they must have arisen as the result of adstratal influence from Gbe and other West African languages which had them, while the next chapter (55-82) examines Bickerton's Language Biopropgram Hypothesis.

Chapter 4 (83-121) concentrates on the role of the different forms of the copula in Saramaccan and other creoles (not just those with English lexica) used in the Caribbean. Chapter 5 (123--43) sets out M's view of the course of development of Saramaccan, and in the next chapter ( 145-70) he presents a model of creole genesis. After a few pages of conclusions (171-76) the book finishes with a good bibliography (1-77-92) and an index, unfortunately largely one of subjects rather than names. The book is rounded off by a smart picture of the author at ease.

M comes to this discussion with impressive credentials. He has worked with speakers of Saramaccan and can thus draw upon his own fieldnotes for examples. He has also investigated the development and creolization of Nicaraguan Sign Language. His work is informed by an agreeably catholic cross-linguistic perspective and a careful examination of parallels between Saramaccan and the African substrate languages, especially Gbe, Kikongo and Twi, which are supposed to have had so much influence upon its structure.

In Saramaccan, the language of the descendants of slaves who escaped from Surinamese plantations in the seventeenth ·and eighteenth centuries and who formed maroon communities in the bush, M has one of the most fruitful languages to use as a test-bed for his theories. The language is extremely unlike its assumed chief lexifier, metropolitan English, in almost every respect, and to the untrained eye at least is typologically far more similar to West African languages. Part of the reason for this difference, for example the overlay of Portuguese elements, which play such an important role in the core vocabulary, is as a result of sociohistorical developments within Surinam. The same can probably be said of the important lexical component of African (especially Gbe and Kikongo) origin, relatively little of which is also found in Sranan.

This is also true of the presence in these creoles of an indigenous Amerindian lexical component, deriving largely from Arawak, which provides much of the ecological terminology in Saramaccan and which is hardly mentioned by M. The Dutch lexical element in Saramaccan, which has penetrated even the basic vocabulary, is naturally also an element of the language which entered in Surinam. Some of the differences

REVIEWS

243

between Saramaccan and English, for example the medial vowel sequences in words where English has 11/ or /r/, can be attributed to developments within Saramaccan itself. We have what for a creole can be described as extensive records of the language from the late eighteenth century, and these allow us to track phonological and other developments to a certain extent. But much of the difference between Saramaccan and English goes to the very heart of creole languages.

Because of its distance in so many structural respects from its primary lexifier language Saramaccan is what many scholars have called a "radical creole". It differs from English to a far greater extent than even basilectal Jamaican does. Other features of Saramaccan which require explanation are some of the parallels between it and Sranan which are not to be found in other forms of Creole English and which cannot be explained away by reference to Dutch. Of course M loses no time in establishing that Sranan and Saramaccan have a common origin, and his use of data from Maroon Spirit Language, a variety spoken by Maroons in eastern Jamaica (who are incidentally known to be largely of Akan linguistic ancestry) while in a state of spirit possession, is especially pertinent.

Throughout the work M examines what previous scholars have said about the processes of the creation of Saramaccan. He pays particular attention to claims, by Derek Bickerton and his followers, that Saramaccan syntax can be taken to represent the application of some form of Universal Grammar to a set of circumstances conducive to the rise of a creole among plantation slaves of diverse linguistic backgrounds who lacked prolonged access to the language of their masters. Bickerton claimed (for instance in Bickerton 1981) that children who grew up in areas where a rudimentary pidgin was the main language of communication would access and rely upon Universal Grammar in order to expand this pidgin in such a way as to enable it to serve as a primary means of communication: in short, to creolize it. M demonstrates in Chapter 3 of his book that Bickerton's Language Bioprogram Hypothesis, far from giving a satisfactory account of the development of Saramaccan, does not even account efficiently for the rise of Hawaii Creole English, the language which provided the worked example from which the theory was elaborated.

It must be said that Afro genesis, in which M believes, is not as popular a hypothesis now as it was even a few years ago, and that those who do adhere to it are in disagreement as to whether Lower Guinea (for instance the Ghanaian coast fort of Cormantin) or Upper Guinea/Senegambia was the cradle of an original Atlantic Pidgin/Creole English.

244

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

Some of the more eager proponents of an Afro genetic account of the origins of Caribbean Creole Englishes have only recently abandoned their support for the theory, and claim that the source of these creoles lies in the New World. The existence today of thriving forms of pidginized or creolized English in West Africa is not to be taken as proof of a tradition of historical continuity. Krio and West African Pidgin English may have millions of speakers, but their existence cannot be adduced as proof of a continuous tradition of pidginized English in West Africa. Krio has its roots in the speech of Jamaican Maroons transported to Sierra Leone in 1800, and this was then diffused from Freetown and elsewhere throughout the eastern coastal part of West Africa. For my own part, I feel that Afrogenesis is not proven, and probably even not provable. It is certainly possible for creole languages to acquire the bulk of their African features away from Africa, as the example of Berbice Dutch shows-if the sociopolitical circumstances are right. Creolists still do not yet adequately control all the variables which come into play during the development of a creole language. M's observations on page 72 about the evident simplification of the substrate languages by the developers of creoles, and the fact that many features common to West African languages are not found in creoles, are important and should be heeded by further researchers.

Indeed, parts of the book read rather quaintly once we integrate certain recent, and as yet partially unpublished, discoveries. The role of St. Kitts as the Caribbean cradle for Creole English was rather overshadowed by that of Barbados when M was writing his book, ·but it is coming into its own now, with important work being conducted by a band of scholars working independently but led by the meticulous research of Philip Baker. Furthermore, it is now known from research (to date unpublished) conducted by John Ladhams at the University of Westminster, that the Portuguese-speaking Sephardim who left Brazil in the 1660s went not to Surinam, as had often previously been thought, but to Cura~ao. In short, by the time this book had been published, some ofM's assertions had been superseded by later research. Some of the other claims, though less tendentious, are also questionable. I did find M's claims on page 14 about the mysterious recrudescence of lrnl before object markers in the Sranan and Saramaccan words meaning 'eat' and 'beat, punish', a little surprising. They may be pronounced with final nasalized vowels or with velar nasals in isolation or in citation form, but both have /rn/ in Jamaican: nyam andfom respectively. What we are seeing here is something probably of the same kind as the Polynesian passive, in which previous Prato-Austronesian final consonants, normally

REVIEWS

245

deleted as the results of an earlier rule, reappear in environments where they are no longer the final consonants at word level. Given that Saramaccan derives from an early form of Sranan, we should not find these parallels too surprising as part of a shared inheritance.

As to the lgbo-derived pronouns mentioned on page 18, it is certainly true that the second person plural form unu is of Igbo origin, but I am a little more reserved about attributing the same origin to the second person singular i and the third person singular a, especially to the former. The possibility of coalescence is open (and we may note that the two forms also occur in the same shapes and with the same functions as unstressed pronouns in Mandinka), but it should be noted that lgbo-derived forms in the Saramaccan lexicon are otherwise not plentiful. The forms are also recorded in Sranan, Maroon Spirit Language and earlier Jamaican, and may be part of an earlier nautical contact medium used in the Atlantic slave trade, together with words such as bakra (attested in Saramaccan as bakda) 'white man' from Efik mbakara 'one who rules', a loan from a language which otherwise contributed little to the lexica of Caribbean creoles. (Interestingly Antillean French creoles tend to use beke, itself derived from lgbo, for this concept, but the word is hardly found in Caribbean Creole Englishes.) I would also question M's claim on page 37 that Papiamentu is almost a semi-creole because of the heavy impact of Spanish upon it. For one thing, the two languages are not mutually intelligible. To redress the balance a little, I would like to commend the ingenious, and to me entirely satisfactory, piece of Sranan philology, relating to a supposed reflex of English somebody, which M carries out on page 107, identifying it as Sranan suma de 'someone is'.

M wisely notes that there are a number of issues which an argument drawing upon substrate transfer cannot explain. For example, the use of complementizers based on 'say' is widespread in English-lexifier Atlantic creoles, but apart from some uncommon examples in Seychellois, it is unparalleled in French-lexifier creoles, even radical creoles such as Haitian. This is all the more significant since Haitian and Saramaccan share many of the same substrates, such as Gbe and Kikongo, and both have borrowed from them extensively. M's model does not seek to explain the genesis of all creoles, and this is just as well: it would be hard to devise a model which could account equally well for creoles as typologically diverse as Saramaccan, Tayo, Chabacano, Berbice Dutch and Mauritian. He points out (xii) that what distinguishes creoles is their history, but it is highly likely that several different historical routes of linguistic development can end up by producing creoles which are typologically similar.

246

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

Overall, the book is valuable as a contribution to the ongoing debate on the history of creoles, and is especially commendable for its sophisticated approach to comparative data, in which Chapter 2, with its displays of serial verb constructions from a number of West African languages, is particularly rich. Whether or not Saramaccan derives from an English speech variety born in Africa, M has elegantly documented much of the history of the language in the New World. I hope that this book encourages others to examine more closely the synchronic and diachronic parallels and differences between Saramaccan, Sranan and Ndjuka, and to explain how and why Saramaccan is different in so many ways from Sranan and Ndjuka, something that is missing from this book. I also hope that it encourages them to investigate less well-explored creole varieties in Suriname such as Paramaccan and Matawai, so that we can begin to see more clearly what is old and new in these creoles, and thereby perhaps build a stronger and better model. Despite what M states on page 175, creolistics, at least when at its best and when least navel-gazing, is still burgeoning and full of promise, and as every year goes by we creolists discover how many unanswered questions there really are.

43 St. Helena Road Wibsey, Bradford West Yorkshire BD6 I SY England

REFERENCES Bickerton, Derek. 1981. Roots of language. Ann Arbor, MI: Karoma.

JAMES E. ALATIS, CAROLYN A. STRAEHLE, MAGGIE RONKIN, and BRENT GALLENBERGER, eds., Georgetown university round table on languages and linguistics 1996. Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1996. 287 pp.

Reviewed by ALAN S.

KAYE

GURT '96 contains some interesting material, as is true with all previous GURTs. It represents the published proceedings of the 47th annual Georgetown University Round Table meeting on languages and lin-

REVIEWS

247

guistics, containing 17 contributions on the themes of second language acquisition (SLA) and language variation. These essays were dedicated by the Chair of the conference, Dean James E. Alatis, to Earl W. Stevick, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Foreign Service Institute, who was also presented with the GURT Distinguished Achievement Medal (pp. 3-4). Professor Stevick is the author of many well-known publications dealing with SLA and language teaching over a long and distinguished career, and there is no need to list them here.

The GURT papers are divided into four sections. Because of space considerations, my strategy in this review will be to comment on anumber of those works in which I have some specialized interest and expertise, while only mentioning the names of the other authors and their respective titles. This approach in no way implies that there are two levels in the quality of articles. As is the case of other GURTs, the quality of these offerings is mixed; but generally speaking, other volumes in this series have much more to offer the general linguist (see, e.g., Kaye 1997). Some of the essays, however, could have been greatly improved by careful editorial advice and scrutiny, as will be clarified by my remarks which follow.

The opening plenary address is by the prolific David Crystal, whose insightful title matches an equally exhilarating performance. "Playing with Linguistic Problems: From Orwell to Plato and Back Again" is both a commentary on contemporary linguistic attitudes and an exploration of the relatively unresearched realm oflanguage play (pp. 5-29). His position is squarely on target: "Of all areas of language use, I see language play as the one which is most capable of altering popular linguistic perceptions-powerful enough to 'take on' prescriptive attitudes and provide an alternative, positive view of language" (p. 15). He is certainly right that "ludic linguistics," as he calls this new field, has been "curiously neglected" (ibid.). It seems to me that a whole journal could profitably be called Ludic linguistics. One thought expressed as a definitive conclusion by the author requires the presentation of convincing evidence, in my view, viz., that "several authors have concluded that the ability to manipulate language [i.e., language play: ASK] is associated with success in learning to read" (p. 27). Contrary to this perspective, I · see the acquisition of reading skills for a language such as English, at any rate, as being predominantly related to (1) the understanding of phoneme-grapheme correspondences; and (2) the quality of the instruction. Of course, the child's motivation and study habits are also of crucial importance in this connection. Arabic (and other languages, too) is another story, however, as classical diglossia (see Kaye 1994) poses

248

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

some very special pedagogical problems in the area of the teaching of reading and literacy in general.

Reinhold Freudenstein's "Foreign-Language Teaching after the Year 2000" is proof that sometimes there is nothing new under the sun, since it is pointed out that Vietor (1882) was the precursor for some modem methods, such as the so-called "natural" approach (pp. 43-54).

Although the author states language teachers should be native speakers because they are "the best language teachers" (p. 53), I see no evidence presented which, in fact, substantiates this claim. I cannot see any reason preventing a foreigner from becoming an excellent foreign language instructor. Taking my own case as a student of various foreign languages over many years as illustrative, many of my own language teachers were both non-native speakers and excellent instructors and had native-like fluency and pronunciation, while a few native-speaking teachers I have had were mediocre. I do not believe that any evidence exists which assigns the native-speaking teacher a monopoly on foreign language instruction.

Stephen Krashen, a regular GURT participant over a long period, writes on "The Case Against Bilingual Education" (pp. 55-69). He reports that he has re-examined all of the published literature in this arena and "found numerous problems with their conclusions" (p. 58). I agree with Krashen's position that bilingual education has done well, and can be improved through "free voluntary reading" (p. 67). Of course, I think the same recommendation holds true for the improvement of monolingual education, despite the proliferation of videos and computers. I am not the only parent and educator to notice a steady decline in the U.S. populatioq's interest in and aptitude for reading over the past two decades. My view is largely based on my experience in teaching California undergraduates for the past 27 years.

