Reviewed by Michael W Morgan, Addis Ababa University

This book is a welcome addition to the discussion of ditransitivity that discusses the topic in the theoretical framework of role and reference grammar and presents a typological survey of a corpus drawn from 100 languages. It is doubly welcome in that Carmen Conti includes the entire corpus of ditransitive examples as an appendix. In the body of the text, all example sentences are glossed in Spanish, but the examples in the appended corpus follow the original sources: except for three languages in Spanish, all of them are glossed and translated into English.

The book consists of a short introduction and four chapters, as well as two appendices, a bibliography, and indices. In the ‘Introduction’ (10–15), C gives three objectives of her study: (i) the description and classification of the markers used to encode recipient and beneficiary, (ii) an analysis of their morphosyntactic codification, e.g. whether they are direct or indirect objects and central or peripheral arguments, and (iii) generalization of the patterns of codification of recipient and beneficiary when they act as the second objects of transitive verbs.

Ch. 1 (16–31) introduces ditransitivity and discusses verbs of transference and the roles of receiver and beneficiary. Ch. 2 (32–74) presents the languages of the corpus and discusses how they mark and codify receiver and beneficiary: nominal affix, full and clitic adpositions, relational nouns, determiners and possessive pronouns, complement clauses, verbal affixes (including applicatives, causals, benefactives, directives, ventives, benefactive anaphora, and honorific), co-verbs, chaining models, and double (multiple) marking.

Ch. 3 (75–133) discusses constructions with double objects, which are present in thirty-two languages in the corpus, with particular attention to the ways in which direct and indirect objects (undergoer and recipient, respectively) are distinguished in the languages of the corpus. Ch. 4 (134–83) treats applicative constructions (found in twenty-six languages in the corpus), which often serve to convert a peripheral object into a grammatically central one.

End matter includes a ‘Bibliography’ (184–94), including descriptive grammars for the languages in the corpus and a wide range of theoretical discussions relating to ditransitivity. Appendix one (195–97) is a discussion of the method for choosing the corpus (following Rijkhoff and Bakker 1998), and appendix two (198–259) presents the corpus of 330 examples from ninety-seven languages, excluding Spanish, English, and (inexplicably) Aymara. Finally, there is an English-Spanish index of language names (260–61) that does not cross reference examples used in the body of the book, and a topic index (262–64).

REFERENCE

Rijkhoff, Jan, and Dik Bakker. 1998. Language sampling. Linguistic Typology 2. 263–314.

Reviewed by Iris F. Levitis, University of Rostock

This volume, edited by John Ole Askedal, Ian Roberts, Tomonori Matsushita, and Hiroshi Hasegawa, is a collection of articles emerging from the Senshu Open Research Project. This project seeks to address the questions: ‘“How are the Germanic languages related?”, “How is the process of language acquisition?”, “What does corpus linguistics have to offer to language analysis?”, and “How can language change by captured in linguistic theories?”’ (1). The volume tackles these questions from different subfields of linguistics. It is divided into three parts focusing on typology, generative grammar, and pragmatics/corpus linguistics.

The first part, ‘Old English and Germanic languages’, includes three articles. John Ole Askedal lays out a typological analysis of the Germanic language family, from which the evolutionary paths and interrelations between the various Germanic language are discussed and contrasted with the Romance family. Tadao Shimomiya approaches the Germanic language family through a detailed comparison of the phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon of each language. In contrast to these broader typological examinations, Yasuaki Fujiwara focuses on the syntax and poetic uses of the possessive and the genitive in Old English. He uses corpus linguistics methods to study the use of the possessive in Beowulf and Genesis A.

In the second part, ‘Generative grammar’, the focus of the articles switches to the more theoretical aspects of grammar. Hiroshi Hasegawa attempts to reconcile the binding of reflexives with the minimalist program, with a detailed exploration of previous attempts. A morphological analysis of the passive nominal and the need for and possible manner of movement is Junji Hamamatsu’s contribution. In the last article, Ryohei Mita explores the phrase structure of ‘tritransitive verbs’ (121). He contrasts tritransitive sentences with double object constructions and provides an analysis of their differing syntactic structures.

