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Morphology at the interfaces: Reduplication and noun incorporation in Uto-Aztecan.

Morphology at the interfaces: Reduplication and noun incorporation in Uto-Aztecan. By Jason D. Haugen. (Linguistics today 117.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. xv, 257. ISBN 9789027255006. $165.
Reviewed by Alexandra Galani, University of Ioannina

Jason D. Haugen discusses reduplication, noun incorporation, and related derivational morphological phenomena based on comparative data from the Uto-Aztecan language family. The data aim to shed further light on issues related to the morphology-phonology interface (reduplication) and the morphology-syntax interface (noun incorporation). The theoretical claims are made within distributed morphology. H also discusses polysynthesis as a new parameter that contributes toward an analysis of the historical development of the Uto-Aztecan language family.

The book is divided into four parts (nine chapters) in addition to the preface (ix–x), the introduction (xi–xv), the references section (231–49), and the language (251–53) and subject indices (255–57).
Part 1, ‘Background’, consists of two chapters. In Ch. 1 (1–16), H offers information about the Uto-Aztecan language family classification and an overview of certain aspects related to word order, sentence structure, and subject and object clitics in Uto-Aztecan. The chapter concludes with a brief discussion on the origins of the Uto-Aztecan community. In Ch. 2 (17–32), accounts that are related to syntactic variation are presented before moving to a sketch of the principles of distributed morphology, which are adopted in this work in order to explain morphosyntactic reconstruction.

Part 2 (33–86) discusses prosodic morphology and consists of two chapters. In Ch. 3 (33–67), H explores reduplication patterns in comparative Uto-Aztecan data (Yaqui, Mayo, Guarijio, Nahuatl, Numic, Tepecano, and Tohono O’odham). He considers reduplicative morphemes to be prosodic pieces, and in Ch. 4 (69–86), he theoretically accounts for them within distributed morphology.

Part 3, ‘Derivational morphology’, consists of three chapters. In Ch. 5 (87–115), data on denominal verbs and noun incorporation into verb structures from Hopi are presented in order to support the view that noun incorporation and denominal verb formation should not be seen as two different kinds of morphological processes. This view is further supported in Ch. 6 (117–62) with data from Comanche, Cupeno, Hopi, Tohono O’oldam, Yaqui, and Nahuatl. In Ch. 7 (163–204), H theoretically accounts for the empirical data presented in Ch. 6. He takes a syntactic view on word formation where head-movement and merge are the main operations to apply.

Part 4, ‘Change in morphological type’, consists of two chapters. In Ch. 8 (205–27), H discusses the diachronic development of polysynthesis in Nahuatl. The book concludes in Ch. 9 (229–30) with an overview of the main points discussed in each chapter.

This is an interesting book on the interfaces of morphology with syntax and with phonology. The interested reader can easily follow the empirical data as well as the theoretical discussions. It nicely presents relevant literature reviews, and the author manages to connect comparative data with theoretical analyses from a diachronic and a synchronic point of view.

Frames and constructions in metaphoric language

Frames and constructions in metaphoric language. By Karen Sullivan. (Constructional approaches to language 14.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2013. Pp.vii, 184. ISBN 9789027204363. $135 (Hb).
Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

Since the 1970s, more and more scholars have approached metaphor from a cognitive perspective. While stressing their conceptual nature, these researchers, in one way or another, neglect other aspects of metaphors. In recent years, many researchers investigating metaphor have started to adopt a discourse-based method, emphasizing the essential role of social and conversational context in processing, interpreting, recognizing, and appreciating metaphors. However, so far few have built a model which gives due attention to the workings of metaphoric language. Aiming to fill this gap, Karen Sullivan ‘integrates insights from Construction Grammar with those of Cognitive Grammar, Conceptual Metaphor Theory and Frame semantics, bringing these together into a new account of metaphoric language’ (4).

The book contains ten chapters, including an introduction and conclusion, a list of references, primary sources, and indices. The introduction, ‘Metaphoric language and metaphoric thought’ (1–16), critically evaluates existing studies on metaphoric language. It also presents the objectives and overview of the entire book. In Ch. 2, ‘Frames in metaphor and meaning’ (17–33), S introduces two important notions from cognitive linguistics (CL), frame theory in cognitive semantics and autonomy/dependence in cognitive grammar, adapting them to suit the analysis of metaphoric language. Ch. 3, ‘Frames and lexical choice in metaphor’ (35–48), demonstrates how frames evoked by a lexical item’s non-metaphorical senses can help to determine which items are chosen to express a given conceptual metaphor.

