Reviewed by James Murphy, University of Manchester

This book is intended as an introductory textbook in conversation analysis (CA) for undergraduates, and it fulfills this purpose, with thirteen chapters covering the most important aspects of the conversation analytic method. Before the start of the book proper, Jack Sidnell provides the transcription conventions employed in the book and discusses them in detail.

Ch. 1 places CA in its historical context, briefly discussing the ethnomethodology of Erving Goffman and Harold Garfinkel, which inspired the earliest conversation analysts Harvey Sacks, Emanuel Schegloff, and Gail Jefferson. The chapter also explores why the close analysis of actual talk is important to our understanding of language and society. Ch. 2 provides advice for collecting, transcribing, and making observations about spoken data.

Ch. 3 begins the main theoretical discussions by examining the turn-taking rules in conversation. S explains clearly how speakers arrange turns-at-talk, how they select the next speaker, and what occurs when talk overlaps. Ch. 4 looks at the non-serial organization of talk, that is, how actions are achieved in conversation. S cogently discusses the notion of the adjacency pair and conditional relevance. Ch. 5 discusses preference structure, which explores why, for instance, speakers disprefer turning down invitations and how speakers go about performing dispreferred utterances.

Ch. 6 examines longer stretches of talk. This includes pre-sequences and extensions of talk before the ‘nitty-gritty’ of conversation is reached, such as pre-announcements (e.g. ‘Guess what happened to me?’ (95)). Insert expansion and post-expansion are also discussed. S describes what happens when things go wrong in conversation in Ch. 7, which entails an analysis of self-repair (i.e. where speakers correct their own mistakes and infelicities) and other-initiated repair (i.e. where hearers seek clarification or repetition of a troublesome turn-at-talk). Ch. 8 provides a more detailed discussion of the turn and how it is constructed. S discusses how turns usually begin and end, and describes the importance of gaze and intonation. S also touches on how turns   can be built collaboratively when talk overlaps.

Ch. 9 explores techniques speakers use to maintain the floor for extended periods. S describes typical storytelling patterns and how couples cooperate to describe events. Ch. 10 focuses on opening and closing sequences in conversation and, in particular, telephone exchanges. Ch. 11 looks at the broad notion of topic, i.e. what a conversation is actually about. S discusses how speakers keep conversation on-topic, including methods employed by others to change or shift topic. S also discusses the problems with using the idea of ‘topic’ in CA work. Ch. 12 looks at conversation in a variety of contexts and discourse domains, including courtrooms and educational settings. The final chapter offers a summary of the previous chapters and of the CA research program more generally.

Overall, this book is an ideal introduction for students new to CA. It is suitable not only for those with a linguistics background, but also sociologists and anthropologists. It is well-written and filled with engaging examples of real-life talk. Perhaps the only element missing is some engagement with criticism of CA.

Reviewed by I. M. Laversuch Nick, University of Cologne

This book makes a much needed contribution to the body of linguistic research devoted to investigating discourse between differentially empowered agents within professional settings (e.g. doctor:patient; and police-officer:witness). The specific thematic focus of this book is the crucial role that interpreting plays in assuring equal access to and protection under the law. Consequently, the work directly confronts the tenacious prejudice that court interpreting is of minimal importance.

After the outstanding introduction provided by the editors, the first of eight articles begins with a fascinating contribution entitled ‘Interpreting at the Tokyo war crimes tribunal’ by Kayoko Takeda (9–27). This riveting case study provides many fascinating insights into the tribunal’s operation during the prosecution of Japan’s former wartime Prime Minister, Hideki Tojo. In doing so, it also powerfully illustrates how court interpreting is ‘conditioned by the social, political, and cultural contexts of the settings in which the interpreted even takes place’ (25).

More contemporary evidence of this assertion can be found in Shira L. Lipkin’s contribution ‘Norms, ethics, and roles among military interpreters’ (84–100). The investigatory focus of this chapter is Israel’s Yehuda military court. This case study of soldier-interpreters vividly demonstrates the extent to which a hostile social environment can adversely affect the services interpreters can provide and defendants can receive. This reality is in sharp contrast to the principle stating that ‘interpreters shall ensure that the duties of his/her office are carried out under working conditions that are in the best interest of the court’ (87). Obviously, this mandate grossly exaggerates the control that many interpreters actually have within the courtroom.

