http://linguistlist.org Latest Review Issues en-us Copyright 2008 The LINGUIST List linguist@linguistlist.org linguist@linguistlist.org http://backend.userland.com/rss Thu, 25 Feb 2016 21:00:02 EST 60 http://linguistlist.org/images/lllogo-large.png http://linguistlist.org http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-989.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-989.html Daria Dayter <coocho@gmail.com> Thu, 25 Feb 2016 14:00:28 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2729.html

EDITOR: Claudio Fantinuoli
EDITOR: Federico Zanettin
TITLE: New directions in corpus-based translation studies
SERIES TITLE: Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing
PUBLISHER: Language Science Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Daria Dayter, Universität Basel

Reviews Editor: Robert Arthur Cote

SUMMARY

This volume, entitled “New directions in corpus-based translation studies” and edited by Claudio Fantinuoli and Federico Zanettin, is a collection of six papers on different aspects of the corpus-based methodology in translation studies. The authors report on their own efforts within this relatively new field, which explains the focus on the know-how, custom-made corpus software, innovative annotation, and probing for new types of research questions. The book is based on the presentations from “Corpus-based translation studies”, a panel held during the 7th Congress of the European Society of Translation Studies in 2013. Its origin is evident throughout the collection, as most of the papers give detailed accounts of works-in-progress, concentrating on methodological decisions, rather than a systematic analysis or an overview of quantified results, which are promised to follow as the projects unfold. This is not to say that the collection is not a success. As anyone who works in corpus-based translation studies (CBTS) knows, technological solutions are often ad-hoc, and the type of research carried out is sometimes constrained by the tools available to the researcher. Even more importantly, corpus studies so far have mostly addressed staple questions related to counting and contrasting microlinguistic features with the aim of finding S- or T-universals (Chesterman 2004). Here, the authors attempt to explore less conventional territory armed with corpus tools (e.g. how translators form, reject and confirm hypotheses during the translation process, investigated with the help of a keystroke corpus in Serbina et al., this volume). The scope of investigation includes seven European languages: Basque, Dutch, German, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and English. Because of the innovative nature of the collection, it will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in the areas of translation and interpretation studies. It should also attract the attention of corpus linguists, for it demonstrates the potential applications of corpus methods in previously uncharted territory and covers new corpus design and corpus software.

The first chapter, “Creating and using multilingual corpora in translation studies” by Claudio Fantinuoli and Federico Zanettin, takes a welcome detour from the established format of an introduction to an edited volume. Instead of giving a summary of subsequent chapters, the editors identify the main issues in CBTS that appear in every contribution. These issues predictably lie in the areas of corpus design, annotation and alignment, and corpus analysis. In a terminological aside, the editors’ propose to solve the debate surrounding the terms “parallel/comparable corpus” by treating them as a function of corpus architecture. In that case, a parallel corpus is a corpus where “two or more components are aligned, that is, are subdivided into compositional and sequential units (of differing extent and nature) which are linked and can thus be retrieved as pairs (or triplets, etc.)” (p. 4). A comparable corpus, in turn, is a corpus whose components are compared on the basis of assumed similarity. The papers in this collection make use of both parallel and comparable corpora sometimes drawing in existing monolingual corpora to verify their results. The diversity of datasets and annotations (from automatically tagged to full manual tagging) finds a reflection in the range of analyses offered by the contributors, from theta theory to critical discourse analysis. Recognising the achievements of the volume, Fantinuoli and Zanettin call for “a stronger tie between technical expertise and sound methodological practice” (p. 9) to continue to move CBTS forward.