Ross Steele's "Developing Intercultural Competence through Foreign Language Instruction" (pp. 70-83) is a disappointing essay about teaching foreign languages and cultures discussing, among other topics, airline magazine advertisements for the teaching of various foreign languages. Any professional linguist knows that one does not learn to think in a foreign language in 30 days, "guaranteed [or your money back: ASK]" (pp. 71-3), so why should one take the trouble to remark about students' speaking abilities after day 1, as the author does: "What would the learner be able to converse about comfortably, we might well ask?" (p. 72). Most of these magazine and newspaper advertisements are so blatantly untrue and misleading that they merit no mention in our scholarly linguistic literature, in my opinion. To do otherwise and discuss the

REVIEWS

249

ads is to dignify the ridiculous claims on this score being made by a host of companies. One of the most ludicrous of claims is that one will actually begin thinking in the foreign language from the very first day of instruction. Need I say more?

Unfortunately, many parts of Steele's article are a rehash of wellknown information, such as the audio-lingual method (p. 73), or the literature vs. language dichotomy (pp. 73-4 ). Finally, there are many banal statements, such as: "Students enroll in a Foreign Language Department in higher education for many reasons: to fulfill a language requirement; to learn a language for travel or professional purposes; because they enjoy reading and want to specialize in a foreign literature, etc." (p. 76), or: "Through the foreign language, the learner is becoming a dual culture person whose native culture will always be part of his or her identity" (p. 77); and: "The use of authentic spoken, written, and visual materials can create a direct link with the foreign culture" (p. 79). There is, sadly, nothing original in this article, nor can I see that anything previously stated by others is better explained herein.

Michael P. Green's "Constructions of the Learner in Second Language Acquisition Research" (pp. 84-1 07) talks of three types of foreign language learners: (1) interpretive; (2) accommodating; and (3) strategic (pp. 87-91). Trying to figure out to which of these three groups I happen to belong, I do not believe that all foreign language learners can be neatly compartmentalized into only one of these categories. The author concludes that a foreign language is learned by first understanding how "language learning is embedded in the discourse of the classroom" (p.

101). It seems to me that the best foreign language learners are those who acquired the tongue living abroad, using it in a natural environment in which it is spoken (and not in the classroom). I even wonder if nativelike fluency can ever be acquired solely in a classroom. This article is, incidentally, overloaded with bibliography for which I can see little justification; e.g., Chomsky (1968) (pp. 101-07).

Joan Morley's "Second Language Speech/Pronunciation: Acquisition, Instruction, Standards, Variation and Accent" (pp. 140-60) mostly contains many well-known facts. Consider the following: "An 'accent' is an interesting thing. Each of us has an accent, yet in our conventional wisdom, we often think it is others who have accents, who 'talk funny', while our speech is the right speech-so of course we are not the ones with accents" (p. 142). Further, there is nothing new in the conclusions offered. For example, I believe most language teachers will agree with Morley that pronunciation is important (p. 146), and further, that teachers who teach pronunciation should know something about phonetics

250

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

and phonology (p. 143). It has been my experience that most do, at least on the university level of instruction.

Renzo Titone's "From Communicative Competence through Bilingualism to Metalinguistic Development: Some Theoretical Pointers and Research Perspectives" (pp. 161-77) has little in it which can be considered innovative. Consider but a few sentences which are typical: "In reality, no communication is possible without the use of linguistic (and non-linguistic) tools. Language as performance (parole) prerequires the existence and availability oflanguage as a system (langue) ... Communication is a wider pale containing language. But if they are devoid of the knowledge of social rules ensuring and governing effective communication, language and linguistic command are not alone sufficient to ensure interpersonal content, or real communication" (p. 163).

Many of the author's conclusions are obscure, at best. Consider: "Diglossic competence, provided it is systematically submitted to special teaching strategies, can become a source for analytic reflection of language texts", and: "Bilingual education has the highest chance of providing food for thought ..." (p. 167). Many vague statements permeate this article. My overall evaluation is that it is very difficult to see the point (correct "pointer" in the title of the article to "point"[?]) of this essay.

Yamuna Kachru's "Culture, Variation, and Languages of Wider Communication: The Paradigm Gap" (pp. 178-95) examines variation in some of the world's major languages (called "languages of wider communication" [p. 178]). Let me now offer an explication on the discussed variation of the indefinite article in English, in which an > a before words beginning with vowels, spoken by such notable native speakers as George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Dick Cavett, and Phil Donahue (p.

184). I suggest that the examples offered are best considered speech errors since most native speakers would, I believe, reject *a unqualified success as an ungrammatical phrase (ibid.). A good parallel here would be the pronunciation of the phrase slip of the tongue as tip of the slongue.

Peter Patrick's "Variation and Mesolect in Jamaican Creole" argues, successfully in my view, against considering Jamaican Creole (JC) an example of a diglossic situation, which is the thesis of Winford ( 1985) (pp. 196--220). The author concludes that mesolectal JC "is best explained as a variable system, ruled by a single grammar which incorporates components from both English and basilectal JC" (p. 216). I agree with Patrick, who rules out code-switching and code-mixing models. However, he presents no evidence for his claim that this diglossic situation consists of one grammar rather than more than one. Personally, I

REVIEWS

251

believe the notion of the creole continuum still works well as an explanation when applied to Caribbean English-creole speech communities (see Kaye 1994 for this model applied to Arabic).

"Theodore Rogers's "Poisoning Pidgins in the Park: The Study and Status of Hawaiian Creole" examines some of the work on Hawaiian creole English agreeing with the research of the late Charlene Sato that "decreolization has stabilized, at least decelerated in Hawaii" (p. 233) (pp. 221-35). We are told that "the standard view of creole evolution is that decreolization is inevitable" (p. 232), and the author correctly stresses that there are factors inhibiting decreolization in Hawaii. I can offer a good parallel here from my work on Juba Arabic (JA), both a pidgin and a creole spoken in Equatoria Province, southern Sudan. JA is growing rapidly, and southern Sudanese rally around and support it because it is so very different from any type of northern Sudanese Colloquial Arabic spoken by most of the country's rulers. Southerners want their own identity and independence, which is reason enough, in my opinion, why ·decreolization has not taken place. Ki-Nubi is a relative of JA spoken in Kibera, a suburb of Nairobi, Kenya, which has also not decreolized, despite the fact that its speakers are all Muslim who come in daily contact with the acrolectic Arabic of the Koran. Another reason is that Ki-Nubi is so radically different in grammatical structure and phonology from Classical Arabic.

Cristina Sanz's "The Problem of Variation in SLA Theory" is a summary (with a long bibliography, pp. 248-51) of research on interlearner and intra-learner variation, with concentration on the latter (pp.

236-51). It is interesting to note that the term "interlanguage", valuable in my view, has been consciously avoided because it has been used to refer "to the language learner's system and her linguistic production".

Walt Wolfram's "Endangered Dialects: Sociolinguistic Opportunity and Obligation" makes a solid case that dialect death is just as significant as language death (pp. 252-69). It examines the so-called Ocracoke brogue-the subject of Wolfram and Schilling-Estes (forthcoming).

(Ocracoke is an island off North Carolina's coast, and there are only 200-250 speakers of this offshoot of southern British English remaining.) I agree with Wolfram's position; in my own area of specialization, Arabic dialectology, researchers often lament that more data were not gathered for Cypriot Maronite Arabic, Uzbeki Arabic, and Afghan Arabic-three Arabic dialects (better designated languages) which are now extinct or almost so. In this connection, I wish to mention Peter Ladefoged's useful, ongoing research project preserving the phonetjc structures of endangered languages: I think most, if not all, linguists will

252

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

agree with Wolfram, who states in this connection: "As linguists, of course, we may not be able to save this or any other variety of a language.

But we can at least chronicle the dialect for the historical record-for community members, curious outsiders, and academicians" (p. 267).

Andrea Tyler and Donna Lardiere's "Beyond Consciousness Raising: Re-examining the Role of Linguistics in Language Teacher Training" represents an accurate picture of the lack of interest in linguistics by many foreign language instructors (pp 270-87). I applaud their perspective which states that marginalizing the role of linguistics in language teaching over the past two decades "is flawed" (p. 270), and that "language teachers need a theoretical grounding in linguistics" (p. 285).

However, I fail to see how their discussion of the history of American structural linguistics and audio-lingualism (pp. 271-6) adds anything to their point of view, nor can I see the relevancy of cited works, such as Bloomfield (1933), Chomsky (1959), or Fries (1962). Furthermore, I do not comprehend why the authors fail to devote space to their thesis concerning the de-emphasis of linguistics in the language-teaching profession: "It is our firm belief that to encourage language-teaching-education programs to begin to de-emphasize linguistics at this time and instead focus teachers' attention primarily on how other teachers already teach will result in the stagnation of the profession" (p. 284 ). This article should have come to grips with the multifaceted reasons why linguistics has, in fact, been de-emphasized.

The remining papers in the volume are as follows: Donna Christian, "Language Development in Two-Way Immersion: . Trends and Prospects;" Anna Uhl Chamot, "The Cognitive Academic Language Learning Approach (CALLA): Theoretical Framework and Instructional Applications;" Mary Ann Christison, "The Effect of Participation Structure on Second-Language Acquisition and Retention of Content;" and Ronald P. Leow, "Grammaticality Judgement Tasks and SecondLanguage Development."

Program in Linguistics California State University, Fullerton Fullerton, CA 92834-9480

REFERENCES Bloomfield, Leonard. 1933. Language. Holt.

Chomsky, Noam. 1959. Review of Verbal behavior, by B. F. Skinner. Language 35:26--58.

Noam Chomsky. 1968. Language and mind. New York:. Harcourt, Brace, and World.

253

REVIEWS

Fries, Charles C. 1962. Teaching and learning English as a foreign language. Ann Arbor, Michigan: The University of Michigan Press.

Kaye, Alan S. 1994. "Formal vs. informal in Arabic: Diglossia, triglossia, tetraglossia, etc., polyglossia-multiglossia viewed as a continuum." Zeitschrift fiir arabische Linguistik 27:47-66.

Kaye, Alan S. 1997. Review of Georgetown University round table on languages and linguistics 1994, ed. by James E. Alatis. WORD 48:2:281-8.

Vietor Wilhelm. 1882. Der Sprachunterricht muss umkehren. Heilbronn: Henninger.

Winford, Donald. 1985. "The concept of 'diglossia' in Caribbean creole situations." Language in society 14:345-56.

Wolfram, Walt and Natalie Schilling-Estes. Forthcoming. Hoi Toide on the outer banks: The story of Ocracoke brogue. Chapel Hill, North Carolina.: University of North Carolina Press.

GARY B. PALMER, Toward a theory of cultural linguistics. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1996. xii + 348 pp.

Reviewed by ALAN S. 1

KAYE

In this book, which can serve as a textbook in anthropological linguistics courses of various persuasions, the author endeavors to resurrect the idea of cultural imagery, which we are told has largely been ignored by linguistic anthropologists since Benjamin Lee Whorf's death in 1941 (p. 4 ). To be exact, Palmer puts it the following way in Chapter 1, his introduction: "In order to reawaken the interest of linguistic anthropologists in cultural imagery, I will show that cognitive linguistics ... can be applied directly to language and culture" (ibid.). Most of the chapter (pp.

3-9) concerns itself with a justification of what Edward Sapir referred to as the ["most massive and inclusive art we know, a"] "mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations" (p. 6), using many interesting examples from Kuna, Apache, Coeur d'Alene (a specialty of the author), and other non-Indo-European languages--certainly a major strength of the work and one ofthe reasons why I think it is a good textbook. It is precisely this non-Indo-European emphasis which, I believe, offers the contemporary linguistics and anthropology student valuable insight into the seemingly intricate and fascinating realm of linguistic diversity. (The index, pp. 335-48, contains numerous references to research on non-Indo-European languagesi Chapter 2 deals with Boasian linguistics, ethnosemantics, and the ethnography of speaking (pp. 10-26). In many ways, the material covered can be taken as a twentieth-century mini-history of linguistic anthropology, including as it does an ample discussion ofthe Sapir-Whorf

254

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

Hypothesis, with due mention of the classic Hoijer (1954 ), and the more up-to-date Lucy (1992a) and (1992b ), for which Kaye (in press a) and (in press b) may be consulted for detailed evaluations.

Chapter 3 is a short survey of the goals and methodology of cognitive linguistics (pp. 27-34). The cognitive specialists quoted include the three prolific giants-Ronald W. Langacker, George Lakoff, and Mark Johnson. Palmer is correct to emphasize the importance of the research on metaphor ("love, anger, argument, time ..." [p. 33]) for an overall appreciation of the cognitive linguistic approach. In this connection, Kronenfeld ( 1996) is also very relevant, especially his section on Lakoff and Langacker on metaphor (1996:22-3). As is well known, the marriage of cognitive science to linguistics produced the impressive Mouton de Gruyter journal, Cognitive linguistics, founded in 1990 and still going strong.

Turning to the author's discussion of the notion of reasoning, we read: "Since world view consists of such conceptual materials as cognitive models and schemas, both language and world view are mutually implicated in reasoning processes" (p. 34). However, we are faced with the apparent dilemma that there is such a thing as "mentalese" or nonlinguistic (or pre-linguistic) thinking to which Pinker (1994) devoted considerable space in his attempt to shout down Wharf's work. Palmer himself explicitly alludes to this "mentalese" when he notes: "Reasoning ... does not proceed entirely through language ..." (p. 33). This is, however, but one of the many instances in which the author should have given further details on an important topic, while curtailing the information devoted to other, better-known subject matter, such as the SapirWhorf Hypothesis.