The final section, ‘Pragmatics and corpus linguistics’, addresses the use of corpora for linguistic analysis. The importance of ‘cognitive dependence phenomena’ (158) in English is explored by Shuichi Takeda. In another direction Hiromi Azuma explores the ‘accessibility’ (163) of a referent to an addressee. The usage of who/whom in four different discourse situations is explored by Yoko Iyeiri and Michiko Yaguchi. Hiroaki Sato explains how his program, FrameSQL, simplifies searches of the FrameNet database. FrameSQL makes it possible to search the database without learning the SQL language.

Due to the breadth of questions that this volume attempts to address, linguists in many subfields will find it valuable. Indexes of both names and subjects are included to help the reader navigate.

Reviewed by Iris Levitis, University of California, Davis

This volume is a rare example of a successful attempt to combine structural, sentence-level analyses with socio-cultural issues both thoroughly and systematically. In this book (the third in the LINCOM studies in French linguistics series) M. Dassi adopts a discourse analysis approach to explore the French sentence as it has evolved in literature emerging from West Africa. D’s corpus consists of excerpts from sixteen novels by eight authors (including Mongo Beti and Sembène Ousmane). The result is six thoughtful chapters on the morphological, phonological, and syntactic aspects of the literature of Francophone West Africa.

In Ch. 1 D summarizes efforts to define the sentence, from philosophic attempts originating in metropolitan France to the reinterpretations of the eight modern authors represented in his corpus. D examines hybrid sentences, in which French is combined with a local language. Illustrative hybrid sentences are given from two creoles: Noutchi, spoken in the Ivory Coast, and Camfranglais, spoken in Cameroon. The following sentence from Patrice Nganang’s Temps de Chien (345) is a characteristic hybrid sentence of Camfranglais: Et il avait raison, a me ben tchup. (Et il avait raison, c’est moi qui le dis.) ‘And he was right, I say’ (50). Ch. 2 introduces African writers and the different linguistic methods they have employed in their writing. The chapter concludes with a description of the open syntactic classes and examples of locally derived nouns, adjectives, and verbs incorporated by West African French.

In Ch. 3, D defines glosses or annotations and explores their use to introduce West African cultural terms into French, e.g. this sentence from Gabriel Kuitche Fonkou’s Moi Taximan (85): L’année entrait dans le « Ncoe Ngesan », le mois de la récolte du maïs ‘The year entered the “Ncoe Ngesan”, the month of harvesting maize’ (153). Ch. 4 commences with a definition and evaluation of the difficulties of translation in the course of which D provides an overview of translation theory and methodology. As an example, a portion of text is examined in French and in the original language, demonstrating that the original requires fewer phonetic units and is more concise than the translation. Additionally, sociolinguistic information is encoded in the code-switching and can be lost in translation into a single language.

Ch. 5 addresses the influence of aspects of African sociology and culture on sentence structure: e.g. linguistic markers of politeness, using place-names to name characters, and gastronomic characteristics. Ch. 6 discusses five African sociocultural contributions to French and how they should be incorporated into the language.

This is an excellent contribution to the study of language in the sociocultural milieu of West Africa that reevaluates French as an evolving language. It should be read by anyone interested in sociolinguistics, African linguistics and literature, Camfranglais, Noutchi, or the French language.

Reviewed by Esther Núñez Villanueva, Bangor University

This book strikes the difficult balance of giving an extensive treatment to a complex topic and discussing it in an approachable fashion, while remaining true to the use of the term global in the title. It is more than an in-depth overview of current practices and theoretical models of bilingual education worldwide, since the profound belief of the author that bilingual education can be socially transformative is truly inspiring.

G has a sound understanding of the multiple identity and language practices of the children of immigrant communities in powerful states such as the USA and sees them as advantageous. Her view of education as reflecting family and community practices makes us better understand the current phenomena of globalization and multiculturalism and their impact on education. She succeeds in incorporating other bilingual education environments in her discussion, such as elite bilingual education in private schools, African and Asian countries which incorporate indigenous and formal colonial languages in education, and language revitalization projects, leaving the reader with the sense that this volume should be compulsory reading for educational policymakers worldwide.

