Causal categories in discourse and cognition. Ed. by Ted Sanders and Eve Sweetser. (Cognitive linguistics research 44.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 2009. Pp. x, 249. ISBN 9783110224412. $150 (Hb).

Reviewed by Natalia Levshina, University of Leuven

Languages have vast inventories of constructions that highlight different aspects of causal relationships. This volume focuses on causal connectives and causative auxiliaries in English, Dutch, and Polish. In addition to detailed linguistic descriptions, it also offers fundamental theoretical insights (e.g. how one can integrate mental spaces and subjectivity) and raises a number of vital methodological issues, such as converging evidence and linguistic hypothesis testing.

The volume contains an introduction from the editors and six articles. In the introduction, the editors present the basic concepts that account for variation found in most of the subsequent case studies, such as subjectivity, perspective, domains of use, and mental spaces.

The chapter, ‘Causality, cognition and communication: A mental space analysis of subjectivity in causal connectives’, by Ted Sanders, José Sanders, and Eve Sweetser, introduces the theoretical concept of the basic communicative spaces network, which integrates the mental space theory by Gilles Fauconnier with the contemporary models of subjectivity and discourse perspective. This framework is employed by the authors to explain the contrasts between several causal connectives in Dutch.

In the chapter, ‘Causal connectives in Dutch Biblical translations’, José Sanders explores the diachronic dimension of causality. Using a parallel corpus of five Old Testament narratives translated into English and Dutch in the seventeenth century and recently, the author finds that the level of the speaker’s subjectivity is higher in the contemporary translations, where the narrator has ‘entrance to the character’s consciousness’ (77).

Barbara Dancygier’s contribution, ‘Causes and consequences: Evidence from Polish, English, and Dutch’, investigates the Polish connectives to and bo (markers of the construed result and cause, respectively). The study explores the role of subjectivity and intersubjectivity in the semantics of the connectives, which help the speaker ‘manage argumentation and inferencing across different subjectivities’ (96).

The chapter, ‘Categories of subjectivity in Dutch causal connectives: A usage-based analysis’, by Ninke Stukker, Ted Sanders, and Arie Verhagen, studies the interplay of conceptual and usage factors in the use of the Dutch causal connectives daardoor, daarom, and dus ‘so, therefore’. The authors also test the hypotheses about the prototypical and non-prototypical usages of the connectives.

The chapter by Dirk Speelman and Dirk Geeraerts, ‘Causes for causatives: The case of Dutch doen and laten’, focuses on the Dutch causative auxiliaries doen ‘do’ and laten ‘let’. Applying advanced multivariate statistical techniques, the authors show that lectal and collocational variables co-determine the speaker’s choice between the auxiliaries together with semantic factors. They also argue for a rigorous quantitative approach to linguistic hypothesis testing.

The final article in the volume is ‘Causal categories in discourse—Converging evidence from language use’ by Ted Sanders and Wilbert Spooren. The authors present a number of case studies, which provide different ‘windows’ into the conceptualization of causal relationships in language—from elicited judgments in categorization tasks and eye tracking to language acquisition data.

To summarize, the volume will give readers an idea of the complex interplay of conceptual, processing, cultural, and other factors in the use of causal constructions in different languages. This complexity requires diverse and sophisticated methodological tools. A valuable contribution to the existing research on linguistic expression of causality, the volume should be of interest to anyone concerned with the conceptual and experiential foundations of language.

Reviewed by David Elton Gay, Bloomington, IN

As Claire Lefebvre, the editor of this book, , writes, because ‘creole languages draw their properties from both their substrate and superstrate sources, the typological classification of creoles has long been a major issue for creolists, typologists, and linguists in general’(3). The authors of the chapters in this volume explore both the problem of substrate influence on creoles and the question of whether or not creoles form a typologically distinct group of languages.