The second chapter, “Development of a keystroke logged translation corpus”, is written by Tatiana Serbina, Paula Niemietz, and Stella Neumann and focuses on the process of translation. To this end, Serbina et al. collected three sub-corpora in an experimental setting: an original English corpus of texts in popular physics and their translations into German by two distinct subject groups, professional translators and domain specialists. During the experiment, the Translog software recorded all the keystrokes and mouse clicks made by the translator and the length of pauses between them. Serbina et al. also designed a custom alignment tool that enabled them to first align the target keystrokes to tokens, and then align these to the alignment units consisting of the source-target token counterparts. The result was a richly annotated corpus that allowed the researchers to identify several intermediate products of translation, juxtapose them to the final version, and draw hypotheses about the thought process of the translator. In addition, the presence of the intermediate versions enabled the researchers to explain the mistakes in the final translation through the reasons other than lacking competence in the target language or simple typos. For example, an incorrect agreement marker on the indefinite article in the phrase “eine dünnes Blatt” is ascribed to the fact that the preceding version of the translation contained another noun phrase in the same position, namely “eine dünne Alufolie”, where the feminine form “dünne” had been the correct choice (p. 23). Serbina et al. conclude with an outlook to further steps in the project: expand the corpus and include eye-tracker data to complement the keystroke logs.

Chapter 3 by Effie Mouka, Ioannis E. Saridakis, and Angeliki Fotopoulou, “Racism goes to the movies: A corpus-driven study of cross-linguistic racist discourse annotation and translation analysis”, is based on the PhD project of the first author. Mouka et al. conducted critical discourse analysis of the translation choices made when translating racial slurs in subtitles of movies from English into Greek and Spanish. They used the categories from the Appraisal Theory – attitude, graduation, engagement – to describe each slur and to categorise the translation choice as mitigating the original, overtoning it, or maintaining the same force. The corpus on which the study is based consists of nine hours of film material annotated in ELAN and GATE platform. The four American and one British film that the authors chose were all feature films belonging to the drama genre, and the stories revolved around racism and interracial relations (p.42). Mouka et al. raise an important concern about the inherent multimodality of film data, and, especially, the shift in the mode of the message in the three sub-corpora. Although the original subtitles are text transcribed from an oral medium, the target subtitles are written. In addition to the subtitles corpus, the authors used enTenTen12, GkWaC, and esTenTen11 as reference corpora for English, Greek and Spanish. The findings, which reflect the cultural sensitivity towards heterophobic discourse that has developed in Greece and Spain as a result of their “first frontier” status in the recent influx of refugees, are said to demonstrate “the role of translation in the diachronic development of the sociolinguistic dimension of racism” (p. 65).

The fourth chapter in the collection is “Building a trilingual parallel corpus to analyse literary translations from German into Basque” by Naroa Zubillaga, Zuriñe Sanz, and Ibon Uribarri. Given the minority status of Basque, certain issues specific to this target language made the corpus compilation especially difficult. For example, it is rare to find a book translated directly from German into Basque without Spanish as a bridge language. In addition, there are very few translators who work with the German-Basque language pair, and until recently, no German-Basque dictionaries were even available (p.78). Zubillaga et al. explain that although they initially only created a Spanish subcorpus for the Basque target texts for which no direct translation was available, they currently plan to complement every German-Basque alignment pair with the Spanish text. The findings of translation research also underscore the special status of Basque. The interference of Spanish, the dominant language of the translators, makes itself known in the Basque translations in the form of literal translations of Spanish idioms. The standardising influence of Basque, a language which is rarely used outside of official domains, is evident in downtoning of offensive language. At the current stage, however, the authors see the creation of the parallel corpus and the accompanying tools as their main achievements. This impressive undertaking (the corpus is 5.5 mio words) involved the digitisation of hundreds of books. Tagging and aligning was done with the help of TRACE-Aligner, a program developed specifically for this corpus, which was followed by manual fine-tuning. The release of the corpus for general use has unfortunately been delayed indefinitely because of the inevitable copyright issues with the literary works.