Ch. 4, ‘Frames in metonymic inferencing’ (49–61), illustrates the effectiveness of frames and constructions in distinguishing metaphor from other figurative language such as metonymy. It is argued that metonymic inferencing requires specific constructional contexts that allow for ambiguity while the constructions involved in metaphor are adopted in ways that avoid ambiguity and ensure a metaphoric interpretation.

The remaining chapters of the book (Chs. 5–9) offer a more detailed illustration of the new model proposed by analyzing a series of grammatical constructions. Ch. 5, ‘Two types of adjective construction in metaphor’(63–86), focuses on domain constructions and predicating modifier constructions, while Ch. 6, ‘Argument structure constructions in metaphor’(87–114), concentrates on argument structure constructions, such as resultatives, ditransitives, and uses of the copula. Ch. 7 scrutinizes ‘Metaphoric preposition phrases and closed-class items’ (115–30), and Ch. 8, ‘Repeated domain evocation and xyz constructions’ (131–48), investigates constructions which combine two or more of those from Chs. 5–7. Finally, Ch. 9, ‘Metaphoric constructions beyond the clause’(149–66), further examines some larger metaphor-evoking structures, including relative clauses and conditional constructions, as well as other complex structures such as parallelism and negation of the literal. Ch. 10, ‘Conclusion’ (167–72), presents the significance and limitations of the research.

This book shows the cross-fertilization among several existent theories within CL by creating a unified and coherent model that is capable of explaining both metaphoric and non-metaphoric language. The book should be of interest to anyone interested in CL and metaphor in particular. Future studies could consider extending the model to cover more metaphor-evoking constructions and analyze linguistic data from languages other than English.

Lexical analysis: Norms and exploitations

Lexical analysis: Norms and exploitations. By Patrick Hanks. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2013. Pp. xv, 462. ISBN 9780262018579. $60 (Hb).
Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

Based on authentic word usage from large corpora and other texts, Patrick Hanks proposes a lexically based, corpus-driven, bottom-up theory of language called the theory of norms and exploitations (TNE), which is expected to help explain how words go together in collocation patterns and how people use words to convey meaning.

Ch.1 points out the need for a theory of norms and exploitations for the empirical analysis of meaning in language and presents the aims of the book. Ch. 2 takes a closer look at the various meanings of the term ‘word’. This chapter also explains the dynamic and infinite nature of the lexicon of a language and how new terms are constantly being created. Ch. 3 argues that words in isolation, instead of having meaning, only have meaning potential. Actual meanings only appear when people use words in specific context, whether verbal or situational.

Ch. 4 illustrates how Paul Grice’s conversational cooperation theory can help distinguish meaning-as-events and meaning potential. He distinguishes between ‘norms’ and ‘exploitations’: the former refers to patterns of ordinary usage in everyday language while the latter denotes the unusual and creative uses. Ch. 5 demonstrates the effectiveness of identifying normal complementation patterns by corpus analysis in terms of valency and lexical sets for determining a word’s meaning.

Ch. 6 addresses the issue of norms of usage change over time on the basis of large historical corpora. H emphasizes that when appreciating literary works from different periods, it is important to bear in mind the different norms of the time. Ch.7 discusses the alternation of three regular patterns of usage in language: lexical alternations, semantic-type alternations, and syntactic alternations.

Ch. 8 is concerned with exploitation, which is a dynamic mechanism used to create new meanings and to say old things in new ways. Moreover, exploitation is also one mechanism for bringing new senses to a word. Various types of exploitations are also introduced in this chapter. In Ch. 9, H analyzes a few examples of how creative writers have exploited lexical and other norms of the English language and created new ones.

Ch. 10 elaborates on how the normal, conventional patterns of meaning and use of a word constitute a complex meaning gestalt, and how such gestalt is exploited in various ways. Ch. 11 explains how TNE is related to the philosophy of language and anthropology, citing the works of
language philosophers like Aristotle, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Hilary Putnam, and Paul Grice, and the ideas of anthropologists such as Bronisław Malinowski, Elenore Rosch, and Michael Tomasello. Ch. 12 discusses how TNE differs from other theories of language concerning the role of the lexicon, and finally, Ch. 13 summarizes the key notions of TNE, pointing out its theoretical significance and practical applications.