This professional reality is underscored by Susan Berk-Seligson’s case study ‘Judicial systems in contact’ (29–53). As the author describes in this study of Ecuador, interpreting services are a luxury which the state can ill afford to offer its multilingual multiethnic population. Thus, despite the fact that Article 2 of Ecuador’s Ancestral Languages bill guarantees the right to use one’s ancestral language in all administrative proceedings, professional court interpreting is a rarity. Importantly, the disjunction between legislation and implementation is sadly not uncommon; even in nations which would, at least theoretically, have the financial wherewithal to provide such professional language services.

What happens when this moral mandate is ignored is illustrated in the account by Bodil Martinsen and Friedel Dubslaff of a trial gone horribly wrong (126–62). Incredibly, although the court interpreter featured in their study openly admitted to being unable to properly translate the defendant’s statements due to inadequate training, the presiding judge allowed the trial to continue. When later asked to explain this decision, the judge offered the following justification: ‘[I]n view of my knowledge of French, I can’t tell how poor or not the interpretation was’ (153). In order to bring such miscarriages of justice to light, more linguistic investigations into courtroom discourse are essential. This book is an excellent step in the right direction.

Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

Based on examples in Spanish, the book addresses issues concerning the theories and applications of contemporary pragmatics, especially the inference-oriented line of pragmatic research. Specifically, it discusses the problems of Gricean pragmatics and introduces relevance theory (RT) as an alternative pragmatic framework which offers a more unified account of human communication by integrating cognition and context, with special attention paid to the addressee’s processing effort and cognitive effects. The two overall aims include (i) seeking ‘to establish the nature and goals of pragmatics as the study of verbal communication, particularly in relation to Spanish’ (6) and (ii) arguing that ‘the remit of pragmatics is (a) the conveyance of intentions in overt verbal communication and (b) how those intentions can be successfully communicated by linguistic means’ (6).

The book is divided into three parts. The first part (Ch.1–3) deals with traditional pragmatics and its problems; the second part (Ch.4–7) is devoted to key theoretical issues of RT; and the third part (Ch.8–11) examines applications of RT. Ch. 1 provides a snapshot of the three parts and reviews major approaches in Spanish pragmatics. Ch. 2 explains the nature and goals of pragmatics, arguing that there is a gap between sentence meaning and utterance meaning, the bridging of which, by hearers, involves risk. Ch. 3 discusses the transition from the traditional code model of communication to Grice’s inferential approach, pointing out the shortcomings of each and laying a foundation for an alternative approach of RT, which is the main topic of the second part.

 Chs. 4 and 5 focus on the two principles of RT, i.e. the cognitive principle of relevance and the communicative principle of relevance, the difference being that the former aims at the maximization of the trade-off between effects and effort in information processing while the latter is aimed at optimization. Ch.6 explores the consequences of the communicative principle of relevance, and Ch. 7 investigates the distinction between explicit and implicit communication. Chs. 8–10 show the application of RT to various linguistic phenomena in Spanish, including disambiguation (Ch. 8), irony (Ch. 9), and metaphor (Ch. 10). Finally, Ch.11 offers a conclusion to the ideas presented in the book.

 One of the aims of the book is ‘to make a contribution to the development and application of relevance theory to Spanish pragmatics’ (7), and this book can be used as a systematic and positive introduction to RT. The book highlights the use of Spanish examples to test the explanatory power of RT, but only a limited number of phenomena are examined in detail (i.e. disambiguation, irony, and metaphor). A strength of the book lies in its drawing on findings from other areas, such as psycholinguistics (191–98) and artificial intelligence (198–200), to make the account ‘psychologically real and compatible with what is known about human cognition’ (49).

Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

This edited volume, arising out of an Expert meeting in 2008, founded by the European Science Foundation and the European Social Cognition Network, brings together findings and theories from leading scholars who, with a wide range of academic backgrounds and using diverse methodologies, addresses the issue of the interaction between spatial and social cognition as well as their mutual support and constraint.

 Besides the editors’ introduction previewing the whole volume, the book is organized into two sections (A and B), reflecting the two emphases of the volume. The articles in section A explore the grounding of social processes and concepts in space, and seek explanations from the embodied cognition paradigm in its different versions (especially conceptual metaphor theory (CMT)), whose main claim is that human higher-order cognition is shaped by sensory-motor processes. The chapters in this part confirm, refine, extend, or complement existing theories of embodiment. Barbara Tversky demonstrates the spatial basis of social thought by scrutinizing the parallel constructive processes existing both in space and social thought, and explains these correspondences using perception-action couplings. Julio Santiago, Antonio Román, and Marc Ouellet challenge CMT by raising the problem of flexibility, and propose a new explanatory model based on basic spatial cognition principles, working memory representations, and attentional processes.

