Expressing opinions in French and Australian English discourse: A semantic and interactional analysis. By Kerry Mullan. (Pragmatics and beyond new series 200.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2010. Pp. xvii, 282. ISBN 9789027256041. $143 (Hb).

Reviewed by James Murphy, University of Manchester

In this adaptation of her 2007 doctoral thesis, Mullan provides a thorough account of how native French and Australian English (AE) speakers express their opinions. To do this, M analyzes a ten-hour corpus of spoken dyadic interaction of native French and AE speakers, and does so using a variety of complementary approaches, including interactional sociolinguistics, politeness theory, and conversation analysis.

The first two chapters are introductory in nature, exploring the aims of the study and the methodology employed. M also outlines how the data was collected (i.e. how native speakers of the two languages were selected, but how age/gender/social class was not controlled for in these selections). The transcription methods are also outlined here. Ch. 3 discusses the theory behind the study and starts with a discussion of French and AE interactional style and is based on the reflections and comments made by her informants as well as previous research on cultural scripts. M then explores how ‘I think’ and its three French equivalents ‘je pense’, ‘je crois’, and ‘je trouve’ can be thought of as discourse markers and are on the way to being grammaticalized.

Ch. 4 explores the function of ‘I think’ in AE (and English more generally). M discusses previous studies into hedging in English and explores cultural scripts involving ‘I think’. M then turns to occurrences found in her corpus and outlines where ‘I think’ is positioned within turns and intonation units. A detailed discussion of the functions of ‘I think’ in all possible discourse positions then follows with the phrase found to have either organizational, primarily semantic, or primarily pragmatic roles. ‘I think’ is found to be more common than the three French expressions combined in the corpus and is predominantly used to organize discourse (e.g. to initiate a topic, to signal turn completion, or to mark a contrast with a previous turn).

Ch. 5 essentially reviews the previous literature on ‘je pense’, ‘je crois’, and ‘je trouve’, and provides the reader with the relevant background knowledge on these expressions. Chs. 6–8 are structured in the same way as Ch. 4, with M providing the analysis for the occurrences of the French expressions found in her corpus. In Ch. 6, M finds that ‘je pense’ functions not only as an organizational device but also as a semantic marker of expressing personal opinion. In Ch. 7, ‘je crois’ is found to function in a similar way to AE ‘I think’ and Ch. 8 discusses how ‘je trouve’ has mainly held on to the function of expressing speaker opinion. Ch. 9 summarizes the major findings in the study and makes suggestions for further work, including an intercultural study along the same lines as this one.

Not only will teachers/learners of French find this monograph useful but so, too, will those with interests in intercultural communication, politeness theory, and interactional sociolinguistics more broadly. It is an extremely thorough study and the multidisciplinary methodology is to be commended.

 Reviewed by Ferit Kılıçkaya, Middle East Technical University

Intended as a guide and resource book for students planning to design their own research projects, this book is divided into two parts. The first part focuses on data types, such as corpora and surveys. The second focuses on data coding, analysis, and replication, which is discussed in relation to coding, statistical analyses, and meta-analyses.

In the first chapter, the editors briefly introduce the aim of the book and describe how each chapter contributes to the overall theme. Ch. 2 discusses how learner corpus research has evolved since the late 1980s and deals with how learner corpora can be collected, analyzed, and interpreted. In Ch. 3, data collection methods used in generative second language acquisition are introduced, highlighting that the method chosen is determined by several factors, such as the linguistic phenomena and populations. Ch. 4 provides a discussion on how research methods such as experimental studies and action research can be utilized to investigate the issues that have emerged within the field of instructed second acquisition.

Ch. 5 introduces survey studies, explaining each step involved in designing a survey, analyzing data, and reporting the results. In Ch. 6, case study research is discussed, starting with a historical perspective, followed by an explanation of how a case study can be conducted. The authors of Ch. 7 focus on how to use psycholinguistic methodologies involving tasks, such as picture-word interference and sentence preamble, can be implemented to inquire into how people can comprehend and produce language. Ch. 8 considers second language writing and elaborates on how an analysis of the writing process can be achieved. Ch. 9 examines second language reading, dealing with issues such as methodological foundations and dual-language impacts on reading development.

