Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

The last fluent native speaker of Chitimacha, a Native American language of southern Louisiana, passed away in 1940. Now the language is being restored by members of the Chitimacha Tribe who still reside in the vicinity of their ancestral homeland. The purpose of this book is to serve as a resource for members of the Chitimacha Tribe in order to help revitalize the language within their community.  Topics included in this publication are word-formation, phonology, syntax, and the coining of new words.

Efforts to restore the language, including the development of textbooks and audio materials by the Chitimacha Cultural Department, are discussed in some detail in the preface. The ‘Introduction’ (12–24) includes a history of the Chitimacha people and gives an account of the records of the language that have been archived in various locations but never published. These records include a few invaluable audio recordings, which have proven indispensable for details of the pronunciation and intonation of the language as spoken by the last fluent speakers.

Julian Granberry gives a detailed description of the sounds and phonological processes of the language, including stress and intonation. There are rather complex sound alternations involved in word derivation (exclusively suffixal) and composition. There are three word classes posited for Chitimacha: verbs, nouns, and particles. Verbs are always inflected, nouns are sometimes inflected, and particles are never inflected.

Morphology is the most complex feature of the language. Here, G discusses preverbs, auxiliary verbs, and verbal morphology. A maximum of seven suffixes may be added to a verb stem in order to express various grammatical functions. The first four slots are filled by stem-extending suffixes and the final three are modifying suffixes that indicate tense/mood, number, and person of both finite and non-finite verb forms.

The chapter on nouns (78–85) includes a discussion of numerals, adjectival modifying nouns, and deverbal nouns as well as their relationships within a sentence. A limited but important subclass of nouns obligatorily shows singular and plural. Possession is shown by the juxtaposition of a possessor noun followed by the possessed noun. G explains the use of particles in a separate chapter (86–90) that discusses pronouns, demonstratives, locative particles, interrogatives, conjunctions, and postpositions.

Ch. 7 deals with sentence structure. The canonical word order of Chitimacha is subject-verb-object, and  subordination is expressed exclusively through participial forms that precede the main clause, and suffixes on the participle consistently mark same and different subjects as well as relative time. Several example sentences with glosses are provided in a grammatical summary (105–10).

The publisher is to be commended for making available this valuable addition to the small amount of published linguistic work on Chitimacha. Modern Chitimacha (Sitimaxa) is an excellent introduction for linguists and non-linguists to study Native American languages.

Reviewed by Iris F. Levitis, University of Rostock

This is the second edition of First language acquisition first published in 2003. The purpose of introducing the sub-field of first language acquisition is delineated by the author, Eve V. Clark, as illustrating the essential connection between children’s need to communicate and the resulting cumulative process of language acquisition. Divided into four parts, the book follows the trajectory of child language from simple to complex utterances. C begins by situating language acquisition in an interactionist framework in Ch. 1, ‘Acquiring language: Issues and questions’ (1–18).

Part 1, ‘Getting started’, commences by constructing the topic through the joint focus of mother and infant. The role and purpose of child directed speech is specifically discussed in Ch. 2, ‘In conversation with children’ (21–50), as well as debates about its universality. Ch. 3, ‘Starting on language: Perception’ (51–74), addresses how children start to segment speech sounds and learn the phonemes of their language. In Ch. 4, ‘Early words’ (75–94), C examines what kinds of words children first begin using cross-linguistically and how they make the best of a limited vocabulary. Ch. 5, ‘Sounds in words: Production’ (94–121), covers language production from pre-babbling to first words. The semantic and pragmatic aspects of word acquisition are the subject of the final chapter, Ch. 6 ‘Words and meanings’ (122–48).

Part 2, ‘Constructions and meanings’, is likewise composed of five chapters. In this section, C demonstrates how children begin to expand in their detail by producing longer utterances. Ch. 7, ‘First combination, first constructions’ (151–75), looks at the learning of inflections and word classes. In Ch. 9, ‘Adding complexity within clauses’ (199–228), C shows the learning of clausal complexity such as negation and question formation. C addresses the combining of clauses in Ch. 10, ‘Combining clauses: More complex constructions’ (229–53). This section closes with a final chapter, Ch. 11 ‘Constructing words’ (254–78), which deals with the formation of words.

In Part 3, ‘Using language’, C focuses on the acquisition of conversational skills. In Ch. 12, ‘Honing conversational skills’ (281–305), C examines how speech acts and turn taking skills are learned. Aspects of politeness and the understanding of social roles are then explored in Ch. 13, ‘Doing things with language’ (306–35). The final chapter in this section, Ch. 14 ‘Two languages at a time’ (336–54), addresses the acquisition of more than one language or dialect.