The book is of great interest for those who want to engage in empirical research in language-related areas such as cognitive linguistics, historical linguistics, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, machine translation, and applied linguistics. It also has practical value for lexicographers, language teachers, and those involved in textbook compilation.

Morphology and language history: In honour of Harold Koch.

Morphology and language history: In honour of Harold Koch. Ed. by Claire Bowern, Bethwyn Evans, and Luisa Miceli. (Current issues in linguistic theory 298.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2008. Pp. x, 364. ISBN 9789027248145. $173 (Hb).
Reviewed by Alexandra Galani, University of Ioannina

Claire Bowern, Bethwyn Evans, and Luisa Miceli put together a collection of twenty-five papers which discuss the various methods used when studying historical morphology. Part 1(‘Genetic relatedness’) opens with Barry Alpher, Geoffrey O’Grady, and Claire Bowern, who bring evidence for the development of Western Torres Strait, whereas Peter Austin investigates the classification of Pinikura. Mark Donohue shows that bound pronominals can also be used as a classification criterion in West Papuan languages, and Margaret Sharpe explains that unsolved morphophonological phenomena prevent researchers from fully supporting the relatedness of Alawa, Mara, and Warndarang. Jane Simpson reconstructs pronominals in Warumungu and compares them to the corresponding forms in neighboring languages as evidence towards the language’s genetic position.

In Part 2 (‘Reconstruction’), Avery Andrews shows how one may use historical morphology to support synchronic morphological theories based on Greek data, whereas Jay H. Jasanoff discusses the reconstruction of the Ancient Greek verb σβέννυμι. Paul Black investigates the pronominal system in Pama-Nyungan languages, and William B. McGregor in his chapter, ‘The origin of noun classes in Worrorran languages’, supports language family classification. John Giacon examines verb specification morphemes in Gamilaraay not only to shed light on its historical development but also for the purposes of language revival. Mark Harvey looks into the origin of conjugational markers in Australian languages, while Luise Hercus and Stephen Morey offer a historical investigation of negatives in Southeastern Australian languages. H. Craig Melchert offers a semantic reconstruction of the adverb duwān in Hittite, and David Nash reconstructs monomorphemic verb roots in Warlpiri, whereas Phil Rose looks at tones in Oujiang Wu through modern acoustics. Grace Koch and Myfany Turpin investigate the language used in Central Australian Aboriginal songs and conclude that it shows a non-archaic behavior. Luisa Miceli compares two methods of reconstruction (inspectional versus comparative method) using data from Australian languages, and, finally, Paul Sidwell uses a bottom-up method of reconstruction to examine verbal morphology in Mon-Khmer.

In Part 3 (‘Processes of change’), Cathryn Donohue reaches generalizations about the morphological realization of case marking of four-place predicates in Old and New Basque, while Bethwyn Evans treats the development of plural in object marking in Marovo as a morphological zero affected by discourse patterns. Anthony J. Liddicoat and Timothy Jowan Curnow investigate the morphological development of the perfect in Jersey Norman French, and Patrick McConvell deals with the reconstruction of kinship affixation patterns in Pama-Nyungan languages. Kim Schulte investigates reconstruction of the plural morphology in Romanian, and following that, John Charles Smith discusses the refunctionalization of first-person plural inflection in Tiwi. Finally, Xiaonong Zhu examines the historical change of chain vowel raising in Chinese.

The book is well organized and coherent. It presents various techniques employed by researchers working on historical morphology. Its strongest advantage is that a wide range of crosslinguistic morphological phenomena, analyses, and theoretical questions are all addressed in a single book.

Mongolian.

Mongolian. By Juha A. Janhunen. (London Oriental and African language library 19.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2012. Pp. xv, 320. ISBN 9789027238207. $165 (Hb).
Reviewed by Mikael Thompson, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia

Juha A. Janhunen has written a thorough study of spoken Mongolian. An introductory chapter (1–20) is followed by chapters on segmental structure (21–55), morpheme structure (57–93), nominal morphology (95–141), verbal morphology (143–84), phrasal syntax (185–222), clausal syntax (223–61), and complex sentences (263–89). The end matter includes the transcription of a folk tale (291–96), a short table of paradigms (297–99), an orthographic chart (301–303), a bibliography (305–11), and a grammatical index. (This reviewer read a preliminary version of the first three chapters and provided some data.) There is little to quibble with in any respect; two topics merit comment.

