Innamincka talk: A grammar of the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwandha with notes on other dialects. By Gavan Breen. (Pacific linguistics 558.) Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2004. Pp. xvii, 245. ISBN 0858835479. $60.28.

Innamincka words: Yandruwandha dictionary and stories. By Gavan Breen. (Pacific linguistics 559.) Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2004. Pp. x, 218. ISBN 0858835487. $55.17.

Reviewed by Harald Hammarström, Chalmers University

The distinguished Australian salvage linguist Gavan Breen has completed a fine two-volume set on the Innamincka dialect of Yandruwandha: one grammar volume for the typologist/Australian linguist and one ‘less technical’ dictionary (with texts) intended to be of interest also for the descendant community.

Most of the metadata on the language and its study is in the grammar volume. Yandruwandha was spoken in the north-east corner of South Australia. The data for the description was collected from 1967–1976, mainly from the last two good speakers. Innamincka has been dead since 1976, meaning that there is at present nobody left with a reasonable command of the language. It is a Pama-Nyungan language, with a typical P-N typological profile, classified in the (less than secure) Karna subgroup whose most well-known language is Diyari.

As in most grammars, the descriptive data starts off with the phoneme inventory. The phonology section as a whole is surprisingly detailed, containing information such as (morpho)phonological rules, sentence intonation, and a phoneme frequency chart. Understandably, given the circumstances of data availability, there are a number of uncertainties on minor matters. However, and this is something I especially like about this grammar, B always shows on what basis something is affirmed, doubted, or cannot be known.

The next chapter, somewhat misplaced, discusses word order and phrase order. In this language it is grammatical to permute the order of phrases and words quite freely, and also to split phrases. But, at least from the corpus of recorded sentences, there are some clear statistical tendencies, such as not to split phrases, SOV/AOV word order, and initial question-word placement.

The following chapter discusses how the phonological word and grammatical word may be defined in Innamincka Yandruwandha. Most grammars, including modern ones, fail to treat this question, as famously lamented by R. M. W. Dixon and Alexandra Aikhenvald in their editors’ introduction to Word: A cross-linguistic typology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, pp. 1–41).

Information on word classes, pronoun inflection, simple sentences, noun inflection, and noun-stem formation follow with few surprises. The verb has a lot of suffixal inflection, which is the topic of another chapter. There is no indication that the description is incomplete (again, given the limits of data availability), except for an occasional suffix of unknown function. The verb can be further modified with bound markers indicating aspect, direction of motion, emphasis, and more, inserted between the root and inflection. In fact, verb stems can incorporate adverb and noun roots, another verb, and even an inflected noun, and then take the bound marker and an inflectional suffix. Further chapters cover complex clauses, particles, conjunctions, interjections, and clitics.

The grammar is entirely functional, described in plain English with no trees, acronyms, or formulae whatsoever.

There is not as much to say about the companion dictionary volume. The dictionary is Innamincka to English (beginning at D since no word begins with A, B, or C) with an English finder list. It contains separate sections on place names, naming of new concepts, and kinship terms. Also, there is a very useful alphabetical list of suffixes. There is not much text material, but all of it is diligently annotated with interlinear translation.

We are thankful to B for filling this gap in documentation. As it is much more complete than a sketch grammar or other salvage studies, it will certainly be valuable to Australianists and typologists alike (and hopefully of interest to the descendant community).

The Tai languages of Assam: A grammar and texts. By Stephen Morey. Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2005. Pp. xxiii, 413. ISBN 0858835495. $97.64.