Chapter 4, "The Synthesis of Cultural Linguistics" explains the author's rationale of amalgamating Boasian and cognitive linguistics into cultural linguistics (pp. 35-45). Palmer's definition of the latter term is vague, awkward, and a trifle bizarre. He says that it "is primarily concerned not with how people talk about some objective reality, but with how they talk about the world that they themselves imagine" (p. 36). Let us try to make some sense of this definition: if I, a native speaker of English, happen to believe in ghosts, e.g., is my language and culture relationship different from that of another native speaker who does not believe in ghosts? I do not understand how the word imagine and the conceptualization of imagination apply in the aforementioned definition.

One of the highlights of this chapter is the discussion of the North African Bedouin song (ghinnawa) of the patrilineal Awlad Ali (pp.

42-4). I concur that "their understandings of generic discourses are so-

REVIEWS

255

cially, culturally, and historically situated" (p. 44). It is precisely this kind of communicative knowledge which can bring a Bedouin woman to tears as she listens to ghinnawa, which, I believe, is exactly parallel to the way that many Muslims are reduced to tears as they appreciate the "beauty" of the Holy Koran in Arabic (even without a literal comprehension of the meaning of the language). It should be kept in mind that most Muslims are non-Arabic speaking.

Chapter 5, "Concepts" (pp. 46-109), is a meaty discussion taking up numerous ideas from Lakoff ( 1987) and Langacker ( 1987). Other authors cited include Charles J. Fillmore, Wallace L. Chafe, and some major researchers on the ever-popular subject of color terminology, such as Brent Berlin, Paul Kay, and Anna Wierzbicka.

Chapter 6, "Connecting Languages to World View, " deals with the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and various other interrelated topics, such as the mythologizing of the GulfWar, and Proto-Bantu noun class semantics (p. 113-69). The reader comes away from reading the final section on Chinese counterfactuals with the seemingly conflicting points of view that (I) the Chinese, because of the nature of their language, cannot think counterfactually-an idea based on the linguistic research of Alfred Bloom ( 1981 ); and (2) Bloom must be erroneous in his deduction since an authority as highly esteemed as Lucy (1992a) has emphatically rejected Bloom's conclusions (pp. 163-9). The reader wants Palmer's opinion of the controversy, but is, unfortunately, left square in the middle of the debate with Palmer's noncommittal concluding note: "Perhaps a better way to approach this problem would be to study natural language and Chinese texts to try to discover how speakers of Chinese normally [emphasis mine: ASK] speak of possibilities and hypothetical ideas and how they structure these realms in their thinking" (p. 169). The author makes no suggestion as to how the aforementioned proposal could be implemented, nor does he define what "normally" means in his statement-a word laden with severe pitfalls.

Chapter 7, "Discourse and Narrative," concentrates on discourse scenarios, participation schemas, speech acts (John B. Searle), sequencing schemas, perspective schemas (Ronald W. Langacker), and numerous other closely related topics (pp. 170-221). Haruko Minegishi Cook's research on discourse indexicals (discursives) in Japanese is particularly germane reading in which the reader can appreciate, e.g., that Japanese yo, is oftentimes best translated as 'I am telling you' (pp.

206-12).

Chapter 8, "Metaphor and Metonyny," summarizes recent research

by Lakoff, Johnson, Zoltan Kovecses, and Leonard Talmy, among others (pp. 222-45).

256

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

Chapter 9, "Constructing and Deconstructing Word and Sentence Grammar," reports on research by Charles J. Fillmore, Langacker, Joan Bybee, and Keith Basso, among others (pp. 246-71).

Chapter 10, "Cultural Phonology," I feel stretches the author's focus on cultural imagery beyond a reasonable bound (pp. 272-89). He overstates his case, in my view, by maintaining: "Like other aspects of language, phonology seems intimately connected to image-schemas, cognitive-models, and world views. Phonology is cultural" (p. 273).

Incidentally, explaining some very basic notions (one might even conclude too basic for this book), Palmer states that English /p/ has allophones of [ph] word-initially and [p] and [p-] elsewhere (p. 273). This is not correct since [ph] may also occur in final position in free variation with [p-]; e.g., the word cup may be pronounced with either allophone.

Chapter 11, "Where We Are," is a summary chapter (pp. 290-6).

Some of the recapitulation points could have been omitted since they are far too rudimentary for a book hyperbolically described to "certainly be one of the most important books ever published in linguistics ..." (Elizabeth A. Brandt on the outside back cover). One typical statement is "Language is symbolic" (p. 290; explained in detail on pp. 54-5).

Palmer has extensively utilized writings by Lakoff and Langacker (and other cognitive linguists) in this work. However, he states that "these studies provide fascinating insights into the workings of language ... , but ... they often seem to lack an essential cultural dimension" (p.

296). I quite agree with this perspective, and I firmly believe that linguistics, as a whole, would be much better off if somehow the anthropology were to be put back into it. Palmer, a Professor of Anthropology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, would no doubt agree with me on this score. Indeed, cognitive linguistics can profit from a closer tie-in with cognitive anthropology. In fact, I would say that the aforementioned concluding statement still holds true when omitting the words "cognitive."

Linguistics Program California State University, Fullerton Fullerton, CA 92634-9480

ENDNOTES 1 The front cover of the book is strange enough to warrant the following comment. Apparently, marketing experts decided to use phonetic symbols and Egyptian hieroglyphics to help sell the volume. This is a reasonable decision insofar as the cover graphics are concerned. However, quite inexplicably, the name Forugh Farrokhzad (the famous Iranian poet, 1935-1967) appears in Persian

REVIEWS

257

script in the upper right-hand comer. Persian script is indeed beautiful, but why this name was chosen is a mystery to me. Of course, I realize that not everything on the cover of a book must relate to material in it.

2 The index indicated (p. 340) a reference to the Kaluli language on p. 271, but no such reference was found on that page. There may be other such errors as well.

REFERENCES Bloom, Alfred. 1981. The linguistic shaping of thought: A study in the impact of language on thinking in China and the West. Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Hoijer, Harry, ed. 1954. Language in culture: Proceedings of a conference on the interrelations of language and other aspects of culture. American anthropologist 56, no. 6, pt. 2, Memoir no.

79. Menasha, Wise.: American Anthropological Association.

Kaye, Alan S. In press a. Review of Lucy 1992a. In International journal of American linguistics.

- - . In press b. Review of Lucy 1992b. In International journal ofAmerican linguistics.

Kronenfeld, David B. 1996. Plastic glasses and church fathers: semantic extension from the ethnoscience tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Lakoff, George. 1987. Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind.

Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Langacker, Ronald W. 1987. Foundations of cognitive grammar, val. I, theoretical prerequisites.

Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lucy, John A. l992a. Language diversity and thought: A reformulation of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

- - . 1992b. Grammatical categories and cognition: A case study of the linguistic relativity hypothesis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Pinker, Steven. 1994. The language instinct. New York: William Morrow.

MERRITT RUHLEN, The origin of language: Tracing the evolution of the mother tongue. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1994. xi + 239 pp.

Reviewed by VICTOR H. MAIR

Although in it the author confronts some of the most difficult and controversial questions in historical linguistics, The origin of language (hereafter Of) is, by his own admission, a popular work. Intended for non-specialist readers, OJ is a clear presentation of technical matters that-in the hands of a less skillful writer-would leave all but a few far behind. Instead, Merritt Ruhlen brings the noninitiate along with him through every step of his intricate, yet lucidly expressed, argument. The book is a sort of Socratic dialogue of Ruhlen with his readers in which he gives them information, asks them questions, and encourages them to

258

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

come up with answers. Thus, the many tables of linguistic forms in the book are not labeled with the real names of the languages to which they belong, but only with the letters of the alphabet (language A, language B, language C, etc.) so as not to prejudice the reader. The latter, through personal examination, is supposed to discover for him/herself the relationships among the linguistic forms presented in the tables. Only after the reader has done his or her exercises does Ruhlen reveal the names of the concerned languages. This is a daring approach, but it works quite well because it makes his reader feel as though Ruhlen trusts his/her intelligence and also makes him/her realize that linguistics is not so arcane and complicated that only specialists can engage in it.

As he states at the very outset (Preface, p. vii), Ruhlen believes that linguistic science during the past two decades has already shown that "all the languages now spoken on earth (roughly 5,000 by [his] count) are descendants of a single ancestral language". The problem is that most linguists are unaware that this proof exists in the linguistic literature. It is the purpose ofRuhlen's book to demonstrate how anyone who is determined to do so may extract from the linguistic literature the necessary data to prove the monogenesis of all extant languages.

I will first take my reader on a quick, minimalist tour of the book's chapters and then raise some questions about its contents and aims.

The Prologue attempts to explain the title of the book: The origin of language. Actually, the title is somewhat misleading, since this is not a book about how human beings acquired the ability to speak. Ruhlen does address this issue very briefly, but it is certainly not·the main concern of his book. Rather, this is a book about how languages originate from other languages, and how those languages originated from still other languages, receding backward in time till we arrive at the mother of all languages, accounting for the subtitle of the book. In this sense, it might have been better for Ruhlen to entitle his book The origins of languages. Be that as it may, the rest of the Prologue focuses on Ruhlen's favorite occupation: classification. Ruhlen is best known as a taxonomist, and taxonomical concerns are unmistakably the driving force behind this book.

Moving swiftly, the first chapter introduces the reader to the concept of language change, relying on familiar materials from European tongues. The second chapter talks about language families, in particular those to which African, Asian, and Native American languages belong.

Then we take the plunge directly into the controversial search for protoproto-languages (i.e., the attempt to find the earlier language superfamilies to which acknowledged families such as Indo-European belong)

REVIEWS

259

and the hysteria this has engendered among mainstream linguists. Chapter four outlines the efforts to bring order out of chaos among the multitude of Native American languages. Chapter five presents six global etymologies: AQ'WA 'water', TIK 'finger, one', PAL 'two', MAMA 'mother', PAPA 'father', and KAKA 'older brother, uncle'. Chapter seven investigates the vexed state of the field after it was exposed to the "lumping" described in the previous chapters. The seventh chapter assays the contributions of macrobiological and microbiological investigations, especially those employing genetics. The eighth chapter delineates what Colin Renfrew has called "The Emerging Synthesis" which relies on linguistics, archeology, and biology to determine the evolution of modem humans after their presumed origin in an African homeland.

In this chapter, which is the culmination of the book, Ruhlen discusses-among other topics-the peopling of the Americas and the Bantu, Austronesian, and Indo-European expansions. The Epilogue reviews issues of reconstruction, sound correspondences, and analogy. The book closes with a case history of the search for the Algonquian homeland.

Back matter consists of a concise, handy annotated bibliography and (naturally) an analytical index.

Now, to return to the beginning and dissect the dissector, the first question that needs to be raised is this: exactly. what is a language family? The author states (p. 4) that it is "A group of related languages, however small or large" and gives the example of "the Romance family" which consists of Latin and its descendants. Ruhlen should certainly know better than I what a language family is, but I was always under the impression that Romance was a group within the Indo-European family.

Ruhlen's Table 8lists 13 words from each of 13 different language families. Although the novice can easily spot some obvious similarities among the words with the same meanings, Ruhlen opines (p. 66) that the politically correct interpretation of this table "-and the only answer that would be acceptable on a Ph.D. oral examination in historical linguistics-is that there is no evidence that any of these thirteen families is related to any of the others". This he declares to be "one of the great hoaxes of twentieth-century science."

We are then introduced to a whole series of"lumpers" who were not afraid to be politically incorrect or who lived before political incorrectness was established as a controlling doctrine: Edward Sapir, Morris Swadesh, Vladislav Illich-Svitych, Aaron Dolgopolsky, Vladimir Dybo, Vitaly Shevoroshkin, and Joseph Greenberg, Ruhlen's mentor. It is Greenberg who is the bete noire of the "splitters", but he is the hero of

260

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

OJ, both for his celebrated classification of African languages in the 60s, but also for his (in)famous reduction of American languages to just three families in the late 80s and for his Nostratic-like grouping of Eurasiatic languages in the mid-90s. For all of these achievements, Greenberg was scathingly denounced by mainstream linguists (there is the Americanist Lyle Campbell's notorious battle call to "shout down" Greenberg, apparently uttered before he had even read Greenberg's work on Amerindian), but Ruhlen views him as a sort of Galilean martyr for the cause of linguistic science.

Greenberg's hypotheses received powerful backing from eminent geneticists led by Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza and distinguished physical anthropologists such as Christy G. Turner II. Also weighing in with persuasive genetic evidence were Robert Sokal and his large team who have published numerous papers which show that there is an unmistakable correlation (though not a one-for-one correspondence) between genes and languages in Europe. The genetics laboratory of Andre Langaney in Switzerland has also demonstrated a high degree of correlation between the genes and languages of African populations. Ruhlen and his associates have been quick to pick up on these findings from genetics and related sciences, while traditional historical linguists have been content to ignore the work of specialists in ancillary disciplines such as genetics, physical anthropology, and archeology. Their rationale is that the reconstruction and classification of ancient languages is strictly a matter of historical linguistics (viz., phonology, morphology, syntax). In my estimation, the traditional historical linguists would be well advised to consult the findings of other disciplines for, if they do not, they will soon find themselves as isolated as Basque and Burushaski.

Mainstream historical linguists insist that, because of language change over time, the efficacy of the comparative method is limited to around 6,000 years, precisely the assumed time-span for the development oflndo-European from its earliest parent to the present. The "longrangers" maintain that this is an arbitrary figure arrived at by circular reasoning on the basis of the amount of time required for the reconstruction of Indo-European.

Another sharp cleavage between Greenberg and his foes is whether one can legitimately classify languages into families and superfamilies before one has reconstructed their earliest forms. Greenberg and his school, including Ruhlen, believe that classification based on multilateral comparison of modem and recent forms can (and should) be done before all reconstructions are carried out and, furthermore, that such provisional classifications assist in the process of reconstruction. The

REVIEWS

261

"long-rangers" maintain that classification is the first stage of historical linguistics and reconstruction is the second stage, just the opposite of those who subscribe to the standard comparative method. It is obvious that the field needs an impartial adjudicator.