In Ch. 10, qualitative research is discussed, highlighting its pivotal characteristics in research traditions, such as ethnography and conversation analysis. Ch. 11 addresses coding procedures of second language studies validly and reliably. Ch. 12 deals with coding qualitative data through computer-assisted data analysis software such as CAQDAS, ATLAS.ti, and HyperRESEARCH. The author of Ch. 13 discusses how to conduct the basic and most frequently used inferential statistical tests such as t-tests, analysis of variance, and chi-square and Pearson correlation tests. In Ch. 14, the authors look at the key steps of conducting a meta-analysis, a statistical method used to determine the mean and the variance of various studies conducted on a specific issue or topic. In the final chapter, Ch. 15, replication studies are discussed, with a focus on how to conduct a replication study.

Overall, the editors and the authors of the chapters have provided students and teachers in the field of second language acquisition with a handy book on various aspects of data types, coding, and analysis in research methodology. The study boxes providing summaries of exemplary studies on the topic discussed within each chapter, the study questions available at the end of each chapter, and the practical step-by-step guide offered throughout, will help readers to increase their knowledge as they design their own research projects.

Reviewed by Josep Soler-Carbonell, University of Oxford

Three keywords that can be proposed to define this work are discourse, journalism, and politics, to which can be added Russia and foreign news, in order to achieve a more contextualized perspective. The book’s aim is to look at how journalism constitutes, affects, and is affected by the political, suggesting a new and more radical relationship (i.e. transformative) between journalism, discourse, and power. The book contains a preface at its beginning, and a thematic index can be found at the end of the book. Notes are introduced in the form of footnotes within each chapter.

The book is organized into three main parts. Preceding these parts is an introduction describing the scope of the book, its objectives, and the theoretical background that shapes its analysis, departing from and building on critical discourse analysis, post-foundational political theory, and journalism studies. Here, the author also discusses her methodology and research strategy, which is a qualitative analysis.

Part 1 of the book is comprised of Chs. 2–5. In it, the author offers an analysis of several events of importance involving Russia and its discursive construction from abroad. This includes issues of civil society, human rights, democracy, and non-governmental organization legislation (Ch. 2); Gazprom and the Russia-Ukraine conflict (Ch. 3); the death of former spy Alexander Litvinenko (Ch. 4); and, in Ch. 5, the Russian-Chechnya conflict, from Budennovsk (1995) to Beslan (2004). Part 2 (Chs. 6–8) sets out to explore in more detail the events presented in previous chapters from a journalistic point of view: ‘Responsibility management’ (Ch. 6), ‘Balance and binaries’ (Ch. 7), and ‘Complexity reduction’ (Ch. 8).

Finally, Part 3 (Chs. 9 and 10) provides the conclusion of the book. Particularly relevant is Ch. 9 (‘“Positive” discourse analysis’), which offers an analysis of the results and key points elucidated in previous chapters. Moreover, an analysis of the events presented in the book is combined with fieldwork conducted by the author between 2005 and 2008: open interviews with nine correspondents based in Moscow; shorter interviews and discussions with reporters and editors in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany; and further correspondence with some of these informants.

Overall, the book makes a positive contribution to the field of critical discourse analysis, offering well-conducted and well-illustrated analyses of relevant events from Russia and their treatment by and from foreign newspapers and journalists. It is, therefore, a recommended book for courses in the upper-undergraduate divisions or postgraduate studies dealing with (critical) discourse analysis, journalism and media studies, cultural and social anthropology, political science, and international relations, particularly in those institutions and research centers with a strong core of Slavonic and East European Studies.

Reviewed by Zhen-qiang Fan, Zhejiang Gongshang University

This book contains papers presented at the International Pragmatics Association conference held in Melbourne, July 2009, with three additional articles contributed specifically for this collection. The book brings groundbreaking research concerning the debate about the conscious vs. automatic processing of available contextual information and the controversy regarding the distinction between literal and nonliteral meaning, specifically focusing on the notions of salience and defaults. The collection begins with the editors’ introduction (Ch.1), which provides background information and a snapshot of the following chapters.