Reviewed by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Research Centre for Linguistic Typology,

La Trobe University

This is the first comprehensive compendium on the Tai languages of Northeast India—Phake, Aiton, and Khamyang (all spoken in Assam), as well as Khamti, a variety of Arunachali Tai, and the practically extinct Tai Ahom. The book is a model example of large-scale language documentation in the true sense of the word. It includes a theoretically informed grammatical description, a selection of texts, and an extensive discussion of the previous sources, accompanied by a dialect survey and a brief introduction to the customs and the culture. The book also contains dictionary materials. It is accompanied by a CD that presents a rich corpus of texts both in transcription and as sound files, in addition to an electronic version of the grammar in which just about every language example is linked to a sound file and to the file containing the text from which it was drawn. This innovative feature places the book on the cutting edge of modern technological advances, which invite the reader to be able to check the original sources. This creates a truly multidimensional edition.

The book consists of eleven chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’, provides the methodological backdrop for the study. Morey states his ‘ideological commitment to the documentation and description of endangered languages’—all of the languages discussed in his book belong to this category. The current technological advances allow linguists committed to documenting languages to go beyond doing this in books: as noted previously, the electronic version of the book that is on the CD allows for the addition of sound files for most language examples and the spoken texts on which the grammar is based, and also photographs and biographies of language consultants. The rest of this chapter offers an overview of the Tai language family, a quick look into the fieldwork conducted by M, and the data on which the study is based. M returns to a meticulously detailed discussion of the methodology of data collection, analysis, and translation of the texts in Ch. 5, after having provided an in-depth discussion of the linguistic situation and cultural context of the Tai-speakers of Assam (Ch. 2, ‘The Tais of Assam and their languages’), and of previous studies and mentions in the linguistic literature (Ch. 3, ‘Previous studies of the Tai languages’). Ch. 4, ‘Theoretical considerations’, outlines the analytic approach, opting for basic linguistic theory as the preferred analytic framework.

Ch. 6 concentrates on phonology, starting with a brief presentation of proto-Southwestern Tai segmental and suprasegmental features, and then going on to the analysis of Phake and Aiton, with preliminary observations on Khamyang. In Ch. 7, M discusses the scripts for each individual language. Ch. 8, ‘Syntax’, is in actual fact the gist of the grammar: it contains a brief description of word classes, major constituents (including constituent order), and basic clause types. It includes incisive discussion of some topics. For instance, the status of adjectives as an independent word class rather than as a subclass of verbs is demonstrated through their syntactic function as noun modifiers (verbs cannot modify nouns) and the limited applicability of tense, aspect, and mood markers. Somewhat less attention is paid to the types, and structures, of complex sentences.

The types of literary genres, and the texts available in Tai languages, are discussed in Ch. 9, ‘The literature of the Tai’. Ch. 10, ‘Lexicography’, provides an overview of the existing dictionaries of the Tai languages discussed. The short final chapter, wisely called ‘Postscript’, discusses technical problems with creating and working with nonstandard fonts, presenting the sound files, data archiving, and the like.

In summary, this is an outstanding achievement that will serve as a modal of linguistic documentation for future linguists. Pacific Linguistics is to be congratulated on this.

Text, context, pretext: Critical issues in discourse analysis. By H. G. Widdowson. Oxford: Blackwell, 2004. Pp. x, 185. ISBN 0631234527. $27.95.

Reviewed by Mousa A. Btoosh, Al-Hussein Bin Talal University

This book, which makes an outstanding contribution to the scholarly research on discourse analysis, addresses a number of challenges and problematic issues that have remained largely uninvestigated in the previous vast literature on this field. Widdowson is remarkably successful in his attempt to bring into the light and provide answers to several controversial questions related to a number of concepts and areas including text, discourse, context, cotext, and pretext.

The book consists of ten chapters, with a preface and references. In the preface, W explains that this work is ‘a reconceptualized and extended version’ of his Ph.D. thesis written in 1973. Ch. 1, ‘Text and discourse’ (1–16), sheds light on the weaknesses of the previous and long-established conceptual distinctions between discourse and text.

Ch. 2, ‘Text and grammar’ (17–35), examines the relationship between text and grammar within the framework of the generative grammar of Noam Chomsky and the systemic-functional grammar of M. A. K. Halliday. Irrespective of the traditional claims that Halliday’s model is functional, it clearly fails to account for the pragmatic use of texts.