The book is divided into five parts. The first is comprised of a long introduction by the editor, in which she outlines the specific problems that the contributors will be addressing. The introduction is followed by three sections on creoles: the first looks at the influence of African languages on Santome, Portuguese Creole, Kriyol, St. Lucian and Haitian Creole, Saramaccan, Papiamentu, Belizean Creole, Nicaraguan, Providence and San André Creole Englishes, and Palenque; the second section looks at creoles in Asia, which includes Singapore English, China Coast Pidgin, Chabacano, Kupang Malay, and Sri Lankan Malay; the third section examines creoles in the Pacific, with essays on Papuan Malay, Central Australian Aboriginal English, Australian Kriol, New South Wales Pidgin, Solomon Islands Pijin, and Tayo. An essay by Bernard Comrie, ‘Creoles and language typology’,concludes the book. .

Although the evidence for substrate influence is occasionally stretched further than it should be, and the authors occasionally have less knowledge of the dialects, colloquial languages, and standard languages that form the superstrate languages, and of other creoles and pidgins, than might be expected, the essays ultimately present an intriguing look at just how the substrate languages influence the creoles.

Do the creole languages form a typologically distinct group? As the editor notes, ‘creoles manifest a great deal of variation among themselves [and] thus they cannot be claimed to be “alike” in any sense of the word, nor to constitute a typological class as such’ (30). However, even if one of the conclusions of the volume is negative, this still remains an important work on the influence of substrate languages on pidgins and creoles. As such, it should be on the reading list of anyone interested in pidgins and creoles, language contact, and language typology.

Reviewed by David Elton Gay, Bloomington, IN

As the back cover of the book accurately explains, this book is a collection of essays ‘concerned with assessing fictional and non-fictional written texts as linguistic evidence for earlier forms of varieties of English’. Historical linguists frequently use literary texts, but the essays in this book look more closely at the important methodological and interpretive issues involved in using literary texts than most books on historical linguistics or the history of English.

The book opens with two essays that focus on Early Modern English. Raymond Hickey examines the question of Standard English in regard to studying earlier English and the representation of dialect in writing. Standard English is a product of the eighteenth century, yet it is often—and misleadingly—used to evaluate forms encountered in earlier English. Claudia Claridge and Merja Kytö examine standard and non-standard forms of English in Early Modern English. They observe that ‘finding evidence of non-standard…is…not an easy undertaking’ (35). This essay is better read, however, as a study of the emerging standard and its relationship to other forms of English.

Philip Durkin’s essay, ‘Assessing non-standard writing,’ looks at ‘the treatment of non-standard and regional varieties of English in historical dictionaries, especially the OED’ (43). His essay is a very useful description of ‘the OED’s policy decision in dealing with written evidence for non-standard varieties [of English]’ (57).

The essays that follow each concentrate on a different regional variety of English, beginning with a group of essays that describe forms of English found in the British Isles. Katie Wales covers Northern English in writing between 1500 and 1900, and Gunnel Melchers describes Southern English in writing during the same period. J. Derrick McClure’s essay addresses attitudes towards early modern and modern Scots. Raymond Hickey then examines Irish English in early modern drama in his second contribution to the book. The final contribution on British Isles English is Kevin McCafferty’s essay, ‘[H]ushed and lulled full chimes for pushed and pulled: Writing Ulster English’.

The book then shifts its focus to forms of English found outside the British Isles. Lisa Cohen Minnick studies dialect literature and English in the United States in her essay. Stefan Dollinger then examines written sources for Canadian English with special reference to “[p]honetic reconstruction and the low-back vowel merger’ (197). Bettina Migge and Susanne Mühleisen offer a survey of ‘research on early written texts in the Anglophone Caribbean and…a critical look at the theories and methods employed to study the texts’ (223) in their essay. Daniel Schreier and Laura Wright describe the sources for the earliest St Helenian English in writing. The following essay, ‘An abundant harvest to the philologer’, by Lucia Siebers, describes the sources, and problems with the sources, for early South African English. Kate Burridge then investigates sources for early Australian English in ‘”A peculiar language”: Linguistic evidence for early Australian English’. In the book’s final essay Elizabeth Gordon examines sources for early New Zealand English.

This book holds an excellent collection of essays on the problems and methods in using literary and other written works as historical evidence of dialect and non-standard forms in English.

Reviewed by Ferit Kılıçkaya, Middle East Technical University

For many graduate students, reading and conducting research can be a painstaking process without an understanding of how a research paper is written, from the abstract to the conclusion. With this book, the author aims to provide teachers, students, and novice researchers of applied linguistics and second language acquisition with an efficient method to analyze and evaluate research written by others as well as themselves.