In Part 4, ‘Process in acquisition’, C explains and examines two debates in the field of first language acquisition. In Ch. 15, ‘Specialization for language’ (357–77), C reviews the arguments for and against an innate language acquisition device. She closes the volume with a discussion of how child language acquisition changes over time in Ch. 16 ‘Acquisition and change’ (378–400).

This book will be useful to the teaching of undergraduates and graduate students alike. Though it would provide an excellent introduction for undergraduates, this text is dense enough with research references that it could also provide graduate students an entrance into a specific area of first language acquisition research. In addition to a glossary and extensive reference section, there is a name index, which offers easy reference to each researcher and where he or she is mentioned in the book. All together, this book would be a useful resource for researchers in the field of first language acquisition.

Reviewed by Peter Freeouf, Chiang Mai University

This work is an attempt to summarize one of the various proto-languages that would have been descended in turn from the proposed Nostratic proto-language. It joins Gyula Decsy’s recent volumes on other proto-languages: Indo-European, Chinese, Turkic and Uralic. This volume on the Afroasiatic proto-language is, as he states in the introduction (6), based on Christopher Ehret’s Reconstructing Proto-Afroasiatic (Proto-Afrasian): Vowels, tone, consonants, and vocabulary (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995).

D notes  that by necessity a reconstructed proto-language is more regular than a modern language and has a smaller vocabulary due to the operation of analogy, borrowing and word loss (5). A specific problem with the Afroasiatic proto-language in comparison with other proposed proto-languages is the much greater time-depth of the former; while Turkic can be traced back 1,000 years and Uralic and Indo-European 6,000 years, Afroasiatic can be traced back 14,000 years (5).

Much attention is devoted to the reconstruction of the phonemic system of Proto-Afroasiatic (7–29). D posits a very simple system with three basic stops (/p, t, k/), two nasals (/m, ng/), one liquid (/l/ or /r/), and two glides (/j, w/). Additional candidates for the sound inventory include /s/, /h/, and /n/, the first two of which are possible allophonic variants of the archiphonemes /t/ and /k/, respectively (11). A simple triangular vowel system /u, a, i/ can be reconstructed, followed by the development of the mid vowels /e, o/, as well as possible length distinctions (9). Ablaut variation is posited as an important word formation process (27). Here, D notes the obvious parallel with Indo-European languages. Possible phoneme sequences are discussed as well as the basic syllable types (CV(C)) that can be reconstructed for Proto-Afroasiatic.

Turning to morphology and syntax (29–37), D makes the bold claim that Proto-Afroasiatic was an isolating and ‘analytic language without patterned grammar similar to present-day Standard Chinese or English’, but with a well-developed word building system (29). He reconstructs pronominal forms, adpositions (relational words), numerals, and derivational affixes. In the next chapter, Vocabulary (38–48), 130 Proto-Afroasiatic roots that are attested in all five branches of Afroasiatic are reconstructed and grouped into related word fields. A short chapter on semantics (48–53) attempts to connect some of the basic vocabulary with elementary concepts and natural processes.

The bulk of the book consists of two wordlists, Proto-Afroasiatic—English (55–88) and English—Proto-Afroasiatic (89–133). These wordlists are no more than alphabetical indices to Ehret (1995) and no attested forms or intermediate reconstructions are given.

This book is a concise introduction to one of the proto-languages on which the proposed Nostratic Ursprache is based and thus will be of interest to those who want to learn more about the Nostratic hypothesis. It is unfortunate, however, that the book bristles with typographical errors, some of which are such that they affect the clarity of the publication.

Reviewed by Ahmed Seddik Al-Wahy, Ain Shams University

This book is about false friends, generally understood as words in two or more languages that are identical or similar in form but different in meaning. Drawing on data from several European languages, it provides a theoretical treatment of the topic. While citing many examples of miscommunication and mistranslation caused by false friends, the book is primarily intended for linguists rather than foreign language learners seeking lists of confusing words in a given pair of languages.

Ch. 1, ‘Clearing the terrain’ (1–30), defines false friends and shows how the term overlaps with other terms such as false pairs, deceptive words, and false cognates. False friends are then classified into two types: chance and semantic false friends, corresponding to homonymy and polysemy within the same language, respectively. It is also noted that false friends occur not only in different languages, but also between dialects of the same language.

