Reviewed by Anish Koshy, The English and Foreign Languages University, India

This volume contains twenty-two chapters organized into five major sections. It sees the addition of ten new chapters while the organizational scheme of the first edition is retained.

Part 1, ‘Experimental phonetics’, has four chapters. Maureen Stone gives an overview of the role of laboratory instruments in the study of speech disorders and speech processing applications. While Christine H. Shadle considers various aerodynamically distinct oral tract behaviors and the methods of measuring them, Hajime Hirose studies the functions of laryngeal structures and the basic laryngeal adjustments required for different phonetic conditions. Jonathan Harrington takes up a detailed analysis of the acoustic characteristics of three major categories of sounds.

Part 2, ‘Biological perspectives’, has three chapters. Janet Mackenzie Beck explores organic variation in speech performance due to differences in shape and proportion of vocal organs. Hermann Ackermann and Wolfram Ziegler review characteristics of primate and human brains with reference to human language. Anne Smith discusses neural processes and issues of interface, the role of feedback, and neuroplasticity.

Part 3, ‘Modelling speech production and perception’, is the largest section in the handbook. Barbara L. Davis gives an overview of the formalist, structuralist, cognitive science, and auditory-perceptual perspectives on speech acquisition. Edda Farnetani and Daniel Recasens explore coarticulation and connected speech processes from various theoretical perspectives. Anders Löfqvist discusses the problems of coordination and motor control in motor systems in speech production. Christer Gobl and Ailbhe Ní Chasaide deal with acoustic aspects of phonation and its exploitation in the context of speech communication. Kenneth N. Stevens and Helen M. Hanson review the quantal/enhancement theory and its relationship to the notion of distinctive features. Brian C. J. Moore introduces aspects of auditory processing. James M. McQueen and Anne Cutler conclude this section by focusing on the cognitive aspects of speech perception in terms of lexical and pre-lexical processing.

Part 4, ‘Linguistic phonetics’, has five chapters. Janet Fletcher reviews temporal aspects of prosody and the rhythmic dimension of speech. Mary E. Beckman and Jennifer J. Venditti discuss functional aspects and establish parameters with which to study pitch change. John J. Ohala reviews the historical evolution of phonetics and phonology, and argues for an integration of the two fields. Tracing the development of the international phonetic alphabet notation, John H. Esling presents important challenges and revisions to the system. Paul Foulkes, James M. Scobbie, and Dominic Watt explore sociophonetics by seeking to explain socially structured variation in speech.

Part 5, ‘Speech technology’, has three chapters. Daniel P. W. Ellis discusses sound-filtering and the Fourier analysis and spectrographic representation of speech signal. Rolf Carlson and Björn Granström survey text-to-speech synthesizing systems, discussing current trends like multimodal and multilingual synthesis. Steve Renals and Simon King conclude this section by reviewing techniques, models, and algorithms used in automatic speech recognition research.

This volume succeeds in maintaining its multidisciplinary orientation with exhaustive discussions of current techniques, experimental approaches, and theories used in the various sub-fields, while also standing as a testimony to the highly productive and ever-expanding nature of the discipline.

Reviewed by Anish Koshy, The English & Foreign Languages University, India

This volume has fifteen papers, which originated in a 2007 Workshop on Diachronic Semantics and Pragmatics, held in Montreal. The papers deal with general theoretical as well as language-specific issues.

In the introductory paper, ‘Current trends in diachronic semantics and pragmatics’, the editors summarize the individual contributions in the book and discuss how pragmatic factors influence semantic change and the conventionalization of conversational implicatures. In ‘APO: Avoid pragmatic overload’, Regine Eckardt discusses semantic change in English even, German fast ‘almost’ and selbst ‘even’, and Italian perfino ‘even’, due to pragmatic overload on the hearer, when confronted with a usage that makes accommodation impossible.