As an openminded and sympathetic Sinologist, I find the weakest of the superfamilies proposed by Ruhlen and his colleagues to be DeneCaucasian, which groups together Basque, Caucasian, Burushaski, Sino-Tibetan, Yeniseian, and the Na-Dene (Athabaskan, Eyak, Tlingit, and Haida) family of the Americas. Na-Dene was one of Sapir's early discoveries and is regarded favorably by many historical linguists, but the attempt to link up Na-Dene with Sino-Tibetan, also entertained by Sapir, is widely viewed with disfavor. Recently, however, the Na-Dene link with Sino-Tibetan has been resurrected by two Russian scholars, Sergei Starostin and Sergei Nikolaev who have· promoted it as part of their Dene-Caucasian superfamily. I am dubious for numerous reasons, among them the following: a couple of the languages in this superfamily are isolates (Basque and Burushaski; Sumerian has also been proposed as a member); the constituent members are scattered across much of Eurasia and North America, but as separate islands surrounded by oceans composed of other superfamilies, causing one to wonder how and when such a puzzling distribution could have occurred; the typologies of the constituent members are hugely dissimilar; Sino-Tibetan itself is still not accepted as a viable family by many specialists; the origins of Sinitic are relatively late and extraordinarily complex, involving extensive inputs from Austronesian, Austroasiatic, and Indo-European, not to mention whatever it was that preceded "Altaic" in the north; and so forth.

In a section entitled "The Remnant Dene-Caucasians" (pp. 164-6), Ruhlen puts forward an interesting thesis which explains why the DeneCaucasians are so geographically .isolated from each other and genetically scattered. He suggests that we are dealing with two separate migrations, a first wave of expansion by Dene-Caucasian peoples and a second wave of Eurasiatics who overwhelmed them: From a linguistic point of view, Eurasiatic seems to be a more obvious family than Dene-Caucasian, supported by more abundant and more transparent cognates, and this too would indicate that the Dene-Caucasian migration preceded the Eurasiatic expansion. (p. 165)

Despite my doubt about the Dene-Caucasian superfamily, I offer just one little addition for Ruhlen's global etymology PAL 'two', which he worked on with John Bengtson. Ruhlen mentions that he and Bengt-

262

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

son found no trace of this root in Dene-Caucasian, but since many of the words he adduces from Eurasiatic mean "half", Sinitic ban (*pan) 'half' immediately springs to mind, especially in light of the fact that final nasals in Sinitic tend to be volatile.

Finally, one of the greatest challenges posed to those who believe that the comparative method cannot be applied beyond single language families such as Indo-European is the undeniable relatedness of Semitic and IE. The affinity of Semitic and IE was already discovered at least a century ago by scholars such as Alfredo Trombetti and Hermann Moller.

By now, anyone who reads the works of Saul Levin and Allan Bombard with an open mind would surely agree that either Semitic and IE were related or that they were in close and prolonged contact. (N.B.: Even the eminent Indo-Europeanists, J.P. Mallory and D. Q. Adams have incorporated the Nostratic roots of Bombard and J. C. Kerns in their magnificent new Encyclopedia of Indo-European culture [London and Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1997].) This relatedness between Semitic and IE raises the following vital question: regardless of whether the lexical, morphological, and grammatical similarities between Semitic and IE are due to cognation or to prolonged and intimate contact, we must ask where and when the Semitic and IE peoples were contiguous or intermingled.

This is an absolutely vital question, both for the origins of the IndoEuropeans and for the origins of the Semites. On the answer to this question also hinges such methodological issues as whether the comparative method can legitimately be applied to the reconstruction of linguistic superfamilies. My own suspicion is that Indo-European did not simply emerge out of a vacuum in the Pontic Steppes around 4,000 BCE (the current consensus view of Indo-Europeanists) but that there was a PreProto-Indo-European stage preceding PIE and that this stage occurred somewhere to the southwest of the 4,000 BCE homeland, perhaps in Asia Minor. Such a scenario would fit very well with the proposals of John Colarusso for a Pre-Proto-Indo-European linkage with Caucasian languages and with the findings of Albert Ammerman and CavalliSforza that show a correlation between the spread of human genes and agriculture from Anatolia northeastward toward Europe beginning about eight or nine thousand years ago. In other words, it may well be possible that both Marija Gimbutas and Colin Renfrew are correct, the former postulating an IE homeland in the area around the Pontic Steppes circa 4,000 BCE and the latter an IE homeland in Anatolia circa 7,000 BCE. The way to bring these seemingly conflicting views into harmony is to recognize that before there were Indo-Europeans there were Proto-

263

REVIEWS

Indo-Europeans and that before there were Proto-Indo-Europeans there were Pre-Proto-Indo-Europeans. To get from one stage to the next would have required a certain amount oftime and naturally, Indo-Europeans being Indo-Europeans (even incipient ones), they would not have been content to stay in one place.

Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104-6305 vmair@sas.upenn.edu

INS UP TAYLOR and M. MARTIN TAYLOR, Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese. (Studies in Written Language and Literacy, 3.) Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1994. xiii + 412 pp.

Reviewed by VICTOR H.

MAIR

In the Acknowledgements which appear at the front of this book, one of the authors thanks numerous individuals and organizations in the first person singular. Again, on pp. 21-2, one of the authors explains in the first person singular how he or she organized the book. This is mystifying, since the cover and title page of the book clearly indicate that two persons were involved in writing it and the Preface speaks in the first person plural. The mystification is compounded by the dedication which reads: "For ... Kim Ki-mae ... , I wrote this book for both of us". Since Kim Ki-mae does not seem to be one of the Taylors, one wonders what his I her relationship to either or both of the Taylors is. Right at the beginning, then, the reader is puzzled, until one reads the note "About the Authors" on p. vi which declares that Ins up Taylor "is responsible for the content of the present book, and is the 'I' of its text and dedication". That would seem to clear things up somewhat, until we read just below that M. M. Taylor collaborated "on both the content and the writing of the book" and "made possible its preparation on a computer". The note "About the Authors" also indicates that M. M. Taylor co-authored with Insup Taylor two books on the psychology of reading and psycholinguistics (in 1983 and 1990 respectively). In the same year (1995) as the book under review, lnsup Taylor edited with D. R. Olson a book entitled Scripts and literacy: Reading and learning to read alphabets, syl-

264

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

labaries, and characters. Despite the assertion that Insup Taylor is the "I" of the text and its dedication, the authorial voice of the book is compromised by the ambiguous role of M. M. Taylor in its writing. This confusion continues throughout the book (e. g., on p. 49 a photograph is said to be "by the authors", whereas one on the next page has a caption that refers to "my own two character name, Insup".

In comparison with the present volume, another recently issued book, Asia's orthographic dilemma (University of Hawaii Press, 1997)

by William C. Hannas, covers the same ground but much more interestingly and coherently. As a matter of fact, Hannas' book handles, in addition to the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean of the Taylors' book, Vietnamese. Furthermore, since Hannas is fluent in both the spoken and written forms of Mandarin, Shanghainese, Taiwanese, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese (plus possessing familiarity with Cantonese and half a dozen European languages including Russian), he is equipped to speak more authoritatively on the issues of orthographic efficiency and reform raised by the Taylors. If one wishes to gain a comprehensive overview of the scripts of East Asia and an intelligent analysis of the problems they face on the eve of the 21st century, I would strongly recommend the book by Hannas over that by the Taylors.

That said, allow me now to concentrate on what the Taylors have to offer. Writing and literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese (hereafter WLCKJ) is divided into an Introduction of24 pages anci three main parts on Chinese, Korean, and Japanese, each with its own bibliography. One is immediately struck by the ordering of the three main parts of the book since they are usually alphabetically arranged in the order Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. This unusual arrangement calls attention to one of the distinguishing features of the book, its subtle (and sometimes rather overt) anti-Japanese bias. At many points in their presentation, the authors gratuitously cast aspersions upon the Japanese and their language.

Superficially, WLCKJ looks as though it has much to offer: numerous charts, maps, photographs, and other illustrative aids; Chinese characters, Korean alphabet, and Japanese syllabaries neatly typeset in the body of the text; extensive, minimally annotated bibliographies; wellorganized sections with bold headings; plentiful statistics; a glossary of technical and semi-technical terms; and so forth. The level of discussion is so low, however, that the reader is often left dazed instead of enlightened. Some examples: " ... [W]hy does Kim mercilessly distort Han' gul letters in a futile effort to make them look like the letters of the English alphabet? Is he ashamed of them?" (p. 220) One may also point to frequent instances of tortuous, twisted logic:

REVIEWS

265

China's illiteracy rate has been steadily declining in the past few decades, but it15% in the 1990 census-is still not low enough for a nation aspiring to become industrialized. But the use of characters cannot be blamed, because Taiwan has achieved a high rate of literacy using characters in their original complex shapes.

A nation's economic and political policies have something to do with its rate of literacy. For example, in China, educational spending is low, and there are urbanrural disparities in primary education. Anyway a high literacy rate may be a prerequisite for, but is not a guarantee of, economic and political progress. (p. 175)

Never mind that the 15% illiteracy rate in China is grossly underreported (according to Zhou Youguang and other senior scholars in the State Language Commission who would put it well over 50%), and never mind that Taiwan relies on English for much of its scientific, commercial, and academic communication. The sheer impenetrability of the authors' argumentation makes it impossible for readers to grasp what they are aiming at. Furthennore, to the extent that one can perceive their position, they would se~m to be making the reductionist claim that it is equally easy to attain high levels of literacy with all writing systems. Examples of such infelicitous, obtuse passages could be multiplied almost endlessly in WLCKJ. The introduction to WLCKJ provides very basic information about the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean peoples and their languages, and about the languages and writing systems of the world in general and of East Asia in particular. It closes with a discussion of the organizational scheme of the book. The presentation of each of the three main parts of the book varies somewhat, but all of them treat the following subjects: spoken and written language, the role of the sinographs (hanzi, kanji, hancha), romanization, psycholinguistic aspects and reading theory, history of education and literacy. The Chinese part is the longest because it is here that the fundamental nature and function of the sinographs are discussed in some detail. The part about Japanese is the next longest because ofthe complex manner in which its two syllabaries (katakana and hiragana) are employed. Ironically, the part about Korean is the shortest, perhaps because the authors instinctively consider it to be the least problematic, despite serious issues such as the implications of linear versus packaged I block forms of han'gul (the Korean alphabet), the role of Sino-Korean lexical items in the north and the south, and so forth. Incidentally, I would like to take this opportunity to mention an excellent new book about han 'gul edited by Young-Key Kim-Reynaud entitled The Korean alphabet: Its history and structure (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997). With chapters on the international background, invention, history, graphical and phonological principles, and usage of

266

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

han'gul by the best American and Korean authorities, Kim-Reynaud's book is now the most reliable source of information on this unique script. Returning to WLCKJ, however, the overall impression one gains from it is that of a jumble of information of varying quality embedded in an infelicitous matrix full of non sequiturs and studded with inappropriate political and cultural innuendoes.

The authors are not afraid to broach such touchy questions as the extraordinary difficulty and cumbersomeness of Chinese characters, whether characters are processed on the right side or left side of the brain, whether the sinographs (hanzi, kanji, hancha) should be kept or omitted I limited in the various written languages, the application of modem electronic information processing systems in East Asia, whether the characters inhibit the development of science and abstract I theoretical I creative thought, and the like. Their response to such problems is generally to let nature take its course, with the fervent hope that economic development will conquer any obstacles that complicated East Asian scripts might present. They do, however, admit that the sinographs do pose problems for education and communication technology. To cope with these undeniable problems, the solution proposed by the authors is to "streamline" the sinographs, by which they mean that Chinese characters should be standardized and not be permitted to proliferate unchecked, also that no character in common use should be allowed to have more than 21 strokes because such characters are unrecognizable blobs on computer screens (even those with 24 pixels, whereas English letters are clear even with 5 pixels). It is obvious that the Taylors are against radical reform of East Asian writing systems and, indeed, would prefer that Korea-which has already totally abandoned the sinographs in the north and seldom uses them in the south-would return to the stage of greater character usage, that Japan would likewise retreat from diminished character usage and would employ far fewer English borrowings, and that China would retract its policy of "sad", "lamentable", "drastic" character simplification. There can be little doubt that the sympathies of the Taylors lie with the traditionalist literati, not with those in East Asia who are striving to create more efficient, demotic scripts.

Another notable feature of WLCKJ is the willingness of the authors to compromise linguistic accuracy in favor of social, political, and cultural practices. For instance, they are quite aware that the so-called Chinese "dialects" are really different languages, but-in order to respect "the wish of the Chinese people"-they persist in the fiction of referring to them as "dialects", albeit usually within quotation marks.

In their Preface, the authors reveal that they have only an ambiguous sense of who their audience is: "The book is intended for people

REVIEWS

267

from various backgrounds, such as the general public or academics, business people or government officials, students or educators, computer scientists, psychologists, or linguists." In attempting the impossible task of speaking to all of these groups, they end up communicating effectively to none of them. In the end, they declare that their book is "more for the general public and students than for scholars on East Asia". This is true, for scholars will not find this a source of trustworthy information or stimulating ideas. The style and tone of the book, with its breathless overuse of exclamation points and conversational transitions from one section to the next, may appeal to high school students, except that they would certainly find the content and format dreadfully boring.