The book contains five broad sections, divided into chapters and arranged from the more general issues of language and education to the more concrete discussion of bilingual classroom practices. Part 1 is a general introduction to the book. Views surrounding language and bilingualism from the viewpoint of the individual, the society and the state are the topic of Part 2. Chs. 2–4 deal with the sociopolitics of language and bilingualism, including models of bilingualism in society, attitudes towards languages, and language policy. At the individual level, Ch. 5 ‘Benefits of bilingualism’ (93–108) discusses the cognitive and social advantages of bilingualism.

Part 3 identifies nine types of bilingual education models that correspond to four theoretical frameworks. Ch.10 ‘Monoglossic bilingual education policy’ (218–43) reviews models of bilingual education that are inspired by subtractive and additive ideologies towards bilingualism and consider bilinguals as the sum of two monolingual speakers. In contrast to these views, the recursive and dynamic theoretical frameworks stem from beliefs that bilingualism comprises ‘multiple language practices in interrelationship’ (7). Models emerging from these two new frameworks are the topic of Ch. 11 ‘Heteroglossic bilingual education policy’ (244–85), written with Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. An example of a model that explicitly promotes multilingualism in all its dimensions is the language policy of the European Union institutions, discussed in Ch. 9, ‘Language promotion by European supra-national institutions (197–217) by Hugo Baetens Beardsmore. This type of policy contrasts with the US policy of tolerance towards other languages, as discussed in Ch. 8, ‘U.S. language policy in education’ (159–96).

Part 4 provides information about instructional methods and strategies to develop bilingualism in the classroom, linking with more traditional pedagogical approaches. Chs. 14 and 15 discuss two concrete issues that are usually neglected in bilingual education: the promotion of literacy in two languages and assessment practices. Part 5 summarizes the ideas contained in the volume.

This volume is destined to become a reference book for teachers and scholars in the field of bilingualism since it incorporates relevant aspects of previous scholarship on bilingualism, education, language planning, and sociolinguistics in a very approachable fashion. Each section ends with questions for reflection and suggestions for further reading. Furthermore, there are frequent re-caps of previously introduced ideas, summary tables, and examples that facilitate the reading. This book could very well serve as an undergraduate or postgraduate textbook and even as a guide to parents.

Reviewed by Ferid Chekili, Sultan Qaboos University

The book is intended as a comparative study of relatives in Arabic and French. One of Houriya Bouarich’s aims is to show that relatives in Arabic and French are characterized by a number of syntactic phenomena, including definiteness, anaphora, and adjectivisation, and to compare the Arabic relative as traditionally defined to the French relative.

The book consists of an introduction, four chapters, and a general conclusion followed by a general bibliography, an Arabic bibliography, and a short glossary. Ch. 1 provides a historical survey of Arabic grammar and sentence structure. B argues that Arabic grammatical thinking is shaped by its origin in two rival schools, Kufa and Basra, whose subsequent filiation into a number of distinct schools caused vast terminological variability. She also discusses the traditional distinction between nouns, verbs, and particles and attempts to locate relative pronouns within this classification.

Ch. 2 addresses the status of relatives as embedded clauses and the nature and etymological origin of the relative pronoun in Arabic. This is followed by a comparative description of relative pronouns in French and Arabic. Considering the function of the relative pronoun she notes that as Arabic, unlike French, does not distinguish subject from object relatives, it uses a resumptive pronoun for this function, from which she concludes that they do not necessarily occupy the same position in the sentence.

In Ch. 3, B discusses the anaphoric nature and distribution of the resumptive pronoun in Arabic and deals with the conditions under which different types of resumptive pronouns may be omitted. In Ch. 4, B reviews the literature on the relationship between relatives and adjectives, and then treats the formal and functional differences between relatives and adjectives in French and Arabic. Finally, comparing relatives and adjectives in terms of definiteness, she concludes that, although similar in function, they are not identical.

The book at times demonstrates an obvious lack of generalization, reminiscent of more traditional descriptions (e.g. 38–40), as well as some ambiguity in its analysis. For example, although B describes the well-known contrast between ‘topicalisation’ and ‘focusing’ (78), she does not use these terms or refer to the associated literature. Similarly, in 3.1.3 she shows that resumptive pronouns occur in different types of sentences containing relative clauses, where it would have been enough to say that they occur wherever relativization occurs. Finally, B often treats certain aspects as inherent to relativization when in fact they are entirely independent: for example, that gender is doubly marked in sentences containing relatives (92) is simply a general characteristic of Arabic agreement.

