Reviewed by Sandra Cristina Becker, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Bringing together work from the most recent investigations on cognitive linguistics, a team of leading experts explores language processing, sharing the view that mental concepts provide the base of categorization and that language reflects patterns of thought and offers a window to cognitive function. Divided into three thematic parts, this volume pins down correspondences between language and cognition within this nonformalist paradigm.

Following a brief introduction by the editor, ‘Cultural models and conceptual mappings’ are addressed in Part 1. Gary B. Palmer draws attention to cultural linguistics to highlight the governing role played by ‘scenarios’ (including discourse scenarios) in categorization. Palmer relies on case studies on grammatical voice and emotion language in Tagalog to deal with the manifestation of agency or the lack of it. Reporting his finding on Shona noun classifiers, the author draws upon ‘polycentric category’ to describe a network of salient categories and their respective chains. Ch. 3, ‘Purple persuasion’, is an ingenious account on conceptual integration by Seana Coulson and Todd Oakley. The authors analyze how speakers exploit elements of blending in two examples of persuasive discourse: one is an e-mail message asking voters to take a stand; the other consists of an appeal for monetary donations, as the pun in its title suggests. The intertwining of human actions and conceptual blends are richly described. Teenie Matlock provides a sharp understanding of cognitive processes underlying figurative uses of motion verbs. The so-called fictive motion sentences were depicted by participants in three different studies. Results pointed to the dynamic and reflective nature of human perception and actions in the world. In Ch. 5, June Luchjenbroers deftly integrates into her research the dimensions of physical space and the many mental spaces required in discourse. The author explores the dynamics of the ‘comfort zone’ and its relevance to the speaker’s navigation through mental spaces.

Part 2 looks at ‘Computational models and conceptual mappings’. Ping Li’s ‘In search of meaning: The acquisition of semantic structure and morphological systems’ presents some insights into the comprehension of Whorf’s classic puzzle involving cryptotypes and sheds some light on the acquisition of semantic structures. Joost Schilperoord and Arie Verhagen discuss the cognitive status of linguistic entities and base their assumptions on evidence from actual language in Ch. 7. They put conceptual structure to the test in explaining linguistic communication. Detailed treatment is given to word recognition of New Zealand English in Paul Warren’s outstanding investigation. EAR/AIR diphthongs are taken under consideration to describe and draw an elaborated picture of sound merger processes.

Part 3 deals with ‘Linguistic components and conceptual mappings’. Cliff Goddard’s significant contribution turns to the relevance of verbal explanation and the natural semantic metalanguage (NSM) approach for cognitive-linguistics-driven studies in Ch. 9. Categorization is carefully explored and a new model is proposed by Robin Turner. In Ch. 10 Turner clarifies the striking question between the linguistic and cultural differences between man and woman in Turkish. Iraide Ibarretxe-Antuñano chooses tactile verbs to richly illustrate a number of points raised on meaning extension in Ch. 11. She analyses the phenomenon of polysemy in English, Basque, and Spanish through the lenses of lexicalization patterns. In Ch. 12, Maarten Lemmens turns to lexical causatives highlighting the role of experience on the conceptualization process of these entities. He not only presents interesting findings but also proposes new directions for research on transitive and ergative constructions. Satoshi Uehara’s study focuses on predicates in Japanese and gives a semantic account for their grammatical behavior in Ch. 13. David Gough uses perception organization and connectionism to explain the structure of the Xhosa verbal system. Ch. 15 offers Ming-Ming Pu’s investigation of some narratives in different languages and reveals determinant underlying cognitive activities that have a crucial role on discourse processing.

As a whole, this volume manages to raise interesting research questions and shed some light on intriguing aspects of language. It also presents a fascinating picture of cognitive linguistics that can be considered quite a new enterprise. More should be done to set the stage for a major shift in the direction of understanding language within this paradigm. This volume definitely advances this new theory and paves the way to further investigations.

Reviewed by Scott Kiesling, University of Pittsburgh

This volume presents a study of epistemic markers used in a subset of the Santa Barbara corpus of spoken American English. Elise Kärkkäinen’s goals are to review the literature of stance taking in ‘naturally-occurring’ (4) conversations and to ‘highlight the essentially interactive nature of stance-taking’ (5) in American English. The first goal, the topic of Ch. 2, is nicely achieved. Although K could have cast her net wider into the epistemicity literature, she very wisely limited her review to studies relevant to interaction.