 In Ch. 2, Kasia M. Jaszczolt reinterprets her framework of default semantics which defines defaults as salient, frequent, and automatic meanings ascribed to the speaker in context. This model is compatible with Rachel Giora’s graded salience hypothesis (GSH). This topic is elaborated in Ch. 3, where Orna Peleg and Rachel Giora offer empirical evidence from their lab supporting the claim of GSH that salient meanings of ambiguous words are accessed automatically regardless of contextual information to the contrary. More generally, both lexical and contextual mechanisms are involved in utterance comprehension and run parallel without interacting initially.

 In Ch. 4, based on a bilingual corpus, Eleni Kapogianni applies the GSH to explaining the effects of two salience-involving mechanisms for irony production and interpretation: salient meanings are in a contrastive relationship with a less salient but literal meaning or contextually biased meaning on the one hand, or with the current context on the other. In Ch. 5, Istvan Kecskes introduces salience in a sociocognitive framework (SCA). The difference between GSH and SCA is that the former is hearer-centered and focuses on lexical processing, while the latter emphasizes both production and comprehension and is more dynamic than the former.

 Drawing on a corpus of spoken English, Alyson Pitts in Ch. 6 addresses the issue of salience and enrichment in the expression of negation, aiming at better understanding the behavior and effects of negation in spontaneous discourse. In Ch. 7, Morton Ann Gernsbacher presents six psycholinguistic experiments revealing how the literal meaning of an acronym interacts with the conceptual meaning (e.g. the literal meaning of the acronym CD is disc and its conceptual meaning is music). She discovers that, when acronyms are processed as letter strings, their literal meaning is more salient, but when processed as lexical units, their conceptual associates can be accessed but less quickly than their literal components.

 In Ch. 8, Keith Allan argues that a lexicon entry ‘should be monosemic’ and ‘the different aspects of its meaning should be included together with an account of the probability and contextual conditions under which each aspect of the meaning is the preferred interpretation’ (165). Finally, in Ch. 9, Michael Haugh explores whether the exclusive meaning of the disjunction or is triggered lexically or by the discourse context. Treating the exclusive meaning as a sociopragmatic/discursive default, he demonstrates that ‘[r]ather than existing at a decontextualized, lexical level, defaults are better characterized as arising relative to (minimal) contexts and speakers’ (217).

Reviewed by Stephen Laker, Kyushu University

A grammar of Old English is the most comprehensive work on Old English phonology and morphology to date. Following Richard Hogg’s untimely death in 2007, R. D. Fulk has done a superb job of writing the remaining chapters of the second volume (i.e. half of Ch. 5 and all of Ch. 6) and subsequently updating, revising, and referencing it with admirable speed and efficiency.

Volume 1, which deals with phonology, was originally published in 1992 and has been reissued to coincide with the publication of the concluding volume on morphology. It has already shown its worth over the years, with its detailed analyses and employment of modern linguistic theory. The contents of the reprint are the same, so they do not require a detailed review here. Its structure and layout are excellent, but the publisher must take some criticism. In particular, the large number of typographical errors in the first volume ought to have been corrected in the reprint. As a makeshift solution, Fulk provides a list of these on his website (http://php.indiana.edu/~fulk/GOE1_corrigenda1.pdf). A subject index for Volume 1 and references for the second volume would also have been welcome additions. In contrast, the second volume includes an index and refers back to the first, but in an odd decision the publisher refers to it as ‘Hogg 1992b’, as if it were an unrelated journal article. The sensible idea of Hogg, followed by Fulk, was to start Volume 2 where Volume 1 left off (i.e. with Ch. 8). This would have created a two-part grammar more at one with itself (though ideally everything could have been arranged between two covers).