Nonetheless, B’s attempt to reconstitute and organize Arab grammarians’ views of relatives yields a fairly comprehensive description of relativization in Arabic, as well as an interesting comparison with French.

Reviewed by Iris Levitis, University of Rostock

This volume portrays how the Bologna Agreement has affected the teaching of English for Specific Purposes (ESP) and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) throughout the European Union (EU). At the outset, the editors address the questions, ‘What is ESP? By whom and how is it taught? What influences has the Bologna reform had on the teaching and learning of ESP?’ (12). In Ch. 1, ‘The state of ESP teaching and learning in Western European higher education after Bologna’ (11–51), Christine Räisänen and Inmaculada Fortanet-Gómez surveyed colleagues at various Western European institutions. In addition to describing their survey and their motivation for conducting it, they provide an overview of the Bologna process and the history of ESP teaching. Eight countries were included in the survey results: Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the Netherlands. A brief sketch of the old and the new degree systems is included for each country. Thirteen contributions provide insight as to how individual courses and institutions realize ESP in the post-Bologna environment. These studies indicate how ESP teaching and learning has changed at different kinds of EU institutions.

Part 2 focuses on the theoretical problems inherent in the teaching of ESP. Robert Wilkinson examines the difficulty of problem-based learning integrated with ESP in Ch. 2, ‘Locating the ESP space in problem-based learning: English-medium degree programmes from a post-Bologna perspective’ (55–73). Dacia Dressen-Hammouda, in Ch. 3, ‘Aligning EAP writing pedagogies across European universities: A case study from France’ (75–96), describes the difficulties of teaching a culturally-embedded way of writing across cultures. Ch. 4, ‘Curriculum change as a result of the introduction of the masters program: Designing and implementing a European online thesis-training course’ (97–115) by R. E. Lankamp, provides a summary of the creation and use of an online of class as well as the challenges associated with it. Ann-Marie Eriksson and Magnus Gustafsson conclude this section in Ch. 5, ‘Tackling transfer and transferability: ESP/EAP design for learning beyond templates’ (117–43). In this article, the authors examine three courses, two undergraduate and one graduate, and the transferability of English skills.

Part 3  focuses on how content language integrated learning (CLIL) can be used in a variety of settings. The first article by Miguel F. Ruiz-Garrido and Juan Carlos Palmer-Silveira, Ch. 6, ‘Content learning in business communication: A teaching experience within the new European framework’ (147–64), describes a joint master’s degree in English and business that provides simultaneous linguistic and professional training. Brigitte Planken and Catherine C. Nickerson in Ch. 7, ‘Business English and the Bologna Declaration in the Netherlands: Integrating business communication practice, content and research’ (165–79), describe how four courses offered to BA and MA students successfully meld business and English together. The creative possibility inherent in CLIL is the subject of Colette Gattoni‘s article, ‘Business is booming: Rethinking business presentations in response to the Bologna Reforms’ (181–97). Gattoni describes a mock business conference structured to teach both business content and English skills. Martin Solly discusses the importance of teaching literacy skills to students in certain discourse communities in Ch. 9, ‘Implementing the Bologna process in Italy: A distinctive approach to language learning in domain-specific contexts’ (199–211). Life-long learning skills are the focus of Ana Bocanegra-Valle’s article, Ch. 10 ‘Learning to learn in ESP: Fostering lifelong learning in European higher education under Bologna requirements’ (213–32). In Ch. 11, ‘On the role of student research in the ESP classroom: A call for sustainable language skills’ (233–43), Sylvana Krausse argues that training students to use corpus linguistics methodology to study English can also help teach students sustainable learning skills.

Part 4 switches focus from student to staff learning. Anne Räsänen describes the changing roles of language centers  and how ESP teaching must adjust to the shifting needs of learners in Ch. 12, ‘Turning ESP/EAP for mobility, employability and expertise: A pedagogical process of change in focus, insight, and practice’ (247–66). The final article, Ch. 13, ‘Preparing for international masters degrees at Stockholm University and the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm’ (267–82) by Philip Shaw, Carol Benson, Sandra Brunsberg, Rosalind Duhs, and David Minugh addresses the ongoing ESP training that teachers and administrators need in order to create truly international universities.

