Reviewed by Iván Ortega-Santos, University of Memphis

This book is remarkable in that it is the first to analyze the Czech language within a generative framework. It includes papers on Case, clitics, the syntax of wh-elements, focalization, the interpretation of anaphors under VP ellipsis, and mixed nominals. It is intended for those with an interest in Czech and in generative grammar.

With regard to Case, Joseph Emonds focuses on Czech Case in PP structures, stressing the similarities with other Indo-European systems. Markéta Ziková discusses initial vowels of Case markers in a Czech nominal declension, the dělání paradigm, claiming that these vowels are lexically floating segments or else lexically associated with Nuclei. Pavel Caha concentrates on Case assignment asymmetries in Czech DPs with inanimate pronouns (like nic ‘nothing’). These asymmetries are captured by arguing that oblique Cases have a large number of functional projections and contain the structural Cases within them.

As far as the discussion of clitics is concerned, Jakub Dotlačil develops an argument from clitic omission in conjunction which supports the view that the second position of the clitic is a result of the interplay of syntax and phonology in Czech. Lucie Medová and Tarald Taraldsen discuss the reflexive clitic in Czech, suggesting a way of unifying its various uses. Andrea Volencová provides an account of the distribution of reflexive verbal forms in Czech.

Hana Skrabalova concentrates on wh-questions containing two (or more) wh-words in which the last wh-item is introduced by a conjunction, She claims that they provide evidence for the existence of two structures: clause-internal coordination of wh-phrases and coordination of two clauses, one of them being elliptic. Markéta Ceplová focuses on a number of aspects of wh-existential constructions, variously known as irrealis free relatives or indefinite free relatives.

With regard to information structure and focus, Petr Biskup discusses sentence-final sentence adverbs in the phase model. He claims that sentence adverbs can be merged in the vP phase and that the (un)grammaticality of certain sentence adverbs in sentence-final position depends on the (non-)interpretability of a given adverb in the vP position. Radek Šimík deals with the syntax and semantics of the Czech invariant demonstrative or demonstrative-like element to, arguing that it is focus-head placed above IP.

The remaining papers are more diverse. Mojmír Dočekal discusses the interpretation of the Czech anaphor svuj under VP ellipsis to explain the fact that this anaphor can be interpreted either as a bound variable or as a covaluated expression, though the covaluation reading disappears in the VP ellipsis context. Petr Karlík deals with mixed nominals, in particular phrases headed by words like stavění and stavba ‘building’, within a non-lexicalist theoretical framework.

The variety of issues it covers makes this volume interesting to a broader audience than those specializing in Czech.

Reviewed by Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University, Japan

Color terminology is a field that naturally attracts interest across the borders of multiple scientific disciplines, including linguistics. Here, Weiyuan Xu uses both synchronic and diachronic analyses to study the semantics of color terms in Mandarin Chinese.

The book consists of five chapters. In Ch. 1 (1–26), X discusses previous research on color terminology, focusing on the pioneering study by Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969). The three goals of X’s study are to (i) provide a comprehensive referential semantic picture of the system of color terms in Mandarin Chinese, (ii) analyze the morphological and syntactic properties of color terms in relation to their semantics, and (iii) trace the evolution of Chinese color terminology.

In Ch. 2 (27–113), X presents an experimental study in which seventy-nine informants named, categorized, and selected colors using a 329-piece set of color chips. Although the results showed unexpectedly wide individual variation, X was able to clearly identify eight basic color terms.

In Ch. 3 (114–50), X explores the use of color terms in Modern Chinese literature. Focusing on the morphosyntactic properties of color terms, X concludes that, contrary to the common perception that Chinese has no word classes, color terms basically behave like adjectives. Additionally, he shows that in figurative language, the basic color terms are used more frequently and are more likely to be employed metaphorically.

In Ch. 4 (151–85), using dictionaries and literary works, X gives an outline of the diachronic development of Chinese color terms. He shows that, as predicted by theories of the evolution of color term systems, the basic inventory of color terms has expanded over time.

In Ch. 5, (186–92), X cautiously endorses the universalistic view of color terms. He argues that the development of color terms in specific languages and cultures has been affected by cultural rather than psychophysiological sensibilities, as other scholars have suggested. The concluding chapter is followed by three short appendices and a bibliography.