As shown in Ch. 2, ‘Synonymy, polysemy, and homonymy’ (31–60), a theoretical approach to false friends is necessarily diachronic. Words that are false friends today were not so at some point in the past. Therefore, when dealing with an old text, the translator (and, indeed, the reader) should pay attention to the sense in which certain words were used in the past. Historical considerations are also crucial for explaining how false friends are created. This involves reference to synonymy, homonymy, polysemy, and register, which are dealt with in semantics and pragmatics to account for lexical relations and contextual variation within the same language. However, in this book, the author uses these concepts as a starting point to explain the cross-linguistic phenomenon of false friends.

In Ch. 3, ‘Semantics of false friends: Borrowing, calques, and inheritances’ (61–90), the author distinguishes between borrowing, inheritance, and calque as sources of false friends. In borrowing and inheritance, the word in the recipient language may acquire new or additional meanings, leading to total or partial false friends. Borrowing and inheritance are, therefore, considered the main causes of false friends. This is not the case with calque, since it involves literal translation and not necessarily cognate words. The book also suggests a classification of the different ways for creating false friends, each of which is discussed and illustrated with examples.

The idea of ‘tropical’ (in the sense of metaphorical) false friends is elaborated in Ch. 4, ‘Semantics of false friends: Tropical false friends’ (91–132). Most semantic false friends, it is argued, have their origin in the metaphorical use of a given word and lexicalization of its new meaning in one language, but not of the cognate form in the other. Special emphasis is given to the transfer of meaning from the domains of plants and animals to humans, which is claimed to be a linguistic universal.

Aspects of the pragmatics of false friends are discussed in Ch. 5, ‘Pragmatics of false friends’ (132–64), which emphasizes the role of context in determining whether cognate words in two languages work as false friends. It also suggests a number of pragmatic strategies to detect misuses and mistranslations attributed to false friends and to reconstruct the speaker’s or translator’s intended meaning. These strategies work best with nonsensical utterances. If the utterance is acceptable, however different from the intended meaning, it will go unobserved.

The book is of interest to researchers in many language-related fields. Generally, it can be regarded as a step towards achieving one of the ultimate aims of language study, i.e. to help improve communication between people.

Reviewed by Nicole Dehé, Freie Universität Berlin

This book is the second edition of the textbook originally published in 2003. Like the first edition, it is organized into four sections—Section A: ‘Introduction’ (1–68), Section B: ‘Development’ (69–148), Section C: ‘Exploration’ (149–222), and Section D: ‘Extension’ (223–72). Each section includes numerous exercises, discussion questions, cross-references, and references to websites and additional readings. The book is accompanied by an audio CD that provides authentic speech samples from a range of English varieties.

Section A, composed of six subsections, introduces the reader to basic concepts and terminology. Focusing on articulatory phonetics, the topics include accentual variation in English worldwide, phonemes and allophones, the syllable, the organs of speech, and English consonants and vowels.

The seven subsections of Section B expand on the concepts introduced in Section A. In particular, it extends the reader’s knowledge of the phoneme and syllable, provides details on the allophonic variation of English consonants and vowels, introduces speech rhythm, stress, and intonation, and explores English spelling.

Section C, consisting of six subsections, explores a selection of accentual varieties of English as spoken in North America, the British Isles, and elsewhere in the world. It discusses pronunciation changes over time and devotes a subsection to the pronunciation of English as a foreign language.

Section D provides a selection of (reprinted) classic readings from leading scholars: David Abercrombie on the British received pronunciation (RP); Daniel Jones on attitudes toward regional and social accents; David Crystal on pronunciation complaints and ‘sloppy’ speech; Dennis Fry on hearing loss and its consequences regarding the development of speech; Peter Ladefoged on the problems of producing synthetic speech; Maurice Varney on phonetics and phonology in criminal investigations; Barbara Bradford on ‘upspeak’ in British English; David Crystal on aspects of the acquisition of first language intonation; J.C. Wells on reforming English spelling and why it is impossible to satisfy all speakers; and Peter Trudgill on changes in RP, its sociolinguistic situation, potential death, and competitor(s).

The book includes a glossary, suggestions for further readings, references, the 2005 version of the International Phonetic Alphabet, and a combined name and subject index.

This second edition has a number of new features, among them a subsection on spelling-to-sound relationships and pronunciation guidelines for non-native speakers (105–15), new written and audio materials representing Estuary English and New York English, and the chapters by J.C. Wells and Peter Trudgill in Section D. The book is also accompanied by a website that contains resources such as additional exercises and answer keys as well as useful web links.