Ulrich Detges and Richard Waltereit trace the diachronic evolution of Spanish bien (a discourse marker) and French bien (a modal particle) in terms of distinct discourse pragmatic strategies. In ‘Context sensitive changes: The development of the affirmative markers godt ‘good’ and vel ‘well’ in Danish’,  Eva Skafte Jensen analyzes the evolution of Danish affirmative markers as an instance of the conventionalizing of conversational implicature. She posits that these markers developed due to word order and the semantic context.

Kate Beeching explains the evolution of particles like French quand même ‘after all’, English though, Scottish but, and German aber ‘but, at all’, from a concessive or adversative conjunction to a hedging and boosting particle in her article, ‘Procatalepsis and the etymology of hedging and boosting particles’. In ‘Central/peripheral functions of allora and “overall pragmatic configuration”: A diachronic perspective’, Carla Bazzanella and Johanna Miecznikowski trace the diachronic evolution of Italian allora ‘so, then’ from being a temporal adverb of simultaneity and consecution to becoming a discourse marker.

Maria Estellés discusses the role that paradigmatic relations have played in the grammaticalization of Spanish digressive markers por cierto ‘certainly’and a propósito ‘by the way’. Magdalena Romera’s ‘The multiple origin of es que in Modern Spanish: Diachronic evidence’, traces the diachronic development of Spanish es que ‘it is that’constructions, as it has come to be used as a function of elaboration and reinterpretation. Bethwyn Evans examines the evolution of the Marovo aspect/mood marker ma to a discourse connective particle in ‘From aspect/mood marker to discourse particle: Reconstructing syntactic and semantic change’. Gabriele Diewald, Marijana Kresic, and Elena Smirnova trace the diachronic evolution of German evidentials and modal particles to demonstrate that different particles may share the same channels in grammaticalization.

Mario Squartini, in ‘Evidentiality, epistemicity, and their diachronic connections to non-factuality’, discusses the diachronic correlations between evidentiality and epistemicity in several Romance language verb forms, including hearsay markers and conditionals. Maj-Britt Mosegaard Hansen suggests the diachronic evolution of the French negation ne…pas to have been largely governed by discourse-functional constraints in Janus-faced contexts in ‘The grammaticalization of negative reinforcers in Old and Middle French: A discourse-functional approach’. ‘A roots journey of a French preposition’ by Silvia Adler and Maria Asnes shows that the multiple readings of the French preposition jus qu’à ‘until’ does not involve any evolution from a concrete core to other abstract meanings.

Elke Gehweiler discusses the diachronic development of the English negative intensifier mere from a privative adjective due to a process of grammaticalization and subjectification. The final paper, ‘The origin of semantic change in discourse tradition: A case study’ by Katerina Stathi, discusses the role of discourse traditions or contexts in semantic and pragmatic change through the German construction gehören + participle II ‘persistence of’’.

This collection closely examines how meanings change by focusing on different aspects, such as the role of the speaker and listener and interactional factors. Altogether, each paper contributes to questioning many of the accepted theoretical positions and offers insightful analyses.

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

The metalanguage of translation contains some materials republished from the international journal Target (2007, volume 19) in hopes of expanding the scope of readership for salient topics. This volume includes eleven papers on metalinguistic topics covering terminology, bibliography, epistemology, and localization.

The first article, ‘How about meta?: An introduction’ (1–7) by the editors, initiates the discussion on the interconnection between translations and our knowledge about translations (1). Gernot Hebenstreit analyzes classical papers to demonstrate the applicability of definition theory to translation terminology in ‘Defining patterns in translation studies: Revisiting two classics of German Translationswissenschaft’ (9–25).

‘Risking conceptual maps: Mapping as a keywords-related tool underlying the online Translation Studies Bibliography’ (27–43) by Luc van Doorslaer focuses on compiling bibliographies on translation studies that may systematize and structure a wide range of concepts, standards, and values. The author demonstrates how the mapping principle is used for an online project and what challenges this mapping faces. Continuing in this line of lexicographic narration, Leona Van Vaerenbergh examines existing dictionaries and encyclopedias on translation in ‘Polysemy and synonymy: Their management in Translation Studies dictionaries and in translator training. A case study’ (45–63).

