Reviewed by Fraibet Aveledo, Bangor University

This book contains relevant studies conducted by Paul Meara and collaborators on word association in second language (L2) learners. M offers an overview of the evolution of his studies in this field, starting from the main metaphor that vocabulary forms a network.

The book is divided into five sections. Each begins with an introduction that summarizes the ideas and research problems that gave rise to the following studies. Section 1, ‘Early work’, presents two studies. Ch.1, ‘Learners’ word associations in French’ (5–20), originally published in 1978, focuses on word association in L2 learners of French. Its aim is to analyze how foreign words are stored in the mental lexicons of L2 learners and how they differ from native speakers’ lexicons. The study described in Ch. 2, ‘Word associations in a foreign language’ (21–28), from 1983, discusses revising the methodologies of the studies in Ch. 1.

Section 2, ‘Associations as productive vocabulary’, contains two studies published in 2000 and 2004. Their main objectives are to show how association data, specifically those obtained through the Lex30 tool (a word association task), can be used to measure the learner’s productive vocabulary. M argues that this tool has advantages over previous methods for assessing productive vocabulary. Ch. 3, ‘Lex30: An improved method of assessing productive vocabulary in an L2’ (33–44), presents a study that demonstrates how the productive vocabulary of non-native speakers of English is assessed through the Lex30 task. In Ch. 4, ‘Exploring the validity of a test of productive vocabulary’ (45–58), M focuses on the validity and reliability of this tool.

Section 3, ‘Word association networks’, is made up of three chapters in which the metaphor of vocabulary as a network is further developed. Based on graph theory and connectionist models, in Ch. 5, ‘Network structures and vocabulary acquisition in a foreign language’ (65–72), the author measures how L2 learners’ vocabulary is connected and how it differs from the vocabulary networks of native speakers. Ch. 6, ‘V_Links: Beyond vocabulary depth’ (73–84), deals with the problem of how to study vocabulary breadth (numbers of words that a learner knows) and vocabulary depth (how well the learner knows these words) using V_Links (a computerized tool that guides the task-taker to make associations between pairs of words). In Ch. 7, ‘A further note on simulating word association behavior in an L2’ (85–96), M presents a model that simulates a set of words and shows that the model’s output is similar to that of real L2 learners.

Section 4, ‘Bibliographical resources for word associations in an L2’, offers as Ch. 8, ‘Word associations in a second language: An annotated bibliography’ (101–28), a list of references in the field of word association with a brief summary that details the aim of the study, its methodology, and the main results. The final section, ‘Software applications’, contains three software manuals: the Lex30 program, described in Section 2; V_Six and its developed version, V_Links, explained in Ch. 6; and WA_Sorter, which allows the sorting and counting of word association data.

This book is a very useful resource for researchers interested in L2 learners’ vocabulary. It shows how M’s hypotheses and methodologies have evolved throughout his career.

Reviewed by Marc Pierce, University of Texas at Austin

This sizeable volume offers exactly what the title indicates: discussions of the personal naming systems of a number of European languages. It is dedicated to Rosa and Volker Kohlheim, both of whom have published extensively on onomastics. The book begins with the normal paraphernalia of a handbook or Festschrift: a brief dedication to the Kohlheims; an essay, ‘Zum Geleit’ by Ernst Eichler that outlines the Kohlheims’ work; a brief foreword by the editors; a table of contents; and a list of abbreviations used in the work. The book proper begins with the essay ‘Europäische Personennamensysteme’ (21–24), which justifies the publication of the book, defines ‘Personennamensystem’ (‘ein strukturierter…und funktionaler…Komplex von Personennamen’ [21]) and ‘europäisch’, and outlines the content and structure of the handbook.