I have found typographical and grammatical mistakes on almost every other page of the book, but will not point them out individually both because they are too numerous and because they usually do not seriously impede the reader. There are also a sizable number of factual and interpretive en:ors, such as the assertion that pinyin orthography divides up Chinese words syllable by syllable (p. 124) and that, "apart from Chinese characters and the Korean phonetic script, most scripts used in the world today have been borrowed from other cultures" (p. 296; for starters, han' gul was not invented out of whole cloth [see the articles by Gari Ledyard and other scholars in the book edited by Kim-Reynaud mentioned above]). The frequent reiteration that Chinese characters are monosyllabic logographs is also debatable. One need only point to the thousands of bisyllabic words in both the modem and classical languages to disprove this notion: bohe ('mint'), zhizhu ('spider'), shanhu ('coral'), hudie ('butterfly'), etc.

WLCKJ does provide a considerable amount of elementary information concerning the nature, function, and history of East Asian scripts. In fact, its reach extends far beyond "writing" and "literacy" which are advertised in its title, so that it serves as a sort of grab bag of basic historical and cultural data. Aside from its introductory character, scholars will be put off by the sophomoric, preachy style and occasionally unidiomatic English of WLCKJ. The tone of this book is well conveyed by its last two sentences: "Watch out, the big dragon is breathing fire!" (referring to China) and "The 21st century may well belong to the East Asians, who value education and hard work". Since this is apparently "the core message of the book" that the authors wish "to drive home" (p. 380), one must be wary in consulting it.

Department of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, PA 19104--6305 vmair@sas.upenn.edu

268

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

WILLIAM EGGINGTON and HELEN WREN, eds., Language policy: Dominant English, pluralist challenges. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1997. xxvii + 170 pp.

Reviewed by MIRTA MARTES

Language policy, a good resource for courses in applied linguistics and sociolinguistics, contains nine reviewed essays presented in a colloquium on language and language-in-education policies in countries where English is a dominant language, from the TESOL annual convention in Atlanta; Georgia in 1993.

The aim of these essays is to familiarize readers with language-ineducation policies in countries where English is a dominant language, namely Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, and the United States.

As Wren (xxv) outlines in the introduction, English has an influence on "the development of national language policies; the maintenance of minority languages; the ability to provide service in other languages; the efforts to promote first language (L 1) and bilingual education programs and the opportunity for adults and children second language (L2) and literacy training." That is, the impact English has cannot be disregarded.

The topics developed in each of the nine chapters are well-documented, and therefore, readers with no formal background in the field of linguistics will have no difficulty in reading the book.

To begin, the book is organized thematically into three main parts, along with the following sections: Foreword (xi), Introduction (xxv), and Notes on Contributors (p. 169). In the Foreword section, Robert Kaplan highlights the importance of being ESL/EFL teachers. Hence it is important for us to take a stand on the future of teaching. That is, there should be more emphasis on the standard guidelines followed to certify entry into the ESL/EFL profession, and this must go on until a comprehensive language policy is established. Otherwise the government will continue ruling on ESL/EFL standards and definitions that do not relate to teaching. As a result, the ones to be affected are the students. Kaplan mentions the efforts done by TESOL in this regards; however, teachers should also do their part.

Part I ("The Dominance of English and National Language Policies: An Overview") includes "Making a Difference in Language Policies Agendas" and "The English Language Metaphors We Live By".

Even though these two chapters are indeed challenging, chapter two presents "a set of language metaphors" grouped by Eggington into three categories, namely Foundation Metaphors (5th-7th centuries), Expan-

REVIEWS

269

sian Metaphors (17th-mid-20th centuries) and Contemporary Metaphors (mid-20th century-). These English metaphors also reflect an impact on the development of language policy. An English metaphor like "correct English is the language of intelligent people" deserves the attention ofteachers and language planners (p. 45). Teachers and language planners should be aware of the impact English language metaphors may have on the attitudes of students and other people.

Part II ("Language and Language-in-Education Policies in EnglishDominant Nations") consists of five chapters as follows: "The GrownUps Know Best" (ch. 3), "Language Policy in the USA: National Values, Local Loyalties, Pragmatic Pressures" (ch. 4), "English Language-inEducation Policies in Canada" (ch. 5), "English and Pluralistic Policies: The Case of Australia" (ch. 6), and "Why Are We Waiting? Language Policy Development in New Zealand" (ch. 7). The aim of Part II is to acquaint readers with different language policies adopted in countries where English is a dominant language. To illustrate, Canada has established a language policy of legal equality between two languages-English and French. (A similar situation is found in Switzerland, which follows a language policy of legal equality among three languages.) (See O'Grady et al. 1997) Similarly, the United States follows a language policy in which linguistic minorities are protected by laws established by the judicial, executive, and legislative branches. (Cf. the Supreme Court decision in Lau vs. Nichols [1974]) Likewise, English is the official language in the United Kingdom, however, other "foreign modem languages" like Urdu, Turkish, Punjabi, and Bengali are accepted. (Nonetheless, Wales follows a language policy in which the Welsh language-the medium of instruction-is the official language recognized in that particular geographical region by the government.)

On the other hand, New Zealand is still waiting for the establishment of a language policy. An interesting aspect of New Zealand is that the English language is used here by the government and media, as well as in trade and social communication. However, the Te reo Maori ('Maori language') has increased greatly in recent years. Something ought to be done about the status of this aborigina11anguage.

Part III (chs. 8 and 9) stresses the role of ESL teachers, and how we should contribute more to the development of new language policies. We (teachers) must take a stand on the development of language policies adopted in other countries so far, since we can learn from them.

The well-developed and well-documented essays included in this book are a must-read source for students, researchers, teachers, and

270

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

those interested in language policy issues. Readers will have no problems with this source as it motivates them to move on. That is, "Think globally, Act locally."

REFERENCE O'Grady, W., M. Dobrovolsky and M. Aronoff. 1997. "Language in social contexts." In Contemporary linguistics: An introduction (pp. 525-527). New York: Saint Martin's Press. Pp. 525-7.

Department of English University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras Campus P.O. Box 23356 UPRStation San Juan Puerto Rico 00931-3356

MARTIN PUTZ, ed., Language choices: Conditions, constraints and consequences. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997. xx + 427 pp.

Reviewed by DoNN O'MEARA

Concerned with largely theoretical aspects ofbi- and multi-lingualism, this collection of 21 papers is divided into four sections, Language contact and language choice, Language policy and language planning, Language use and attitudes toward language and Code switching.

Rather than attempting to cover its entire contents, its signal defects can be briefly noted and some assessment made of those few papers of genuine value.

The book's major defect is the amount of space dedicated to language policy and language planning. This is another way of saying government and sometimes privately-subsidized language maintenance programs for minority languages. Its weakness is that to a large degree no distinction is recognized among what are three quite different, if sometimes overlapping types of program. ( 1) is language revival (Manx). (2) is language maintenance (Yiddish in Latin America). (3) is language recognition and acknowledgment, (Swedish in Finland and vice-versa, Welsh in the UK and Cree in Canada). (4) is not a program but a state of affairs: language tenacity. This includes Hungarian in Transylvania and Slovakia, Hokkien in Thailand, Finnish in Upper Michi-

REVIEWS

271

gan, Misk:ito on Central America's Atlantic coast and, of course, Spanish all over the United States.

Obviously, (3), where it exists, is a consequence of (4). The common denominator of ( 1) and (2) is that whatever success they may have is temporary; in the not very long run they are failures. The suggestions for turning them into successes can, and in this book do, often border on the ridiculous. In his paper on language ecology, Peter Miihlhausler, whose work on Tok Pisin is well known, recognizing that in the case of Australia's aboriginal languages, "There can be no return to the traditional state of affairs ...",is still capable of saying, apparently in all seriousness, that English is here to stay. All that can be done is create functional links between English and Aboriginal languages ... and disempower English ... by requesting companies mining Aboriginal land to carry out their negotiations for mining rights in an Aboriginal language. (My italics) ... ecologica] planning should seek as many links as possible between all languages as well as strengthening such practices that (sic) can keep the maximum number of aboriginal languages alive. (Again, my italics).

With missionaries given a free hand to weaken or eradicate such practices (i.e. initiation rituals and requirements: cf. Hale 1992 in the specific case of Damin) it would be interesting to see who comes forth to do the opposite and what possible success could be obtained by an outsider.

While on the subject, this book is no exception to the almost universal reluctance to consider missionary activity in analyses of language mortality. The most succinct comment I have seen in recent years comes from that acute observer, V. S. Naipaul: "The missionary must first teach self-contempt. It is the basis of faith of the heathen convert." No more personal possession exists than one's language and, while not always successfully, it is often the first thing the missionary demands be sacrificed (cf. Craig 1992 on Rama). Since this is an almost universal lacuna, criticism of it here might be considered out of place, but I feel it should be made, if only on the grounds that two wrongs don't make a right.

A pointed example of the strange reverence in which official language support programs is held is a statement by Gabriele Sommer in her paper on the ethnography of language shift, which would have us believe that official recognition and support of a minority language is all that will keep it alive.

According to previous studies of language shift and language death, the whole process usually follows the pattern detailed below. (1) Language shift takes place

272

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

in speech communities where the recessive language has minority status, i.e. the language has low prestige in official contexts and experiences no institutionalized support in language policy and planning. (My italics)

This is a perfect description of Catalan until the death of Franco, and the exact opposite of language shift and language death has always been the case. Today it may be possible to live in Barcelona speaking only Spanish, but it is not possible to make a living there except in the most menial occupations. Lack of "institutionalized support" has never killed a language. This emphasis on formal funded programs for language maintenance (not language recognition and acknowledgment) may be a fact of life, but it is ephemeral and unfortunately a good part of the book is dedicated to it.

For those with an interest in it, an exception is the paper on "language policy" by Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas (who, incidentally, while not putting it into so many words, do recognize the different characteristics of language programs noted above). It is a good factual treatment which makes the rest of the papers in the book on the same subject superfluous.

Weakest of all is the section on attitudes toward language. Two papers examining attitudes toward standard German in Switzerland andAlsace reach the hardly surprising conclusion that people don't like German because they don't like Germany. Despite their extreme verbosity, what the papers don't do is explain any more than the undeniable fact that standard German is known and utilized despite these negative attitudes. The reasons remain unclear. Helma Pasch, in her paper on linguae francae in triglossic environments in Africa, reflects this omission when she cites another scholar to the effect that, "The fact that in the Southern Sudan the hated Arabic language continued to spread ... is another example of how subjective feelings for or against a certain language do not necessarily influence its use." Again, Arabic is hated because its speakers are hated, but its spread is essentially unexplained. What none of them mention, perhaps because they don't consider it important, is that both German and Arabic are rich and expressive languages and things can be said in them that cannot really be said in the languages or dialects of the people who take the trouble to master them. My generation still repeats the hoary wheeze that Central Europeans learn German in order to read Shakespeare in the original. The first part of the paper by Rebecca Ehret on Krio in Sierra Leone is interesting from an historical point of view.

While effectively absent in the above mentioned papers, motivation figures in some of the papers but certainly in not enough of them and in insufficient measure. No one of them comes close to Sorensen's treat-

REVIEWS

273

ment of multilingualism in the Upper Amazon, for example, but it is clear that there are papers eminently worth reading. One of them is Finlayson and Slabbert's paper on code-switching in urban South Africa and the reason, as the lawyers say, is not far to seek. In the generation of data "the discussions ... were led by ... experienced market research moderators who are fluent in at least nine of the eleven South African languages". The paper does what every paper in a book of this sort should do and very few do: it adds to our body of knowledge. Most of the other papers consist of a series of commonplaces that anyone who takes the trouble to read such a book hardly needs to hear repeated, and this includes Pieter Muysken's analysis of code-switching processes. If the book were intended as required reading for beginning classes in sociolinguistics, Muysken's paper might, in fact, serve a purpose, but not in a publication destined to be read, it is presumed, by those experienced in the field.

Strangely enough, another paper that justifies taking the book off the shelf is sqmething of an anomaly in scholarly books. "A matter of (language) choice" by Florian Coulmas is a polemic. Well written, provocative and timely, it may not add much to our storehouse of facts (although it does in many instances), but it practically forces us to look at what we do know in a light we may not otherwise have considered.

Finally, throughout the book much of the "data" concerning language choice and ability are based on the speakers' own statements defining their knowledge and use of a language, a form of "research" that should have been abandoned long ago by academics in the footsteps of the discovery by commercial market research that smokers, asked what cigarette they smoke, (as one small example), will answer according to what they think will give them the highest status. The same applies in spades to questions regarding language use and competence and no one active in the field is unaware of it. But where market research, on which large amounts of money are often at stake, abandoned it in favor of time and effort-consuming verification techniques, similar effort is, it would appear, often lacking in sociolinguistic fieldwork, and this book reflects that lack in large measure.

In fairness, it must be said that a good many of the papers do offer an occasional insight or a hitherto unknown fact, some of genuine value, but these scattered instances hardly justify the length and repetitiousness of the papers in which they are found, or for that matter of the book in general.

P.O. Box 1212 Petach Tivka Israel

274

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999) REFERENCES

Brener, Avraham. "A Briv fun Rio de Janeiro." Bnai Yiddish, Jan.-Feb. 1968, pp. 14-5.

Craig, Colette. 1992. "A constitutional response to language endangerment. The case of Nicaragua." Language 68:17-24.

Hale, Ken. 1992. "On endangered languages and the safeguarding of diversity." Language 68: 1-3.

Naipaul, V. S. 1962. The middle passage. London: Andre Deutsch.

Sorensen, A. P. I 972. "Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon." Sociolinguistics. Harmonsworth: Penguin. Pp. 78-93.

GREGORY GUY, CRAWFORD FEAGIN, DEBORAH SCHIFFRIN and JOHN BAUGH, eds., Towards a social science of language: Vol. 1. Variation and change in language and society; xviii + 436 pp. Vol. 2. Social interaction and discourse structures. xviii + 358 pp. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1996.