Josep Marco argues that the epistemological, conceptual, and intercultural problems in translation terminology are inextricably linked in ‘The terminology of translation: Epistemological, conceptual and intercultural problems and their social consequences’ (65–79). ‘Natural and directional equivalence in theories of translation’ by Anthony Pym (81–103) discusses the concept of equivalence, revealing the co-existence of two competing conceptualizations of this term. Leena Laiho studies the translatability of a literary work in ‘A literary work—Translation and original: A conceptual analysis within the philosophy of art and Translation Studies’ (105–21), framing the discussion in the theoretical context of analytic philosophy and translation studies.

Mary Snell-Hornby focuses on the concept of terminology in ‘‘What’s in a name?’: On metalinguistic confusion in Translation Studies’ (123–33) by studying the ways in which a new term may be introduced. Nike K. Pokorn elucidates the pitfalls in defining such distinct and clarified concepts as ‘native speaker’ and ‘mother tongue’ in ‘In defence of fuzziness’ (135–43). Iwona Mazur continues the examination of terminology in her article, ‘The metalanguage of localization: Theory and practice’ (145–65).

‘The metalanguage of translation: A Chinese perspective’ (167–81) by Jun Tang provides a brief account of its development throughout history and discusses the recent domestic anxiety concerning the uncritical acceptance of Western academic discourse in China.

The final article, ‘Translation terminology and its offshoots’ (183–89) by Yves Gambier, analyzes the history and principles of compiling Translation terminology (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1999). This volume also contains a subject index to help direct the reader.

The publishers were absolutely right to republish these precious articles for a wider distribution. Altogether, this volume presents the significance of translation studies as a discipline and demonstrates the need for additional study in this area.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, Sabanci University Writing Center, Turkey

This monograph dissects the ideological concepts of native and non-native speakers in a broad variety of communicative settings, with a focus on a number of different languages (European, Asian, African, and Polynesian). It is a compilation of nine ethnographic studies. Each of the five sections is prefaced by an introductory chapter.

Part 1, ‘Setting the stage’, provides the framework through which one can question the assumptions underlying the native-speaker concept. Ch. 1, ‘Investigating “native speaker effects”: Toward a new model of analyzing “native speaker ideologies”’ (15–46) by Neriko Musha Doerr, calls for an analysis of the multidimensional and multilayered character of language acquisition and use in bi- or multilingual discourse communities. Robert Train examines the development of the native speaker concept and language standardization processes in Ch. 2, ‘Toward a “natural” history of the native (standard) speaker’ (47–79).

Additional studies provide nuanced portrayals of multilingual speakers and discourse communities. Part 2, ‘Nation-states’ designs and people’s actions’, begins with a discussion of migrant experiences. Ch. 3, ‘”Native speaker” status on border-crossing: The Okinawan Nikkei diaspora, national language, and heterogeneity’ (83–100) by Michiyo Takato, describes the experiences of reverse migrant families from Latin America. Yuko Okubo explores the mainstream educational opportunities available for ethnic minority groups in Osaka in Ch. 4, ‘The localization of multicultural education and the reproduction of the “native speaker” concept in Japan’ (101–33).

Part 3, ‘Standardizing impulses and their subversions’, exposes the diversity of language standardization process. Victoria J. Baker describes the pressure to learn the standard forms of languages within a multilingual community in Ch. 5, ‘Being “multilingual” in a South African township: Functioning well with a patchwork of standardized and hybrid languages’ (139–60). Ch. 6, ‘Social class, linguistic normativity and the authority of the “native Catalan speaker” in Barcelona’ (161–84) by Susan E. Frekko, presents a micro-study onthe tensions inherent in the standardization of a language and illustrates how the learner’s social status may influence learning outcomes. The final chapter in this section, Ch. 7 ‘Uncovering another “native speaker myth”: Juxtaposing standardization processes in first and second languages of English-as-a-second-language learners’ (185–209) by Neriko Musha Doerr, advocates addressing language standardization issues in English-as-a-second-language classrooms by establishing parallels between the first language and the English variants.