The meat of the book consists of entries on the personal naming systems of an impressively broad range of seventy-seven languages, including Albanian, Basque, English, Maltese, and Slovenian. All of the entries are similarly structured. For example, Sirkka Paikkala’s chapter on Finnish (‘Das finnische Personennamensystem’ [200–14]) begins with a brief introduction, then discusses the development of first names (covering such issues as the use of Finnish versions of originally foreign names) and then of last names and patronymics (with a treatment of, e.g. the use of names by the nobility, the military, and farmers), and concludes with an outline of the relevant literature and an extensive bibliography.

In many respects, this is a valuable and useful work. The individual entries pack a good deal of information into a relatively limited space, and the book well repays the browser. At times a bit more editorial control could have been exercised (the terminology is not always consistent from entry to entry, as the editors admit in the foreword), a more complete table of contents would make the book handier to use, and the price of the volume will doubtless keep it out of the hands of many potential readers. Nevertheless, this book is a good resource for those interested in European personal names.

Reviewed by Taras Shmiher, Ivan Franko National University in L’viv, Ukraine

This is the sixth collection of the Annual review of cognitive linguistics published under the auspices of the Spanish Cognitive Linguistics Association. The volume contains nine articles, five reviews and two interviews.

In her article, Clara Molina (1–22) suggests reorganizing historical dictionary definitions according to the principles of prototype theory in order to reflect the semasiological profile of terms more transparently and stress the mutual interface between synchrony and diachrony. Veronika Szelid and Dirk Geeraerts (23–49) apply concepts of cognitive linguistics to traditional dialectology and discuss whether differences of culture and conceptualization can be detected within one language. The language variant under study is Moldavian Southern Csango, an archaic Hungarian dialect.

Esther Pascual (50–82) analyzes the discourse of a prosecutor’s closing argument through the conceptual blend of the deceased victim. The focus is on the constraining effects of the overall communicative context, particularly the participants’ experience, knowledge, and general contextualization, on conceptual integration. The article by Klaus-Uwe Panther and Klaus-Michael Köpcke (83–112) concentrates on the problem of defining the sentence and its types. The authors propose to regard them as complex prototypical structures on the levels of morphosyntactic form, conceptual content, and pragmatic function.

Hans C. Boas (113–44) argues that Adele Goldberg’s characterization of the interactions between lexical entries and grammatical constructions faces similar difficulties as in the Chomskyan framework. Using analogy, collocational restrictions, frequency, and productivity, the paper discusses encoding semantic, pragmatic, and syntactic information from both comprehensive and production perspectives. The corpus-based study by Marion Neubauer (145–67) investigates the cognitive grammar conceptualization of the reference point embedded in the anaphoric pronoun and of coreference between singular epicenes and plural pronouns.

Zoltán Kövecses (168–84) analyzes criticisms of ‘conceptual metaphor theory’ from the perspectives of methodology, the direction of analysis, schematicity, embodiment, and the relationship between metaphor and culture. Antonio Barcelona (208–81) reports on the study of metonymical and metaphorical motivation in English and Spanish compounds in which neither component actually refers to the compound’s referent (bahuvrihi). He provides some tentative remarks on the cognitivistic representation of their semantic structures, the connection between meaning, grammar, and prosody, and the contrasts between the two languages. Jan Nuyts (185–207) explores tense-aspect modality and related categories (deontic modality, volition, intention, and directivity). The relationship between qualificational and illocutionary categories can deepen our understanding of the cognitive organization and processing of language. The volume also contains five book reviews.

Reviewed by Carolin Patzelt, University of Bochum

This book is a collection of twelve papers selected from over 120 talks delivered at the Third International Conference New Reflections on Grammaticalization held in Santiago de Compostela in July 2005.

The volume comprises an impressive range of topics related to grammaticalization theory, particularly to new tendencies in the field. Acentral topic of this volume is the need for a broader notion of grammaticalization, as discussed in the contributions by Zygmunt Frajzyngier and Walter Bisang. Frajzyngier argues that an expanded agenda of grammaticalization should include such coding means as phonological devices and semantic/pragmatic functional domains. Within this expanded model of grammaticalization, the paper raises basic theoretical questions, e.g. regarding the motivations for grammaticalization. Bisang emphasizes the need to integrate the areal perspective in grammaticalization, since the standard approaches to grammaticalization cannot fully account for grammaticalization processes occurring in languages of East and mainland Southeast Asia, as he shows by analyzing three case studies. The contributions by Kaoru Horie, Michael Noonan, Seongha Rhee, Andrew Simpson, and Foong Ha Yap and Stephen Matthews also deal with areality with respect to nominalization in East Asian languages, which has attracted much attention in recent years.