Indeed, one tension that K fights is the reification of stance as a preexisting category rather than a category that arises in conversation. After discussing the intonational unit (IU) in Ch. 3, K presents her quantitative analyses in Ch. 4, obtained through a valuable and carefully-constructed study (although based on a limited geographic range—west of the Rockies—and a small group of fifteen speakers). She finds that stance is usually indicated preceding the assertion it marks, and that ‘stance-taking can be viewed as highly regular and routinized’ (35). The latter claim applies to the types of stance found in the data, although the data do not conform to K’s interpretation: while I think is used more than any other marker, the analysis of ‘highly regular and routinized’ (35) is highly relative. K shows that I think is used for nine percent of the total tokens, while there are at least seventy-seven token types in the 503 tokens in her data (37). I do not interpret this as highly routinized but rather as extremely varied. In any case, K needs to define routinized and compare her findings to those of another language to show that this is a ‘limited set of items’ (37). The routinization of stance placement is more convincing: the majority of instances are in IU-internal position. However, it is not clear that this is an interactional constraint or one imposed by English syntax. (It might be argued either way, although K plays down the possible syntactic constraints.)

Ch. 5 moves to a study of how stance-taking is an interactive activity: ‘displaying stance is thus engendered by what happens […] in prior discourse’ (105). This is a welcome and important step that shows both the link between interpersonal and epistemic stance and that stance is not only (even rarely) limited to the expression of the state of knowledge in the speaker’s head. The analyses are nicely done, and K manages to make some interesting interactional generalizations about how I think is used by speakers in interaction. Ch. 6 summarizes K’s study and argues for more work in interactional linguistics.

This is a valuable work that anyone studying stance or epistemicity should examine, for both its method and findings, especially those on the interactional nature and interpersonal function of stance-taking.

Reviewed by Sandra Cristina Becker, Federal University of Minas Gerais

Considered a modern school of linguistic thought, cognitive linguistics (CL) is firmly rooted in two pillars: the generalization commitment and the cognitive commitment. The first involves general principles that are responsible for all aspects of human language, and the latter establishes that language and linguistic organization reflect cognitive principles. Rejecting the claim that there is a distinct language module, cognitive linguists believe that language is not an autonomous cognitive faculty and that knowledge of language emerges from language use. In order to minimize the lack of methodological principles underpinning some studies in CL, theoretical research focused on methodological approaches have been carried out. While cognitive semantics is concerned with investigating conceptual structure and processes of conceptualization, grammar-based studies are centered on studying the language system itself, highlighting its conceptual organization.

This volume is a highly relevant collection of nine articles on one of the central themes within CL: corpus linguistics. In methodological terms, most of the papers pertain to the quantitative sphere. In the opening chapter, Stefan Th. Gries does a good job of setting the scene for the entire book. In his solid introduction he not only clarifies the assumptions that CL and functional linguistics have in common but also singles out the parameters considered in corpus-driven investigations.

In the first article Dagmar Divjak turns to Russian near-synonymous verbs to draw a lucid basis for a network representation, and sheds some light on the phenomenon of categorization. ‘Corpus-based methods and cognitive semantics: The many senses of to run’, by Gries, addresses the issue of prototype identification and polysemy. Although the corpus presented was not large enough, it was sufficient for Gries to wittily demonstrate the possible uses of a lexeme, as well as what makes a database reliable for sense analysis. Stefanie Wulff’s ‘Go-V vs. Go-and-V in English: A case of constructional synonymy’ aims to account for the substantial difference between these two constructions. It must be said that one of the most important achievements of this study was the methodological points raised as it delineates a model for research on polysemy. Beate Hampe and Doris Schönefeld’s bright contribution offers interesting evidence on cognitive systems underlying ‘creative’ constructions. As the authors state, their conclusions ‘cannot be drawn on the basis of corpus data alone’ (150), since experimental evidence would hopefully corroborate their findings.