 The two chapters that follow challenge the embodiment theorists’ claim that social cognition is based on spatial cognition. Nira Liberman and Jens Förster survey evidence in support of the view that spatial distance and other psychological distances, such as social distance, temporal distance, and likelihood, affect each other and that distances affect and are affected by the level of construal. In the following chapter, Simone Schnall, on the basis of the economy of action theory, argues that social variables affect spatial ones rather than vice versa. Thomas W. Schubert, Sven Waldzus, and Beate Seibt review evidence supporting the assumption that power is metaphorically understood as elevation and size in space. They also draw on semantic network models and simulation theories to complement CMT to explain the findings.

 Also assuming embodiment, section B contains chapters specifically examining the horizontal dimension, i.e. the left-right asymmetries and their affects in various phenomena. These phenomena include the attribution of agency during our conceptualization of action and event (by Anjan Chatterjee); face perception (by Nuala Brady); drawing, object recognition, and aesthetic preference (by Jyotsna Vaid); simple visuospatial tasks (by Sylvie Chokron, Seta Kazandjian, and Maria De Agostini); paintings (by Caterina Suitner and Chris McManus); gender stereotyping (by Caterina Suitner and Anne Maass); and graphs and diagrams (by Peter Hegarty and Anthony Lemieux). The authors in Section B also offer numerous explanatory models by attributing these asymmetries to reading and writing habits, specialization of the brain hemispheres, or motor processes.

 All of the chapters extensively review theories and evidence ranging from cognitive linguistics, psychology, neuroscience, and various branches of the social sciences, and some articles present results from the labs of the respective authors. Most chapters raise issues for future research.

Reviewed by Abby Forster, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

In this book, Edgar W. Schneider presents an overview of World Englishes and many of the key issues involved in the global spread of English. S covers the reasons why English has spread globally, the processes by which spread occurs, the results of the spread of English, the linguistic properties of English varieties, and the social consequences of this phenomenon. The book also includes text samples of major varieties of English around the world.

Ch. 1 begins the book with a brief introduction and overview. Ch. 2 provides a strong theoretical base for newcomers to the topic. It introduces basic linguistic principles, including language variation (and a brief overview of lexical variation, phonetics, syntax, and pragmatics), language change, and language contact. In this chapter, S argues that extralinguistic conditions such as identity and politics have greater influence on language change than internal language processes. Ch. 3 provides a brief historical background pertinent to the topic, covering European colonization, British colonization, American expansion and colonization, and post-independence issues related to the spread of English.

Chs. 4–6 are roughly divided into major steps in the spread of English. Ch. 4 focuses on processes of linguistic contact and the role of colonization and the slave trade in developing varieties of English, such as Northern (British) English, English in the Southern United States, and Jamaican Patois (Creole). Ch. 5 more deeply examines language contact between colonizers and indigenous peoples, including discussions of Australian English and South African Black English. Ch. 6 describes English varieties that have relatively recently increased in prominence through both grassroots movements and formal education in Sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. Cases include Nigeria, Singapore, Tok Pisin in Papau New Guinea, and English learning in China.

Ch. 7 offers a broad analysis of the linguistic processes in the spread of English. S argues that while linguistic processes may contribute to which features and forms are selected in a language variety, extralinguistic factors always play a more determinate role. Additionally, S identifies a few linguistic features of World Englishes that seem to be widespread, such as the omission of inflectional endings and the progressive use of stative verbs. Moving away from linguistic analysis, Ch. 8 offers a discussion of some of the major social and political issues involved in the spread of English, including the tension between English dominance and language death, and the politics of teaching English worldwide.

This book sacrifices depth for breadth and assumes readers have little to no knowledge of linguistics, making it ideal for use in introductory courses. At the same time, there is enough detailed linguistic analysis of particular language features that advanced students and graduate students who want a quick primer on the topic of World Englishes may find this text useful. Teachers may appreciate the numerous activities and exercises at the end of each chapter intended to reinforce and apply the concepts discussed. A standout feature is that audio files for eight of the thirteen text samples are accessible through the publisher’s website.