Mongolian is known among phonologists for its system of vowel harmony, which is usually presented as a front-back opposition with i front but transparent. In fact, due to vowel shifts, most Mongolian dialects are better analyzed as having ATR (advanced tongue root) or pharyngeal harmony in reflexes of modern Mongolian simple vowels, and conditioned fronting of former back vowels has left little phonetic basis to Mongolian vowel harmony (78–79). J treats the vowel system well, but his transcription, based on contemporary pronunciation, is counter-intuitive: digraphs indicate both quality and quantity (e.g. the short vowels ü, u, ö,and o, pronounced roughly [u], [o], [ɯ], and [ɔ], are transcribed u, ou, eu, and o; 34). Moreover, as it differs from the standard transcription and that adopted in Svantesson, Tsendina, Karlsson, and Franzén’s The phonology of Mongolian (Oxford University Press, 2005), this makes his data less accessible.

Morphologically, Mongolian is usually presented as having seven cases. In fact, the status of Mongolian case endings as inflectional endings distinct from derivational endings can be challenged. As Mongolian lacks productive agreement, cases must be defined by verbal and postpositional government, and by alternations in pronominal stems. These criteria do not entirely agree. In addition, some derivational suffixes can be productively added after certain case endings. On this point, J’s analysis could be sharpened: while J treats the suffix -x used to make the predicate form of the genitive and the attributive form of the dative-locative as a nominal case marker of sorts (114–17), it is also used to form the attributive of the instrumental, certain postpositions, and certain adverbial verb forms (e.g. tal-aar ‘with respect to’ < tal ‘side’, tölöö ‘for (beneficiary)’, and -tal4 ‘until’ all may take -x), and should better be treated as a derivational suffix indicating the government of a word form. In general, grammatical roles and functions in Mongolian need detailed re-examination; this book provides a good starting point.

Although Mongolian has been the subject of a significant body of research, a study summarizing and analyzing the language as a whole is needed. This book fills that need. The data are reliable, the coverage is comprehensive, and the treatment of unsettled questions is judicious. It is highly recommended to all Mongolists and will interest many other linguists.

Ancient Greek

Ancient Greek. By Silvia Luraghi, Anna Pompei, and Stavros Skopeteas. Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2005. Pp. 101. ISBN 3895862398. $70.56.

Reviewed by Edmund P. Cueva, Xavier University

Ancient Greek is a book written for linguists who are not familiar with the language. The authors write that this text should serve as a ‘sort of guide to steer non-specialists through the complexities of specialistic literature’ (3). The book provides a good review for classicists who wants to reacquaint themselves with the varied, complex nature of Ancient Greek. It is also useful for the nonclassicist scholar interested in tackling the many Ancient Greek grammars that abound in the field of classics. The text has a preface, a list of abbreviations, five chapters, and a bibliography.

‘Introductory remarks’ (7–12) includes a succinct report on the genetic affiliation of Ancient Greek and its language history. It comments on the geographical and social element and continues to outline dialectical variations, forms of writing, and documentation. Ch. 1, ‘Phonology’ (13–23), covers segments (syllabics, nonsyllabics (consonants, glides)), accents (general properties, rules for lexical accents, clitics), phonotactics (syllables, diphthongs, geminates, phonotactic constraints), and phonological processes. Ch. 2, ‘Morphological processes’ (23–26), deals with affixation, reduplication, apophony, position of accent, and word formation (affixation and compounds). Ch. 3, ‘Parts of speech and grammatical categories: Morphosyntax’ (27– 71), includes sections on nouns (number, gender, definiteness, case, possession), pronouns (personal pronouns, demonstratives, relative pronouns, reflexives, interrogative and indefinite pronouns), adjectives (general properties, comparison), numerals, adverbs, adpositions, verbs (person and number, tense and aspect, mood, nonfinite verb forms, voice), negation, conjunctions, and particles. The last chapter, ‘Syntax’ (71–97), assesses such sentence types as statements, wishes, questions, and commands. It also focuses on the word order, and the subject, object, and predicate components of the simple sentence structure. The authors end the chapter with sections on interclausal coordination, subordination, relative clauses, adverbial clauses, complement clauses, infinitives, and participles.