Gaëtanelle Gilquin’s ‘The place of prototypicality in corpus linguistics: Causation in the hot seat’ provides a detailed account of prototypical causation. Willem Hollmann’s paper accounts for passivization of English periphrastic causatives, delineating some of their aspects within the implicational universals proposal. Different degrees of transitivity are addressed by John Newman and Sally Rice. According to them, inflected verb forms have their own semantic and constructional properties, and ‘inflectional island’ is a relevant notion to explain such properties.

Posture verbs and their causative counterparts are ingeniously explored by Maarten Lemmens. Using extensive corpus material, Lemmens identified the degree of productivity of these verbs as well as spatial relationships encoded by language. Schönefeld’s insightful and original study deals with a number of collocations to delineate construal operations that are related to image schemas.

All in all, Corpora in cognitive linguistics represents a broad spectrum of interests. The volume’s value is enhanced by excellent analyses that will certainly contribute to the field and stimulate new research. Undoubtedly, it deserves to be placed on the reading list of all who are interested in cognitive linguistics and methodological approaches.

Reviewed by Dustin De Felice, University of South Florida

The editors of this volume have compiled selected papers on advancedness in foreign language competence, taken from the 2005 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (GURT). The book is divided into three themes: cognitive approaches, descriptive and instructional considerations, and the role of assessment. In the introductory chapter, ‘Locating the advanced learner in theory, research, and educational practice: An introduction’ (Ch. 1, 1–16), Heidi Byrnes outlines the notion of advancedness and the current state of the field in the US.

Chs. 2–6 cover the theme of cognitive approaches. In Ch. 2, ‘The conceptual basis of grammatical structure’ (17–39), Ronald Langacker focuses on language as meaning, while Christiane von Stutterheim and Mary Carroll focus on language features in selecting, organizing, and expressing relevant information during the process of creating coherent text in Ch. 3, ‘The impact of grammatical temporal categories on ultimate attainment in L2 learning’ (40–53). In Ch. 4, ‘Reorganizing principles of information structure in advanced L2s: French and German learners of English’ (54–73), Mary Carroll and Monique Lambert explore the set of grammaticized and structural features that organize and structure the languages studied. Bergljot Behrens examines ‘marked’ phenomena to pinpoint the nature and location of knowledge conceptualization in Ch. 5, ‘Language-based processing in advanced L2 production and translation: An exploratory study’ (74–86). Susan Strauss, in ‘Learning and teaching grammar through patterns of conceptualization: The case of (advanced) Korean’ (Ch. 6, 87–104), focuses on meaning-making and the process learners use to make meaning-driven choices. Aneta Pavlenko explores narrative structure through two areas—degree and type of evaluation/elaboration and type of forms of cohesion—in Ch. 7, ‘Narrative competence in a second language’ (105–17).

The second theme, descriptive and instructional considerations, is covered in Chs. 8–10. In ‘Lexical inferencing in L1 and L2: Implications for vocabulary instruction and learning at advanced levels’ (Ch. 8, 118–35), T. Sima Paribakht and Marjorie Wesche examine what makes a learner successful at lexical inferencing in specialized content areas. Susanne Rinner and Astrid Weigert, in ‘From sports to the EU economy: Integrating curricula through genre-based content courses’ (Ch. 9, 136–51), offer an example of overcoming the division between content and language using literacy and genre. Rebekha Abbuhl focuses on the ability of a learner to function in a professional setting in Ch. 10, ‘Hedging and boosting in advanced-level L2 legal writing: The effect of instruction and feedback’.

In the final chapters, assessment and its role complete this treatment of advancedness. In Ch. 11, ‘Assessing advanced foreign language learning and learners: From measurement constructs to educational uses’ (167–87), John Norris focuses on two areas of assessment: its role in research and in language programs. Elana Shohamy offers a list of characteristics for advancedness that leads to advanced abilities that can be assessed in ‘Rethinking assessment for advanced language proficiency’ (Ch. 12, 188–208).

This book succeeds in promoting the cause of the study of advanced learning here in the US. and furthers the current impetus on the focus in advancedness.