Part 4, ‘Revisiting “competence”’, consists of four chapters. Ch. 8, ‘”We don’t speak Maya, Spanish or English”: Yucatec Maya-speaking transnationals in California and the social construction of comeptence’ by Anne Whiteside (215–32), describes a Californian Mayan migrant community and the construction of their social identity. Using an account of the hiring process,  Ryuko Kubota investigates how  the native speaker status may interact with other social and cultural considerations in Ch. 9, ‘Rethinking the superiority of the native speaker: Toward a relational understanding of power’ (233–48). Ch. 10, ‘Heterogeneity in linguistic practice, competence and ideology: Language and community on Easter Island’ (249–76) by Miki Makihara, examines the convictions surrounding the revitalization of Rapa Nui, spoken on Easter Island. Shinji Sato concludes this section in Ch. 11, ‘Communication as an intersubjective and collaborative activity: When the native/non-native speaker’s identity appears in computer-mediated communication’ (277–94), by examining the practice of online blogging by a second language learner of Japanese in an attempt to create for himself a variety of identities within a more holistic linguistic and social environment.

The volume is concluded in Part 5, ‘Moving forward’. Neriko Musha Doerr and Yuri Kumagai situate the discussions of ideological aspects of language (and speaker) status, power relations, and institutional discursive practices within second language instruction in Ch. 12, ‘Towards a critical orientation in second language education’ (299–318).

This professionally produced volume embraces a wide variety of languages and social contexts of language use. It can be received with enthusiasm by both students and researchers in linguistics, anthropology, and sociology.

Reviewed by Louisa Buckingham, Sabanci University Writing Center, Turkey

This monograph on language contact in multilingual settings foregrounds the study of communicative processes, and thus breaks with the tendency of language in contact research to prioritize the study of structural-grammatical change. The work comprises thirteen ethnographic studies on a variety of languages used in an equally broad variety of settings. The studies examine transnational and intra-national migration processes and the role of language in maintaining and re-asserting identities.

The book is organized into three parts. Part 1, ‘Scale and multilingualism’, focuses on migration, whether internal or transnational, and multilingual encounters in studies spread across four continents. Part 2, ‘Spatialization, migration and identity’, considers migrants’ narratives about the process of displacement and making a life in new environments. The final section, Part 3, ‘Studying processes and practices across time and space’, examines the interrelatedness of networks and language.

Numerous contributions to this volume analyze language-related issues raised by migration. Joan Pujolar, in Ch. 6, ‘Immigration in Catolonia: Marking territory through language’ (85–106), investigates the role language plays in situating immigrants in a Catalan language teaching classroom within a broader Catalan-Spanish social context. In Ch. 9, ‘”Either” and “both”- The changing concepts of living space among Polish post-communist migrants to the United Kingdom’ (170–87), Aleksandra Galasińska and Olga Kozłowska study the perception of living space and movement as experienced by Polish immigrants to the United Kingdom within a broader context of sociopolitical change in Europe. Gill Valentine, Deborah Sporton, and Katrine Bang Nielson discuss the use of English, Somali, and Dutch among Somali migrant children in Sheffield in Ch. 10, ‘The spaces of language: The everyday practices of young Somali refugees and asylum seekers’ (189–206). The authors illustrate the inter-relatedness of language and identity, and examine how these multilingual individuals have developed different socially constructed identities. Gabriele Budach’s article in Ch. 11, ‘‘Canada meets France’: Recasting identities of Canadianness and Francité through global economic exchanges’ (209–31), investigates the positioning of French Canadian products on the French market and their promotion by transnational service providers who use selected aspects of Quebec culture, customs, and language, to promote their region-specific products.