Reviewed by Joseph F. Eska, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

The articles included in this book were originally presented at a workshop on sound change held at the University of Salamanca in May 2009. The foreword informs readers that ‘[a]ll papers in this book share the common belief that progress in the understanding of the causes of sound change can only be achieved through analysis and evaluation of articulatory, acoustic and perceptual data’ (5).

In their article, ‘Speech rate and articulatory reduction in Italian alveolar and velar nasal + stop clusters’ (7–33), Silvia Calamai and Irene Ricci investigate the temporal and articulatory aspects of the production of nasal + alveolar plosive and nasal + velar plosive groups as a function of speech rate. They find that the articulation of the nasal changes with the place of the plosive and that the plosives reduced in faster speech. They note that assimilation of the nasal occurred even in slower speech and that careful articulation could occur in faster speech. Chiara Celata, in ‘Rhotic retroflexion in Romance: Acoustic data for an articulation-driven sound change’ (35–60), examines the retroflection of /t(ː)r/ groups in the Sicilian dialect of Italian. She says that this group is realized as [ʈ(ː)ʂ] by some speakers and that this is the result of a diachronic process whereby the rhotic could be realized as retroflex [ɽ] followed by articulatory blending and affrication which led to [ʈʂ].

In his article, ‘Experimental analysis of some acoustically driven phonetic changes in Medieval Spanish’ (61–70), Juan Felipe García Santos argues that the sixteenth-century change of /b/ > /v/ in Castilian Spanish was due to lenition and that the currently ongoing change of /j/ > /x/ is a manifestation of the same diachronic process. In their article, ‘A perceptual study of the articulatory and acoustic factors triggering dark /l/ vocalization’ (71–82), Daniel Recasens and Aina Espinosa argue that the realization of dark /l/ as /w/ in Majorcan Catalan may be triggered both by alveolar contact loss and acoustic equivalence in F₂, and suggest that both articulatory and acoustic cues play a role in sound change.

Fernando Sánchez Miret, in ‘The effect of word final unstressed high vowels on stressed vowel duration and its consequences for metaphonic diphthongization in Southern Italian’ (83–97), presents preliminary evidence that mid open [ɛ] and [ɔ] undergo dipthongization when they co-occur with final high vowels in Northern Calabrian Italian. In his article, ‘A reexamination of the palatalization of Latin /kt/ in the light of phonetic research’ (99–114), Kenneth J. Wireback argues that the palatalization of Latin /kt/ in the Romance languages is the result of gestural blending and regressive assimilation. Finally, Marzena Żygis demonstrates, in ‘On changes in Slavic sibilant systems and their perceptual motivation’ (115–38), that acoustics and perceptual cues play a large role in determining the configuration of sibilants in some Slavic languages.

This book should be read by all historical linguistics, phoneticians, and phonologists interested in the mechanics of sound change. It does an excellent job of demonstrating how experimental data can be employed for evaluating analyses of sound change.

Reviewed by I.M. Laversuch Nick, University of Cologne

This book is the latest in John Benjamin’s Studies in language companion series and contributes to the body of literature on German-language islands or Sprachinseln. What makes this particular collection stand out, however, is its novel approach. Rather than adopting a traditional ethnolinguistic investigation, this work explores several different colonial German varieties from a generative perspective. Accordingly, the book is divided into four basic sections:  phonetics and phonology, morphology and lexis, pragmatics, and syntax. Of these sections, the lion’s share is devoted to syntax. In fact, of the 475 pages found in this work, no less than 250 pages focus on syntactic phenomena. An examination of the chapters to be found in this section reveals different yet complementary thematic sub-sections. While the first of these three compares and contrasts verb clusters among Pennsylvania Dutch and Mennonite Low German, the remaining two sub-sections focus on a single variety: Cimbrian German. Therein lies another asset of this book: in addition to prominent American varieties like Texas German, other varieties that have taken seed in South America and Southern Europe are also featured.