Another central topic is the relationship between grammaticalization and language contact. Contrary to Paul Hopper and Elizabeth Traugott (Grammaticalization 2nd edn, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), who attribute grammaticalization processes to universal tendencies and internally motivated changes, several papers in this volume argue that there are universal properties of grammaticalization that  can be traced back to historical contact between languages. Anna Giacalone-Ramat argues that language contact was involved in the genesis of four well-known linguistic changes that occurred in the European linguistic area: the development of periphrastic have-perfects in Romance, Germanic, and other European languages, the extension of the definite article area in Europe, the renewal of the relative pronoun paradigm in European languages, and the development of reflexive markers for passive and impersonal constructions. Tania Kuteva shows that language contact does not always lead to simplification but can also be responsible for elaborateness or redundancy of marking. Livio Gaeta demonstrates that grammaticalization can often explain the way in which language mismatches are produced and constrained. In his article, he focuses on content and complexity mismatches and argues that they result from the expansion of grammaticalization processes.

Finally, the articles by Philippe Bourdin and Ferdinand von Mengden offer crosslinguistic evidence for two interesting grammaticalization clines: while Bourdin analyzes cases of the grammaticalization of motion verbs meaning come and go into markers of textual coherence and clause linkage, von Mengden focuses on the grammaticalization of cardinal numerals and numeral systems. In summation, the articles collected in this volume embody the current state of research in grammaticalization and open new directions for future research in the field.

Reviewed by Jamin R. Pelkey, Canada Institute of Linguistics

Christopher Beedham would like to see a broad reappraisal of Saussurean Structuralism. In Ch. 1, ‘Saussurean structuralism’ (3–17), B reviews the tenets and implications of Saussure’s approach to language and insists that linguistics must proceed from form (language) to meaning (reality) since the first creates the second.

In Ch. 2, ‘Aspect’ (19–31), he examines crosslinguistic verbal aspect as an indicator that linguistic categories should be understood and studied formally rather than semantically, by using grammaticality judgments in syntactic frames. He draws attention to formal contrasts between aspect systems in Russian, German, and English to illustrate some ways in which each is a unique structure.

B then explores English, Russian, and German passive constructions from a structuralist perspective in Ch. 3, ‘The passive’ (33–60), arguing that instead of being derived from underlying transitive actives, the passive results from sentences in which telic verbs are reinterpreted as ‘action + state’ (i.e. be + V-ed). Thus, under B’s formal, structural analysis, the passive is not a voice phenomenon but an aspectual phenomenon. In B’s view this reinforces the idea that a correct interpretation of syntax-dependent form (i.e. linguistic categories) is what enables the semantic intuitions of speaker and grammarian alike. This reanalysis was motivated by unexplained lexical exceptions.

In Ch. 4, ‘Generative grammar’ (61–105), B divides linguistics into two camps, descriptivist and generative, and identifies himself with the former. He argues that the generative tradition is guilty of ‘constructing assumptions in a notation and claiming that they are explanations’ (99–100), the nature of the passive construction being essential among these assumptions. He examines several branches of generative grammar, identifies Steven Pinker as a descriptivist and concludes that descriptive linguistics (in the Saussurean style) should be reinstated.

In Ch. 5, ‘Tense and irregular verbs’ (107–33), B presents evidence from English, German, and Russian to argue against the notion that the old ‘tense’ labels—‘present’, ‘past’, and ‘future’—describe time-based phenomena in a straightforward manner and thus should not be approached as such.