Ancient Greek is well written and concise. In its 97 pages it supplies a thorough introduction (or review) of Ancient Greek and most of its rules of grammar, syntax, and morphology.

Language and society in Japan.

Language and society in Japan. By Nanette Gottlieb. (Contemporary Japanese society.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Pp. ix, 169. ISBN 0521532841. $27.99.

Reviewed by Lea Cyrus, University of Münster

This book explores from various angles the ways in which language and identity in Japan are intertwined. Its main focus is on present-day Japan, but historical developments are always taken into account to explain the present situation.

In the first chapter (1–17), Gottlieb explores the notion of ‘Japanese language’, taking as her starting point the simplistic but widely held Nihonjinron view that Japanese is a homogeneous, unique, and unchanging entity, and also impossible to grasp for nonnatives. She goes on to describe the development of standard Japanese since the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1867) and then briefly touches on various diversifying factors, such as dialects, influences by other languages, and differences in male and female speech.

Ch. 2 (18–38) deals with language diversity in Japan. G discusses minority languages, such as Ainu, Okinawan, Korean, and Chinese, and describes the various roles they have played in constructing a Japanese identity. The Japanese attitude to foreign language studies, in particular with respect to English, is also mentioned.

Ch. 3 (39–54) identifies ideological connections between language and national identity in Japan since the Meiji Restoration. The Japanese writing system has played a crucial role in this respect: attempts at creating a standardized form based on contemporary spoken language rather than on classical Chinese were seen either as an assault on national values or as a necessity for and a symbol of a modernized Japan.

Ch. 4 (55–77) focuses on various language policy issues. With respect to Japanese itself, these were mostly concerned with script reforms—the list of 1,945 ‘Characters of general use’ (Jōyō Kanji) being one major result—and recently also with the issue of English loanwords. Furthermore, language policies regarding minority languages like indigenous Ainu, the teaching of English in Japan, and the teaching of Japanese as a foreign language are also presented.

In Ch. 5 (78–99), G first introduces the Japanese writing system with its three scripts (kanji, hiragana, and katakana) and then discusses the way kanji are taught at schools. This includes a list of those kanji that are learned during the six years of elementary school. The remainder of this chapter deals with issues like dyslexia and literacy, and also with reading habits in Japan.

Ch. 6 (100–119) covers discriminatory language and linguistic stereotyping directed at various groups of people, such as women, people with mental or physical disabilities, and ethnic minorities (e.g. Koreans and Ainu, or, very particular to Japan, the so-called burakumin, that is, descendants of people with occupations that used to be associated with impurity).

Ch. 7 (120–36) assesses the social and cultural consequences of the development of character-capable software, such as the rise of a Japanese presence on the internet. In addition, the new technology has brought about changes in kanji usage: there has been an increase in the use of complex characters in printed texts, while at the same time the ability to write even the simpler characters by hand has decreased.

The last chapter (137–45) provides a short summary and gives an outlook by investigating whether Japanese has the potential to become a global language.

This book is clearly written and does not assume any previous knowledge of Japanese. It will be of benefit for linguists and sociologists alike, or indeed for anyone interested in Japan and Japanese society.

A natural history of Latin: The story of the world’s most successful language.

A natural history of Latin: The story of the world’s most successful language. By Tore Janson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. 305. ISBN 0199214050. $15.95.

Reviewed by Edmund P. Cueva, Xavier University

A natural history of Latin attempts to give an ‘overview’ and an ‘appetizer’ (ix) of the history of Latin. Janson supplies this overview in two parts: Part 1 deals with Latin and the Romans in antiquity and Part 2 with the postclassical language and its users. This division allows for an examination of the different roles that Latin played in antiquity and in Europe after the influence and importance of Rome had waned. It should be noted that this 2004 English edition (translated by Merethe Damsgård Sørenson and Nigel Vincent) is not just a translation of the 2002 Swedish version, but also includes revisions, adaptations, and some completely new sections. Sørenson and Vincent themselves authored the sections on ‘Latin and German’ and ‘The pronunciation of Latin in England’ (x).