Volume 2 is divided into six chapters. Ch. 1, ‘Preliminaries’, provides an overview of the approaches, aims, terms, and limits of the grammar. It explains that the main focus is on inflectional morphology (i.e. compounding and other issues, such as affixation, are discussed only marginally). Ch. 2, ‘Nouns: Stem classes’, deals with the Germanic and pre-Old English origins of the later attested Old English nominal morphology. Ch. 3, ‘Nouns: Declensions’, analyzes the synchronic variation in Old English nominal declensions, with special attention to dialectal variation. Ch. 4 looks at adjectives, adverbs and numerals, a departure from other grammars that deal with these parts of speech in separate chapters. Ch. 5 covers pronouns, and Ch. 6 offers extensive treatment of verbs. Hogg’s methodology of clearly differentiating the diachronic from the synchronic dimensions is noticeable throughout. Other grammars do not provide nearly as much reconstructive information. In particular, the frequent inclusion of both Proto-Germanic and later Pre-Old English reconstructions of paradigms helps one to gain a clearer understanding of the origins of the variation found in Old English dialects.

The finished grammar is a landmark achievement and shows several advancements over other widely used grammars. Most obviously, it reflects progress in research over the last half-century and provides analysis on important points in the text and notes. While its research is thoroughgoing and erudite, it has a less matter-of-fact tone than other grammars, revealing where research is still murky. For example, the origins of the ‘to be’ paradigms are not fully understood; in this instance, however, the unique situation of Old English should have been highlighted more and ideas of Celtic influence at least mentioned. Another bonus is that the grammar makes excellent use of the Dictionary of Old English Corpus, which contributes to the clearer identification and location of forms, more discussion of dialect variation and interdialectal influences, frequency statistics, and the elimination of a surprisingly large number of erroneous ghost-forms lurking in other grammars and dictionaries. Through the use of this database, one feels closer to the primary texts when reading this grammar. Finally, metrical evidence is expertly used on numerous occasions to determine properties of problematic Old English forms. To sum up, anyone with dealings in medieval English will admire and value this profound gift to Old English scholarship.

Reviewed by Anelia S. Ignatova, Polytechnic University of Madrid

This revised edition of Understanding morphology reaffirms the success of the first edition. It provides an introduction to linguistic morphology, bringing issues of morphological theories to the forefront. The book consists of twelve chapters, each followed by a summary, further reading, comprehension exercises, and exploratory exercises (extended). An extended glossary, a language index (104 languages), and a subject index are also included. This organization shows the authors’ methodological concern with providing students with basic concepts, a diversity of word formation patterns, and plenty of useful and necessary tools for analysis of either English morphology or the morphology of languages other than English.

 The first two chapters deal with analytic and (poly)synthetic languages, which are distinguished within a continuum. The goals of morphological research are explained, and two definitions of morphology are provided. Technical terms are introduced gradually. Ch. 3 concerns a system of morphological rules, based on concatenative/non-concatenative morphological patterns. Two alternative models of rule structuring are also presented: the morpheme-based model, where morphological structure is treated as a string of morphemes, analogous to syntactic strings of words; and the word-based model, which represents the features common to morphologically related words in word-schemas.

 The potential problems of a morpheme lexicon and a strict word-form lexicon are covered in Ch. 4. Word-forms and morphemes are ‘reconciled’ in a moderate word-form lexicon, where a lexical entry is not a morpheme but a morphological pattern, a generalization based on word-forms in the lexicon. An example from Russian involves word lexical entries of complex lexemes and word-schema lexical entries of morphemes (e.g. suffixes and roots).

 The overall goal of Ch. 5 is to determine whether inflection and derivation should represent two distinct systems in morphological architecture. The dichotomy and the continuum approaches are juxtaposed for that purpose. As in these two approaches the syntax-morphology interface is affected in a very different way, there is little agreement among linguists about this distinction. However, ‘a number of empirical issues argue against split morphology’ (107). Ch. 6 treats productivity as part of speakers’ competence rather than exclusively as part of their performance.