In Ch. 6, ‘Text grammar: Parole versus Langue’ (135–52), B equates ‘text grammar’ with Saussure’s parole and ‘sentence-grammar’ with langue. Whether or not this was Saussure’s intention, B argues that linguists should study both types of grammar in a dialectical relationship. He further argues, in the best interests of science, that sentences must be abstracted from specific texts in order to discover important generalizations.

In Ch. 7, ‘The method of lexical exceptions’ (153–64), B asserts that exceptions to grammatical rules signify that grammarians have not yet properly identified the rules. In other words, a structural grammar should be watertight. He furthers his application of Hegelian dialectic to grammatical analysis by proposing a method based on the search for lexical exceptions as a preferred way of defining structural rules.

The argument of the book might be summed up in the two following quotes: ‘The meanings we perceive are determined by the forms through which we see them’ (93), and ‘the linguist who starts with meaning is doomed to be trapped in the analysis which produced that meaning’ (156). We might only wish to ask, paradoxically, whether or not the ‘meaning’ of these claims is itself determined by its ‘form’.

Reviewed by Dennis Ryan, Raleigh, NC

Recent discoveries of neuroscience, especially regarding the brain’s plasticity, have rekindled old debates about language and mind and their implications for literacy, including the possibility that our computer and digital age can change how people think. So saying, Roy Harris embarks on an investigation of reason and literacy in which he makes two claims: (i) how one conceives of rationality depends upon one’s language viewpoint, and (ii) language viewpoints differ in literate and preliterate societies. For H, this inquiry is fraught with social, moral, and political implications that go to the heart of problems of language and meaning.

Ch. 1, ‘On rationality, the mind and scriptism’ (1–16), traces debates about mind from neuroscience to philosophy and behavioral psychology. H notes the prestige accorded to writing in the West and the general belief that written language is superior to spoken language—a pro-writing bias he terms ‘scriptism’. Ch. 2, ‘The primitive mind revisited’ (17–29), looks at nineteenth century anthropologists and leading figures in intellectual history who subscribed to a belief in a primitive mind different in kind, or graduated differently, from the modern mind. Ch. 3, ‘Logicality and prelogicality’ (31–43), looks at anthropologists Lucien Levy-Bruhl and Alexander Luria, both of whom promoted the notion of a primitive mind.

Ch. 4, ‘Reason and primitive languages’ (44–60), discusses the classification of grammatical categories within Western languages due in part, to the tendency of nineteenth century comparative philologists to follow the lead of earlier European grammarians. Ch. 5, ‘The great divide’ (61–78), looks at what anthropologists conceived of as the gulf between literate and preliterate societies; however, as H asks, ‘[W]hat, if any, is the connexion between being able to reason and being able to write?’ (61). Ch. 6, ‘Aristotle’s language myth’ (79–94), surveys Aristotle’s Organon, the compendium of his work on logic, to better understand his theory of communication. Aristotle had developed a system of logic that was deeply flawed from the outset because it depended upon accepting a simple, transparent view of language to refer to the physical world—this is the ‘language myth’.

Ch. 7, ‘Logic and the tyranny of the alphabet’ (95–109), discusses the constraints Aristotle imposed on the systematic development of his logic based on his ‘language myth’. Ch. 8, ‘Literacy and numeracy’ (110–24), examines mathematical reasoning, not addressed by Aristotle anywhere in the Organon. Ch. 9, ‘Interlude: Constructing a language-game’ (125–33), discusses the role of ‘operational discriminations’, i.e. the formulation of concepts in language operations, in a controlled language game H names Constructionese.

Ch. 10, ‘The literate revolution and its consequences’ (134–46), reintroduces readers to how writing and its institutionalization profoundly changed the way we think. Ch. 11, ‘The fallout from literacy’ (147–59), looks at our post-literate era in which television, calculators, and computers have replaced written language as the main sources of information. Ch. 12, ‘Epilogue: Rethinking rationality’ (160–77), offers an alternative view of reasoning, an integrationist, semiotic one, that challenges the received opinion of logicians commencing with Aristotle.