Other studies focus on social communicative processes and how speakers seek to use language to position themselves in a context of flux and fluidity, often typical in migrants’ lives. Ch. 1, ‘Goffman and globalization: Frame, footing and scale in migration-connected multilingualism’ (19–40) by James Collins and Stef Slembrouck, investigates multilingual encounters within a Mexican migrant family whose members use three languages, shifting between them to position themselves in social contexts. Jie Dong and Jan Blommaert discuss perceptions generated among standard Mandarin speakers of dialectal forms produced by Chinese internal migrants in Ch. 3, ‘Space, scale and accents: Constructing migrant identity in Beijing’ (42–60). The scenarios described illustrate the monoglot ideology of language in which the standard, Putonghua, is viewed as the only language that rightfully extends itself through all sectors of the capital. Cécile Vigouroux, in Ch. 4, ‘A relational understanding of language practice: Interacting timespaces in a single ethnographic site’ (62–83), examines how language choices, both oral and writtenforms, reflect the broader social context within which the users of an internet café (proprietors and clients) situate themselves.

Although it would be a mistake to view globalization as a central theme to this compilation (as suggested by the title), the book presents a collection of ethnographic studies that illuminate the multifarious purposes of language as a social tool among speakers of different status in multilingual settings. It is likely to appeal to both sociolinguists and ethnographers alike.

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

Translation theory and globalization studies have vast areas of common interest in investigating how global information flows across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Esperança Bielsa and Susan Bassnett suggest an examination of global communication through translation practices, both from a diachronic and synchronic perspective.

Ch. 1, ‘Power, language and translation’ (4–17), presents the role of translation in a global society. The very notion of translation may be regarded in a dual way: it makes communication between cultures possible, but it may also reinforce an unequal power relationship between nations. Factually, not all languages and cultures are of equal power and status. Investigations of these power relations are necessary to this field. The authors attempt to elucidate how and why absolute domestication turns out to be the dominant strategy in news translation.

Ch. 2, ‘Globalization and translation’ (18–31), is devoted to globalization as a sociological phenomenon and its relevance to translation studies. The authors argue that the availability of global information sources (e.g. the World Wide Web) allows for information to overcome spatial barriers and promotes the centrality of knowledge. Some theorists have focused on the global circulation of material and non-material goods, showing its increased profusion and speed during the last few decades. The noted asymmetry between globalization and the production of knowledge and information is directly reflected in translation when examining the directionality of global information flows.

In Ch. 3, ‘Globalization and news: The role of the news agencies in historical perspective’ (32–55), the authors review the function of the media in popularizing images of simultaneity. This influence has been present since the first modern newspapers appeared in mass circulation. News agencies later developed into powerful agents of globalization in the late twentieth century through the incorporation of written, oral, and audio-visual modes of human communication due to technological progress and computer-aided innovations. .

In news practice, translation is not regarded to be separate from other journalistic tasks and is usually performed by a news editor. Ch. 4 ‘Translation in global news agencies’ (56–73) shows how the organization of news agencies has changed to take on a more global presence. The editor has specific skills for providing such translations so as to facilitate communication between different linguistic and cultural communities. Editorial duties now include changing titles and leads, eliminating unnecessary information and adding important cultural information to suit the interests of both local and global audiences.

This theoretical and historical consideration is followed by case analyses. Ch. 5, ‘Journalism and translation: Practices, strategies and values in the news agencies (74–94), examines existing practices and specific strategies as applied in the regional headquarters of Agence France-Presse and Inter Press Service for Latin America in Montevideo. Ch. 6, ‘Reading translated news: An analysis of agency texts’ (95–116), focuses on textual analysis in order to present the nature of translation in news agencies.

The authors question the truthfulness of global news agencies in Ch. 7, ‘Translation and trust’ (117–32). In addition to different textual and communicative conventions, within each country there are enormous divergences of style and expectations that are driven by market and political prospects. The authors investigate the extent to which textual manipulation occurs in the target culture.

‘Appendix: The languages of global news’ (133–47) contains the coverage (e.g. main presentations, discussions, and feedback) of an international symposium on globalization, linguistic difference, and translation in the production of news, held at the University of Warwick in 2004. The book also includes extensive notes, a substantial bibliography, and an index.