 Syntax-morphology interface issues (Chs. 7 and 11) and phonological vs. morphological/ lexical conditioning (Ch. 10) are developed in line with the latest linguistic research and will contribute to students’ natural involvement with theoretical issues. Ch. 8 emphasizes the importance of the balance between syntagmatic and paradigmatic description of inflectional structure for the description of morphological structure. The lexical integrity hypothesis is introduced in Ch. 9. Compounds, free forms, and clitics are opposed to phrases, bound forms, and affixes, respectively. Ch. 12 concerns frequency effects in morphology.

 This book is of great value not only to students of morphology but also to linguists in general, as it provides excellent guidelines to the research of morphology, a discipline which is considered ‘inherently messy’. The authors’ expertise in the subject, their honest concern about the future of the discipline, and its proper place within linguistics make the book an indispensable academic tool.

Reviewed by Melanie McComsey, University of California, San Diego

Recent methodological innovations in studying co-speech gesture—afforded by advances in digital video technology—have been adopted across several disciplines with promising results. This edited book aims to unite such gesture research with the study of language development and will be valuable to linguists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists.

Marianne Gullberg, Kees de Bot, and Virginia Volterra introduce the book with their chapter ‘Gestures and some key issues in the study of language development’, outlining previous research and future directions for the study of gesture in relation to first- and second-language development. The authors take an innovative approach considering gesture in the context of ageing and language attrition, and not only language acquisition. Some of the important themes they suggest for further study include the role of gesture in input versus output, variation and individual differences in gesture, and gesture as a compensatory mode of expression.

The following two chapters focus on first-language (L1) development. ‘Before L1: A differentiated perspective on infant gestures’, by Ulf Liszkowski presents evidence that twelve-month-old infants point referentially, with communicative intent, and with cooperative and prosocial motives. The author argues that the emergence of pointing and representational gestures is motivated by a drive for social contact. In ‘The relationship between spontaneous gesture production and spoken lexical ability in children with Down Syndrome in a naming task’, Silvia Stefanini, Martina Recchia, and Maria Cristina Caselli ask whether gesture is related more closely to cognitive or spoken linguistic abilities. By comparing gestures of children with Down Syndrome to those of typically developing children, the authors conclude that gesture may compensate for limited spoken abilities when non-verbal cognition is more advanced.

The remaining chapters concern second-language (L2) development. In ‘The effect of gestures on second language memorisation by young children’, Marion Tellier investigates the respective impact of accompanying images and gestures on word memorization. She finds that memorization is improved when words are accompanied by gesture, suggesting that the combination of verbal, visual, and motor modalities enhances L2 learning. Keiko Yoshioka’s chapter, ‘Gesture and information structure in first and second language’, discusses the role of gesture in combination with referring expressions for L1 and L2 speakers (namely, Dutch and Japanese). The author’s surprising results point to the complexity of the relationship between gesture and the particular language being spoken. Finally, ‘Gesture viewpoint in Japanese and English: Cross-linguistic interactions between two languages in one speaker’, by Amanda Brown, presents evidence that L2 (English) proficiency, even at an intermediate level, affects gestures produced when recounting motion events in L1 (Japanese).

The chapters in this book span research on first-language development and second-language development, children and adults, and speaking and cognition; but they seamlessly cohere in their theoretical approach, which represents one of the cutting-edge directions of research on language.

Reviewed by Ferit Kılıçkaya, Middle East Technical University

This book contains brief overview articles, covering various issues in translation. The first article, ‘Advertising translation’, focuses on the pragmatic function of advertising material, product-oriented approaches, and the impact of electronic media. The second article analyzes translation from the agent’s viewpoint. The article that follows provides bibliographies used in translation studies. The following article discusses several issues pertaining to collaboration in translation, and an article entitled ‘Comparative approaches to translation’ touches on issues such as corpus, conceptual apparatus, and method.

In the article ‘Cultural approaches’, the author presents approaches to translations from several perspectives. The following three articles focus on the direction of transfer and how translators work in their native language, on how domestication and foreignization play a pivotal role in translation studies, and on the role of major approaches in translation evaluation. In the article ‘Hybridity and translation’, the author investigates how culture and the notion of hybridity can be bridged.