Reviewed by Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus

In this volume, John te Velde pursues a theory of coordination within the minimalist program that incorporates recent theoretical advances and tools. Based primarily on data from English, German, and Dutch, the author offers interesting and novel accounts of symmetries and asymmetries that can be observed in coordination phenomena, including case assignment, number agreement, ellipsis, and the role and nature of the parallelism requirement in general. This approach is strictly derivational in nature (integrated within the so-called phase theory of minimalism), and the author develops computational processes that incorporate the minimalist building blocks mentioned in the book’s subtitle.

Ch. 1 provides a detailed ‘Outline of the study’ (1–12). ‘Features and matching in coordination’ (13–88) makes up Ch. 2, which presents an overview of the author’s account and the empirical issues involved. The major claims addressed in this study are that (i) the operations Select (from the lexicon) and Merge (into phrase structure) are involved in building coordinate structures and (ii) the operation Copy (of morpho-syntactic or semantic features) is responsible for observed symmetries, whereas failure of the application of the operation Copy (at specific points in the derivation) results in particular asymmetries.

In Ch. 3, ‘Deriving coordinate structures’ (89–178), the author addresses and accounts for symmetries and asymmetries in coordination. He extends this approach to coordinate ellipsis in Ch. 4, ‘Deriving coordinate ellipsis’ (179–282). Utilizing the notion of multiple spell-out (as applied to phases), which first applies to conjuncts in coordinated ellipsis structures followed by subsequent conjuncts linear-successively, the author argues persuasively that conjuncts form a phase (in the relevant technical sense) and thus serve as the relevant unit for the application of spell-out. The short conclusion, Ch. 5 ‘Coordinate ellipsis and the structure of West Germanic’ (283–316), addresses a more finely articulated left periphery for German that contains (at least) two projections, one headed by the complementizer (C) and the other by a separate topic (head Top). Combining several different strands of recent research, the author assumes that German has an underlying object-verb order and that the subject remains within the inflection phrase (IP; the canonical subject position, i.e. the specifier of the tense phrase [SpecTP]).

The book also contains more than forty pages of endnotes in addition to the references, an appendix, a name index, and a subject index. Although the book has a nice visual presentation, the author’s writing style is certainly dense. The lack of both roadmaps for the structure of the book and any background on minimalist theorizing will probably make the volume difficult to penetrate for most people not dedicated to (and knowledgeable in) either coordination or minimalism.

Reviewed by Kleanthes K. Grohmann, University of Cyprus

As the preface to this eclectic collection clarifies, this volume is the product of a Mind-Brain Circle organized at Aarhus University (which the editors were affiliated with at the time). The articles reach considerably beyond language and linguistics, as becomes evident from Anjum P. Saleemi’s ‘Introduction: The enigma of unification’. The volume is a mix of reprinted articles by some of the world’s leading voices in mind-brain studies and original contributions from other, mostly local, researchers.

The articles can be categorized into two groups. The first group of contributions includes articles by authors who are already well known. Noam Chomsky contributes two articles ‘Language and mind: Current thoughts on ancient problems’, which originally appeared in 1997, and ‘Language and the brain’, from 2001. The article on ‘Consciousness’ by John R. Searle dates from 2000, and Steven Pinker’s article ‘Reverse-engineering the psyche’, from his 1997 book How the mind works (New York: W. W. Norton & Company), is reprinted here as well. Martin Atkinson expresses his ‘Minimalist visions’ to a (possibly) larger audience than the original 2000 edition (Essex working papers 34, Colchester, UK: University of Essex).

The second group of contributions includes work by the editors and local contributors. ‘On pain of irrationality: Refuting relativistic challenges to the unifiability of knowledge’ by Anjum P. Saleemi builds on the theme of his introduction: unification across multiple levels of reality. Ocke-Schwen Bohn (whose paper is mysteriously not included in the table of contents) wishes ‘A fond farewell to the critical period hypothesis for non-primary language acquisition’. Albert Gjedde’s contribution ‘Subjectivity and the self: The neurobiology of consciousness’ enriches John R. Searle’s philosophical concerns on the study of consciousness in addition to some neurobiological considerations.