In Ch. 1, the author discusses how an abstract is written, highlighting specific points. In Ch. 2, what a problem statement includes and how it is constructed is discussed. Ch. 3 deals with the relevance and importance of a literature review, with a focus on relating the review to the problem statement. Ch. 4 presents how to devise research questions and hypotheses and how to identify variables and their relationship with research questions and hypotheses, and more specifically with the findings.

Chs. 5–7 discuss the methods section of a research paper, which is largely considered to be the heart of any research. In Ch. 5, the author helps readers to know what constitutes the methods section, such as participants and materials, and then moves forward to validity and reliability issues. In Ch. 6, procedures and research design are discussed in relation to instruments and ethics, with a detailed discussion of classifications of research design and their basic but vital features. Ch. 7 discusses which procedures are applied for data analysis and how data analysis responds to the objectives of the proposed study.  Ch. 8 reports on how results can be presented and touches upon fundamental statistical knowledge, such as descriptive and inferential statistics, providing examples for each. The final chapter handles the discussion and conclusion sections of a research paper, presenting how conclusions can be drawn from the findings gained through data analysis, with a focus on the research questions and/or hypotheses. This chapter also elaborates on limitations, future research, and practical implications, which should be addressed in a research paper.

Overall, the author has succeeded in providing anyone working in the field of applied linguistics and/or second language acquisition with tools for reading and understanding the elements of a research paper. What makes the book especially appealing is that in the discussion of each of the elements are clear examples and questions to help readers engage with the material. The exercises and tasks in the workbook, the key terms in the glossary section, and the charts in the appendices, such as a flowchart to be used before choosing the appropriate measurement test, further enrich the book.

Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University

This book provides some background on Tsou, an Austronesian language spoken in Taiwan, and a grammatical sketch before focusing on five temporal markers. Most of the work on Tsou has been published as Ph.D dissertations in English and German whereas Elizabeth Zeitoun’s reference grammar is in Chinese. Chia-jung Pan’s work is, therefore, a welcome addition in making the data more accessible. The examples are also well-glossed and nicely presented.

Ch. 1 starts with a discussion of the various dialects of Northern and Southern Tsou, which comprise the Tsouic family. Tsouic has sometimes been seen as one of the four families of the Austronesian family, though this is controversial. The grammatical sketch in Ch. 2 includes a discussion of the verb-object-subject (VOS) word order and its variants, the Case markers on nominals, the free and bound pronouns, the focus system, negation, and questions. It ends with a brief overview of tense and aspect. If one has never seen a language with agent- and patient-focus, there is a steep learning curve.

In Tsou, as in many Austronesian languages, the focus marker is present in a preverb, as in m-o tmeaphu to oko ta skayu si ino [AF-REA put.AF OBL child OBL cradle NOM mother] ‘Mother put the child into a cradle’. The type of focus marker determines which nominal receives nominative (NOM) Case. If it is an agent-focus marker (AF), the agent is nominative. P (38; 41) shows that the preverb can be omitted in certain sentences and also that Tsou is a mood-prominent language as opposed to Chinese, which is aspect-prominent.

Chs. 3 and 4 address the semantics and syntax of temporal expressions respectively. Words for certain temporal concepts (e.g. the concepts of hour, minute, second, and days of the week) do not occur in Tsou. The markers ne-, ho-, ta, to, and no are used with a noun to distinguish that temporally. With day parts, ne-taseona [NE-morning] is ‘yesterday morning’ and ho-eofna [HO-evening] ‘tomorrow evening’; with seasons, ta, to, and no are used for present, past, and future, respectively. Helpful tables with the various possibilities occur throughout.

Ch. 4 contains a literature review on adverbs and adverbials and a discussion of adverbs in the other Formosan languages, Atayal, Paiwan, and Amis. The temporal markers ta, to, and no are also relevant to spatial and psychological distance when used as Case markers (156–57). They can also be used as complementizers, keeping their tense; for instance, a clause with ho is referring to the future. The categorical status of adverbs is also examined, as is their position in the clause.

In conclusion, there is much of interest in this book. As mentioned, of particular note are the excellent glosses and examples of Tsou.