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

Assessment and testing, key notions in translation and interpreting studies, face a range of dilemmas concerning the criteria of equivalence/adequacy, reader response, textual variables, and discourse functions. The present collection of papers, published under the auspices of the American Translators Association, aims at contributing to this field of inquiry. It consists of the editors’ introductory chapter, ‘Introduction: Testing and assessment in translation and interpreting studies: A call for dialogue between research and practice’ (1-10), and three parts that cover eleven articles.

Part 1 is entitled ‘The development of assessment instruments: Theoretical appliations’,  Reviewing literature from translation studies, testing, and second language acquisition, Claudia V. Angelelli in Ch. 2, ‘Using a rubric to assess translation ability: Define the construct’ (13–47), explores sub-components of a rubric to examine the construct of translation competence. In Ch. 3, ‘Moving beyond words in assessing mediated interaction: Measuring interactional competence in healthcare settings’ (49–70), Holly E. Jacobson focuses on the assessment of the community interpreter’s performance in US healthcare environments. The author studies discursive competence in the framework of interactional sociolinguistics and conversation analysis, and proposes the use of analytic rubrics for assessing interactional competence.

In Part 2, ‘The development of assessment instruments: Empirical approaches’, the researchers analyze empirical methods for developing assessment instruments. In Ch. 3, ‘The perks of norm-referenced translation evaluation’ (73–93), June Eyckmans, Philippe Anckaert, and Winibert Segers have elaborated a norm-referenced method for translation assessment that is independent of subjective conditional  judgments about a source text and oriented at identifying those text fragments that have discriminatory power. Elisabet Tiselius, in Ch. 4, ‘Revisiting Carroll’s scales’ (95–121), presents the assessment of interpreting through the application of scales originally designed by John B. Caroll for machine translation. Mira Kim discusses how meaning-oriented criteria, which are devised using a text analysis approach based on systemic functional linguistics, are applied for assessment in teaching English to Korean translation in Ch. 5, ‘Meaning-oriented assessment of translations: SFL and its application to formative assessment’ (123–57). Assessment tools on the basis of comparable corpora are suggested by Brian James Baer and Tatyana Bystrova-McIntyre in Ch. 6, ‘Assessing cohesion: Developing assessment tools on the basis of comparable corpora’ (159–83). In this chapter, the authors uncover three features of textual cohesion (e.g. punctuation, sentencing, and paragraphing) that can encourage novice translators to consider the target text in the global way, including various traits above and beyond lexis. Keiran Dunne, in Ch. 7, ‘Assessing software localization: For a valid approach’ (185–222), argues that localization quality assessment should focus less on the localized software and more on the customer’s preferences and expectations. .

Part 3, ‘Professional certification: Lessons from case studies’, deals with professional certification. In Ch. 8, ‘The predictive validity of admission tests for interpreting courses in Europe: A case study’ (225–45), Šárka Timarová and Harry Ungoed-Thomas discuss general principles of admission testing, emphasizing its predictive validity measuring aptitude. The authors argue that ideally, tests should be based on evidence-based research rather than solely the intuition and interpretation of the educator. Karen Bontempo and Jemina Napier surveyed sign language interpreters on their perceptions of the efficacy of interpreter education in Australia in Ch. 9, ‘Getting it right from the start: Program admission testing of signed language interpreters’ (247–95). Based upon their findings, the authors designed an admission test to include elements that are considered to be potentially predictive of performance. The final two chapters,  Ch. 9, ‘Standards as critical success factors in assessment: Certifying social interpreters in Flanders, Belgium’ (297–329) by Hildegard Vermeiren, Jan Van Gucht, and Leentje De Bontridder, and Ch. 10, ‘Assessing ASL-English interpreters: The Canadian model of national certification’ (331–76) by Debra Russell and Karen Malcolm,  highlight professional procedures for assessment and certification.

Two indices of authors and of subjects end this substantial book. A systematic response to the above-mentioned issues from teachers, practitioners, and researchers will advance the discussion to much higher theoretical understanding.