Dominic Rainsford, a local contributor and the former general editor of the Aarhus Dolphin-series, discusses ‘Literary language and the scientific description of consciousness’. In his ‘Biology, culture and the emergence and elaboration of symbolization’, Chris Sinha advocates the contribution of culture to human cognition. Finally, considering intricacies of the economic part of social complexity, Jamsheed Shorish, provides ‘A simple vocabulary for planning and deliberation: Risk, complexity and Knightian uncertainty’.

In sum, this is at first glance perhaps a strange collection of articles dealing with quite different themes ranging from consciousness and language to complex social structures. That said, in its totality, the volume turns out to be a quite interesting contribution to the study of the human mind/brain and beyond. The articles nicely connect philosophical, economical, psychological, and literary perspectives on issues many linguists have been concerned with for some time.

Reviewed by Bojana Petrić, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

Greg Myers’ fourth book deals with expressions of opinion in group discussions and broadcast media events. In Ch. 1 (1–21), M introduces this theme by pointing to paradoxical aspects of opinion: opinions are both private and public, consistent and contradictory, local and global, individual and shared, and while no one would want to be seen as having no opinion about an issue, opinions are considered inferior to facts, yet facts can be represented as opinions and vice versa.

Chs. 2–4 present analytical and methodological approaches to exploring expressions of opinion in group discussions. Ch. 2 (22–46) overviews a range of frameworks by providing analyses of a focus group excerpt from the perspectives of (i) conversation analysis; (ii) the categories participants use in the discussion; (iii) participant roles; (iv) linguistic analysis of discourse markers, politeness, pronouns, and reported speech; and (v) rhetorical analysis focusing on the participants’ use of commonplaces to frame arguments. In Ch. 3 (47–66), using the framework of the ethnography of communication, M compares focus group discussions to other types of group discussions (e.g. classroom and dinner table discussions as well as business meetings) and analyzes their structural elements, such as the moderator’s opening and prompts, participants’ introductions, and the closing. Ch. 4 (67–88) deals with institutions that study public opinion and presents two perspectives: cognitive, which sees opinions as individual; and social, which regards opinions as interactive. M supports the social perspective, arguing that ‘all expressions of opinion begin in interactions’ (71).

Chs. 5–8 explore how opinions are expressed in focus group discussions by analyzing topics (Ch. 5), agreement and disagreement (Ch. 6), reported speech (Ch. 7), and the notion of expertise (Ch. 8). In Ch. 5 (89–111), M argues for studying topic boundaries in group discussions rather than topical content and analyzes how topics are opened, acknowledged, interpreted, rejected, changed, closed, and reopened by the moderator and focus group participants. Ch. 6 (112–33) investigates different ways in which participants express agreement and disagreement both among themselves and with the prompts offered by the moderator. Ch. 7 (134–56) looks at forms, signals, and functions of reported speech in expressing one’s own and others’ opinions in group discussions, while Ch. 8 (157–78) explores the ways in which participants talk about experts as well as how they talk as experts. M warns that researchers should not take individual statements out of context as expressions of opinion, as they may in fact be rhetorical statements leading to opinions (e.g. concession to the previous speaker preceding an expression of disagreement) or quotations of others’ opinions who the speaker does not necessarily agree with. He argues that opinion must be analyzed in the context of previous turns—that is, in the social interaction within which it is embedded.

The following two chapters analyze expressions of opinion in two types of media events: phone-ins on radio programs and vox pop (i.e. man on the street) television interviews. In Ch. 9 (179–202), M stresses that, despite the asymmetry between the host and the caller in the phone-in interview, this media event is a result of their cooperation, produced for the overhearing audience who participates in the ‘para-social interaction’ (184). M’s analysis of vox pop interviews (Ch. 10, 203–22) focuses on the ways the media categorize people to construct the public. The concluding chapter (Ch. 11, 223–34) summarizes the main points of the book: that expressing an opinion is an act in words; that opinions are expressed in interaction; and that opinions are packaged, mediated, and intertextual.

This highly readable book will be of interest to media scholars and linguists, especially sociolinguists and discourse analysts. Particularly valuable are the detailed transcript analyses, which will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Reviewed by Bojana Petrić, Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest, Hungary

In this book, Ken Hyland critically reviews the concept of metadiscourse and presents a new, theoretically sound, and analytically powerful metadiscourse model, based on the social view of writing. H argues that metadiscourse, defined as ‘the ways writers refer to the text, the writer or the reader’ (48), is essentially interpersonal and interactional and should therefore be viewed primarily as a social act.