Ch. 3, ‘Context’ (36–57), considers and criticizes the representations of context in previous major works, concluding that textual interpretation essentially involves extralinguistic factors. Ch. 4,‘Context and co-text’ (58–73), distinguishes between the internal literal message of the text (depending on cotextual relations) and the external pragmatic message (depending on contextual relations). According to W, ‘co-textual relations are only realized by users to the extent that they are contextually relevant’ (71). Ch. 5, ‘Pretext’ (74–88), investigates the direct involvement of the ulterior motive, a fabricated reason for doing something used to hide the real reason, in the interpretation process.

Chs. 6 and 7, which shift in their focus from text-discourse distinction to methodology, present two approaches to discourse analysis. Ch. 6, ‘Critical discourse analysis’ (89–111), provides substantial evidence of the failure of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to provide interpretation based on a close analysis of textual features. Ch. 7, ‘Text and corpus analysis’ (112–27), makes it explicit that the concordancing lines of the corpus-based approach cannot deduce the contextual factors from cotextual ones.

Ch. 8, ‘Analysis and interpretation’ (128–46), asserts that interpretation is not derived from a blow-by-blow and systematic analysis of the textual features, but rather from the interpretation of texts governed by external or contextual factors. Ch. 9, ‘Approach and method’ (147–64), accounts for the reasons attributed to the contradiction we find between the claims and practices of CDA. According to W, this is mainly attributed to the confusion found in CDA literature about the concepts of ‘approach’ and ‘method’. The last chapter, ‘Conclusion’ (165–74), provides concluding statements about the major points raised throughout the book.

Overall, this book lives up to all of its grand goals and constitutes a well-referenced text and an invaluable source for all those interested in discourse analysis. If students and researchers are to understand what discourse analysis is, then a work such as this is certainly needed.

Introducing phonetics and phonology. 2nd edn. By Mike Davenport and S. J. Hannahs. London: Hodder Arnold, 2005. Pp. xvi, 223. ISBN 0340810459. $34.95.

Reviewed by Carolina González, Florida State University

Introducing phonetics and phonology is an introductory undergraduate textbook that discusses the fundamentals of articulatory and acoustic phonetics (Chs. 1–6) and the main concepts and frameworks in phonological theory (Chs. 7–12). For its second edition, the volume has been revised and a chapter on suprasegmentals has been added.

Ch. 1, which briefly discusses generative linguistics, serves as a general introduction to the areas of phonetics and phonology. Chs. 2–4 focus on articulatory phonetics and the articulatory characterization of the consonants and vowels of British and American English. Ch. 5 provides a basic introduction to acoustic phonetics, covering the acoustic properties of speech sounds and the two most commonly used types of acoustic displays: spectrograms and waveforms.

Ch. 6, new to the second edition, concentrates on suprasegmentals. It looks in detail at the syllable and its organization and also considers stress, tone, and intonation. The remaining chapters offer an introduction to phonology. Ch. 7 provides an overview of features, and Ch. 8 outlines the fundamentals of phonological analysis, including the distinction between phonemes and allophones and the difference between surface and underlying forms. Ch. 8 also introduces the concept of the phonological rule, further explained in Ch. 9, which discusses phonological processes and alternations.

Ch. 10 deals with feature organization and introduces feature geometry, autosegmental phonology, and underspecification. A more advanced discussion of syllable structure is also included in this chapter, as well as some information on other units of phonological organization like the mora and the foot. Ch. 11 focuses on derivational analyses and examines important issues for any phonologist, including how to decide among competing analyses and how to choose underlying forms. Ch. 12 discusses the tension between the abstract and the concrete and covers issues such as learnability, plausibility, and the need to distinguish between synchrony and diachrony in phonological analyses. Lexical phonology and optimality theory are also briefly discussed in the last chapter. The volume ends with a list of references and various indices.