Chapter 5 by Ekaterina Lapshinova-Koltunski, “Variation in translation: Evidence from corpora”, compares the end product of human and machine translations. Lapshinova-Koltunski extracted source English texts and their translations into German by professional translators from the CroCo corpus. She then supplemented this data with the translations by inexperienced human translators using computer aided tools and rule-based and statistical machine translations. The resulting material was tokenized, lemmatized, and tagged with part-of-speech information and segmented into syntactic chunks and sentences. To compare the different types of translation, the author resorts to the well-known features of translationese: explicitation, simplification, normalisation, and convergence. They are operationalized through a number of microlinguistic features that could be easily retrieved from the tagged corpus. For instance, simplification is measured through lexical density and type-token ratio, whereas explicitation is defined as the proportion of nominal phrases filled with pro-forms vs. full nominal phrases. Interestingly, the translation produced by the rule-based system was so poor that the inclusion of these results into overall discussion is almost nonsensical. Overall, Lapshinova-Koltunski finds that the feature of convergence is the only one visible in all the texts, and it shows no significant variation among translation methods. As the editors remark, although the features of translationese have been extensively tested before, this paper stands out as “one of the first investigations which compares corpora obtained through different methods of translation to test a theoretical hypothesis rather than to evaluate the performance of machine translation systems” (p. 7).

The contribution by Steven Doms, “Non-human agents in subject position: Translation from English into Dutch: A corpus-based translation study of ‘give’ and ‘show’” forms the sixth chapter of the collection. Doms investigates the choices that translators make when confronted with a fundamental typological difference between two languages. The difference in question is the constraint against non-human subjects in agent role in Dutch. In English, of course, such subjects are perfectly acceptable, as the example demonstrates: “Studies in animals have shown reproductive toxicity […]” (p. 116). The author uses the Dutch Parallel Corpus to extract sentences that contain the verbs “give” and “show” in the English source text and then cleans the data manually according to a number of criteria, e.g. filtering out the phrasal verbs and idioms, choosing the sentences that have agent as the subject, etc. Following D’haeyere (2010), Doms assigns the Dutch translations to three categories: (1) the non-human subjects retained in the agent role; (2) avoidance of a non-human agent through changes to the sentence; and (3) the original non-human agent not translated. In Doms’ corpus, when choosing to avoid a non-human agent, the translators either introduced a human agent in Dutch,used a non-agentive subject (theme, recipient, possessor), or substituted the original verb “give/show” for another one. The results show, however, that in an overwhelming majority of cases (57.2%), the translators retain the non-human agent, thus introducing English interference into Dutch texts.

The collection concludes with Gianluca Pontrandolfo’s contribution “Investigating judicial phraseology with COSPE: A contrastive corpus-based study.” This chapter is based on a custom-made corpus of criminal judgements, COSPE, which contains 6 mio tokens in English, Spanish, and Italian. This contribution stands out from the rest of the volume because COSPE is not a parallel but instead a comparative corpus, i.e. the texts are not translations of each other but simply representative of the same legal genre. To query the corpus, Pontrandolfo resorted to a variety of analytical steps, ranging from corpus-driven to corpus-based. On the corpus-driven end of the continuum, he looked at n-grams and collocations of common legal terms. On the corpus-based end, he investigated complex prepositions and lexical doublets/triplets, both of which are characteristic of the judicial genre. To establish the importance of the investigated features for the legal judgements, Pontrandolfo used the BNC, CORIS/CODIS and CREA as reference corpora for English, Italian, and Spanish respectively. The findings confirmed that although there were some differences between the three sub-corpora, “phraseology is indeed a key lexico-syntactic feature of this genre and it is part of judges’ idiosyncratic drafting conventions” (p. 152).

EVALUATION

Once again, shortly after the appearance of Straniero Sergio & Falbo’s “Breaking ground in corpus-based interpreting studies”, Italian scholarship has announced its intention to stay on the cutting edge of CBTS. The main strength of “New directions in corpus-based translation studies” is that it reports on the most current, ongoing research that readers would not normally have access to unless they attend thematic conferences. It is also the first volume in the new series “Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing” launched by Language Science Press, which promises to be a thoughtful forum dedicated to empirical and interdisciplinary investigation of translation. The contributions all tie in together well thanks to their methodological unity, which makes the book interesting to researchers who are currently working on or plan to undertake a project in quantitative translation studies. The only paper that somewhat skews the pattern is Pontrandolfo’s project on phraseology in legal texts because it uses a comparable rather than a parallel corpus. As a result, it is oriented more towards developing a teaching resource rather than answering fundamental questions about translation, and ultimately is not well-situated within a translation studies framework.