Many of the activities and exercises might be difficult for non-native students. Overall, however, I consider the book an invaluable resource for teaching English phonetics and phonology in both native and non-native contexts.

Reviewed by Carolin Patzelt, University of Bochum

This volume is a fascinating survey—the first systematic, large-scale one—of New Mexican Spanish, its characteristics, diatopic variation, and historical emergence. The study is based on data from the New Mexico-Colorado Spanish Survey (NMCOSS), a project directed by the editors, Garland Bills and Neddy Vigil. This project has recorded and analyzed the interviews of 357 native-born Spanish speakers from different communities across New Mexico and sixteen counties of Southern Colorado.

This linguistic atlas analyzes the data collected in these interviews and provides highly interesting maps that describe the present linguistic and sociolinguistic situation of New Mexican Spanish. However, it is not the typical traditional linguistic atlas that makes material accessible only to specialists in the field. Instead, its concern is to document the range of Spanish varieties spoken in New Mexico and Southern Colorado at the end of the twentieth century and to make these data accessible to anyone interested in New Mexican Spanish. Given the clear, easy-to-understand explanations and numerous examples, the editors certainly succeed in reaching their aim.

The volume is divided into four main parts. Part 1, ‘The study of New Mexican Spanish’, begins by discussing some common prejudices concerning New Mexican Spanish and by presenting the NMCOSS. It concludes with an overview of the emergence of the Spanish language and culture in New Mexico.

Part 2, ‘The formation of traditional New Mexican Spanish’, is mainly concerned with the influences that shaped the character of early New Mexican Spanish, such as Maritime, Caribbean, or Mexican influences. Part 3, ‘The development of traditional New Mexican Spanish’, focuses on later influences, particularly anglicisms. Part 4, ‘The present and future of New Mexican Spanish’, discusses the impact of Standard Spanish and more recent immigration from Mexico on New Mexican Spanish and makes interesting predictions for its future.

All in all, this volume is an excellent source for anyone interested in sociolinguistics as well as the linguistic and cultural history of New Mexico. The book succeeds in destroying some widespread myths about New Mexican Spanish, such as the claim that it is an archaic variety of Spanish. The editors convincingly show that certain phonological, morphological, or syntactic features are indeed archaic, but that these are facts about individual forms, not about the language system in general. By including a detailed account of historical language contact in the New Mexico area, they can even provide valuable explanations for such individual developments in many cases.

Reviewed by Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy, University of Canterbury

This book contains chapters relevant to Europe from The Cambridge encyclopedia of the world’s ancient languages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). After a preface and introduction by Roger D. Woodard, the contributors discussed a variety of languages including Attic Greek, Greek dialects, Latin, Sabellian languages, Venetic, Etruscan, continental Celtic (that is, Hispano-Celtic, Lepontic, and Gaulish), Gothic, and ancient Nordic as recorded in runic inscriptions. An appendix contains a seventeen-page account of Proto-Indo-European languages. There are indices of languages, grammatical topics, linguistic laws, and general subjects. In the introduction Woodard discusses briefly some languages about which too little is known to warrant separate chapters: Sicel, Raetic (and Lemnian), Ligurian, Illyrian, Thracian, Macedonian, and Messapic.

The preface explains that for the purpose of this book, ancient means attested before the end of the fifth century AD (xv). This is why, for example, Gothic, ancient Nordic, and Gaulish are included, but not literary Old Norse, Old English, or Old Irish. Given its importance, one might have expected Mycenaean Greek to occupy a chapter on its own, but it is lumped in with Greek dialects. All the chapters conform to a similar pattern, with sections on the historical and cultural context of the language, its writing system, and its phonology, morphology, syntax, and lexicon. There are extensive bibliographies.

In regards to Etruscan, some characters usually transcribed as <f> and <q> are regarded by some scholars as representing not voiceless aspirated stops (which was their value in Ancient Greek) but palatalized stops. I noticed only one curious error (carried over from the parent encyclopedia): the singular forms of the Greek perfect active and of oîda ‘know’ are given but the dual and plural forms are omitted (41).  This may be because it is only in the singular that the relevant person-number suffixes are particularly unusual, but it is not explained. The reader is left in the dark about the ablaut alternation preserved uniquely in the stem of oîda, as illustrated by e.g. ísmen (< *íd-men) ‘we know’.