Reviewed by Jason Doroga, University of Wisconsin-Madison

This textbook is an introduction to the sounds of Spanish and provides a comprehensive account appropriate for students with little background in linguistics and phonetics. Several recently published textbooks provide an overview of the sounds of Spanish, but the author states that the main objectives of this book are to provide clear definitions of the main concepts of articulatory phonetics in Spanish with an emphasis on real-world examples and culturally relevant activities.

In Chs. 1–4 (1–78), the author presents the basic concepts of orthography, syllabification, and accentuation. Ch. 5 (79–88) introduces the differences between phonemes and allophones and highlights key contrasts between phonemic and phonetic transcriptions. Chs. 6–12 (89–141) describe the five-vowel system, diphthongs, vowel reduction, and syllabic modifications arising from vowels in contact. Ch. 13 (143–54) offers an overview of the articulatory description of consonants, and the individual consonantal phonemes are described in Chs. 14–25 (155–385). The final chapter (387–94) is an introduction to dialectology and summarizes a number of distinguishing features found in different dialects of Spanish.

A strength of this textbook is the clear presentation of the main concepts as well as the comparisons drawn between the sounds of Spanish and those of English from a theory-independent perspective. Compared to many other phonology textbooks, the explanations are quite brief and straightforward, and are always accessible to the student. Each chapter builds on previous ones, allowing key ideas such as syllabification to be refined with more precision in later chapters. The author defines important phonological processes (e.g. lenition) when appropriate and occasionally considers historical development in order to explain the modern inventory of sounds.

What most distinguishes this book from other recently published textbooks is the considerable breadth and range of activities that accompany each chapter. In most chapters there are more pages dedicated to transcription practice, aural comprehension activities, and phonological problems than are dedicated to the actual exposition of the material. The author strives to provide engaging, culturally driven activities taken from real-life modern Spanish sources. The full-color photographs of Spanish billboards, newspaper headlines, and product packaging provide examples of phonological processes (e.g. assimilation, lenition) that complement the prose of the chapter.

While it is not possible for an introductory phonetics textbook to adequately cover all relevant topics in sufficient detail, a few important topics such as intonation and prosody are covered only superficially. Moreover, the contrasts between English and Spanish vowel production could be developed more in Chs. 6–12. For example, the important distinction between tense and lax vowels in standard American English, a feature that is often transferred to the Spanish vocalic system by English learners, is not adequately described in the text. Additionally, a small number of activities do not complement the content of the chapter.

These quibbles are not meant to detract from the overall quality of this textbook. Learners will gain a solid understanding of the sound system and improve their pronunciation of Spanish from the clarity of the explanations, from the extensive written and oral practice exercises, and from the high-quality audio program that features speakers from across the Spanish-speaking world. This book showcases the author’s unique ability to provide fresh, relevant examples to explain the fundamental concepts of Spanish phonetics.

Text, time, and context: Selected papers of Carlota S. Smith. Ed. by Richard P. Meier, Helen Aristar-Dry, and Emilie Destruel. Dordrecht: Springer, 2010. Pp. lxiv, 404. ISBN 9789048126163. $189 (Hb).

Reviewed by Muhammad Aurang Zeb Mughal, University of Durham

Dallas TACA (The Arts and Community Alliance) Centennial Professor in the Humanities, Professor Carla S. Smith, died from cancer in 2007 at the age of seventy-three. She taught at the University of Texas at Austin for about thirty-eight years and has been well known as a pioneer scholar in generative linguistics. This book collects her papers, which she herself selected along with some of her colleagues, with a focus on temporal expression in language, starting with her earlier works from the 1970s onward, though her first publication appeared in 1961.

In the beginning of the book, an introduction of, an interview with, and a list of publications by Smith are helpful, especially for new readers of her work. The book is then divided into five sections. Each section includes an introduction by either one of the editors or an established linguist. Two papers included in this book are coauthored, one with Jeanne T. Whitaker and one with Mary S. Erbaugh. The first section focuses on aspect and includes three of Smith’s papers on a speaker-based approach to aspect, aspectual categories in Navajo, and a dialogue over activities as states versus events. Smith’s major focus in these papers is on situational choices by speakers.