Rationality and the literate mind is one of the most important books ever written on logic and literacy. As a theory of applied logic, it looks at logic and language use in social interaction to dissolve misconceptions older than Aristotle concerning logic and literacy. Its implications for language learning are vast and profound. I would criticize H’s discrediting historical and psychoanalytic arguments for words as evolutionary semantic components that affect and effect thought and behavior. I would also question certain of H’s assumptions about Aristotle’s use of classical Greek in formulating the syllogism that issue from a language and linguistic viewpoint separated from Aristotle’s by more than 2,000 years. These points notwithstanding, H has composed a major work that should attract the attention of scholars working in many disciplines beyond logic, linguistics, and education.

Reviewed by Michael W. Morgan, Addis Ababa University

This book contrasts two lines of linguistic theory, ancient and modern, Indian and Western. As Korada Subrahmanyam is an Indian linguist from an orthodox Brahmin family, literally raised on Pāṇ̟ini, his presentation of the former is, not surprisingly, more thorough and authoritative, but his discussion of modern Western linguistic theory is also of interest, not the least in providing an outside view.

The preface (v–vii) summarizes the author’s credentials, his views of the relative merits of the two systems, and his motivation for writing this book

The introduction (1–3) presents an overview of Indian theories of language. Although there is no field of linguistics per se in the Indian tradition, its subject matter is treated in depth by a wide variety of systems (Pāṇ̟ini’s being the most widely known outside India). Ch. 1, ‘Origin and development of ancient theories of language’ (5–71), presents the development of linguistic thought from the earliest Vedic traditions through post-Pāṇinian discussions and commentary. Ch. 2, ‘The connection of Vyākaraṇam with philosophy and Spoṭa’ (73–85), discusses the connection of Indian linguistics with religious philosophy.

Ch. 3, ‘The origin and development of Western linguistics’ (87–118), is a rather brief exploration of modern Western linguistics (the ancient Greek and Latin and the various medieval traditions being ignored) that starts by noting with some pride that modern linguistic theories of the West begin with the western discovery of Indian languages and theories of language. Beginning with Sir William Jones’ comments on the relation of Sanskrit to the older European languages, S briefly introduces each of the major figures in the development of Western linguistics, noting in many important cases the indebtedness or at least similarities of their theories to the East.

The remainder of the book compares how the East and West do linguistics. In Ch. 4, ‘Oriental vs. Occidental’ (119–36), S compares levels of analysis (phonetics, word, and sentence), concepts of language and meaning, language acquisition, and the competence/performance distinction. Ch. 5, ‘Discourse analysis—East and West’ (137–45), brings attention to work on discourse within the Indian tradition largely unknown or ignored outside India. Ch. 6, ‘Inference, syllogism and the logical discourse’ (147–53), is a brief digression on the logical syllogism as developed within Indian philosophy. Ch. 7, ‘Āryas and purism of language’ (151–53), is a final note on the importance of correct speech within the Indian linguistic, as well as philosophical/religious, tradition. Glossary (155–58), Bibliography (159–64), and Index (165–72) complete the book.

Each point discussed is accompanied by extensive citation references to the original Sanskrit verses from a wide variety of treatises. While this may be the most valuable contribution of the book, the lack of an English translation limits their usefulness to those not well versed in Sanskrit. This is also true of many Sanskrit technical terms used in the body of the text.

Reviewed by Eric A. Anchimbe, University of Bayreuth

In the preface to Jody Gladding’s translation of Claude Hagège’s Halte à la mort des langues (Paris: Éditions Odile Jacob, 2000), the author’s aim is stated: ‘It is to this dangerous adventure, this wildly reckless game languages play with death, that this book is dedicated’ (viii). We only understand what is meant by ‘reckless game’ when we are faced with frightening facts about the future of languages: about twenty-five languages die each year and the number may certainly increase, and only twenty-five hundred of the world’s five thousand languages may survive the twenty-first century. Is this a catastrophe? H categorically replies Yes!, especially because, as he puts it, ‘Languages, quite simply, are the most human thing about humans’ (vii). The historical evidence this book presents of the essential importance of language to humans and human societies is compelling, just as the wide range of languages and countries discussed.