The volume illustrates the trend in translation and interpreting studies to shift the attention from the product of translation towards its process – a research objective which until now has mainly drawn the eyes of cognitive linguists. In this vein, Serbina et al.’s paper proposes an excellent way to query the translation process on the level of observable tokens that can be compiled into a corpus. Zubillaga et al.’s work on a corpus of parallel German/Spanish/Basque translations feeds into this research strand from a different direction by giving a corpus analyst a view of the influence of the intermediate language version and the dominant language of the translator.

I recognise a further value in the language combinations chosen by the authors. It is especially cheering to see European minority languages, such as Basque, investigated within translation studies and through a corpus lens. Similarly, the papers based on the major language pairs such as Spanish, Italian, and Greek (Mouka et al., Pontrandolfo) fill a gap in corpus-based studies of societally relevant topics, e.g. heterophobic language and legal judgements, which to date have mostly been English based (cf. Baker et al. 2013 on representation of Islam in the British press, for example).

The work-in-progress nature of these papers, however, also gives rise to certain drawbacks. Given that quantitative analysis is the key strength of a corpus approach, it would have been desirable to see some overall systematic, quantified results which the authors withhold due to the ongoing status of their projects (see Serbina et al., Mouka et al., Zubillaga et al.). Some methodological decisions are skimmed over, although they appear quite critical to the study design. For example, Lapshinova-Koltunski’s paper makes one wonder about the reliability of corpus-based findings when the chosen operationalisation of the analytical categories is questionable. Is it justifiable to define normalisation solely through the proportion of nominal to verbal phrases? The author does remark that these definitions have limitations. It seems to me, however, that the limitations are too severe to talk of the global categories of translationese, and it would have been more appropriate to talk of individual linguistic features instead.

Finally, the quick production process, which brings the articles to the reader in double time, resulted in some language and formatting issues. Nevertheless, they do not affect readability or understanding in any important way. On the whole, “New directions in corpus-based translation studies” is an excellent publication that gives us a window into the ongoing research in CBTS and undoubtedly deserves the attention of translation scholars, among them those interested in literary translation, machine translation, legal translation, and corpus design. The book can also serve as supplementary reading for courses in translation studies to bring the students up to date on the state of translation research; however, they would need to refer to a simpler text to familiarize themselves with the basics.

REFERENCES

Baker, Paul, Costas Gabrielatos & Tony McEnery. 2013. Discourse analysis and media attitudes. The representation of Islam in the British press. Cambridge: Cambridge UP.

Chesterman, Andrew. 2004. „Hypotheses about translation universals.” In Hansen, Gyde, Malmkjar, Kirsten & Daniel Gile (eds.), Claims, changes and challenges in translation studies. Selected contributions from the EST Congress, Copenhagen 2001, 1-13. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

D’haeyere, Laurence. 2010. Non-prototypical agents with proto-agent requiring predicates: A corpus study of their translation from English into Dutch. Gent: Hogeschool Gent.

Straniero Sergio, Francesco & Falbo, Caterina (eds.). 2012. Breaking ground in corpus-based interpreting studies. Bern: Peter Lang.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Daria Dayter is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Basel, Switzerland. Her habilitation project is a corpus-based investigation of simultaneous interpreting in the Russian-English language pair. Daria Dayter's other research interests include pragmatics of CMC, youth language, and teaching applications of the new media.