The book is divided into three sections. Section 1, which consists of three chapters, provides the theoretical foundations for the rest of the book. H first clarifies the concept of metadiscourse and traces its origins, which he sees in the attempts to reestablish a focus on the neglected social aspects of language use (Ch. 1, 3–15). Ch. 2 (16–36) provides a critical overview of previous conceptualizations and classifications of metadiscourse, which is followed by H’s proposal for a new metadiscourse model (Ch. 3, 37–60). H argues that metadiscourse is not a linguistic but rather a rhetorical and pragmatic phenomenon, which covers ‘the self-reflective expressions used to negotiate interactional meanings in a text’ (37). His model rests on three principles: (i) metadiscourse is distinct from propositional aspects of discourse, (ii) it expresses writer-reader interactions, and (iii) it distinguishes reference internal to the text from external relations. H classifies metadiscourse into interactive, which helps organize the text (e.g. transitions), and interactional, which covers expressions of stance and engagement (e.g. hedges). Throughout this section, H provides numerous examples to illustrate the discussion. Particularly useful is the analysis of metadiscourse in postgraduate dissertations in six academic disciplines, which shows how the model can be applied in practice.

Section 2 presents applications of metadiscourse in rhetoric (Ch. 4, 63–86), genre (Ch. 5, 87–112), culture (Ch. 6, 113–37), and community (Ch. 7, 138–71). Ch. 4 analyzes the use of metadiscourse for persuasion, taking examples from Charles Darwin’s On the origin of species and company annual reports, while Ch. 5 focuses on generic variation by analyzing metadiscourse in research papers, popular science texts, and textbooks. In Ch. 6, H examines metadiscourse across languages, drawing on contrastive rhetoric research involving English and a number of other languages. Ch. 7 investigates variation in metadiscourse across disciplinary discourse communities, drawing on H’s earlier comparative study of metadiscourse in eight academic disciplines. In these four chapters, H reviews an impressive range of studies, illustrating what insights metadiscourse—used as a tool for the study of texts—can provide into various aspects of communication in writing.

The two chapters in the last section of the book deal with pedagogical applications of metadiscourse and directions for further research. Teachers of English will find the practical principles and strategies for metadiscourse instruction especially useful (Ch. 8, 175–93). The final chapter succinctly summarizes the book’s main arguments and points to issues for further research (Ch. 9, 194–203).

Clearly written, well argued, and richly illustrated with examples from a wide range of texts, this book will be of particular interest to discourse analysts, applied linguists, and teachers of English. The critical reevaluation of the concept of metadiscourse and the new metadiscourse model presented in this book make a significant step forward in the study of metadiscourse as well as in academic and professional writing.

Reviewed by Dejan Matić, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology

Yukaghir languages, conventionally classified as Palaeosiberian and often considered distantly related to the Uralic family, covered the greater part of northeast Siberia until the advent of the Russians in the seventeenth century. The number of languages or dialects spoken at that time is uncertain because most sources from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are unsystematic word lists. What is certain is that today only two languages remain: Kolyma and Tundra Yukaghir, each with less than one hundred speakers. Thus, the research contributing to their documentation is of utmost importance.

Irina Nikolaeva has carried out fieldwork among the Kolyma Yukaghirs over the past decades and published an important series of text collections (Fol’klor Jukagirov verkhnej Kolymy. Jakutsk: Jakutskij gosudarstvennyj universitet, 1988; Yukaghir texts. Szombathely: Berzsenyi Főiskola, 1997; Online Kolyma Yukaghir documentation. www.sgr.fi/yukaghir, 2004). This dictionary represents a step further in her work on this language family. According to the cover text, this volume has two purposes: first, to provide a comprehensive lexicographical description of all varieties of Yukaghir and second, to offer a reconstruction of the Proto-Yukaghir phonology and lexicon.