The range and depth of empirical data from this experimental research and the synchronic and diachronic corpora are truly impressive. This book certainly deserves the attention of anyone seriously interested in the study of color terms.

Reviewed by Dimitrios Ntelitheos, United Arab Emirates University

This collection of papers focuses on the contribution of corpus studies to the development of language acquisition research. Despite the long-standing significance of corpus databases in language development research, little work has been done examining the processes involved in data archiving and mining or the validity of statistical generalizations based on language acquisition corpora.

Heike Behrens provides an introductory chapter discussing the history, methodology, and perspectives of corpora in language acquisition research in detail. After a brief historical survey of the field that describes the development of sampling methods from systematic diary studies at the end of the nineteenth century to current computerized longitudinal studies, she discusses methods of data archiving and sharing, information retrieval methods, and quality control.

Caroline Rowland, Sarah Fletcher, and Daniel Freudenthal, in ‘How big is big enough?’, assess the reliability of data from naturalistic samples and the validity of results from longitudinal studies, which in general sample only a very small percentage of the linguistic output of children. To maximize the reliability of child acquisition corpus studies, they propose statistical methods that can assess the amount of data required and different types of sampling regimes.

Dorit Ravid, Wolfgang Dressler, Bracha Nir, Katharina Korecky-Kröll, Agnita Souman, Katja Rehfeldt, Sabine Laaha, Johannes Bertl, Hans Basbøll, and Steven Gillis discuss the form of plurals in the input transmitted by care-takers to children in the first stages of language acquisition. They show that plurals in child-directed speech are much more predictable and regular than in the fully mature adult system, and, children’s plurals are quantitatively very close to the input they receive from their care takers

Elena Lieven provides a usage-based account of the development of the English auxiliary system that tracks the development of six children’s productive auxiliaries between the ages of 2;0–3;0. She shows that the developmental process begins as children establish productive frames around specific auxiliary forms, then later integrate tense and agreement information from these frames into a ‘system-wide’ grammar. Her account provides an alternative to earlier approaches that are based on abstract linguistic representations of the auxiliary system.

Shanley Allen, Barbora Skarabela, and Mary Hughes examine the use of corpora in determining discourse effects in syntax. They claim that naturalistic corpus research is essential in studying discourse factors on argument omission in children’s speech. Much of the chapter concerns the effect of information flow on argument realization in adult and child speech.

Padraic Monaghan and Morten Christiansen reformulate the poverty of stimulus argument by investigating interacting phonological and semantic cues in the acquisition of syntax. When these cues are considered together, they provide the child adequate and reliable information about syntactic categories.

Brian MacWhinney discusses how the Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database can be enriched for advanced morphosyntactic analysis. After surveying improvements to the database, he shows that MOR grammars, which introduce morphological information in corpus transcripts, can be implemented successfully to calculate morphological development indices.

Finally, Katherine Demuth summarizes issues related to corpora for language acquisition research: e.g. corpus size, longitudinal case studies, early production data, the nature of input, and the relevance of discourse content.

This collection is a welcome contribution to the field of language acquisition, as it critically examines one of the most important sources of data in acquisition research. It is essential reading for everyone working on creating new corpora of longitudinal studies of children acquiring a first language, as well as a valuable source of information about language acquisition and corpus studies.

Reviewed by Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University, Japan

This empirical study, based on Anna Wärnsby’s doctoral dissertation at Lund University, compares the English modals must and may with their Swedish counterparts måste and kan. Specifically, W is interested in the polyfunctionality of Germanic modal verbs (e.g. deontic must, which indicates an obligation, in contrast to epistemic must, which indicates a conclusion) as well as elements in the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic context that help to resolve this ambiguity.

W explores these issues in six chapters. In Ch. 1 (10–47), W discusses the subtypes of modality and introduces the corpus (i.e. the English-Swedish Parallel Corpus, which contains about 2.8 million words). In Ch. 2 (48–59), W presents the findings of a similar study by Jennifer Coates (The semantics of modal auxiliaries, London: Croom Helm, 1983) and identifies a number of contextual factors, including aspect, verb type, and the nature of the grammatical subject, that disambiguate polyfunctional modals.