This volume is a very accessible and readable introduction to phonetics and phonology. Some of its highlights are the concise and straightforward explanation of how to conduct phonological analyses and of the issues every analyst has to be aware of when choosing among competing analyses or frameworks.

This book might be best suited as a primary textbook for introductory linguistic courses that cover the basics of both phonetics and phonology, especially for students with no previous background in linguistics. Since it discusses many varieties of British and American English, this book is also a good option for introductory linguistic courses in English programs. Suggestions for further relevant secondary sources and a few exercises are offered at the end of every chapter, which can help to supplement the presentation of the topics covered in this book.

Studies in linguistic motivation. Ed. by Günter Radden and Klaus-Uwe Panther. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2004. Pp. viii, 389. ISBN 3110182459. $180 (Hb).

Reviewed by Annalisa Baicchi, University of Pavia

The issue of the pervasiveness of motivation in natural language is tackled in this thought-provoking volume, which must be considered as a fundamental contribution since it reviews the current research on the topic and paves the way for future lines of investigation. The volume consists of twelve papers grouped into four sections that address the topic from four different perspectives (ecological, genetic, experiential, cognitive). In addition, Radden and Panther’s insightful introductory paper, ‘Introduction: Reflections on motivation’, offers an exhaustive overview of linguistic motivation, which ‘is receiving increasing attention in present-day functional and cognitive linguistics’ (1), and illustrates the semiotic criteria useful for its understanding.

Ecological motivation is examined by John Taylor (‘The ecology of construction’) and by Ad Foolen (‘Expressive binomial NPs in Germanic and Romance languages’).  Analyzing in depth the constructional idiom Bang goes + NP_[subj], Taylor argues that constructions—which are motivated when related to the other language units of phonological, semantic, and symbolic type—never occur in isolation but occupy an ecological niche within a network of relations. Foolen discusses the double-headedness in constructions like She is an angel of a child, whereby angel is the expressive head and child is the referential head, and convincingly shows that such a construction represents a highly motivated direction from conceptual content to syntactic form.

In the second section, Bernd Heine (‘On genetic motivation in grammar’) and Christian Koops (‘Emergent aspect construction in Present-Day-English’) discuss genetic motivation, a label coined by Heine to refer to the diachronic motivation. Heine takes up the categories of numerals, indefinite reference, and predicative possession to compare and contrast the structural motivation and the genetic motivation. Koops studies the grammaticalization of three constructions across languages conveying progressive meaning, and clearly shows that the progressive aspect follows from the three source concepts of location, motion, and posture.

Experiential motivation is addressed in the third section. Vyvyan Evans and Andrea Tyler, in ‘Spatial experience, lexical structure and motivation: The case on in’, brilliantly discuss the motivation of lexical structures analyzing the figurative extensions of the polysemous English particle in. John Newman, in ‘Motivating the uses of basic verbs: Linguistic and extralinguistic considerations’, examines some basic verbs from various languages in their metaphorical extensions motivated by body-based experiential concepts.

The last section takes into account cognitive motivation in full depth. Teenie Matlock, in ‘The conceptual motivation of fictive motion’, claims that, when in the presence of a fictive motion construction like the road runs along the coast, we mentally scan the trajectory and simulate motion along a path; interestingly, she shows that we construct a different dynamical representation of fictive motion depending on the verb encoding motion. Anatol Stefanowitsch and Ada Rohde, in ‘The goal bias in the encoding of motion events’, clearly demonstrate that the wider use of goal PPs is motivated by the major salience of goals of motion over sources, and by the higher information values of goal PPs, which allow for inference of initial and medial segments of a path. Gerhard B. van Huyssteen, in ‘Motivating the composition of Afrikaans reduplications: A cognitive grammar analysis’, examines the iconic motivation exemplifying cases of onomatopoeic and grammatical reduplication in Afrikaans, which he discusses from the framework of conceptual metonymy.