Reviewed by EDGAR C. Po LOME

This magnificent homage to one of the major pioneers of sociolinguistics contains no fewer than 35 contributions from William Labov's friends and former students. In their preface, the editors indicate how the volumes took shape, and besides laudatory forewords, a bibliography of the publications of Labov until 1994 is offered.

The first volume offers eight papers under the subtitle "The Social Organization of Variation and Change"; it opens with a contribution by P. Trudgill on isolation, social network and phonological structure in dialect typology, in which the author states that, in view of the rapid disappearance of isolated languages, it is the urgent task of the historical linguist and sociolinguist to investigate the developments that occur in them. Next comes a study by A. Kroch on dialect and style in upper class Philadelphia speech, followed by P. Eckert on the diffusion of <ay> in the Detroit area, tying up with Labov's exploration of local terms on Martha's Vinyard. R. Mougeon and E. Beniak write on social class and language variation in bilingual speech communities, indicating how massive and sweeping changes can be observed in these groups. N. Haari focuses on sex and gender differences in speech, especially in Cairene Arabic, identifying the social pressures that trigger expressive gender-based differences. C. Paradis explores the conditioning of linguistic heterogeneity, showing that the interview situation does not pro-

REVIEWS

275

duce an adequate interactional framework for the study of variation. The last two papers of the section examine phonological topics: C. Feagin looks at peaks and glides in southern short /a/, while J. Hibaya observes the denasalization of the velar nasal in Tokyo Japanese.

The following section is on the linguistic structure of variation and change, and includes six papers, going from variation and drift to phonological rule set complexity in an extensive vocabulary word recognition system (P. Seitz and M. Lennig). First, C. Ferguson examines loss of agreement in Germanic, focusing on English and Swedish, and ascribes it to diachronic drift. Then, F. Tarallo investigates syntactic changes in Brazilian Portuguese since the tum of the century. G. Guy reexamines form and function in linguistic variation, studying such items as English coronal stop deletion or Portuguese s-deletion, endeavoring to show how an acquired perceptual constraint may translate into a functional production constraint. R. Steiner tries to apply Labov's rule of compensatory structural change to the ancient Hebrew modal system, using the present to explain the past. M. Yaeger-Dror takes the Montreal French vowel shift as a case of phonetic evidence for the evolution of lexical classes, particularly stressing the lowering of the middle low level vowels.

The last section of the volume covers African American varieties of English (five papers). The first essay (D. Bickerton) throws new light on the origin of variation in Guyanese. After this fascinating paper, P. Patrick describes the urbanization of creole phonology in Jamaica, relating variation and change on the model of Labov to socioeconomic factors and status of the speakers in the community. J. Rickford reanalyzes DeCamp's texts to study copula variability in Jamaica versus African American vernacular English and concludes that their similarity (also in Barbadian and Trinidadian creole) point to common creole origin. R. Fasold and Y. Nakano investigate contraction and deletion in African American English in relation to Euro-American English, while J. Baugh studies the dimensions of a theory of econo-linguistics, indicating to what extent economic factors impact on African American speech, and create concomitant prejudices.

Whichever topic they tackle, the contributors are unanimous in paying homage to the stimulating inquiries and the challenging methodology of Labov that showed them the way to their present research. Even when they disagree or improve on them, they recognize that they would not be where they are without Labov's inspiration.

The second volume's initial section is devoted to social interaction and discourse structures, and comprises ten papers on discourse analysis

276

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

and the like. It starts with a contribution from C. Linde analyzing the structuralist approach, and wondering how relevant it is to the analysis of discourse, suggesting various criteria for future research. After this stimulating paper, E. Schegloff discusses "third tum repair" when the speaker corrects himself to "get it right". D. Schiffrin contrasts identity and context with other current viewpoints in sociolinguistics and examines their relevance for the study of variation, underlining the importance of the social behavior of the individual. A. Bower analyzes deliberative action constructs and describes them as highly internalized evaluative structures. M. Harness Goodwin describes how, through narrative evaluation, "recipients" use the speaker's talk as an interpretation basis and participation frameworks of their own making. B. Horvath studies horse race calls and tries to identify the functional structure of these grammatically limited test types. R. Shuy analyzes a taped conversation between a judge and an attorney, revealing a disguised code that led to the empeachment of the judge. E. Weiner examines incongruity in jokes, riddles, and the like, and thinks that the study of humor contributes to exploring pragmatic issues in language. S. Dubois and D. Sankoff provide new insights on the problem of enumeration with regard to "Schegloff's denominator". J. Gumperz closes the section with an essay on social networks, ethnicity, group membership and their impact on discourse.

The last section concentrates on language use, syntactic, and lexical variation. First on the list is an essay on focusing sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (M. de Oliviera and M. Braga); next, E. Prince contends that English contains a construction she labels kind-sentences (=subordinate clauses introduced by that, a wh-complementizer, or 0) and points to a parallel situation in Yiddish. J. Myhill indicates how the use of 3rd person pronouns seems conditioned by the narrative function of the relevant clause. S. Boyd wonders whether the incorporation of lexemes in language contact is relevant to typology or sociolinguistics, and tries to define the relationship between socio-historical context and patterns of incorporation in language contact. S. Poplack studies the sociolinguistic dynamics of apparent convergence as they affect the choice of mood in French, and tries to retrace its origin. The last paper (B. Wald) investigates the human/inanimate polarization of the Swahili object marker with regard to the Varbrul analysis.

This second volume also exemplifies how much the contributors owe to the Labovian model, and though some of their views may sometimes seem pretty controversial or marginal, one must recognize the valiant effort to follow the master and try to improve on his findings.

REVIEWS

277

This, by itself, would make the collection most attractive, as does the courage of the participants in tackling practically any relevant issue.

2710 Rock Terrace Drive Austin Texas 78704-3843

GROVER HUDSON, ed., Essays on Gurage language and culture: Dedicated to Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his 90th birthday. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. 239 pp.

Reviewed by JEAN-FRANc;ms PRUNET

Few people can boast of such a profound influence on their field as Wolf Leslau can. Indeed, it can be claimed that he almost single-handedly built the field of Ethiopian studies, having published about 45 books on the Semitic languages of Ethiopia (as well as a few others on other languages). The status of this scholar in his field is the reason behind why this book was presented to him as a third Festschrift. The first one (Segert and Bodrogligeti eds. 1983) dealt with Ethiopian studies while the second one (Kaye ed. 1991) was concerned with Semitic studies at large. The present Festschrift focuses on the languages that have occupied most of Leslau's efforts since his first trip to Ethiopia in 1946, namely, the cluster of South Ethiopian Semitic languages and dialects known as Gurage. In addition, one of the interesting features of this excellent book is that it also covers some aspects of Gurage culture, thereby providing a bridge for scholars who work in the same geographical area but in different disciplines. One does not have to be an Ethiopianist, however, to be interested in this book, for Grover Hudson has brought together studies that will be invaluable to many linguists and anthropologists because of their theoretical and empirical contributions.

The book is divided into three sections: 3 articles provide background information on Gurage, 9 treat linguistics, and 3 deal with anthropology.

The three background articles, by Grover Hudson, Monica Devens, and Sahle Sellasie Berhane Mariam, situate the work of Leslau in historical perspective and emphasize the importance of Gurage studies for both linguistics and anthropology, while providing exhaustive refer-

278

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

ences to Leslau's studies on Gurage. As Leslau continues to publish at least one book and several articles every year, there is every reason to believe that these references will continue growing.

The articles on linguistics cover phonology, morphology, syntax and phonetics. Articles by A. J. Drewes and Wolf Leslau provide indepth dialectal studies of three Gurage dialects (Silt'e, Inor and Chaha).

While traditional work on Gurage has dealt mostly with diachronic change, there has been a recent surge of interest in the synchronic aspects of Gurage morphophonology. The complexity of Gurage phonological processes, in particular, has been the cause of their popularity in recent autosegmental studies. But the facts of Gurage are much more complex than is assumed in recent studies, and we are only now beginning to understand their behavior and their implications. Five articles in this section are typical of the abstract synchronic studies originally started by Jean Lowenstamm and the members of his research project on Ethiopian languages at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal. Berhanu Chamora, Jean Lowenstamm, Degif Petros, Jean-Fran~ois Prunet and Sharon Rose present studies of various aspects of the morphophonology of Inor, Chaha and Muher. In their attempts to discover the rigorous rootand-pattern organization of Semitic languages behind the apparent anarchy of Gurage morphophonology, these studies follow a philosophy that can been seen at work as early as Habte-Mariam's (1974) study oflnor roots or Bender and Fulass's (1978) monograph on Amharic verbs.

Robert Boivin's acoustic study of the nasalizing effects of the glottal stop of Inor complement these studies from a phonetic perspective. Lastly, two articles by Gideon Goldenberg and the late Robert Hetzron, who will be sorely missed, discuss complex aspects of Kestane and Inor syntax. The degree of detail attained by these and other articles of the book, as well as recent publications such as Gutt and Hussein's ( 1995) impressive dictionary of Silt' e, is all the more striking when it is compared with how little was known only about fifty years ago. Gurage studies have now come of age and are ready to make major contributions to linguistic theory.

The three anthropological articles provide welcome information on the people behind the languages. William A. Shack's article discusses the importance of myths for Gurage societal values while that of Stephen A. Brandt, Kathryn J. Weedman and Girma Hundie deals with the hide-working crafts of the Fuga, a caste of untouchables. The Fuga appear to be the only remaining people who still use flaked stone scrapers which are identical to those of prehistoric Europe. In contrast to these studies of traditional Gurage culture, Worku Nida documents the recent

REVIEWS

279

changes undergone by Gurage society, as it has evolved from a strictly rural culture to an increasingly urban one.

Constant waves of migrations to the capital city of Addis Ababa and increased access to schools have affected the fabric of Gurage culture to the point where many Gurage youngsters, even in the countryside, feel more at ease conversing in Amharic. Should this trend continue, it is conceivable that Gurage will become extinct in a few decades, as no amount of research on Gurage can, by itself, ensure its survival. It would be unfortunate if these languages disappeared at a time when academic circles are showing an unprecedented interest in them. Such an extinction would entail a loss to humankind of a linguistic and anthropological laboratory whose fascinating complexity Wolf Leslau has done so much to reveal to younger generations.

Department of Linguistics Universite du Quebec a Montreal C.P. 8888, Succursale Centre-ville Montreal Quebec H3C 3P8 Canada REFERENCES Bender, Marvin and Hailu Fulass. 1978. Amharic verb morphology. A generative approach. East Lansing: African Studies Center, Michigan State University.

Gutt, Eeva H. M. and Mohammed Hussein. 1995. Silt' e-Amharic-English dictionary (Shorter version). Addis Ababa: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Habte-Mariam, Marcos. 1974. "Palatalization in Ennemor." Proceedings of the IV Congresso Internazionale di Studi Etiopici, Torno II. Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Pp. 251-65.

Kaye, Alan S., ed. 1991. Semitic studies in honor of Wolf Leslau on the occasion of his eighty-fifth birthday, 2 volumes. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

Segert, Stanislav and Andras J. E. Bodrogligeti, eds. 1983. Ethiopian studies in honor of Wolf Les/au. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

ROBERT E. LONGACRE, The grammar of discourse. New York: Plenum Press, 1996. 362 pp.

Reviewed by LEONARD ROLFE

This book, an extended second edition of Longacre's 1983 study, is the fruit of many years' research that has developed and modified the

280

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

system of tagmemics of K. L. Pike that arose in the 1960s. In that system referential meaning is not at issue; instead a functional grammar is elaborated, in which discourse is analyzed according to a hierarchy of functional levels so as to produce an all-embracing structure. An outline of Longacre's version oftagmemic functional grammar is presented in the last chapter's fifty pages. This is a most interesting chapter, and could stand in its own right as an attempt to bring discourse analysis within the confines of a formal structural theory. The preceding chapters chart the way. They investigate discourse at various structural levels, from complete expositions down to clauses: it is a top-down hierarchy. As Longacre aims to produce a grammar of discourse, his study progressively moves towards formalisms, in which elements of generative grammar, formal semantics, predicate logic and systematic case theory will be · found.

Longacre starts with monologue as distinct from discourse between participants. Traditionally, monologue has been studied as revealing the principles of rhetoric. Longacre ranges far wider, to include all forms of monologue, from exposition as brief instructions to extended narrative.

From Pike he adopts the "etic/emic" distinction between underlying notional and formal surface structure, discusses various types of these structures and draws up diagrams to summarize his findings. He then considers narrative in notional terms, including relative salience, plot and peak. In the lengthy chapter 3 he considers how these notions are expressed in the combination of predications to form paragraphs. There is a move away from the notional to the formal: "a kind of formal semantics is developed and applied to predications within the sentence itself" (p. 51). A logical system is drawn up to reflect the "ernie" aspect of paragraphs, while chapter 4 treats their "etic" aspect. By now an analysis of discourse as monologue has given way to more grammatical considerations that would apply to any sustained text. This progression enables Longacre to deal (all too briefly) with discourse as dialogue between participants. Dialogue becomes repartee, which is conducted according to various paragraph types. Having considered both monologue and dialogue as conforming to various basic principles of discourse, Longacre considers those elements of clause structure that reflect, or are dependent on, the discourse that is being pursued. They are: cases or thematic roles (chap. 6); case frames (chap. 7); and the agency hierarchy (chap. 8).

Chapter 8 also includes some interesting comparisons of clause structure for case as between not only English but also some unfamiliar languages.