Aside from this geolinguistic panorama, the book also scores highly in the multiplicity of questions it presents and the thought-provoking answers it suggests. For example, in the chapter, ‘Spoken syntax in Cimbrian of the linguistic islands in Northern Italy’ (233–79), Werner Abraham asserts that ‘autonomous linguistic change of an exclusively oral preserved dialect code’ has primarily yielded the typological features observed in this variety and not, as is so often claimed, in prolonged language contact with Italian (260). A similarly intriguing chapter is Michael T. Putnam’s ‘Anaphors in contact: The distribution of intensifiers and reflexives in Amana German’ (111–28).  Putnam resists the temptation to place his investigatory focus on morpho-syntax and examines instead the morpho-semantic properties of this contact language. His conclusion is that Amana German ‘seems to have adopted a reflexive system that is more similar to modern Dutch and English than what is found in modern German’ (112).  Thus, Putnam effectively demonstrates the ways in which diachronic change is a simultaneous process of attrition and innovation.

Although the focus of all of the research in this collection is firmly centered in a generative analysis of colonial German varieties, sociolinguists interested in other languages will also discover many familiar topics (e.g. multilingualism, dialectology, and ethnolinguistic identity). Additionally, detailed historical descriptions are given about the immigration patterns of each dialect group. Taken all together, this book is to be highly and widely recommended, and the authors and the editor are to be most highly commended. From the first two chapters on phonetics and phonology to final two on pragmatics and conversation analysis, all sixteen chapters of this book make a substantive contribution to German language research in particular and language variation studies in general.

Reviewed by Janne Skaffari, University of Turku

There is a huge market for textbooks on English grammar, in Anglophone countries and elsewhere, to which the main title of this book undoubtedly refers. However, anyone reading this book will soon realize that it is not so much a grammar in the traditional sense as a linguistics textbook with a focus on syntax. The author aims at combining language learning and current linguistic ideas, not prescribing ‘good English’.

The book contains an introduction and fifteen chapters, the majority of them 20–26 pages long. Each chapter concludes with a summary, a short further reading section, and some exercises. The topics range from the history of English (Ch. 1) to pragmatically marked constructions (Ch. 15). The historical overview is followed by chapters on linguistic typology, word classes, morphology and word-formation, and the semantics of ‘participants’ and ‘actions’ in clauses. Chs. 7 and 8, discussing such syntactic concepts as constituency and determiner phrases, start the more demanding second half of the book, covering complementation and modification, characteristics of English verb structures, and patterns of clause combination. Finally, the glossary gives brief definitions of some 400 terms, followed by endnotes and a lengthy bibliography.

The references section contains about 170 entries, some forty percent of them from after 2000. The sources cover a broad range of linguistic topics. Although a number of grammars have been consulted, it is surprising that some recent corpus-based descriptions of English, most notably the Longman grammar of spoken and written English (1999), are missing from the bibliography. P does use material from large corpora and the Internet, thus avoiding the problems arising from the traditional armchair grammarians’ invented examples.

An experienced teacher, P regularly takes up the pedagogical concerns involved in describing English grammatical structures to non-native speakers of the language. Indeed, most academics teaching English in non-Anglophone countries probably have to use textbooks primarily intended for the United Kingdom or United States market and cannot but deplore the native-speaker proficiency often assumed by such books. P has actually dedicated this volume to his former students in South Korea. What remains an unsolvable problem in textbooks is that students with different linguistic and educational backgrounds may require different solutions to the problems they face when learning grammar: for instance, not everyone finds motion verbs difficult, or benefits from a discussion of fifteen aspectual categories.

The linguistic approach to grammar is commendable but makes the textbook quite complicated in places. Moreover, several topics or concepts appear as if from nowhere: for example, generative grammar appears in Ch. 7 with little explanation. It is, thus, evident that this book is best read with a teacher who can clarify the linguistic analyses and classifications. This book on understanding the structures of English will certainly give many new ideas not only to the student but also to the teacher.

Reviewed by I.M. Laversuch Nick, University of Cologne

A recent addition to the Trends in applied linguistics series, the book under review presents an insightful look into language use in psychotherapeutic settings. Contrary to the author’s description, however, this work is not empirically based. Instead, it is a qualitative analysis of sixty-five hours of discourse recorded between a single therapist and his clients.  Complementing these audio-recordings are the ‘thick notes’ which the author took before, after, and during each session.