Francisco Ruiz de Mendoza Ibañez and Olga Díez Velasco, in ‘Metonymic motivation in anaphoric reference’, tackle the thorny issue of the selection of anaphoric pronouns in the English language when they have metonymic antecedents; the authors propose a challenging solution relying on their theory of metonymic mapping. Rita Brdar-Szabó and Mario Brdar, in ‘Predicative adjectives and grammatical-relational polysemy: The role of metonymic processes in motivating cross-linguistic differences’, compare some English polysemous constructions with predicative adjectives with their equivalents in Croatian, German, and Hungarian, and insightfully show that English relies on metonymic processes to rearrange argument structure and to keep the adjectival construction constant, an operation that is limited and even absent in the other three languages. Antonio Barcelona, in ‘Metonymy behind grammar: The motivation of the seemingly “irregular” grammatical behaviour of English paragon names’, focuses on the motivation of proper names used as paragon names, as in There are three Shakespeares in my college, and identifies two metonymies that motivate paragons and the behavior of paragon names.

Discourse markers in Colombian Spanish: A study in polysemy. By Catherine E. Travis. (Cognitive linguistics research.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2005. Pp. xiii, 327. ISBN 3110181614. $128 (Hb).

Reviewed by Barbara de Cock, University of Leuven

In Discourse markers in Colombian Spanish, Catherine E. Travis provides an overview of current research on discourse markers, with special attention to Spanish, as well as new insights through the analysis of the polysemy of four Spanish discourse markers.

First, T outlines some basic research questions on discourse markers (Ch. 1) and describes her data set of spontaneous conversation in Colombian Spanish as well as her methods of transcription (Ch. 2). She then provides an exhaustive review of the literature, including research from both the Anglo-Saxon and the Spanish research traditions, and addresses the terminological labyrinth in the field of discourse markers (Ch. 3). In addition to this critical state of the art, the chapter highlights some of the most important prosodic, syntactic, and semantic features of discourse markers. Finally, T briefly introduces the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach (which is used in Chs. 4–7) in which ‘meaning is equated with conceptualisation, and with this focus on conceptualisation it fits into the broader arena of cognitive linguistics’ (61).

These more general chapters are of interest to any linguist in search of a good and critical overview of research on discourse markers. The case studies (Chs. 4–7) may appeal to a more limited audience, but in any case they show T’s accurateness in processing both her own corpus data as well as other researchers’ insights and comments. The cases of bueno (Ch. 4), o sea (Ch. 5), entonces (Ch. 6), and pues (Ch. 7) are described as follows. First, the author sketches the diachronic development of the discourse markers. She then presents previous research before proceeding to a description of the markers’ different functions, using examples from her corpus data. The NSM definitions of these four discourse markers are also summarized in an appendix. These analyses bring the author to a more general description of discourse markers in terms of multifunctionality—based on semantic and pragmatic information—and polysemy, ‘a shared component of meaning, or partial semantic invariant, evident across the range of use of the marker’ (288).

The conclusions summarize the analyses both of the four case studies and of the various theoretical approaches, indicating the main difficulties and the directions for future research. Thus, the volume provides a critical overview of research on discourse markers and opens new paths for work in this domain.

Language variation: Papers on variation and change in the Sinosphere and in the Indosphere in honour of James A. Matisoff. Ed. by David Bradley, Randy LaPolla, Boyd Michailovsky, and Graham Thurgood. (Pacific linguistics 555.) Canberra: Pacific Linguistics, 2003. Pp. xii, 320. ISBN 085883541. $73.93.