Ch. 3 (60–112) presents the corpus study. W examines the impact of perfect and progressive aspect, of introductory there subjects, of state verbs, and of inanimate subjects on the interpretation of each of the four modals. In Ch. 4 (113–49), W proposes a refined analysis of the contextual factors discussed by Coates. Crucially, W suggests that all the features that contribute to deontic or epistemic interpretation are related to one overarching concept: controllability. In essence, if a situation described in the proposition can be controlled by an agent with intentions, it is likely to receive a deontic interpretation, and if not, it is likely to receive an epistemic interpretation.

In Ch. 5 (150–207), W presents an analysis of the modals using data mining software. This software allows her to propose a decision tree for each modal and to combine the decision trees of two or more modals. For example, in the decision tree for must, the criterion in the top node of the tree is the presence or absence of marked perfect or progressive aspect: presence leads to an epistemic interpretation, absence leads further down the tree. Although must and måste have very similar decision trees, the trees for may and kan are dissimilar, which W attributes to different degrees of grammaticalization. The final remarks in Ch. 6 (208–215) are followed by references, appendices, and name and subject indexes.

This volume is a welcome addition to the ever-growing literature on modality. W has skillfully refined the information presented in Coates’s important study.

Reviewed by Muhammad Aurang Zeb Mughal, Durham University

This volume is a commentary of key ideas and approaches to narrative study contributed by sixteen scholars in eighteen chapters. The contributions analyze various approaches to narrative inquiry in everyday storytelling and media from literature to television.

The volume is divided into four parts. In the first part, David Herman introduces the objectives and contents of the book. He describes how narratology has been an important concern within language and literature, while the ‘narrative turn’ in the social sciences and related disciplines like psychology, education, cognitive sciences, theology, and law shows the increasing interest narrative has held as an object of inquiry in recent decades. Mary-Laure Ryan then reviews different definitions of narrative in order to establish a definition of narrative suited to the wider use of the concept across disciplines by describing misunderstandings about narrative.

Part 2 discusses narrative inquiry in fiction and literature: story, plot, time and space, character, dialogue, focalization, and genre. The third part of the volume analyzes approaches to narrative inquiry in other media, e.g. the shift of interest of sociolinguists from fiction to conversational storytelling, and scholarly interest in drama, film, television, and digital media. The fourth part discusses perspectives that narrative analysis offers on gender, rhetoric, ethics, ideology, language, cognition, emotion, consciousness, identity, and alterity.

The book analyzes the current treatment of these terms and critiques diverse opinions on the use of these approaches in different contexts. In surveying the development of narrative inquiry from Russian Formalism through French Structuralist Narratology and Anglo-American contributions to the current traditions, this volume demonstrates the continuity between classical approaches and post-classical methodology.

This volume will be very helpful to students just starting narrative study for understanding the basic concepts of narrative analysis. Researchers coming from linguistics, literature, the arts, rhetoric, creative writing, psychology, the social and cognitive sciences, media studies, and similar disciplines will find it a useful summary of the analysis of narrative in different contexts.

Reviewed by Heiko Narrog, Tohoku University, Japan

Studies on color terms have long been a battlefield for scholars of different persuasions. The universalist approach of Brent Berlin and Paul Kay, whose seminal book, Basic color terms: Their universality and evolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), initiated this field of study, has been the target of often ferocious criticism from anthropological and discourse-oriented scholars. This set of two volumes, based on papers presented at Progress in Colour Studies 2004, held at the University of Glasgow, promises a new round of controversy.

Volume 1 is devoted to ‘Language and culture’. Section 1 focuses on ‘Theoretical and methodological approaches’ to the study of color terms. Anna Wierzbicka (1–24) sets the tone by denying the universality of the concept of color. Instead, Wierzbicka posits a set of basic and universal semantic atoms that can describe color terms and related concepts in any language. Terri MacKeigan and Stephen Q. Muth (25–36) present a subset of the results from their study of Tzotzil-Mayan color terms. Here, they focus on the spread of new color terms in social networks. Adam Pawłowski (37–52) explores variation in the frequency of use of color terms in ten European languages. Anders Steinvall (58–71) investigates the use of color terms for type modification (e.g. white wine), which is thought to be instrumental in the spread of new color terms within a language. Adam Glaz (74–87) discusses Robert E. MacLaury’s vantage theory (Color and cognition in Mesoamerica: Constructing categories as vantages, Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). Barbara Saunders (89–99) pleads for a socio-historical view of color.