According to the author, her attendance did not lead to observer’s paradox, as the clients were exceedingly comfortable with the researcher, for two reasons: (i) the researcher lived with the clients and the therapist during the workshop and was, therefore, able to establish an uncommon level of trust and respect; and (ii) all of the clients participating in these sessions were therapists themselves who would not have been intimidated by the presence of a colleague. While these points are not to be completely discounted, it must nevertheless be stated that for these very reasons, the sessions were far from being representative. It would only stand to reason that the normal distribution and manifestation of power found in a counseling session would differ somewhat in a context where both the client and therapist are experts. It is worth noting the author’s cognizance of this potential confound.

An issue that the author fails to address, however, is the clients’ ethnolinguistic diversity.  The fact, for example, that many of the clients did not share a native language or national variety with the therapist might well have had a significant effect on the communication process in general and the use of discourse markers in particular. Aside from the failure to address this variable, the results presented would seem to be buttressed by a fairly robust methodological foundation.

The findings are reported in four separate chapters, divided according to the functional psychotherapeutic purpose of the linguistic data analyzed: (i) ‘The transparency of meaning’ in Ch. 2 (51–96); (ii) ‘Self-disclosure’ in Ch. 3 (97–150); (iii) ‘Communication of emotion’ in Ch. 4 (151–84); and (iv) ‘Emotional support’ in Ch. 5 (185–204). Within each chapter, there are the sub-sections divided according to discursive feature. For example, in Ch. 3, the author describes the many ways in which patients use ‘you know’. In some instances, it elicited confirmation from the psychotherapist; and in others, in combination with ‘I don’t know’, it was used to signal patient vulnerability and self-disclosure.

For linguists primarily interested in discourse analysis, this work may at times be somewhat frustrating in that the depth of the analyses offered is often sacrificed for the breadth of the observations made. However, for those whose interests encompass counseling psychology, the book will be not only thought-provoking but also deeply moving. More than anything else, this work gives powerful evidence for the deep healing which a talented, compassionate psychotherapist can offer.

Reviewed by Natalie Operstein, California State University Fullerton

This book is a study in urban sociolinguistics, focusing on the evolving Spanish of Latino New Yorkers. Based on Spanish-language interviews with 140 consultants from six countries (namely, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Colombia, and Mexico), the authors employ the methods of quantitative sociolinguistics to investigate the variable realization of subject personal pronouns with finite verbs (e.g. yo canto versus canto ‘I sing’). They use information about the rate of use of these pronouns to draw conclusions about the extent of continuity between Latin American and New York City Spanish, as well as the extent to which Spanish in New York is being transformed under the influence of dialect leveling and contact with English.

The authors find that of the two types of contact phenomena, contact with English has a greater and more uniform impact on Spanish in New York than interdialectal contact. The overall direction of change is toward the rise in pronominal rates for all the groups examined; specifically, the authors note that established immigrants use more subject pronouns than immigrant newcomers; second-generation speakers use more pronouns than first-generation speakers; and, for some subgroups, higher pronoun rates can be linked to higher proficiency in English.

In the case of dialect leveling, the outcome is found to be more selective and dependent on in- versus out-group orientation with respect to the observed regional divisions. On the basis of their pronominal use, the authors identify two such divisions: Caribbeans (consisting of Cubans, Dominicans, and Puerto Ricans) and Mainlanders (consisting of Mexicans, Colombians, and Ecuadorians). The Caribbean group, characterized by higher pronominal use, is homogeneous in its pronoun rates across all demographic strata, while Mainlanders are found to be internally differentiated according to gender, education, class, and socio-economic status.

A major theme stressed throughout the book is that of a balance between continuity with Latin American linguistic patterns and change due to language and dialect contact. The authors expressly contradict the claim that the simplification frequently observed in the grammar of second-generation Spanish speakers, including higher subject pronoun rates, is due to incomplete acquisition. Instead, they take the alternative view that simplification in bilingual lects is internal to the system and represents a systematically coherent grammar. The authors briefly discuss a connection between the simplification patterns observed in the data and previous episodes of simplification in the history of Spanish, making their study relevant for diachronic Spanish linguistics.

The book’s major research themes are spread over its ten chapters, and detailed descriptions of the experimental procedures are interspersed with theoretical discussions. The book is enhanced by two appendixes, which provide the questionnaire and coding manual used in the study. Although technically sophisticated, the book is written accessibly and provides details that are relevant to the study of Spanish in New York and also to theoretical questions related to language contact, dialect leveling, and linguistic variation. The book will be of particular interest to sociolinguists, dialectologists, and those interested in bilingualism, urban linguistics, and the history of Spanish.