The article ‘Institutional translation’ focuses on how the concept of intuition can be realized in translational studies, and the following article’ presents linguistic theories of translation. An article on literary translation deals with sociolinguistic and discourse issues in literature, and an article on medical translation and interpreting focuses on the scientific and technical issues of medical translation. Another article investigates the use of metaphor in translation, citing Theo Hermans’ view of translation as mirror or reflection.

In the article, ‘Methodology in translation studies’ practices and contexts in data type in translation research are analyzed. The following article focuses on how translation theory can contribute to the study of minority languages and vice versa. Another article provides a brief history of the notion of a natural translator/interpreter. In ‘Neurolinguistics and interpreting’ the role of neurolinguistics in understanding the task of processing two languages simultaneously is discussed. The following three articles address the significance of orality for translation, the issue of handling verbal and visual material in translation, and the challenges of translating poetry.

The article ‘Pseudotranslation’ deals with texts which ‘resemble’ translations, and ‘Realia’ focuses on strategies to overcome the challenges imposed by culture-specific references. The following article investigates the issues that interpreters face when they are physically distant from where speeches are given. Also included is an article focusing on interpreters’ social ranking and group membership, followed by an article addressesing the status of translators in academia and on the market. Another article provides an overview of how stylistics helps translation to go ‘beyond the obvious in a text’ (154).

The author of the article ‘Theory of translatorial action’ discusses how translation has benefited from several approaches. The article ‘Translation policy’ highlights how translators’ strategies are structured in and beyond official settings. The following article discusses three types of translation problems: source-oriented, target-oriented, and process-oriented. The author of the following article, in a discussion of translation universals, investigates whether any aspect of the source text differs from the translated version. The final article focuses on challenges that emerge with wordplay in the source language.

The articles in this book constitute a well-structured reference book for anyone seeking an introduction to a variety of issues pertaining to translation studies. Readers will find the references and further reading sections particularly useful.

Reviewed by Melanie McComsey, University of California, San Diego

This book comes at a time of renewed interest in Benjamin Lee Whorf’s linguistic relativity hypothesis within the language sciences. It explores the relationship between linguistic variation and non-linguistic cognition via the semantic domain of space.

Following Paul Chilton’s brief introduction comes Part 1, ‘Perception and space’, consisting of Vyvyan Evans’ chapter ‘The perceptual basis of spatial representation’, which grounds spatial conceptualization, and indeed the book itself, in human biological systems.

Part 2, ‘The interaction between language and spatial cognition’, takes on linguistic relativity. In ‘Language and space: Momentary interactions’, Barbara Landau, Banchiamlack Dessalegn, and Ariel Micah Goldberg seek middle ground in the relativity debate, arguing that language affects spatial cognition online but not permanently. ‘Language and inner space’, by Benjamin Bergen, Carl Polley, and Kathryn Wheeler, reveals the surprising relationship between neurocognitive mechanisms for understanding spatial language and for perceiving space itself.

The chapters in Part 3, ‘Typological, psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic approaches to spatial representation’, each feature one of those three methodologies. ‘Inside in and on: Typological and psycholinguistic perspectives’ by Michele Feist, ‘Parsing space around objects’ by Laura Carlson, and ‘A neuroscientific perspective on the linguistic encoding of categorical spatial relations’ by David Kemmerer each model the value of cross-disciplinary approaches to space and language.

Part 4, ‘Theoretical approaches to spatial representation in language’, advances several innovative theories each taking prepositions as inspiration. In ‘Genesis of spatial terms’, Claude Vandeloise explores processes of lexical formation, while ‘Forceful Prepositions’ by Joost Zwarts brings together the spatial domain and force-dynamics through the notion of vector. Evans’ chapter, ‘From the spatial to the non-spatial: The “State” lexical concepts of in, on and at’, refines an earlier theory to account for polysemy as an outcome of situated language use.