The second section addresses tense, an explicit temporal category and expression in language. This section includes four papers on the syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of tense, dealing with the interpretation of temporal expressions focusing on the English futurate construction, and with tense and context in French. The third section addresses acquisition of tense and includes two papers deal with the first language acquisition and learning of temporalities through grammar by children.

The fourth section deals with discourse structure or discourse modes. The papers within any section of this book are collected according to theme and not according to chronology of their publication.  Although this might be confusing since a scholar passes through personal and intellectual transformations over time, it is helpful for understanding the arguments of a single scholar on particular issue. All four papers in this section provide a bridge between Smith’s earlier works on transformational syntax and later analysis on aspect, tense, and discourse structure and modes. The final section includes two essays on context and interpretation, in which Smith discusses drawing inferences and issues of subjectivity.

This book would be useful in semantics and linguistics while studying the temporal expressions in language and analyzing it in a cultural context. Since different papers not only deal with one language but also draw on different languages, such as English, French, Navajo, Mandarin, and Russian, the book will be a useful reader in linguistic anthropology and cross-cultural studies of language. There are still many issues that can be drawn from Smith’s work, for someone researching temporality in language. For instance, this book includes papers on first-language acquisition in children, which is indeed Smith’s expertise; however, analyzing gender disparities or intercultural temporal expressions of language can also be drawn from her work.

Reviewed by Julie M. Winter, Gonzaga University

The most striking feature of this book is the author’s tone. Lieber sounds as though she is directly addressing her students in a classroom. Explanations of topics are easy to understand and accessible without being oversimplified. The tone of the text assumes that students are interested in the topic and are intelligent, careful readers exploring an area that is new to them.

In keeping with the author’s tone are some additions useful in an introductory morphology text. Each chapter includes one or more ‘challenge’ boxes, or exercises, addressing a point just explained in the text. These exercises give students the opportunity to ‘take a breather from reading or class lecture and try something out for themselves’ (x) and can be used in class discussion, group work, or as homework assignments.

Other valuable features are the chapter outlines at the beginning of each chapter and the summaries at the end. Clear drawings and diagrams illustrate main points throughout the text. Each chapter also contains a good selection of exercises at the end (in addition to the ‘challenge’ boxes) to allow students to practice morphology on their own. This is in keeping with the author’s goal of making morphology accessible and hands-on for students. The nature of the exercises could allow for lively discussions in class after students have individually completed them. For example, in the chapter ‘Words, dictionaries, and the mental lexicon’, students are asked to carry out searches in the online Oxford English dictionary, and to visit the Word Spy website to look at new words to see whether they use these words themselves and whether they agree with the definitions.

The chapter on dictionaries nicely illustrates how the author’s experience teaching morphology influences the text. She finds that students generally experience some interference when thinking about word formation and the mental lexicon; it is therefore advantageous to devote time to dictionaries to help students distinguish the formal record-keeping function of dictionaries from the human ability to organize and formulate words in the mind and understand that there are morphological rules underlying them.

Several chapters include ‘How to’ sections that take students through the process of analyzing morphological data step by step, and an excellent glossary of linguistic terms rounds out the book. Furthermore, data from languages other than English is included to aid students in understanding the universality of morphological rules.

Finally, the author saves morphological theory until the last chapter so that students first gain a firm footing in morphological rules before embarking on theoretical concerns, a reasonable approach in an introduction to morphology. All in all, this is a comprehensive, informative, and well-written introductory level text with a great deal of hands-on material to make morphology come alive.

Reviewed by Ferit Kılıçkaya, Middle East Technical University

This book, originally published in issues of Pragmatics & cognition (2008, 16:2) and (2009, 17:1), aims to explore the research in cognition and language learning, putting forward that technology enhanced learning should  benefit from effective mental representations that will work in line with the human cognitive system to help learners to acquire and remember information more efficiently.

The book is divided into seven parts and opens with the editor’s very concise and efficient introduction to brain-friendly technology, discussing how it affects cognitive load and the human user and providing reasons why brain-friendly technology is needed. The second part deals with whether cognitive technologies can be adapted so as to benefit learning and, based on the experiments done, suggests that computer-based simulations can be effective to transfer learning when they are created with an understanding of concreteness and idealization and supported with a graphical interface. The third part provides interesting insight into dynamic and adaptive scaffolding which benefits from learners’ attentional states and interventions, rather than implementing a static and generic manner ignoring attention-related, finely-tuned aspects such as timeliness and fitness.