For ESP instructors, and anyone interested in the current status of higher education within Western Europe, this book will be very informative. It is well-organized and describes the challenges and successes of the Bologna reform from the perspective of those actively trying to implement it.

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

This short grammatical sketch presents an overview of the variety of the Inuit (Eskimo) language spoken in the Baffin region of the eastern Canadian territory of Nunavut. The type of Inuit described by Elka Nowak is a part of the Eastern Eskimo grouping and is very close linguistically to the Eastern Eskimo language (Kalaallisut) spoken in Greenland.

Ch. 1 discusses the place of Inuktitut within the wider Eskimo-Aleut family and gives a short overview of the sociolinguistic position of Inuktitut as a community language in Nunavut. Its position compares with that of the closely related Greenlandic (Kalaallisut). Ch. 2 provides a brief summary of the history of research in Inuit languages. In Ch. 3, N discusses the development of writing systems for Inuit languages, in particular Greenlandic, and gives a comparative overview of three different phonemic writing systems employed in the linguistic study of Inuktitut and Greenlandic.

Ch. 4 summarizes the basic polysynthetic characteristics and processes of Inuktitut. N posits that the overriding characteristic of Inuktitut morphosyntax is that the core of the Inuktitut sentence is synthetic complex. The author divides the morphemes of the language into four categories: nuclei (nominal or verbal), affixes, flectional endings, and particles. The distinguishing feature of nominal nuclei is that they can but seldom do occur with a zero-inflectional (absolute case) ending. Verbal nuclei occur only as bound morphemes in a complex formation with an obligatory grammatical ending. Affixes are bound derivational morphemes that form with nuclei stems and then take other affixes to build recursive forms of great complexity. Morphologically complex forms must end with one flectional ending. The last affix is the head of the construction and determines the grammatical category as either nominal or verb. Compound formations of two or more nuclei are not possible. The distinguishing characteristic of particles is that they are not grammatically marked and can occur as free morphemes.

Ch. 5 is devoted to obligatory grammatical inflectional endings that occur with verbs to indicate transitivity or intransitivity, person, number, and mood. Nominal inflections showing case, number, and possession (relational status) are discussed. This section includes sample paradigms and constructed sentences as examples. A short subsection lists the first and second person pronouns (singular, dual, plural) and some of the various third person demonstrative pronouns, all of which are used primarily as answers to questions and rarely for emphasis. Also included in this chapter are word lists of the four classes of verb nuclei or roots.

N describes affixal derivation of potentially quite complex stems in Ch. 7. Much of what is subsumed under syntactic arrangements in other languages takes place in Inuktitut in these complex formation of a nucleus (or root) followed by a theoretically unlimited number of affixes, closed by a single (usually verbal) inflectional ending. Ch. 8 deals with argument structure, discourse organization, and various other issues such as causatives, antipassives, and external modification of nominals incorporated into verbal complexes. The final section consists of a short glossed text to illustrate the structure of a coherent discourse or text. The book concludes with a short bibliography of Eastern Eskimo linguistic research.

This grammatical sketch of Inuktitut is a welcome addition to the growing literature on a language family characterized by its complex morphological structures. It will be of interest to linguists who study Native American languages as well as those interested in typology.

Reviewed by Jill Hallett, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Language diversity in the classroom is John Edwards’ collection and critical examination of classic and recent linguistics and education research. Price notwithstanding, this book is accessible to researchers in various fields as well as to teachers, teachers-in-training, parents, and administrators in multilingual and multicultural school situations. Fourteen chapters comprise the book, roughly organized such that the broader concepts of classroom language, methodologies, and disadvantage appear in earlier chapters, with chapters on specific issues in linguistic diversity in education appearing later.

Ch. 1, ‘Introduction’ (1–23) outlines issues that arise in linguistically-diverse classrooms, including lack of teacher preparation and students’ susceptibility to prejudices associated with their home languages. In Ch. 2, ‘Discourse analysis and its discontents’ (24–39), E discusses the problems with discourse analytic approaches to educational research, such as the great number of insular offshoots and the tendency to  rely heavily on samples that serve to confirm the researchers’ hypotheses.