The book begins with an introduction (1–94), which offers far more than its name may suggest: in addition to general information on the structure of the dictionary, the introduction provides a rich philological discussion of the Yukaghir sources from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, a description of the sources for Modern Yukaghir languages, an excellent account of the Modern Yukaghir phonology, and an outline of the phonology of Proto-Yukaghir, established on the basis of internal reconstruction and external data.

The dictionary itself (95–463) has 2623 entries. Each entry is headed by a reconstructed Proto-Yukaghir root or word and, in case of loanwords, by a word from the source language. This heading is followed by Yukaghir lexical data. The data within each entry are systematized in groups that correspond to lexical items derived from the given Proto-Yukaghir root or word. Within a group, the data are cited in a fixed order: first Modern Kolyma Yukaghir, then Modern Tundra Yukaghir, and at the end attestations from older sources. In practice, this means that a lemma based on a reconstructed root may contain information on up to twenty lexical items derived from it, so that the overall number of lexemes in the dictionary can be safely estimated to lie between 10,000 and 15,000. Many entries are rounded off with a phonological, etymological, or historical commentary. The book closes with an index of meanings and a language index (464–500).

This dictionary is an ambitious and successful project. N has brilliantly mastered a number of difficult tasks, most of which bear one or another superlative epithet: this is the first Yukaghir dictionary to appear in English, it is the most comprehensive lexicographical account of Yukaghir that has ever been published, and it provides the first reconstruction of the Proto-Yukaghir lexicon. Especially impressive is its breadth of coverage: N uses practically all relevant historical and contemporary sources and covers all known varieties of Yukaghir.

This book will prove invaluable to those dealing with the diachronic and synchronic linguistics of Eurasia and to the small community of people working on Yukaghir. Although the latter would certainly have been happier if, in addition to the existing indices, a word index had been included, since it is not always easy to find, say, a Kolyma Yukaghir word by looking up the entries headed by reconstructed Proto-Yukaghir forms (e.g. ataqi ‘spider’ is found under *ataqi, but a:- ‘do’ is listed under *wa:-). This notwithstanding, N’s book is a major breakthrough in the field of Yukaghir and Eurasian studies.

Reviewed by Adrienne Lo, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Stance in talk examines the use of the particles ou and a in interactions between adult speakers of Mandarin from Taiwan. Through conversational analysis of both telephone conversations and videotaped interactions between friends, Ruey-Jiuan Wu demonstrates that although such particles may seem at first glance throwaway expressions, they are actually complex markers of epistemic and affective stance. Both particles, she argues, relate to contrasts in knowledge, expectation, or perspective between speakers. W’s fine-grained analysis reveals that each particle is composed of phonetically distinctive variants that convey different kinds of stance. Ou with low tone (i.e. unmarked ou), for example, occurs with statements that convey new information (news, in conversation analytic terms) and with statements in which the speaker situates the hearer as the authority over the information and seeks the hearer’s confirmation. On the other hand, ou with high tone or dynamic tone movement (i.e. marked ou) is associated with a heightened sense of newsworthiness and is reserved for extraordinary statements or statements in which the speaker is disagreeing, complaining, or teasing the hearer. Affectively speaking, ou occurs with light banter, joke sequences, solidarity, or concern for the hearer.

In contrast, a is associated with the stance that matters are different from how they normally are, or how they should be, and usually indicates stronger disaffiliation between the speaker and the hearer. When produced with a low tone, a usually attaches to interrogatives, whereas a with flat or slightly high tone generally occurs in noninterrogatives. W’s analysis teases apart the intricate ways in which each variant indicates the speaker’s stance towards her own and her interlocutor’s state of knowledge. For example, a with flat or slightly high tone can mark the stance that the person being informed should have known a fact in the first place, while a with low tone, in the context of an interrogative, occurs with questions or forms of repair that express doubt about the interlocutor’s point of view.

Stance in talk is a well-written book that will be of interest to scholars in East Asian linguistics, conversational analysis, and grammar and interaction. Although the analysis is complex, W’s clear writing style makes this volume accessible to scholars who are not specialists in conversational analysis. By demonstrating the intricate epistemic and affective positionings of self and other instantiated by the particles a and ou, W makes an important contribution to the understanding of the dynamics of stance and to the subtle ways in which attitudes towards knowledge are expressed in language.