The fourth part discusses the role of wikis and blogs in teaching and learning with case studies of the two courses at the Open University, reporting on several aspects of these technologies such as usability and pedagogical features and the key success criteria to infuse wikis and blogs outside the walls of the classroom. The very detailed discussion in this section is worth noting. The fifth part, through discipline-specific strategic support (DSS), aims to figure out how DSS and software representations can be used to increase the efficacy of learning technology at the navigation and disciplinary-signification levels.

The sixth part examines how principles of perceptual learning can be combined with computer technology to address problems in fraction learning and algebra, through experiments conducted by developing and testing perceptual learning modules. The findings show learning gains, especially in pattern recognition, structural intuition, and fluency. The last chapter is devoted to an experiment carried out through two software systems, SIMCARS and SHADE, to bridge the design-science gap and overcome time and material constraints. As in the second part, to achieve this, scaffolding was integrated with modeling and simulation, showing that the technology applied improved the quality of collaborative understanding and social construction.

This is an excellent collection of articles on the use of efficient technology use, taking the human learner and cognitive load into consideration. The editor’s contribution, which deals with brain-friendly technology, is especially valuable. However, this section could have been developed and discussed in more detail with more concrete examples since it sets up the focus of the book. Overall, this book achieved its aim that technology should not shape the learning process but rather should serve the cognitive system.

Reviewed by Sofia Rüdiger, University of Bayreuth

One of the newest additions to John Benjamin’s Pragmatics and beyond new series, this monograph investigates the acquisition of honorifics and politeness by second-language (L2) learners of Korean. Using a variety of research methods, the author describes and analyzes differences between honorifics and politeness usage of native speakers and advanced learners of Korean as a second language.

The nine chapters of the book can be divided into two parts. The first part consists of the introductory chapter and three chapters providing theoretical background relevant to the study. Ch. 2 introduces the complex Korean honorifics system to the reader. After explaining the different components of the system in separation (i.e. hearer honorifics, referent honorifics, and forms of address), the author also demonstrates how these components work together to form the distinct Korean honorifics system. The description of the factors influencing native speakers’ usage of honorifics is important for the later discussion of data. This is followed by a comprehensive overview of politeness theories and honorifics in general in Ch. 3. The author adopts a frame-based approach to politeness and differentiates between ‘indexical politeness’ and ‘modulation politeness’. The chapter is concluded by a description of politeness ideologies pertaining to Korean society and culture. The last theoretical section of the book, Ch. 4, deals with honorifics and pragmatic development in a second language.

The second part of the book contains analyses of a significant amount of data obtained by the author using different data gathering methods. In Ch. 5 the author analyzes the results of a discourse completion test. Using data obtained from L2 speakers as well as native speakers of Korean allows the author to directly compare the performance of both groups regarding the different components of the Korean honorifics system. Ch. 6 is concerned with the usage of honorifics in two different role-plays (i.e. ‘the professor role-play’ with a superior status and ‘the friend role-play’ with an intimate, equal status). This dual distinction between interactions between L2 speakers and people with superior status and new acquaintances, on the one hand, and people with intimate, equal status and subordinates, on the other hand, also functions as framework for the analysis of recordings of natural interactions in Ch. 7. An analysis of honorific-sensitive incidents as reported by the L2 speakers in the introspective interviews in Ch. 8 is followed by the discussion and conclusion in Ch. 9. The use of tables and figures in the data analysis chapters is favorable, and a mix of in-depth qualitative and quantitative analysis make this study highly comprehensive and insightful.

L2 learners of Korean apply honorifics differently than native speaker norms prescribe. The author found patterns of under-generalization of honorific forms indexing ‘separation’ and non-honorific speech styles indexing ’connection’. He connects this more egalitarian use of language, besides other factors, mainly to the politeness ideologies of the L2 speakers pertaining to Western societies and cultures. As a result, this study has implications for politeness research, interlanguage pragmatics, and language pedagogy.