The book is divided into two major and two secondary parts and also includes a foreword, a list of suggested readings, and an index. Part 1, ‘Latin and the Romans’ (3–82), begins with an attempt to provide a first acquaintance with the lingua latina by discussing cognates and their adjectival modifiers. There is also a brief presentation on Latin word order, orthography, and pronunciation. This section then moves on to a summary of the 2,700-year history of the development of the language that includes geographical and archaeological data. Among topics included in this section are ‘How Latin became Latin’, ‘How bad were the Romans?’, ‘The meeting with Greece’, ‘The age of revolutions’, ‘Speeches, politics, and trials’, ‘Cicero and rhetoric’, ‘Name and family’, ‘Poetry and poets’, ‘Philosophy: Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca’, ‘Everyday language’, and ‘Christianity: From dangerous sect to state religion’.

Part 2, ‘Latin and Europe’ (85–176), covers the aftermath of the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west and then proceeds to track the changes (political, linguistic, etc.) that led from standard Latin to the Romance languages. J discusses a variety of topics including, for example, work done by missionaries, the use of Latin in Britain, Latin in the schools, the importance of books and scribes to the advancement of the language, postclassical poetry, Abelard and Héloïse, the Renaissance, the sciences (medicine, physics, chemistry), alchemy, witchcraft, the works by J. K. Rowling, loanwords and neologisms, Latin and German, Latin and French, and Latin and English.

Part 3, ‘About the grammar’ (177–215), does a thorough but brief job of describing the essentials of Latin grammar: pronunciation, stress, sentence structure, verbs, nouns, adjectives, pronouns, gerunds, and gerundives. Plenty of morphological charts are included. Part 4, ‘Basic vocabulary’ (217–69), is a listing of all of the Latin words that occur in the text and words that have ‘left frequent traces in the modern languages’ (218). An added bonus to this list is the placement of stress accents that approximate those of classical Latin. Part 5, ‘Common phrases and expressions’ (271–96), consists of some 500 Latin phrases, expressions, and quotations with translations. The reader can find phrases and sayings ranging from such well-known ones as carpe diem (Horace) and cui bono? (Cicero) to such lesser-known ones as ad maiorem Dei gloriam (the motto of the Society of Jesus) and nemo me lacessit impune (the national motto of Scotland).

All in all, this brief introduction delivers on its promise to serve as an overview and to whet the appetite for future interest in the Latin language. J covers quite a bit of information in the 305 pages of text.

Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education.

Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education. By Mike Scott and Christopher Tribble. (Studies in corpus linguistics 22.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2006. Pp. x, 203. ISBN 9027222940. $39.95.

Reviewed by Aleksandar Čarapić, University of Belgrade

Mike Scott and Christopher Tribble’s Textual patterns: Key words and corpus analysis in language education aims to familiarize the audience with corpus resources, theoretical frameworks, and analytical tools that are highly relevant for language teachers and their educators to show how key-word (KW) analysis and the systematic study of lexis and genre can model the groundwork for a corpus-informed approach to language teaching.

The volume consists of ten chapters divided into two parts. Part 1 (3–88) by S is more theory-oriented; Part 2 (91–193) by T demonstrates practical application to a group of diverse areas of knowledge. Ch. 1, ‘Texts in language study and language education’, focuses on features of corpus-based analysis highlighting four different sources for corpus-oriented researchers: the text, the language, the culture, and the brain. Providing an explanation of word lists, Ch. 2, ‘Word-lists: Approaching texts’, shows that such lists obey power laws; it further deals with the transformation of a text into a word list, and the selection of words that will figure in it. Discussing collocations, colligations, and semantic prosody, Ch. 3, ‘Concordances: The immediate context’, explores concordancing and the nature of cooccurrence. Starting with the nature of keyness and its dependence on repetition, Ch. 4, ‘Key words in individual texts: Aboutness and style’, aims to establish a method for identifying KWs, and Ch. 5, ‘Key words and genres’, focuses on ‘“association” (the contextual relationship between words that are key in the same text)’ (72) to determine formal patterns of linkage and to provide analysis of such patterns as obtained not only within texts, but between them, too.

Demonstrating how an analysis of small sets of texts with similar content helps teachers and students understand the contrasting linguistic choices made by speakers and writers in the process of text production, Ch. 6, ‘General English language teaching’, begins with the grammatical and lexical differences between spoken and written language. Ch. 7, ‘Business and professional communication’, shows how KW analysis can identify words that are relevant for discourse moves ‘critical to the management of writer/reader relationships in professional correspondence’ (103). Ch. 8, ‘English for academic purposes’, focuses on clusters (bundles, N-grams), showing how they can be used to examine contrast between expert and apprentice production in academic writing. Ch. 9, ‘What counts in current journalism’, deals with KW analysis in a diachronic perspective using a collection of texts from the Guardian Weekly. Finally, Ch. 10, ‘Counting things in text you can’t count on’, uses Samuel Beckett’s Texts for nothing to show the ways in which tools that are used in the analysis of large collections of texts can be applied to an analysis of an extremely short story.