Reviewed by Karen Steffen Chung, National Taiwan University

This book investigates whether the plural forms of brains (e.g. She’s got the brains in the family.) and works (e.g. The works of my watch were all gummed up.) are inflectional forms of the singular brain and work. It seems that the answer is anything but obvious. What follows is a proposal of a universal basis for examining linguistic number.

In Part 1, entitled ‘A typology of lexical plurals’, Paolo Acquaviva reviews general properties of lexical plurals. A distinguishes lexical plurals from inflectional plurals in Ch. 2, ‘Varieties of non-inflectional plurals’ (11–48). First, he outlines three things lexical plurals are not: irregular plurals (e.g. children), semantically irregular plurals, (e.g. brothers or brethren), and pluralia tantum (i.e. words that exist only in the plural, such as clothes). The author further notes that lexical, as opposed to inflectional, plurals in general lack obligatoriness, generality, determinism, and semantic opacity. In Ch. 3, ‘Plurals and morphological lexicality’ (49–78), he argues that number is an inherent, and not context-determined, characteristic of every number-inflected noun. That is, number is a gradient rather than absolute phenomenon because some plurals are more lexicalized than others. Ch. 4, ‘The meaning of lexical plurality’ (79–120), discusses the semantic property of lexical plurals. A cites the existence of singularia tantum and pluralia tantum forms to show that nouns often do not have the full range of the number values made available by the grammar.

Part 2, ‘Four case studies’, examines exceptional plural marking in four languages: Italian, Irish, Arabic, and Breton. In Ch. 5, ‘Italian irregular plurals in -a’ (123–61), A analyzes the case of plural -a as opposed to -i marking in Italian. For example, the singular osso ‘bone’ has two plural forms: ossi ‘bones (disconnected)’ and ossa ‘bones (whole/connected)’. In this case, it seems as though the –i plural means the object should be viewed as independent components whereas the -a plural, an idiosyncratic lexical plural, functions as a collective plural. Ch. 6, ‘Irish counting plurals’ (162–94), focuses on plural nouns that are used after numbers three to ten. In Ch. 7, ‘Arabic broken plurals’ (195–233), A concludes that while somehow lexical due to their unpredictability, broken plurals are entirely within the inflectional number system. Ch. 8, ‘The system of Breton plural nouns’ (234–65), examines the inflectional and derivational plurals in Breton which may share the same morphological realization (235). One important conclusion of this work is that in many cases, ‘…stem-internal plurality has a privileged relation with non-canonical readings that are sensitive to the meaning of the lexical base’ (269).

Lexical plurals is a deep, systematic, and thorough treatment of plural marking in languages. It is refreshingly free of cumbersome formalisms and provides plenty of relevant data. Following A’s approach, some significant parts of linguistic number will be non-deterministic and will fall into multiple linguistic categories (i.e. lexical, morphological, or syntactic), possibly creating a new sub-area of morphology. His results should certainly be incorporated into future works on morphology and number. This rich resource will be of particular interest to anyone working on linguistic number, while also being an exemplary model of carefully constructed and persuasive linguistic argument.

Reviewed by Daniel W. Hieber, Rosetta Stone

The newest edition of George Yule’s widely-used textbook remains an excellent introduction to linguistics. In contrast to the data-driven, hands-on approach of such texts as Language files (Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 2007), this book focuses on the conceptual. Chapters are typically organized around important terminology, so that each term receives its own section, and the table of contents resembles a vocabulary list. Y briefly explains each concept without too much detail, and his writing is lucid, concise, and easy to read.

The book begins with chapters on language origins (Ch. 1) and primate communication (Ch. 2), including a discussion of the defining properties of language. Y then moves into the core of linguistics: phonetics (Ch. 3), phonology (Ch. 4), morphology (Ch. 6), syntax (Ch. 8), semantics (Ch. 9), and pragmatics (Ch. 10). He includes chapters on prescriptivism and traditional grammar (Ch. 7) and word-formation and neologisms (Ch. 5).