The eleven chapters of the book are grouped into three parts. Part 1describes the social embodiment of language as a provider of life, as a living species, and how its elements, especially words, struggle to survive under various threats. Part 2 focuses on language death with insights into languages like Latin, Sanskrit, and Coptic, and the paths and causes of language extinction. A general assessment of the state and number of spoken languages in the world is presented here. Three main types of causes of language death are explained: physical causes (e.g. extinction of all speakers through natural catastrophes, genocides, epidemics), economic and social causes (e.g. pressure from a more powerful economy), and political causes (e.g. state’s monolingual policies).H lights up this gloomy picture by presenting factors that might help avoid the disaster of language extinction.

Part 3 takes up the resurrection of languages. It begins with an extensive case study of Hebrew from its origins to its revitalisation in Israel. The last chapter discusses the emergence of new languages, especially pidgins and creoles, and how these are preserved and promoted. The conclusion emphasizes the need to revitalize dead or dying languages, an effort that should be undertaken not only by linguists. English is singled out as ‘the death threat that weighs upon languages today’ (333), and in a direct address to speakers of English, H says, ‘I wager that the wisest Anglophones would not, in fact, wish for a world with only one language’ (333).

Discourses on the endangerment, death, and revival of languages have been around for a long time. While it seems to have been generally agreed that dead languages cannot be successfully revived, H takes a compelling contrary perspective, basing his argument on the revitalization of Hebrew. This example and the appealing way in which his argument is made tell linguists that something not only must but can be done to avert the catastrophe of language death. For scholars and students, this book is a relevant read especially as it helps us size up literature that presents language endangerment and death as irreparable outcomes. The direct and straightforward style in which the book is written makes a good reading and gives readers a stronger feeling of the issues discussed—the loss of human languages and the inescapable need to revive them.

Reviewed by Michael W. Morgan, Addis Ababa University

The negation of stative relation clauses in the Mordvin languages, the publication of Arja Hamari’s dissertation, is a detailed account of the various forms of negative stative predication in the two Mordvin languages, Erzya and Moksha. H has produced a rich, corpus-based study. Native speakers of both languages were consulted in addition to a written corpus that includes translations of three of the Gospels into both Mordvin languages, material from cultural journals, and an electronic corpus of literary and older folkloristic texts.

After an introductory chapter (12–21), in Ch. 2, ‘Predication of stative relations’ (22-75), H discusses the various stative relations found crosslinguistically (proper inclusion, equation, attribution, location, existence, and possession) and presents the main features of Mordvin affirmative predication with a focus on nominal conjugation. Ch. 3, ‘Negation’ (76–94), discusses such matters as scope, structural types, and marker types, which are pertinent to negation.

After the background of Mordvin predication and negation and the comparative framework given in Chs. 2 and 3, H discusses the specific characteristics of Mordvin negative stative relations. Ch. 4, ‘The Mordvin negative markers and their origin’ (95–123), presents the negative markers used in the two languages and their origins. Mordvin negation is complex in that there is a variety of different negative markers, not always cognate, differing in structure (negative particles, suffixes, and auxiliary verbs all being present) and function (there are different tense- and mood-specific forms, as well as a separate verb to express negated existence). In Ch. 5, ‘Formation of negative stative relation clauses in the Mordvin languages’ (124–248), the negative form of each stative relation type examined in Ch. 2 is dealt with in turn. Clauses of proper inclusion, equation, and attribution with nominal or adjectival predicates are negated similarly, as are locative, existential, and possession predicates, but the possessive relation is divided into ‘have’ and ‘belong’ constructions that express negation differently. Ch. 6, ‘The functional development of the Mordvin negative markers’ (249–84), proceeds to explicate the development of negative markers in the two Mordvin languages. A short conclusion in Ch. 7 (285–88) is followed by a list of references (289–98).