Reviewed by Picus S. Ding, Macao Polytechnic Institute

This is a collection of nineteen papers in honor of James Matisoff, a leading figure in the linguistics of the Tibeto-Burman area. The volume starts with a brief biography of Matisoff, followed by David Bradley’s introduction, which highlights Matisoff’s major academic achievements (1–20). The themes of the papers can be roughly divided into seven groups: (A) phonology, (B) morphology, (C) syntax, (D) grammar and discourse, (E) language contact, (F) lexicon, and (G) orthography. Group A includes Martha Ratliff’s discussion of Hmong secret languages (21–33), Jackson Sun’s account of tonal developments in Tibetan (35–51), Robert Bauer’s description of the impact of English loanwords on the Cantonese syllabary (253–61), and Jerold Edmondson’s study of the phonological system of Phu Kha, Xá Phó, and Vietnam Lolo (305–20). Group B covers Carol Genetti’s account of some case studies on linguistic variation found in Newar (53–63), Balthasar Bickel’s proposal of prosodic tautomorphemicity in Sino-Tibetan word structure (89–99), and Benji Wald’s comparative notes on verb compounding in English and East Asian languages (201–18). Group C contains Aimée Lahaussois’s description of split ergativity in Thulung Rai (101–12), Yasuhiko Nagano’s remarks on negation particles in Gyarong (159–72), and David Peterson’s study of agreement and grammatical relations in Hyow (173–83).

Group D encompasses Randy LaPolla’s explication of why languages differ in terms of variation in the conventionalization of constraints on inference (113–44), and Martine Mazaudon’s study of the interface between discourse and grammar in Tamang (145–57). Group E consists of Michael Noonan’s study of language contact between Tibeto-Burman languages and Nepali (Indo-European) in the Himalaya (65–87), Graham Thurgood and Fengxiang Li’s account of contact-induced variation and syntactic change in Tsat (Austronesian) (185–200), and Michel Ferlus’s discussion of borrowing from Middle Chinese into Proto Tibetan (63–75). Group F includes David Bradley’s discussion of deictic patterns in Lisu and Southeastern Tibeto-Burman (219–36), and Boyd Michailovsky’s comparison of time ordinals in Kiranti languages (237–51). Group G comprises Mark Hansell’s study of variations in Chinese character choice in writing loanwords in Taiwan (277–90) and R. Sprigg’s analysis of features of the Lepcha and Limbu scripts (291–304).

As the majority of languages studied in this volume are ‘exotic’, the reader should find many interesting facts about languages that they probably have not heard of. Taking language variation as the basic theme, these papers concern differences observed within the linguistic system. While LaPolla advances an intralanguage explanation for the divergence of languages, Noonan has touched upon a crucial interlanguage factor: language contact, which is a double-edged sword to linguistic diversity. As noted by Thurgood and Li, the chronic language contact with Min and Cantonese has siniticized the typological profile of Tsat, but the acute language contact with Mandarin as a national language is threatening to replace it, just like what Nepali is doing to Kiranti languages.

C-ORAL-ROM: Integrated reference corpora for spoken Romance languages. Ed. by Emanuela Cresti and Massimo Moneglia. (Studies in corpus linguistics 15.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. xvii, 304, DVD. ISBN 902722286X. $144 (Hb).

Reviewed by Carolina González, Florida State University

C-ORAL-ROM presents corpora of spontaneous speech of French, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish collected in Europe by researchers following the same guidelines. This collaborative effort outlines the history of the project and the conventions and methodological issues that were relevant for its completion.

Ch. 1 deals with the C-ORAL-ROM resource in general. The corpora consist of approximately 300,000 words for each of the four languages and include recordings and texts from a wide variety of contexts, genres, and dialogue structures. Available in the accompanying DVD and through the ELDA Catalogue (http://www.elda.fr), the corpora are presented in a multimedia format that includes both textual and acoustic information. The textual information, which follows the CHAT format (MacWhinney 1994), is prosodically tagged and annotated for part of speech. A key feature of C-ORAL-ROM is text-to-speech alignment, which is a function of the selection of each utterance in the resource through prosodic cues. The resource provides text-to-speech synchronization of roughly 130 hours of spontaneous speech.