In Ch. 3, ‘Disadvantage: A brief overview’ (40–51), E evaluates the term disadvantage, finding it an apt term for discussion of social inequality. Here, the reader is also introduced to the terms difference and deficit with regard to varieties of English. The deficit theory is fairly bludgeoned in Ch. 4, ‘Disadvantage: The genetic case’ (52–76), in which a discussion of the eugenics movement and its language testing implications will turn the stomach of all but the most ardent racist. Environmental deficiency is explored in Ch. 5, ‘Disadvantage: The environmental case’ (77–92), in which E describes schools as ‘middle class institutions’ (84) for which students are expected to be prepared. E again emphasizes the case for the use of difference over deficit in minority language theory.

Ch. 6, ‘The language debate’ (93–125) raises issues of research damaging to linguistic minority students, further discussed in Ch. 7, ‘The persistence of linguistic deficit’ (126–45). E reports on various reactions to prestige and non-prestige language in Ch. 8, ‘Evaluative reactions to the language of disadvantage’ (146–69), which is followed by a case study in Ch. 9, ‘Black English as Ebonics’ (170–85).

In addition to the background on English variation in educational settings, E takes on issues of multilingualism in Ch. 10, ‘‘Foreign’ languages in the classroom’ (186–205) and what it means to have a multicultural education in Ch. 11, ‘Multiculturalism and multicultural education’ (206–33). E specifically draws examples from the English-only movement in the United States and the plural linguistic situation in Canada. In Ch. 12, ‘Bilingualism: A very brief overview’ (234–49) and Ch. 13, ‘Bilingual education’ (250–78), E does a fair job of explaining nuances of bilingualism, such as additive and subtractive bilingualism, submersion, and weak and strong bilingual education, adding that the implementation of bilingual education is highly political.

Ch. 14, ‘A concluding statement’ (279–88) implores the reader not to romanticize disadvantage but to reject the notion of substandard languages, and suggests that educators work with what the children bring to the classroom.

E’s style is smart and witty, and this book will be an asset to the libraries of educators and researchers.

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

Páez, also known as Nasa Yuwe, is spoken in the southwestern regions of Columbia, by most of the ethnic population of almost 140,000. Three quarters of this population are bilingual in Páez and Spanish and one quarter is monolingual in Páez. Ingrid Jung provides a short history of the Páez people in the introduction (13–29), including an examination of the impact of a sixteenth century Spanish conquest on the language. What follows is a concise discussion of the still unsettled question of the wider affiliation of the language, in particular, whether Páez is an isolate language or a member of a wider Macro-Chibchan grouping.

Ch. 1 presents a fairly detailed description of the phonology and phonological processes of Páez. This chapter concludes with a brief overview and comparative chart of the various orthographies used in writing the language. There are vowel and consonant charts as well as lists of words showing phonological contrasts.

Ch. 2 discusses the theoretical model (dependency grammar) used in the analysis of the morphosyntactic structure of the language. In Ch. 3, J’s focus is on describing the verbs. Her discussion of the interrelationship between aspect, tense, and mood is conducted with reference to Bernard Comrie’s Aspect (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). The theoretical discussion of aspect and tense concludes that only aspect is morphologically indicated, while tense is derived from aspectual distinctions.

Ch. 4 is on nouns, where the distinction of nouns from verbs is based on their syntactic functioning in a sentence as subject and object by the fact that nouns cannot be modified aspectually. However, some nouns can be transformed into verbs by derivational means. The function of a noun in the sentence as topic or theme and its semantic-role relationship to the verb are indicated either by syntactic position or by suffixation. The category of plural is marked morphologically only in the dative case by a characteristic suffix. When a noun is the subject of a sentence, the plurality of the referents is indicated by the portmanteau form of the verb ending. Páez pronouns, as discussed in Ch. 5, distinguish masculine and feminine in the first person singular and in the second person singular and plural.