The second half of the book covers other major subfields in linguistics, including discourse analysis (Ch. 11), neurolinguistics (Ch. 12), first and second language acquisition (Chs. 13–14), sign language (Ch. 15), orthography (Ch. 16), and diachronic linguistics (Ch. 17). Coverage of sociolinguistics includes separate chapters on regional variation (Ch. 18) and social variation (Ch. 19), and the final chapter discusses language, culture, and linguistic relativity (Ch. 20). Each chapter includes study questions, tasks, discussion topics, and topically arranged lists of sources for further reading.

This edition includes a number of improvements, most notably replacing the appendix with a freely downloadable ninety-seven-page online study guide that gives interesting in-depth answers to all of the study questions and tasks in the book, with fully-cited sources. The website also includes all figures and illustrations, which most instructors should find useful.

This edition is better organized than its predecessors into sections and subsections, and it gives greater emphasis to data analysis. There are twenty new sections and fifty new end-of-chapter tasks, including expanded discussions of language origins, text messaging, and kinship terminology. The expanded tasks are an excellent launching point for further investigation and term papers, challenging the student to consult outside sources and conduct independent research.

Lamentably, this edition lacks any discussion of linguistic typology or language endangerment, and the chapter on syntax limits itself to phrase structure rules and basic generative syntax. Interestingly, Ch. 2 fails to discuss recursion as a property of language. Finally, by avoiding broader theoretical questions (e.g. do language universals exist?), the book remains practical enough for an introductory class.

Overall, this textbook is an excellent overview of the central topics in linguistics and how linguists study language, and this edition is a notable improvement over previous ones. The student will come away from it with a solid understanding of basic linguistic terminology and an appreciation for the breadth of topics that linguistics has to offer.

Reviewed by Ilya Yakubovich, Moscow State University

The Iguvine Tablets (Tabulae Iguvinae), the largest cache of extant Umbrian texts, constitute our main source of knowledge of the Umbrian language, a member of the Italic group of the Indo-European language family. Altogether nine tablets, two now lost, were found in the Umbrian town of Gubbio (ancient Iguvium) in 1444. They deal with the administration of the local pagan cults in the third through first centuries BC. The decipherment of the Iguvine tablets began easily enough thanks to the relatively close relationship between Umbrian and Latin, but many passages still have not been fully elucidated. By far the most obscure are Tablets 3 and 4, which contain a continuous set of instructions for the rites of the deities Puemun and Vesuna. The main purpose of this book is to treat these tablets anew using combinatory and etymological methods and ritual comparisons. Michael Weiss, who combines thorough training in comparative Indo-European linguistics with expertise in Latin philology, is ideally suited to this task.

The book is organized like a detective story. The bulk of it (29–431) is divided into sections that follow the sequence of ritual acts prescribed in Tablets 3 and 4. The treatment of each act begins with a provisional translation of the corresponding passage that leaves items of disputed meaning untranslated. W then addresses the conflicting viewpoints of earlier scholars and discusses his preference for one of the interpretations or suggests his own solution. The discussion of particularly complicated philological problems is relegated to a series of excurses. A cohesive translation of Tablets 3 and 4 reflecting W’s interpretation is provided only at the end (433–39), which readers are invited to compare with the Latin translation of Giacomo Devoto (439–41). W concludes with a brief exposition of his philological findings (441–43).

This book is intended for Indo-Europeanists and classical philologists. Most professional readers will find it most helpful to read it not as a mystery story but as a textual edition, beginning with W’s close reading of Tables 3 and 4 and turning to the preceding essays for philological commentary. An alternative strategy fitting for some Indo-Europeanists would be to browse through the detailed indices and turn to the essays for items of interest. For example, scholars working on Hittite may find the discussion useful of the possible relationship between Umbrian supa ‘intestines’ and Hittite suppi– ‘sacred’, ^UZUsuppa ‘taboo-meat’. Supporting W’s skepticism towards this etymology is new evidence that Hitt. suppi– is a non-Indo-European loanword (Thomas Zehnder, Die hethitischen Frauennamen, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2010, 5–8).