Chs. 2–5 focus on the subcorpora for each language, and Ch. 6 provides some discussion of the important role of the utterance—defined as an ‘expression marked by a prosodic terminal break’ (210)—in speech-corpora analysis. Finally, the appendix briefly presents the results from the external evaluation of the prosodic annotation utilized in the project.

The DVD offers several tools. The corpus metadata provides metalinguistic information for each language sample. Glossaries are included for Italian regional forms and Spanish nonstandard forms. Text-to-speech alignment is provided through a demo version of the WinPitch Corpus (© Philippe Martin), where recordings can be listened to and analyzed acoustically with the help of waveforms, spectrograms, and pitch tracking. This is especially helpful for prosodic analysis. A text search engine is also provided, through a demo version of Contextes (1.1.0) (© Jean Véronis). Every match returned for word or lemma searches includes a partial context; the script where the match appears can be uploaded with a simple click. Frequency lists for words and lemmas for each of the subcorpora are also included in the DVD, together with tables and comparative diagrams of relevant linguistic measures and strategies in each language.

Overall, this is a great resource for researchers in the areas of Romance linguistics, corpus linguistics, syntax, second language acquisition, and speech and prosody research. The operation of the DVD and the tools included in it is quite straightforward. The exception is the WinPitch Corpus, for which a troubleshooting section and additional information on its operation would be a welcome addition. An online tutorial for this program is announced at http://lablita.dit.unifi.it/coralrom/. Finally, it is unfortunate that one of the key options in Contextes—playing the context for each match returned through the search function—is not supported in the demo version distributed in the DVD.

Tajik. By Shinji Ido. (Language of the world/materials 442.) Munich: LINCOM Europa, 2005. Pp. 98. ISBN 3895863165. $71.96.

Reviewed by Andreea S. Calude, The University of Auckland

Today Tajik is recognized as an autonomous West-Iranian language, independent from Persian and Dari, through genetically linked to them. Tajik, spoken in Tajikstan and Uzbekistan, is also influenced by Uzbek, Arabic, and Russian, and even has a ‘sprinkling of words of Chinese origin’ (2). The term ‘Tajik’ has itself been used to denote different things at different times in history, that is, it has been used to differentiate various linguistic, geographical, religious, or ethnic groups of people—though these never quite coincided exactly. Tajik intellectuals, as Ido refers to the people concerned with promoting the Tajik language, were faced with making decisions about which alphabet to use (Latin or Cyrillic), which dialect to base the Tajik language on, and how to incorporate it into the identity of the people living in Tajikstan.

After describing these issues in the first chapter of the book (1–9), I moves to giving a brief discussion of the phonetics and phonology of Tajik in Ch. 2 (11–16). First, vowel and consonant phonemes are given, and then syllable structure and stress are outlined (all examples given throughout the book are in the Cyrillic alphabet).

Ch. 3, the longest chapter in the book, concerns the morphology of Tajik (17–78). The chapter begins with nominal morphology (17–42), treating nouns (including number gender, definitiveness, case, possession), pronouns (personal pronouns, honorific expressions, demonstrative pronouns, reflexives, interrogative pronouns, question words), numerals (cardinal numbers, fractions, ordinal numbers, classifiers, arithmetic vocabulary), adjectives (comparison, intensification, disintensification), and adverbs. Verbal morphology is then discussed (43–71), treating past- and present-tense stems, person and number forms, nonfinite forms, copular verbs, aspect, modality, various verb paradigms (simple past, past imperfective, past perfect, past progressive, present progressive, present imperfective, future), principal mood categories (including inferential, imperative and optative, conditional, speculative, and intentional), participles as predicates, causative voice, passive voice, negation, and auxiliary verbs. Ch. 3 also deals with adpositions (71–72) and outlines word-formation processes (72–78), detailing noun formation, verb formation, adjective formation, and adverb formation.