The information supplied about each language in a work of this length is inevitably limited. However, this book is a good starting point for anyone wanting to explore any of these languages further. Even the most expert historical linguist is likely to find it a useful resource for the lesser known languages covered. Readers accustomed to thinking of Indo-European as having an Italic subfamily will learn here that there is no clear reason to regard Sabellian languages (principally Oscan and Umbrian) as more closely linked to Latin than to other Indo-European subgroups.

Reviewed by Iris F. Levitis, University of Rostock

This monograph evolved out of Emma Betz’s dissertation research. It describes the grammatical phenomenon of pivots using a conversation analysis (CA) methodology. In a syntactic pivot construction, ‘two syntactic structures (pre-pivot+pivot and pivot+post-pivot) are connected by a shared element (the pivot element) in a way that makes it difficult to determine to which of the two structures this element belongs’ (1). The research is based on the analysis of natural conversation data, from telephone and face-to-face conversations, in two dialects of German.  Ch. 1 ‘Introduction’ (1–12) and Ch. 2 ‘Preliminaries’ (13–38) provide an overview of German syntax, the transcription conventions used, and a typological inventory of pivots.

Chs. 3–6 describe four different types of pivots according to their functions. Ch. 3, ‘Pivot construction as a syntactic resource for turn-taking: Managing overlap’ (39–68), examines pivots that allow turn-taking during conversation. In this context the overlap can be caused by multiple simultaneous speakers, as well as the repetition of information by the speaker. B found that when a speaker did not want to relinquish a turn, he or she chose to extend the turn through the use of a pivot, both on the telephone and in face-to-face conversations. Ch. 4, ‘Pivots at sequential and topic boundaries: Steering the emerging direction of the talk’ (69–96), focuses on situations of conversational shaping. B classifies these pivots as enabling a speaker to return to previous topics, or, alternatively, to expand upon a topic. This type of pivot most frequently occurred at points of conversational boundaries. Ch. 5, ‘Pivot constructions as a resource for managing repair: Searching for a word’ (97–136), describes pivots that are used in the context of repair. B delineates this pivot as signaling that a speaker is searching for the appropriate word for the conversation. This pivot construction can be defined as one that allows the speaker to fix the problem (in this case a missing word) without help from their interlocutor. Interestingly, specific types of word search pivots are not equally available in the two dialects of German studied. Ch. 6, ‘Pivot constructions in embedded self-correction: Changes in action and epistemic stance’ (137–68), describes pivots used by a speaker who desires to shift epistemic stance in mid-conversation. To change epistemic stance unobtrusively, speakers were found to use this type of pivot construction, which appear to be more diverse in structure than the previous three cases. Ch. 7 ‘Concluding discussion’ (169–82) concludes and summarizes the pivot typology and the results of the study.

This is an excellent volume both in terms of the theoretical framework and the study design. The implications for the further study of natural syntax and the distinction between spoken and written language are important. It will be a very useful resource to those interested in CA and thoughtful linguistic research.

Reviewed by Alessandro Capone, University of Palermo

Institutional discourse is an issue which deserves special importance, as it privileges the situatedness of speech acts, which are subject to special rules and are sensitive to contextual influence. The contributors focus on the cross-section between institutional discourse and cross-cultural pragmatics. The methodologies employed in this volume include: ethnomethodology, speech act theory, and systemic-functional grammar. The goal is that diversified approaches can yield more interesting results.

The book studies three areas of institutional interaction: classroom interaction, professional interaction, and academic interaction. In classroom interaction, the focus is on how foreign language learners can improve their communicative competence in a formal teaching environment. The contributors focus on intonation, phatic talk (i.e. the establishment of human bonds), the ways speech acts are expressed, and autonomous language learning. There are clearly culture- and language-specific differences in the realization of speech acts of which learners should be aware. The authors argue that it is important to study the status of information in relation to intonational patterns. Meaning in the classroom can be studied by investigating acoustics and, in particular, the tonicity of the teacher’s speech.

The second type of discourse examined is that which occurs in professional interactions. Business communication is realized through written and spoken modes of communication. The contributors distinguish between everyday pragmatics and business pragmatics, while pointing out the constraints a business environment may have on discourse. They also consider prescriptive rules in relation to complaints.