Adjectives are introduced in Ch. 6. Here the discussion centers around the establishment of a separate class of words on morphosyntactic grounds or whether adjectives are a subclass of verbs, since they can occur with some suffixes associated with verbs. J seems to consider adjectives to be an intermediate word class between nouns and verbs, sharing some morphological or syntactic features with both basic word classes.

A brief chapter (Ch. 7) discusses phrases. This is followed in the next two units by longer analyses of sentence subordination (Ch. 8) and coordination (Ch.9). The next unit (Ch. 10) discusses interrogative sentences and the final syntactic chapter deals with negation (Ch. 11). Two short texts, with glosses and translation, are given in an appendix. A comprehensive bibliography finishes the book.

This volume is a valuable contribution to the ongoing and urgent documentation of the native languages of South America, a large number of which have become extinct before any linguistically sophisticated descriptions, as is J’s grammar, were written and published.

Reviewed by Engin Arik, Purdue University

The use of spatial language in dialogues is one of the research areas that will contribute to our knowledge of the language of space. This book does so wonderfully by providing thirteen papers on psycholinguistics, discourse analysis, and computer science in spatial language in dialogic contexts.

Kenny R. Coventry, Thora Tenbrink, and John Bateman, in Ch. 1 ‘Spatial language and dialogue: Navigating the domain’ (1–7), outline the book and give motivations for studies on the language of space in dialogues. In Ch. 2, ‘Why dialogue methods are important for investigating spatial language’ (8–22), Matthew E. Watson, Martin J. Pickering, and Holly P. Branigan stress the importance of studying spatial language in dialogue and show that interlocutors affect each other in talking about space. In Ch. 3‘Spatial dialogue between partners with mismatched abilities’ (23–39), Michael F. Schober shows that interlocutors’ individual spatial abilities can affect spatial descriptions in dialogues.

Constanze Vorwerg, in Ch 4 ‘Consistency in successive spatial utterances’ (40–55), looks at speakers’ descriptions of various scenes and proposes that speakers tend to use similar strategies such as consistent reference frame, lexical items, and syntactic constructions. In Ch. 5 ‘An interactionally situated analysis of what prompts shift in the motion verbs come and go in a map task’ (56–69), Anna Filipi and Roger Wales use  conversation analysis to investigate map descriptions of pairs of adults and pairs of children, focusing on the verbs come and go. The results indicate that most speakers use the verb go, even though this use shifts their perspectives.

Luc Steels and Martin Loetzsch, in Ch. 6 ‘Perspective alignment in spatial language’ (70–88), provide results from a series of experiments with paired robots in order to investigate perspective-taking in spatial language. They show that robots, too, need to learn each other’s perspective to establish successful communication. In Ch. 7 ‘Formulating spatial descriptions across various dialogue contexts’ (89–103), Laura A. Carlson and Patrick L. Hill show that speakers construct spatial relations with a preference for a reference object in a salient relation. In Ch. 8 ‘Identifying objects in English and German: A contrastive linguistic analysis of spatial reference’ (104–18), Thora Tenbrink examines how English and German speakers differ in their written spatial descriptions from a web-based study. In Ch. 9 ‘Explanations in gesture, diagram, and word’ (119–31), Barbara Tversky, Julie Heiser, Paul Lee, and Marie-Paule Daniel present work on interlocutors’ gestural, verbal, and diagrammatic descriptions of navigation and instructions to assemble objects in the stimuli.

Timo Sowa and Ipke Wachsmuth, in Ch. 10 ‘A computational model for the representation and processing of shape in coverbal iconic gestures’ (132–46), provide a formal representation that takes speech and gesture into account in object-shape descriptions. In Ch. 11 ‘Knowledge representation for generating locating gestures in route directions’ (147–65), Kristina Striegnitz, Paul Tepper, Andrew Lovett, and Justine Cassell investigate how an embodied conversational agent on a computer can generate human-like gestures when giving directions. In Ch. 12 ‘Grounding information in route explanation dialogues’ (166–76), Philippe Muller and Laurent Prévot analyze feedback strategies of French speakers giving route descriptions on the phone. Finally, in Ch. 13 ‘Telling Roland where to go: HRI dialogues on route navigation’ (177–90), Shi Hui and Thora Tenbrink address potential problems in human-robotic wheelchair dialogues during route instructions.