This is an excellent book. Its wealth of data and its clear, insightful analysis make it a welcome addition to the libraries of Finno-Ugricists and typologists alike.

Reviewed by Jason D. Haugen, Oberlin College

This volume is a Festschrift for Harold Crane (‘Hal’) Fleming, an anthropologist and linguist with a long history of work in Africa, including both synchronic and historical linguistics. Fleming originated the proposal that Western Cushitic is not actually part of Cushitic but is instead a primary branch from Afro-Asiatic that he refers to as Omotic. Fleming holds an abiding interest in long-range historical comparison and served as a key conduit for the ideas of the Moscow Circle of historical linguists to the western world in the mid to late 1980s.

The book contains twenty-four chapters divided into five parts that show an impressive range of approaches to language in prehistory that cut across the four fields of anthropology. Given limitations of space, I can do little more here than list the papers contained in the volume, but this overview should itself suffice to give the reader an idea of the diversity of topics covered.

Part 1, ‘African peoples’, contains three papers: Shomarka Omar Keita’s ‘Geography, selected Afro-Asiatic families, and Y chromosome lineage variation: An exploration in linguistics and phylogeography’; Christy G. Turner II’s ‘A dental anthropological hypothesis relating to the ethnogenesis, origin, and antiquity of the Afro-Asiatic language family: Peopling of the Eurafrican-South Asian Triangle IV’; and Daniel F. McCall’s ‘African weeks’.

Part 2, ‘African languages—synchronic studies’, has just two papers: Azeb Amha’s ‘Gender distinction and affirmative copula clauses in Zargulla’ and Paul Black’s ‘Riddling in Gidole’.

Part 3, ‘African languages—Classification and prehistory’, contains five papers by Václav Blažek (‘A lexicostatistical comparison of Omotic languages’); Christopher Ehret (‘The primary branches of Cushitic: Seriating the diagnostic sound change rules’); Herrmann Jungraithmayr (‘Erosion in Chadic’); Phillippe Bürgisser (‘On Kunama ukunkula ‘elbow’ and its proposed cognates in Nilo-Saharan languages’); and Roger M. Blench (‘The problem of pan-African roots’).

Part 4, ‘Languages of Eurasia, Oceania, and the Americas’, broadens the geographical scope considerably. The papers in this section include those by Allan R. Bomhard (‘Some thoughts on the Proto-Indo-European cardinal numbers’); Juha Janhunen (‘Some Old World experience of linguistic dating’); John D. Bengston (‘The languages of northern Eurasia: Inference to the best explanation’); Michael Witzel (‘Slaying the dragon across Eurasia’); Jonathan Morris (‘Trombetti: The forefather of Indo-Pacific’); Jane H. Hill (‘Otomanguean loan words in Proto-Uto-Aztecan maize vocabulary?’); and Larry Lepionka (‘Historical interpretations of geographical distributions of Amerind subfamilies’).

Finally, Part 5, ‘Human origins, Language origins, and Proto-Sapiens language’, contains seven papers, Stephen L. Zegura’s ‘Current topics in human evolutionary genetics’; Philip Lieberman’s ‘A wild 50,000-year ride’; Ofer Bar-Yosef’s ‘Can Paleolithic stone artifacts serve as evidence for prehistoric language?’; George van Driem’s ‘The origin of language: Symbiosism and symbiomism’; Paul Whitehouse’s ‘Some speculations on the evolution of language, and the language of evolution’; Alain Matthey de l’Etang and Pierre J. Bancel’s ‘The age of Mama and Papa’; and Pierre J. Bancel and Alain Matthey de l’Etang’s ‘The millennial persistence of Indo-European and Eurasiatic pronouns and the origin of nominals’.

The book also contains several photos of Fleming, a foreword on Fleming by the editor, and a comprehensive list of Fleming’s publications at the time of printing.