This book reveals an extremely interesting concept of the quantitative and qualitative interface of the study of lexis in text. Clearly and convincingly written, it will be highly valued by both beginners and experts whose interests lie in the lexical relations within texts and genres from various linguistic perspectives of applied linguistics, computational linguistics, corpus linguistics, pragmatics, semantics, text and discourse linguistics, and so on.

Artificial descendants of Latin.

Artificial descendants of Latin. By Alan Libert. Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2004. Pp. 140. ISBN 3895868183. $76.16.

Reviewed by Edmund P. Cueva, Xavier University

Artificial descendants of Latin is a survey of the multitude of languages that have been created using elements from Latin. Libert’s book includes a preface, a list of abbreviations, and six chapters; there is also a short bibliography on printed and internet resources. In Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–8), L briefly presents the ALBLs (artificial languages based on Latin) that he covers in the text: Carpophorophilus’s language, Kosmos, Latino Moderne, Latino sine Flexione, Latinulus, Linguum Islianum, Mundelingva, Myrana and Communia, Nov Latin, Reform-Latein, SIMP-LATINA (SPL), Universal-Latein, Uropa, Weltsprache (Eichhorn), and Weltsprache (Volk and Fuchs). These languages are known as a posteriori since they are mainly ‘based on one or more natural languages’ (1) and are, of course, different from the natural descendants, the Romance languages. The ALBLs are consciously created and based on Latin.

The initial presentation of each language in Ch. 1 follows a somewhat set paradigm: year presented, medium used for presentation, author, extent of development of language, and a few secondary scholarly references to the language. For example, Carpophorophilus’s language was first presented in 1732 in vol. 15 of the Deutsche Acta Eruditorum; the author is unknown; it is not a completely developed language; and reference is made to Histoire de la langue universelle published in 1907 by Couturat and Leau, and Drezen’s Historio de la mondolingvo published in 1967. Another example is Latino Moderne, which was created by David Stark in 1987 or 1994; is available only on the World Wide Web (references are made to Stark’s URLs available on the internet); and no mention is made of the extent of development, except to say that a grammatical summary, lessons, and dialogues of the language exist.

Ch. 2, ‘Phonetics’ (9–20), is divided into subchapters on sound inventories and orthography, suprasegmentals (stress and intonations), and phonotactics. Ch. 3, ‘Lexicon’ (21–25), focuses on the Latin noun forms that the ALBLs borrow, their modifications, and terms for modern concepts. Ch. 4, ‘Morphology’ (26–116), is divided into subchapters on nouns (number, gender, definiteness and articles, case, and nominal derivational morphology), pronouns (personal pronouns and possessive pronouns, adjectives, demonstrative pronouns and adjectives, reflexive and reciprocal pronouns, interrogatives, relatives, indefinitives, and quantifiers), numerals (cardinal, ordinal, and other types), adjectives (agreement on making adjectives, comparison of adjectives), adverbs, verbs (person/number agreement, tense and aspect, mood, infinitives, participles, gerunds, gerundives, supines, voice, and irregular verbs), prepositions, conjunctions, participles, and interjections. Ch. 5, ‘Syntax’ (117–35), discusses word order in several subchapters. The first is ‘Word order in the sentence’, in which L comments on Latino Moderne (subject–verb–direct object), Latino sine Flexione (flexible word order), Latinulus (normally subject–verb–direct object), SPL (usually subject–verb–direct object–indirect object), and Uropa (subject–verb–direct object is most common). The other languages are basically of the subject–verb–direct object category. The other subchapters cover ‘Word order in the noun phrase’, ‘Binding and the use of reflexive pronouns’, ‘Pro-drop’, and ‘Absolute constructions’. Ch. 6, ‘Semantics’ (136–38), briefly covers ambiguity and homonymy, synonymy, idioms, and generics.

Although brief, Artificial descendants of Latin is an excellent introduction to an interesting facet of linguistic research, and readers will be pleased with it.