Any assessment of Longacre's work must take into account the difficulty of pinning discourse analysis down within the bounds of a codi-

REVIEWS

281

fied system of grammar, even one that is functionally structured. While the work of Pike provides the initial inspiration, a good deal of the writing is eclectic; but then, he always acknowledges his sources and adapts them to his own argument. As he progresses from principles of rhetoric penultimately to the grammar of clause structure he tends to open up a number of different fronts in succession, so that the final chapter is a little unattached to the preceding analyses. This, however, is perhaps the only way to deal with such a protean subject as discourse analysis, which while having grammar as its first basis, soon widens out into considerations of sociolinguistics or even behavioral psychology. Perhaps calling his work "a grammar" of discourse suggests the achievement of a formal system that is hard to attain. Yet Longacre is to be applauded for a noble attempt, one that many linguists would flinch at. His research is ongoing, and we can look forward to further refinements of his theory.

Meanwhile we are offered a work of patient and diligent scholarship that demands the attention of linguists working in his field.

He is well served by his publishers. This hard-cover volume has an extensive list of references and an excellent index. There is room for Longacre's many informative diagrams that admirably summarize his findings. This is a book worth having and which will repay its close study.

Department of Psychology University of Lancaster Lancaster LA/ 4YF United Kingdom

MALCOLM W. MINTZ, Listening comprehension: Selections from Malaysian and Indonesian history (With Cassette Tapes). Singapore: EPB Publishers, 1996. 254 pp.

Reviewed by JYH WEE SEw

This book is meant for intermediate learners. It has two sections which comprise 12 Malay and 12 Indonesian comprehension exercises, respectively. The objectives of the book are to improve listening comprehension of standard Malay and Indonesian, and to introduce formal writings in these languages in a guided and structured way.

282

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

Useful introductions are provided in each section to guide the reader towards optimum learning returns. Among other listening rules laid down, the reader is reminded not to transcribe or translate the texts, and to avoid answering questions in English. The advice is laudable, as many foreign language learners tend to learn a new tongue through the linguistic mould oftheir mother tongue(s). As such, many grammar points of the second language are often disrupted if not distorted by one's first language competence.

Each lesson contains a Malay/Indonesian-English glossary. The vocabulary in each lesson is clearly grouped and marked with numbers for quick reference to the identically marked written texts in which a particular word is located. Ten questions concerning each comprehension exercise are provided. An answering format is also included after the questions. Following the twelfth lesson in each section, a Malay- and Indonesian-English glossary, respectively, is given. Both sections end with written examples of the recorded texts.

I will avoid comparing spelling systems, such as pikir 'think' in Indonesian which is spelled as .fikir in Malay. The learner will probably have to differentiate these through practice and usage. I shall, instead, look at the semantics in the lexicon in each section.

In the first section, the Malay word saingan is given the meaning 'competitor'. The word is found in this sentence: Dengan adanya kubu ini mereka dapat menjauhkan pedagang-pedagang saingan mereka dari Selat Me/aka ('With the fort they could keep their competing traders away from the Straits ofMalacca' p. 81). Lexically speaking, 'competitor' is pesaing and contextually speaking saingan in this sentence should be translated as 'competing'; therefore it is an adjective, modifying the noun phrase pedagang-pedagang 'merchants'.

Despite the fact that the book is meant for intermediate classes, I still think the first question in lesson one (p. 12) is a little difficult for a start. Since there are 9 maps at the end of the book; perhaps the teacher might like to begin by asking the student where Melaka is situated. In order to pin-point Melaka,the student would have to understand the utterance before offering the answer. Naturally one would then practice the listening and speaking skills.

Since Mintz has said earlier that the Malay that he is advocating in the book is the standard version, the word mengenai 'regarding' in the vocabulary of lesson two (p. 16) should then be tentang, as mengenai is a colloquial form in Malay. I am not sure if the Malay spelling system has been altered because, as far as I know, the word mempastikan (p. 32) is always spelled as memastikan based on the hormorganic principle of

REVIEWS

283

natural phonology in Malay. Furthermore, menghadkan is spelled as mengehadkan (p. 33) in Kamus Dewan, the authentic Malay dictionary in Malaysia. The word memberhentikan (p. 39) is correctly explained as 'to stop'. But to be more accurate it should be 'to put to a halt', based on the principle of iconicity. Since henti itself means 'stop' the double affixation and the suffixation of this word should provide additional meaning; thus an additional effort is designated in memberhentikan. Even if one dislikes this explanation, the fact that -kan is a causative suffix in Malay should warrant the causal meaning in my opinion.

There seems to be a synonymous relationship between mengancam (p. 36) and mencabar (p. 42) as Mintz provides the meaning 'to threaten' for both lexical items. The latter actually means 'to taunt' or 'to challenge' but not to threaten.

The word setengah in lesson three (p. 19) does not mean 'some' as described. Setengah is 'half' and only when it is reduplicated either completely or partially into setengah-setengah or sesetengah does the meaning extend to designate 'some'. This is often a confusion among non-native speakers and is further capitalized on as an examination question in the Malay examination at 0-level (better known as Sijil Pelajaran Malaysia [SPM]).

For the second section, the Indonesian vocabulary item of the first lesson, menumpang, is correctly explained as 'to ride in'. However it should be noted that one can never say Saya menumpang kereta saya ke pejabat, while the English equivalent following Mintz's vocabulary is correct, 'I ride (in my car) to the office. This pragmatic constraint is due to the fact that menumpang has an additional semantic component inherent to the meanings of 'sharing' and 'following'. Therefore my Malay sentence above can be corrected by replacing the second saya with a third person pronoun or a third party as one shares and follows another party. This point perhaps could be included as an explanation to the meaning of menumpang.

It is also noteworthy to point out that cakap (p. 147) has a few other meanings apart from the meaning of 'capable' or 'clever' as provided.

The Indonesian Dictionary, Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia, lists six meanings for this word. Its most common meaning, 'talk' (verb) in Malay-Indonesian should also be included.

The emergence of new Indonesian morphemes such as memblockade (p. 139) 'to blockade' and karesidenan 'residency' (p. 148) on the other hand, support my fear (Sew 1995) that Indonesian is facing language attrition. I must agree that Mintz has provided a good job in assembling all the interesting texts into audio and print. Teachers will find

284

WORD. VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

the text samples handy and interesting as pedagogical discourses. With this book, an additional step has been made towards Malay and Indonesian being placed on a par with other major languages of the world.

Department of Linguistics Schoo/ of Languages University of Otago P. 0. Box 56 Dunedin New Zealand jyh-wee.sew@stonebow.otago.ac.nz

REFERENCES Kamus Dewan (Edisi Ketiga ). 1994. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pus taka. [Dictionary] Kamus Umum Bahasa Indonesia. 1994. Jakarta: Pus taka Sinar Harapan. [Dictionary] Sew, Jyh Wee. 1995. "Bahasa Inggeris rempuh ke dalam Bahasa Indonesia." [English is crashing into Indonesian] Berita Harian (Singapore's Malay Daily), 12 October.

BRUCE HAYES, Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995. xv + 455 pp.

Reviewed by JoHN

STONHAM

This book consists of ten chapters covering virtually the entire field of metrical stress studies. The title, Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies, is perhaps somewhat deceptive, since the book goes far beyond a presentation of the author's views on metrical stress theory, providing data and analyses relevant to anyone interested in stress systems, whether or not they ascribe to this particular approach. Hayes (henceforth H.) shows the kind of careful and detailed presentation for which he is well-known, and the book is a mine of information on stress systems and related issues.

After a brief introduction to the book in Ch. 1, H. moves on to a chapter on the methodology of investigating stress systems (Ch. 2 "Diagnosing Stress Patterns"). Therein he provides various diagnostics for determining the nature of the prosodic system of a language. His first step is to examine the phonetic correlates of stress with a view to determining their validity. The currently accepted view is that strictly phonetic criteria do not fulfil the goals of a theory of stress and therefore there

REVIEWS

285

must be further criteria; H.'s own view is that stress assignment is related to rhythmic organization within the word, phrase, or larger unit.

Along these lines, H. discusses other means of defining stress in a rigorous fashion.

H. explores the debate concerning the relationship of stress to expiratory effort, first suggested by Stetson ( 1928) and in part supported by Ladefoged (1967). He discusses the notion of rhythm and its relationship to stress, including the difficulties in quantifying this concept formally. He then moves on to a discussion of the number of levels of stress necessary for a phonological analysis of the phenomenon, citing the work of Stockwell (1972), Gussenhoven (1991), and others. The diagnostics presented in this chapter will be useful for anyone interested in analyzing the prosodic patterns of a language.

H. makes the further interesting claim that stress is basically parasitic upon phonetic resources that principally serve other phonological ends, suggesting a somewhat derivative status for stress. The claim is that this is the reason for the realization of stress being such a parochial phenomenon linguistically, even though there do appear to be correlations between certain linguistic properties and particular patterns of stress assignment; it might be interesting to pursue this issue in greater depth. This, in fact, is another valuable aspect of this book: it provides numerous challenges for the interested reader to investigate further.

Ch. 3, "Background", proceeds to a discussion of various fundamental issues pertaining to stress systems, including their typological and formal properties, and the various mechanisms employed in the analysis of such systems. H. provides a useful summary of the properties relevant to stress systems typologically, including (i) culminativity, the fact that each word bears a single main stress; (ii) rhythmic distribution, which is the observation that stresses occur at regular intervals throughout the word; (iii) hierarchical stress, concerning the occurrence of multiple degrees of stress; and (iv) lack of assimilation, the universal claim that stress does not spread to adjacent syllables. He then delves further into the formal properties of stress rules, including the notions of locality, the continuous column constrain, grouping, and the faithfulness condition.

He then examines the issue of quantity as it pertains to syllable structure and stress assignment and provides examples of the various realizations of quantity. Issues such as the domains of application of stress and the devices employed to delineate lower order units are discussed in Ch. 3, and parameters to be employed in the theory, including extrametricality, first suggested in Hayes ( 1980), are presented.

286

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

In this chapter, there is a rather curious and virtually gratuitous reference to Prosodic Morphology in the discussion of issues of grouping.

The excursus, constituting a sub-section of the chapter by itself, occupies only half of a page and seems rather out of place in the context, giving the effect of paying lip service to an important branch of linguistic inquiry rather than providing support for any particular issue under discussion.

"Foot Inventory" (Ch. 4) consists of an overview of the different types of metrical feet found to occur in languages, along with arguments and alternatives to foot-based stress rules. Examples of bounded systems involving the various foot types are presented. H. distinguishes three types of feet: syllabic trochees, iambs, and moraic trochees, and then provides justification for this categorization of foot types. This distinction may be exemplified as follows: (i)

Syllabic Trochee: a disyllabic foot with initial stress (x ·)

(ii)

Iamb: disyllabic foot with final stress ( ·x)

(iii)

Moraic Trochee: foot consists of 2 moras, the first of which is stronger (x-) or (x)

He then discusses various alternatives to this view, including Hayes (1980) and Halle and Vergnaud (1987). The chapter concludes with a discussion of the rhythmic basis of foot categorization, discussing the Iambic/Trochaic Law and its application to the foot.

Ch. 5 on "Further Elements of the Theory" provides further elucidation of certain additional aspects of stress systems, including the existence of degenerate feet, parsing parameters and the notion of the grid.

Concerning degenerate feet, H. draws a distinction between "degenerate" and "proper" feet and argues that degenerate feet are sometimes necessary in order to repair a faulty foot structure. The parameters of parsing proposed by H. include: (i)

Location: top down/bottom up

(ii)

Direction: L

(iii)

Iterative vs. Non-Iterative

(iv)

Persistent vs. Non-Persistent

~

R or R ~ L

REVIEWS

(v)

Strong Local vs. Weak Local

(vi)

Prohibition on Degenerate Feet

287

Following this is an interesting discussion of what H. calls "the unstressable word syndrome", which is basically a consequence of a conspiracy of rules that produce as its outcome a form which is theoretically unavailable for stress assignment. This results from the convergence of four factors: (i) the shape of the original word; (ii) the condition on foot well-formedness; (iii) the principle of extrametricality; and (iv) the notion of culminativity, as defined above. Together these may cause conflicts within the system which, in H.'s view, are resolved in languages in an ad hoc fashion. H. provides a tabulation of the variety of solutions which arise under these conditions.

Subsequently, the various parameters necessary for proper parsing of a string of elements is presented and finally, a discussion ofthe metrical grid, which closely follows the model proposed originally by Prince (1977).

It is in Ch. 6 that we encounter the meatiest part of the text data from the point of view of constituting fully one third of the entire book. This chapter, entitled "Case Studies", explores in detail a number of different examples from a variety of languages of the application of what has been discussed in previous chapters, providing evidence for the various patterns of stress assignment from a number of sources. This chapter is divided into three sections along the lines of the three different foot types introduced in Ch. 4: (i) moraic trochees, including a detailed discussion of Palestinian Arabic, Egyptian Radio Arabic, Cahuilla, Wargamay, Fijian, Maithili, Hindi, and Lenakel; (ii) syllabic trochees, with data presented from Auca and Icelandic; and finally (iii) iambs, as exemplified

by Hixkaryana, Yupik, and varieties of the Arabic, Muskogean, Algonquian, and Iroquoian languages.

The examples provided are extensive and detailed, and offer ample data and suggestive analyses for use in exercises for students of stress systems.

Ch. 7 on "Syllable Weight" returns to the more formal aspects of stress systems, discussing the issue of syllable weight and its contribution to stress assignment in greater depth. Here H. draws a formal distinction between "syllable weight" and "syllable prominence" and provides arguments for his position. Syllable weight is considered to involve the time dimension, i.e. there is an equivalence between heavy and long with respect to the structure of the syllable. Prominence, on the

288

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

other hand, involves strictly the height of columns in a grid ala Halle and Vergnaud (1987) and is clearly a more theoretically dependent construct. Further on H. discusses issues which arise from this distinction, including problems with unbounded stress systems, variation within a single system, and others.