Four papers explore color terms in ‘Modern languages’. Isabel Forbes (101–09) analyzes age-related variation of the two French color terms for ‘brown’—namely, brun and marron. Margarita Correia (111–25) provides an introduction to the semantic field of color in European Portuguese. Andrew Hippisley and Ian R. L. Davies (127–43) describe color terms in Lower and Upper Sorbian, two endangered Slavic languages spoken in Germany. They demonstrate that the system of color terms in these languages is still evolving. Heidi Ann Lazar-Meyn (145–57) describes color terms in the oral literature and music of Scots Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia.

The final three papers in this volume offer ‘Historical approaches’ to the study of color terms. Carole P. Biggam (159–79) examines the demise of Old English hœwen and its replacement by Norman French bleu ‘blue’. Carole Hough (181–98) reports on place names that contain Old English color adjectives, and Michael J. Huxtable (199–217) conceptualizes color in the English medieval world, arguing that ‘in the past colour was seen differently’ (199).

Volume 2 is devoted to the ‘Psychological aspects’ of color terms. ‘Theoretical approaches’ are discussed in three papers. Taking a meta-theoretical perspective, Don Dedrick (1–12) stresses that color term researchers must clarify the scope, the goals, and the underlying assumptions of their studies. Kimberley A. Jameson, David Bimler, and Linda M. Wasserman (13–33) reassess perceptual diagnostics for observers with diverse retinal photopigment genotypes. Marc H. Bornstein (35–68) overviews research on the relationship between hue categorization and color naming.

‘Developmental and cultural aspects’ of color terms are the focus of Section 2. Davida Y. Teller, Maria Pereverzeva, and Iris Zemach (69–90) present preferential looking techniques used to study infant color perception. Di Catherwood (91–100) discusses the rivalry between color and spatial attributes in infant response to the visual field. Anna Franklin and Ian R. L. Davies (101–19) demonstrate that perceptual color categorization occurs even before infants learn color terms. They suggest that color categorization might be linguistically modified rather than linguistically constructed. Valerie Bonnardel and Nicola Pitchford (121–38) investigate color perception in preschool children. They demonstrate that language has little influence on the categorization of color perception, except in the case of brown, which is conceptualized later than the other basic colors. Nicola Pitchford and Kathy T. Mullen (139–58) find no temporal advantage in the first language acquisition of primary color terms compared to nonprimary color terms. Debi Roberson, Jules Davidoff, Ian R. L. Davies, and Laura R. Shapiro (159–72) investigate color category acquisition in Himba (a Bantu language) and English. They conclude that ‘children gradually acquire the organization of [color] categories, and progress gradually from an uncategorized organization of colour based on perceptual similarity […] to a structured organization of categories that varies across languages and cultures’ (168). Yazhu Ling, Anya Hurlbert, and Lucy Robinson (173–88) explore sex differences in color perception. In particular, they identify a preference for red by females in both the United Kingdom and China.

The final two papers focus on ‘Cognitive and emotional aspects’ of color terms. Lilia Roselia Prado-León, Rosalío Avila-Chaurand, and Rosa Amelia Rosales-Cinco (189–202) investigate color associations in the Mexican university population. They find that some colors are solidly associated with specific stereotypes, while others are not. Christian J. Kay and Catherine Mulvenna (203–29) overview synaesthesia from a linguistic and psychological perspective.

These papers represent the diversity of the current research on color terminology. As Marc H. Bornstein succinctly states: ‘an apparent paradox plagues the color literature: color categorization without the involvement of linguistics […] supports universalism, whereas color categorization in which linguistics plays a role (color naming) points to relativism’ (Vol. 2, 57).

Reviewed by Michael W. Morgan, Addis Ababa University

The linguistics of space is a popular topic. This volume is a welcome addition to the wealth of literature on the linguistics of space that examines space in Chinese languages from new theoretical perspectives. It presents work on a wide variety of modern and ancient Sinitic languages and dialects, as well as non-Sinitic Bai and Chinese Sign Language.