The third type of interaction investigated is that of academic interactions. Academic discourse is an area which demonstrates the need for a greater number of studies on the spoken language. Focusing on one type of academic discourse, that is, during office hours or academic advising sessions, the contributors postulate the need for an increased emphasis on interactional aspects of academic discourse. It is also stressed that there is a research gap in the cross-cultural dimension of research, suggesting that future research pay more attention to interlanguage aspects.

The volume seems to be a good step in adopting a societal view of linguistics. This approach, which takes the situated aspects of language into account, cannot help but elicit positive reactions.

Reviewed by Carolin Patzelt, University of Bochum

This volume represents an interesting and diverse collection of articles on the variability of contemporary French, including research on the varieties spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland, Africa, and Canada. The articles are grouped into three main sections: phonology, syntax, and semantics. They do not provide comprehensive coverage of the array of phonological, syntactic, and lexical features of contemporary French, but they do have a unifying theme: the role of external sociolinguistic factors in language variation and change. On this basis, the contributions collected in this volume analyze a wide range of aspects of contemporary significance.

In the introductions to the three main sections, the editors provide overviews of their respective areas of expertise: Nigel Armstrong focuses on phonological variation and leveling in hexagonal French and elsewhere (3–8), whereas Françoise Gadet gives an overview of recent developments in research on syntactic and stylistic variation in contemporary French (115–20). Kate Beeching and Richard Waltereit introduce current directions in research on lexical variation and semantic change (195–99). These introductory articles are followed by more focused studies in the respective chapters.

The largest section, Section 1: ‘Phonological variation and leveling’, begins with a contribution by Nigel Armstrong and Zoë Boughton,‘Perception and production in French dialect leveling’ (9–24). In this article, the authors look at dialect leveling in hexagonal French, focusing on the intersection between social factors and phonological change. Examining word final consonant devoicing as a phonological variable, Philippe Hambye analyzes language variation in Wallonia in ‘The sociolinguistic relevance of regional categories: Some evidence from word-final consonant devoicing in French spoken in Belgium’ (25– 42). In ‘Prosodic style-shifting as audience design: Real-time monitoring of pitch range and contour types in Swiss French’ (43–62), Jessica Sertling Miller studies style-shifting in Swiss French with a focus on prosody. Tim Pooley in his article ‘The immigrant factor in phonological leveling’ (63–76) analyzes the relationship between the immigration of young people of Maghrebian origin and phonological leveling in France. Finally, the articles by Elissa Pustka, ‘A prototype-theoretic model of Southern French’ (77–94), and by Anne Violin-Wigent, ‘The law of position revisited: The case of mid-vowels in Briançon French’ (95–112), both focus on the phonological features of Southern France and the impact of age on language variation. Although the articles mentioned focus on diverse aspects of phonological variation, they all show one interesting development. Apparently, European French is shifting towards a supra-local norm, which does not correspond exactly to classical standard French.

Section 2: ‘Stylistic and syntactic variation’, commences  with a contribution by Mireille Bilger and Henry Tyne who focus on the distribution of parce que in native and non-native speakers of French in ‘Variation in first and second language French: The case of parce que’ (121–40). Laurence Buson, in her article ‘French preadolescents’ perceptions of stylistic variation: A contrastive sociolinguistic study’ (141–58), traces the perceptions of pre-teenagers regarding stylistic variation and relates them to social class. Anne Moseng Knutsen analyzes relative clauses in the French spoken in the Ivory Coast in ‘Sociolinguistic variation in African French: The Ivorian relative clause’ (159–76). Finally, Nathalie Rossi-Gensane ends this section with her examination of stylistic variation in the non-standard use of non-finite forms in ‘Register variation in the non-standard use of non-finite forms’ (177–92).

In Section 3, ‘Lexical variation and semantic change’, Gaétane Dostie focuses on diatopic variation in Canadian French in ‘Discourse markers and regional variation in French: A lexico-semantic approach’ (201–14), suggesting that the degree of pragmaticalization of discourse markers in Quebec French may vary from one region to another. Kate Beeching, in her article ‘Sociolinguistic factors and the pragmaticalization of bon in contemporary spoken French’ (215–30), examines sociosituational variation as a factor of raising the distributional frequency and pragmaticalization of the discourse marker bon in modern hexagonal French. Finally, Bruno Courbon investigates the social and economic factors behind the shift in meaning of fortuné from ‘luck’ to ‘wealth’ in ‘From “luck” to “wealth”: The stylistic (re)distribution of fortuné in Modern French’ (231–52).

Given the wide range of topics dealt with, this volume will certainly appeal to anyone interested in contemporary French and sociolinguistics in general.