Parts 5 and 6 offer rich descriptive evidence for how spatial language and concepts are deployed in spoken language, signed language, and gesture. These chapters include ‘Static topological relations in Basque’ by Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano; ‘Taking the principled polysemy model of spatial particles beyond English: The case of Russian za’ by Darya Shakhova and Andrea Tyler; ‘Frames of reference, effects of motion, and lexical meanings of Japanese front/back terms’ by Kazuko Shinohara and Yoshihiro Matsunaka; ‘How spoken language and signed language structure space differently’ by Leonard Talmy; and ‘Geometric and image-schematic patterns in gesture space’ by Irene Mittelberg.

Part 7 transitions from static location to the domain of motion with two pieces offering modifications of Leonard Talmy’s classic typology. In ‘Translocation, language and the categorization of experience’, Jordan Zlatev, Johan Blomberg, and Caroline David propose a typology of ‘motion situations’ based on human experience. In ‘Motion: A conceptual typology’, Stéphanie Pourcel’s typology is based on ‘language-neutral’ conceptual categories.

Part 8, ‘The relation between space, time and modality’, is comprised of Daniel Casasanto’s ‘Space for thinking’, Jörg Zinken’s ‘Temporal frames of reference’, and Chilton’s ‘From mind to grammar: Coordinate systems, prepositions, constructions’. These chapters consider the relevance of space in metaphor and non-spatial domains.

This ambitious project reveals extraordinary breadth, showcasing the truly interdisciplinary nature of current research on space and language. The book features scholars both well established and from a new generation, and heralds exciting new directions for this burgeoning area of study.

Reviewed by Joshua Thusat, Harry S Truman College

Although this book seems an impossibly slim introduction to the study of semantics, Paul Elbourne contextualizes, in eight chapters, the trends in this sub-field of linguistics and the history of these trends. In what could be described as an independent study, E conversationally explains how we analyze and make meaning, introducing us to the debate between referentialist and internalist views of word meaning, the many mathematical connections to analyzing meaning, and contextualization problems. This approach fits a wide audience, whether a new student to the field of linguistics, a schooled philosopher of language, or someone who simply wants to refresh their foundational knowledge.

Ch. 1 details the problems with defining a word. For E, this serves to introduce the subject of semantics and informs the reader of immediate complexities in identifying clear, universal descriptions of terms. With the example of a chair, E highlights the difference between the intension and extension of word meanings. Ch. 2 explains word meanings through the referentialist and internalist views. E presents the philosophical traditions behind these two views, branching from realists and the nominalists, and nominalism and Platonism. This is one of the most important chapters, as this debate reappears in subsequent chapters.

In his chapter on semantic properties of words, E goes through synonymy, ambiguity, and vagueness. Underneath each, other terms are introduced and explained, like generality (under vagueness) or polysemy and homonymy (under ambiguity). E presents an important study on ‘lexical activation’ using magnetoencephalography (MEG) to view electric currents in the brain. This study reveals telling information about phonological inhibition and semantic priming.

Ch. 2 is continued in Ch. 4 when E introduces how meaning is analyzed in sentences. E returns to set theory, but introduces the mathematical discussion of alternate universes, or possible worlds. E teaches negative-polarity items licensors to help the reader understand the idea of possible worlds. With such a complex discussion of sentence meanings, Ch. 5 eliminates some confusion by offering the necessary syntactic relationships. Showing the reader the varying nodes, and how constituents work on paper further elucidates how those relationships appear in our minds.

In Ch. 6, E introduces meaning and grammar by returning to Russellian set theory and possible worlds, but by focusing on lambda notation. In Ch. 7, E turns away from how we analyze words and sentences to have one kind of meaning and turns toward meaning and context. Indexicals are the focus, but the importance of indexicals is broken down by various professionals, like David Kaplan, who breaks sentences down into content and character. E moves on to other important terms like bound readings or bound variable readings, and bound anaphora. These are meaning varieties depending on context. This section also introduces a brief discussion of pragmatics, mentioning Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson’s relevance theory; but, as this is a book on semantics, it does not linger long. Finally, Ch. 8 sums up how thought makes language, or how language makes thought, introducing the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis and its spectrum from strong to restricted.