After a preface (vii) explaining the project that produced the papers in this volume is an ‘Introduction: How Chinese structure space’ (1–12) by the editor, Dan Xu, in which he outlines the language situation in China.Although X focuses on Sinitic languages, fortunately this work also covers some non-Sinitic languages. After an overview of previous approaches to space with regard to languages of China, X introduces the notion of grammaticalization and Talmy’s typology of motion events, and then discusses adpositions and the impact of phonological change on syntax. Front matter includes two appendixes, a table of Chinese chronology (dynasties and dates) (13), and a map of the Sinitic languages (14). The remainder of the book falls into two sections, ‘Space: A cross-linguistic perspective’ (15–174) and ‘Space in synchronic and diachronic Chinese’ (175–266).

Section A begins with Hillary Chappell and Alain Peyraube’s ‘Chinese localizers: Diachrony and some typological considerations’ (15–37). The second paper is Danqing Liu’s ‘Syntax of space across Chinese dialects: Conspiring and competing principles and factors’ (39–67), which is followed by Christine Lamarre’s ‘The linguistic categorization of deictic direction in Chinese—with reference to Japanese’ (69–97) and Yunji Wu’s ‘The locative words in the Waxiang dialect spoken in Guzhang, Hunan’ (99–117). The first section closes with two papers on non-Sinitic languages of China: Jinqi Fu and Lin Xu’s ‘From locative to object markers: The parallel development of two postpositions in Bai’ (119–41) and Shun-chiu Yau’s ‘The role of visual space in sign language’ (143–74).

Section B opens with X’s ‘Asymmetry in the expression of space in Chinese—the Chinese language meets typology’ (175–98), followed by Chaofen Sun’s ‘Two conditions and grammaticalization of the Chinese locative’ (199–227). The topic of grammaticalization is continued in ‘Origin and evolution of the locative term hòu ‘BACK’ in Chinese’ (229–47). The final paper in this volume is Qingzhi Zhu and Wenjie Chen’s ‘The inessive structure in archaic and medieval Chinese: An evolutionary study of inessive demonstrative uses from archaic to early modern Chinese’ (249–66).

As references are given at the end of each paper, the end matter includes only Subject Index (267–70), Language Index (271–72), and Author Index (273–75).

Reviewed by Sara McElmurry, Northeastern Illinois University

The second in a series of three books geared toward undergraduates, Urszula Clark’s Studying language: English in action offers a practical, student-friendly guide to studying language across the disciplines of language variation, pragmatics, stylistics, and critical discourse analysis. Each of the book’s four chapters focuses on one discipline and includes a discussion of the theories, issues, and subfields relevant to current research, along with numerous examples taken from real language data and contemporary studies. Chapters conclude with a how-to guide for student-led research, which includes tips on topic selection, data collection, and data analysis, along with suggestions for sample projects and lists for further reading. Companion books in the series include Discovering language: The structure of Modern English by Leslie Jeffries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) and Thinking about language: Theories of English by Siobhan Chapman (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

The first two chapters focus on the analysis of spoken language. C opens with a discussion of ‘Variation and change in English’ in Ch. 1 (3–49), which draws on the Ebonics debate in the United States to illustrate the social significance of this field. C includes a historical overview of the standardization of English in England and in the United States, along with an outline of research in the areas of linguistic variation, social variation, and social networks.

Ch. 2, ‘Pragmatics and discourse’ (50–93), focuses on research related to the ethnography of communication, speech act theory, and the cooperative principle. C provides a comprehensive overview of the theories and the debates within the areas of discourse (i.e. exchange structure) and conversation analysis and concludes with a discussion of interactional sociolinguistics. The student research section in this chapter includes a useful guide to the conventions of transcription.

Moving to the analysis of written work, Ch. 3, ‘Stylistics’ (94–135), describes the field by way of the formal, cognitive, and sociocultural analysis of texts. C introduces grammar-focused (e.g. alliteration, assonance, rhyme, repletion) and style-focused (e.g. cohesion, deixis, simile, metaphor) approaches to analysis. Additionally, she examines the study of narratives, drama, and the representation of speech and thought.

Ch. 4, ‘Critical discourse analysis’ (137–68), discusses the element of power inherent in both spoken and written discourse. Drawing on a discussion of Marxist and neo-Marxist thought, this chapter introduces semiotics and the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis as well as the notion of language as discourse. C describes transitivity- and modality-focused analyses of media texts before introducing the analysis of textual, discourse, and sociocultural practices inherent in critical discourse analysis.