Ch. 8 ("Ternary Alternation and Weak Local Parsing") extends the examination of syllable weight to that of ternary feet, discussing issues of locality and the domain of rule application. H. provides criteria for a theory of ternary alternation and proposes a distance of one mora as the maximum that should be allowed between well-formed feet, explaining the presence of ternary but not larger units of alternation. He then proceeds to incorporate this into his Foot Parsing Locality Parameter, which is separated into two sub-components, Strong Local Parsing and Weak Local Parsing. As implied by the name, Strong Local Parsing allows no omission or skipping of syllables or moras, and is thus the more rigidly constrained and also the more unmarked alternative. It is with Weak Local Parsing that we encounter the opportunity to "skip" over elements consisting of a single mora (or less) in determining foot structure, thus, " ... align the window for further parsing by skipping over I~/, where possible." (308) The theoretical preliminaries lead to a discussion of a large number of the best-known purported examples of ternary alternations, including Cayuvava, Winnebago, Pacific Yupik, Estonian, and others.

In the final section H. provides a brief description of additional cases without further analysis, although reference is made to the original sources so that those interested may pursue the analysis of such cases.

Ch. 9 ("Phrasal Stress") takes us beyond the level of the word to that of the phrase, providing principles for the analysis of phrasal stress patterns. He introduces a set of phrase-level operations, including the following: (i) the End Rule, which suggests that metrical structures favor peripheral positions for stress assignment (this has a detailed discussion in section 9.4); (ii) Move X, used to resolve stress clashes, is discussed along with restrictions on its application in 9.5; (iii) De-stressing, allowing for the removal of stress from a syllable involved in a stress clash; (iv) Beat Addition, which has the opposite effect of strengthening the prominence of a particular stressed element (extensive justification for this is presented in 9.3 and 9.5); and finally, Eurhythmy, defined as placing stressed elements at optimal distances from each other. Since this refers to optimal distances, there is naturally some room for variation depending on the structure encountered, leading to the notion of degrees of eurhythmy.

REVIEWS

289

The concluding chapter (Ch. 10), entitled "Theoretical Synopsis and Conclusion", provides a brief summary of the various proposals presented in the book with references to the appropriate sections. It is a useful complement to the table of contents and index, highlighting the key issues of metrical stress theory as they are seen by H. This book contains a large amount of data. Over 250 different languages and language varieties are cited in the book with varying degrees of coverage, from brief mention to in-depth investigations complete with analyses. There are examples of virtually every imaginable type of stress system, presented in a very careful fashion along with detailed references to the original sources. As such the book represents an excellent example of solid scholarship and a model for linguists to emulate.

H.'s careful blending of theory and practice make this a useful book for students interested in learning about doing linguistics, especially as it is applied to stress systems and metrical stress theory in particular. Yet it goes beyond .this, demonstrating how one can combine a comprehensive treatment of a field with a pedagogically sound and comprehensive presentation of the issues.

H.'s idea of intermingling theoretical discussion and presentation of detailed analyses of individual cases into the body of the book is an effective one. It provides the reader with an appreciation of the process involved in coming to conclusions about stress systems and linguistic analyses more generally.

One interesting omission in the book is any discussion of the relationship between stress and tone. H. mentions tone in various places throughout the book, but never addresses the possibility of an interaction between stress and tone in metrical stress theory. Cases such as the analysis of Mandarin Chinese neutral tone, whether right or wrong, often depend on the idea of "unstressed" syllables for the explanation of the tonal facts (see for example Yip 1980), so it seems appropriate to at least consider the possibilities and the consequences here.

Pitch accent is also noticeably absent from the discussion here and so one must conclude that H. wishes to concentrate solely on issues of a strictly phonological stress type. Even the mention of Gussenhoven's (1991) proposal for English phrase-level stress as pitch-related seems off-topic in this case.

On the production side, the index is quite detailed, with only the occasional lapse in coverage. For example, Laryngeal metathesis occurs in the title of a subsection of Ch. 7, and yet there is no reference to metathesis or laryngeal metathesis in the index. Moras is listed in the index but not mora, cola but not colon; metrical stress (theory) is not listed at all.

290

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

In general, however, the index provides accurate and detailed coverage of the contents of the book.

There are a few typos, as might be expected in a volume of this size, but generally this is a very careful and well-produced book, enhancing its value for data-oriented readers. In summary, this book should be read by any and all who are interested in the field of linguistic stress systems, whether descriptively, theoretically, or typologically. It constitutes a valuable, almost encyclopedic compendium of information and a well presented exposition of the theory of metrical stress.

Department of English The University of Hong Kong Pokfulam Road Hong Kong People's Republic of China

REFERENCES Gussenhoven, Carlos. 1991. "The English rhythm rule as an accent deletion rule." Phonology 8:1-35.

Halle, Morris and Jean-Roger Vergnaud. 1987. An essay on stress. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hayes, Bruce. 1980. "A metrical theory of stress rules." Ph. D. dissertation, MIT. Ladefoged, Peter. 1967. Three areas of experimental phonetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Prince, Alan S. 1977 [1983]. "Relating to the grid." Linguistic inquiry 14:19-100.

Stetson, Raymond H. 1928. Motor phonetics. Amsterdam: North Holland.

Stockwell, Robert P. 1972. "The role of intonation: Reconsiderations and other considerations." Intonation. Ed. Dwight Bollinger. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Pp. 87-109.

Yip, Moira J. 1980 "The tonal phonology of Chinese." Ph. D. dissertation, MIT.

VICTOR H. YNGVE, From grammar to science: New foundations for general linguistics. Amsterdam and Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996. xii + 350 pp.

Reviewed by WILLIAM J.

SULLIVAN

1

1. Introduction. To the extent that any book can be said to represent the culmination of an individual's life's work, From grammar to science (FGS) does. It is a testimony to VictorY ngve' s dedication to making linguistics a science in the physical sense. It would be a mistake to underestimate his dedication to the observation of physical events, the deter-

REVIEWS

291

mination of cause-effect relationships between these events, and the empirical verification of each claim.

FGS is a radical book in both senses of the word. Its stated goal is to build a scientific linguistics-in the sense of a hard, physical sciencefrom the roots up. In so doing it attacks the very base of most contemporary linguistics. That is, it denies the existence of language as generally understood. Yet the book repays careful reading. It is clearly written, produced with only a few, essentially self-correcting, typos, and it proceeds in linear fashion from premiss to conclusion in a manner as inexorable as a logical proof. Still, the book and indeed Y's thesis have their limitations, all self-imposed. Moreover, Y's view of the relation between science and philosophy is controversial. However, there are areas of linguistic research ignored or ill-reported to date that Y's approach makes a direct contribution to.

Understanding Y's approach to science is the key to understanding his thinking. To him true science begins with accurate measurements of the properties of physical objects followed by observations of changes in those properties and the conditions under which they change. From these observations the scientist devises experiments to determine cause and effect, calculates theoretical predictions, and checks those predictions empirically against further real-world observations (pp. 101-2).

Science, in short, is both empirically and logically sound or it isn't science. It may define the physical limits of its object. of study, but it does not define the object of study. That object is there in advance. Two things cannot be overemphasized here: Y's insistence on observations in the real (physical) world and on the determination of cause and effect.

I proceed now to a short summary with apologies for over-simplifications, appending some commentary along the way.

2. Problems with the grammatical tradition. Y traces contemporary linguistics to the logical (i.e. non-physical, non-natural) domain of Stoic philosophy, where most of linguistics remains. Being non-physical, this domain's hypotheses are generally impossible to validate empirically.

I am, of course, oversimplifying a discussion that Y spreads over several careful chapters. Yet Y has a good point here. The object of study in the grammatical tradition and for most linguists even today is language or some part of language. But language is a fictitious object, as Y is at some pains to point out, as fictitious as a uniform speech community or an ideal speaker-hearer. "It" has no existence in time or· space.

Bloomfield and those who followed him called the homogeneous speech

292

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST, 1999)

community and segmental phonemes useful fictions. The only problem is that these fictions took on a life of their own and were never replaced by anything real. Moreover, judging by the way they operated, some phonologists seemed to be unaware that they were using segments.

Consider the case of Halle 1959. Halle claimed that he had rejected Bloomfieldian segmental phonemes. But what he rejected was phonemic contrast. He preserved the segmentation in his morphonemes. Y's scientific approach has something to offer here. First, it has long been known that the speech chain is not segmentable into anything smaller than a syllable. Segmentation at the level of (mor)phonemes produces nothing recognizable as speech or any part thereof. Conversely, close phonetic experiments (e.g. Saw allis 1996) show that modifying a single acoustic variable or the interplay between two acoustic variables can affect the way a listener perceives the phonetic chain. In the end, contrast, a linguistic phenomenon that was adduced logically, has direct physical correlates. In short, Y's insight is that Halle retained what should have been discarded and discarded what is scientifically verifiable. Y details an alternative.

3. A scientific linguistics. Since language does not exist as an object available for direct study, the only scientific recourse is studying the communicating human beings, including the limiting case involving a single individual as both speaker and hearer. Every physical object relevant to communication is part of the study. These objects may include parts of the immediate surroundings. The human beings and other objects are modeled as systems described in terms of properties that are either inactive or active at a given moment. The communicating people with the relevant parts of the environment are called an assemblage and the set of features is called a linkage. A linkage may cover different conditions and different periods of time, from a single conversation between two people to a relationship that covers years and different individuals (husband and wife, various in-laws, children growing and adult, etc.).

Thus codified Y's approach can be formalized. The formalization is essentially a relational-network model, though Y does not elaborate on it. Descriptions reflect hierarchies in the linkage and are time- and context-sensitive. They are so explicit that it is relatively easy to see how cause-effect experiments can be designed.

4. Evaluation. It is fair to say that Y wants us to start over on a physical, scientific basis. It isn't that he believes all the insights of grammaticallinguistics are wrong, though some or all may be. Since they have

REVIEWS

293

not, in general, been verified through physical experimentation, it is impossible to be sure of them. He has a good point. Consider the "phoneme" again. Patterns of behavior and phonetic experimentation suggest a phenomenon called phonemic contrast. But we have never proved the existence of a single phoneme. That would be roughly equivalent to proving the existence of a magnetic monopole. The Sawallis experiments mentioned above provide verification of contrast-which is a relationship between two (sets of) phonemes (specifically, voiced and unvoiced stops in French). Or consider Universal Grammar. Its existence is adduced because children presumably don't have enough exposure to language to enable them to acquire it in the time it takes them to become native speakers. But this is an empirical claim which is testable.

It would require a great deal of work longitudinally, but it could be done.

The assumption is clearly falsifiable, so it could lead to scientific findings. But building a theoretical structure on an untested assumption which could easily be (and probably is) false is dangerously unscientific, and no "discoveries" made in its name can be trusted.

As far as he goes, and he goes a long way, Y provides a useful tool for linguistic research in the physical world. We have never taken the physical context fully into account in our studies of communication, though Meyer 1991 makes a good start. Y wants us to go all the way. He also shows us how to isolate changes in the particular communicative characteristics of an individual so that the causes of these changes can be determined. This and his unswerving devotion to a scientific approach are significant contributions. It is safe to say that a more widespread application ofY's methods would have saved much time over the past forty years at least.

Y's book is not without its limitations. His views of the philosophy of science and of the limits to valid scientific procedure are certainly moot. I don't agree with all of them myself, and they could be an impediment to a reader. Yet they are irrelevant to the contributions cited above. What Y insists on is good science; my comment is that good science doesn't stop there, and communication is not restricted to the outwardly-visible physical world. Plenty goes on in the brains of communicating individuals. Y is not averse to extending linguistic research into the brain. However, this requires more research on neurology and cognitive psychology (Y, personal communication).

One very real limitation of this book is in Y' s treatment of linguistic theories. Except for the central line of Chomsky an linguistics (C-lin), no contemporary theory gets much consideration. C-lin only gets as much as it does because of its place as the dominant paradigm. As a result, ar-

294

WORD, VOLUME 50, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST,

1999)

guments for other approaches, e.g. Jackendoff-Lakoff cognitive linguistics, are not generally considered. However, this is again irrelevant toY's contributions. First, where such theories are built on a conception of language rather than communicating individuals, they fall outside the scope ofY's work. Second, they might be on a reasonable, scientific track, e.g. those cognitive/neurological approaches being pursued in Lamb 1994 and Paradis 1997. But cognitive psychology and neurology don't need "arguments" in their favor. We will know them and the linguistic research that proceeds from them by their concrete results. That's science.

This book is well-written, well-presented, and provocative. But don't read it if you can't stand having your most basic preconceptions challenged.

Program in Linguistics University of Florida 112 Anderson Hall Gainesville FL 32611-5454

ENDNOTE 1

Having in hand a first-run copy ofFGS, I offered to review it for WORD. Dr. Embleton was good enough to accept my offer. I had nearly completed the review when I discovered that my name is in the acknowledgements. I offered to step aside, but WORD had already invested time in my review and Dr. Embleton kindly suggested that I carry on, appending this note.

REFERENCES Halle, Morris. 1959. The sound pattern of Russian. The Hague: Mouton Lamb, Sydney M. 1994. "Relational network linguistics meets neural science." Twentieth lAC US forum, 1993. Ed. Valerie Becker Makkai. Chapel Hill: LACUS. Meyer, Cynthia Ford. 1991. "Talk of times past: On the interaction of cognitive systems in conversation." Ph. D. dissertation, Rice University.

Paradis, Michel. 1997. "Prerequisites for a neurolinguistic investigation of bilingualism." Paper read at Twenty-ninth LACUS forum. at York University, Toronto.

Swallis, Thomas. 1996. "An autonomous system for quantifying the perceptual use of acoustic speech cues: Voicing in intervocalic /t- d/in French." Ph. D. dissertation, University of Florida.

Sullivan, William J. 1995. "Scientific linguistics and relational networks." Communications of the · workshop for scientific linguistics 4.1 :4-14.