Ch. 4 is concerned with Tajik syntax (79–85). Three main issues are treated, namely copular verb constructions, coordination (including ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘but’ coordination), and subordination (with mention of relative clauses, participial modifiers, adverbial clauses, and converb constructions). Interestingly, I makes a point in noting some differences in syntax between spoken and written registers. The final chapter (87–88) gives a small inventory of three short passages: a magazine article (1929), a speech excerpt (2001), and an excerpt from a news report (2003).

Tajik is a very accessible, clearly written, and well-organized book, which can be used by language enthusiasts and professional linguists alike to obtain a quick overview of this fascinating and, to date, underdocumented language.

Numerous meanings: The meaning of English cardinals and the legacy of Paul Grice. By Bert Bultinck. Oxford: Elsevier, 2005. Pp. 327. ISBN 0080445578. $99.95.

Reviewed by Michael Haugh, Griffith University

The issue of what English cardinal numbers mean may seem at first glance a fairly specialized topic, but as Bert Bultinck comprehensively demonstrates in his study, resolving this issue has significant implications not only for theorizing about the interface between semantics and pragmatics, but also for the methodological stance that underpins much theorizing in the field of pragmatics.

The book consists of six chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–3), contains a very brief statement of the primary focus of B’s study, while Ch. 6, ‘Conclusion’ (303–10), gives a succinct overview of the main findings of his study. The bulk of the content of this book thus lies in the intervening four chapters.

Ch. 2, ‘The Gricean theory of implicature’ (5–59), is a general discussion of the theory of implicature proposed by H. Paul Grice and subsequent modifications of it by neo-Griceans and relevance theorists. The focus here is on a particular type of implicature, namely generalized conversational implicature, and its relationship to the logical meaning of expressions. B concludes that conventional meaning should be identified with ‘familiar meaning’ by examining the frequency of different senses in corpora, a theme that is crucial to this study.

In Ch. 3, ‘Three decades of Gricean numerals’ (61–101), B focuses on the literature associated with the arguments for and against the Gricean view of cardinals. Alternatives to the Gricean approach are also found to be inadequate by B, who thus introduces an ‘absolute value’ approach to cardinals, which is further elaborated upon in the following two chapters.

Ch. 4, ‘General corpus analysis of the forms and functions of English cardinals’ (103–66), constitutes a corpus-based analysis of the different syntactic characteristics and functions of cardinals. The forms and functions of ‘two’ are taken to be representative of other cardinals, although ‘zero’ is considered to be an exceptional case, and so is given a separate treatment in the last section of the chapter. This analysis shows that while numbers can be used to specify cardinality, there are other uses such as in mathematical calculations and time expressions, among other things. There is, however, a correlation to be found between adnominal uses of numerals and cardinality, according to B’s analysis.

In Ch. 5, ‘ “At least n”, “exactly n”, “at most n” and “absolute value” readings’ (167–302), B finally tackles the question of what constitutes the ‘coded’ meaning of cardinals. While one of the key findings of this corpus-based analysis is that cardinals actually have numerous meanings, B argues that the ‘absolute value’ (i.e. with no modal commitment) is the most frequent meaning to be found in the corpus and thus is the conventional (or ‘coded’) meaning of cardinals. While the ‘exactly n’ interpretation is also quite common, it is argued by B that this arises due to the influence of restrictors and definiteness on the ‘absolute value’. The ‘at least’ and ‘at most’ readings of cardinals are found to be much less frequent, arising from extralinguistic material in the cotext (and occasionally the context).

B’s study shows that the Gricean/neo-Gricean view of cardinals is problematic in light of an analysis of the actual usage of numerals. More importantly, however, B demonstrates that a corpus-based analysis has considerable value in furthering our understanding of the meaning of lexical items that appear to lie at the crossroads of semantics and pragmatics.