Overall, C provides a clear and comprehensive overview of language-related research disciplines. This book will be an excellent resource for undergraduate students of linguistics and related fields.

Reviewed by Will Barras, University of Edinburgh

This book is a worthy successor to Peter Trudgill’s 1984 edition of Language in the British Isles, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) taking account of changes in the intervening two decades. The structure of the book matches the 1984 edition, though some varieties and topics discussed in that edition are not treated separately here: Part 1 covers English; Part 2 discusses the Celtic languages of Scotland, Ireland and Wales; Part 3 covers other languages spoken in the British Isles; and Part 4 discusses sociolinguistic issues of language policy and language in education. This edition succeeds in its stated aim of providing an overview of the languages spoken in the British Isles at the start of the twenty-first century. Notably, Part 3 is much extended in order to include languages that have arrived in the British Isles through recent population movement.

Part 1 begins with James Milroy’s account of the history of English in the British Isles. The emphasis on language mixing and borrowing effectively introduces the rest of the book. An account of standard and non-standard English by Paul Kerswill follows, which points out connections between social changes during the twentieth century and ideas of standard English. The rest of Part 1 adopts a mixed approach to documenting variation in English spoken in the British Isles. England is dealt with in two chapters: Paul Foulkes and Gerard Docherty write on phonological variation and David Britain covers grammatical variation. The following chapters take the reader on a geographical tour around the remainder of the British Isles: Paul A. Johnston, Jr. writes on Scottish English and Scots (the inclusion of Scots under the heading ‘English’ could be questioned, given that Scots has regional language status under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, a topic discussed in the chapter); Kevin McCafferty writes on Northern Irish English and Raymond Hickey on Southern; Robert Penhallurick writes on English in Wales; Andrew Hamer describes English on the Isle of Man; and Heinrich Ramish gives an account of English in the Channel Islands. These chapters are very readable and contain many references to more detailed descriptive literature.

Part 2 begins with Paul Russell’s account of the history of Celtic languages in the British Isles. The following chapters address each geographical variety in turn: Kenneth MacKinnon’s chapter is on Gaelic, Pádraig Ó Riagáin writes on Irish and Martin Bell on Welsh. These chapters discuss aspects of language planning and policy in addition to providing linguistic descriptions of the languages.

At the start of Part 3, Mark Gibson’s account of multilingualism sits very well with points made in Milroy’s earlier chapter on the history of English; Mark Sebba writes on Caribbean creoles and Black English; Mike Reynolds and Mahendra Verma discuss Indic Languages; Li Wei describes Chinese as spoken in the British Isles; Penelope Gardner-Chloros discusses European immigrant languages; Bencie Woll and Rachel Sutton-Spence discuss sign languages; Mari C. Jones writes on Channel Island French; and Peter Bakker and Donald Kenrick discuss Angloromani. Many of these languages, in particular those of European immigrants to the British Isles, have not been discussed frequently in earlier descriptive literature.

Part 4 includes a chapter on language policy and planning by Dennis Ager and one on non-standard English and education by Ann Williams. Ben Rampton, Roxy Harris, and Constant Leung write on education provision for speakers of languages other than English, providing a detailed discussion of education policy in England since the 1984 edition.

This is a wide-ranging and ambitious book that reflects the sheer range of topics that could be included in a discussion of language in the British Isles.

Reviewed by Don R. McCreary, University of Georgia

This collection of nineteen papers, which provides a fascinating insider’s perspective on contemporary European lexicographic research, has much to offer those interested in modern electronic dictionaries. These papers were selected from those presented at the 12th International Symposium on Lexicography at the University of Copenhagen in 2004.

The papers discuss topics from pronunciation to etymology to grammar. Four of the nineteen papers were written in German, and the other fifteen are in English. The contributors analyze English, English as a foreign language, and German monolingual dictionaries as well as bilingual dictionaries in Afrikaans-English, Danish-English, Latvian-English, Polish-English, German-Danish, and German-Icelandic. The papers on bilingual lexicography are noteworthy for their promotion of electronic-based dictionaries, such as personal digital assistants (PDA), CDs, handheld, and Internet-based dictionaries.

Overall, these papers clarify the modern lexicographers’ intention to put user-friendliness first, especially in bilingual dictionaries, by concentrating on pragmatic functional equivalence rather than seeking an all-purpose translation equivalent.