[Linguist List announcement 27.989]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-941.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-941.html Liubov Baladzhaeva <baladjaeva@gmail.com> Mon, 22 Feb 2016 16:50:45 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-447.html

EDITOR: Gerald Stell
EDITOR: Kofi Yakpo
TITLE: Code-switching Between Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives
SERIES TITLE: De Gruyter linguae & litterae 43
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Liubov Baladzhaeva, University of Haifa

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Code-switching Between Structural and Sociolinguistic Perspectives”, edited by Kofi Yakpo, tries to combine the structuralist, psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic perspectives on code-switching (CS). The editors embrace a wide definition of code-switching, including the switching between different codes in one speech event, in one sentence and in one word. The last two are sometimes defined as code-mixing (Muysken, 2000); however, the editors prefer not to put code-mixing into a separate category. The chapters in the volume focus on code-switching in many different places and on less-studied languages, such as Light Warlpiri and Pana.

Most authors of the chapters employ the Matrix Language Frame Model and Markedness Model in their analyses and use Muysken’s typology of code-switching. According to the Matrix Language Frame (MLF) (Myers-Scotton, 1993a), when two languages are combined in one sentence, one is the matrix language (ML), while the other is the embedded language (EL). The model predicts that the word order in a clause that contains code-switching will be taken from the matrix language. Markedness Model (Myers-Scotton, 1993b) explains code-switching from the social and pragmatic perspective. CS is marked if it is used to convey a social or discourse message. It is not marked, if its presence does not serve to convey such a message. Muysken’s typology (Muysken, 2000) divides CS into three types: insertional (items from language A are inserted into sentences in language B), alternational (items from language A and B alternate in a sentence), and congruent lexicalization (languages A and B converge morphosyntactically). All three types of CS can be marked or unmarked.

Chapter 1: Gerald Stell, Kofi Yakpo. “Elusive or self-evident? Looking for common ground in approaches to code-switching.”

The first chapter serves as an introduction to this edited volume. In the chapter the authors give a brief overview of the study of code-switching and the issues with defining code-switching; they describe different approaches to classification of code-switching. The authors suggest that community-wide code-switching is not necessarily a sign of a language shift, since it might be a stable system and not a transition state. They maintain that code-switching should be seen in a social context and should be approached holistically. The authors conclude that currently none of the grammatical models of code-switching embrace all the existing types of code-switching.

Part 1: Code-switching between cognition and socio-pragmatics

Chapter 2: Ad Backus. “A usage-based approach to code-switching: the need for reconciling structure and function.”

This chapter presents a preliminary theoretical model of code-switching. The author argues that the usage-based approach can enable a unified account of code-switching. This approach sees code-switching, loan translation, structural borrowing and transfer as aspects of a more general and continuous process of language change and not as separate phenomena. Backus suggests that code-switching should be studied both from synchronic and diachronic perspectives, and that lexical and structural types of code-switching should be investigated as parts of the same continuum. Backus argues that specificity and entrenchment are major factors in borrowing and code-switching.

Chapter 3: Gerrit Jan Kootstra. “A psycholinguistics perspective on code-switching: Lexical, structural, and socio-interactive processes.”

In this chapter the author tries to connect psycholinguistic, sociolinguistic and structural accounts of code-switching. He defines code-switching as the overt use of elements of more than one language in a single sentence (unlike transfer which is a covert use). The chapter presents experimental data on code-switching in which psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic approaches were combined. The results of the experiments show that interactive alignment is one of the major factors that influence code-switching. Bilinguals both make strategic choices to code-switch in order to convey a message and automatically and subconsciously align to the style of their interlocutor.

Chapter 4: Maria Carmen Parafita Couto, Margaret Deuchar, Marika Fusser. “How do Welsh-English bilinguals deal with conflict? Adjective-noun order resolution.”

This chapter presents an experimental study that attempts to test the Matrix Language Frame model. The focus of the study was noun-adjective combination in the speech of Welsh-English bilinguals. In English the adjective precedes the noun (‘red wine’), while in Welsh it follows the noun (‘gwin coch’). Therefore, if code-switching occurs in the noun-adjective combination, it might be a potential source of conflict for Welsh-English bilinguals. The results of the study mostly adhered to the MLF model: most combinations that contained code-switching followed the order of the matrix language. They also found significant correlations of language attitudes with the code-switching in production: those who were against code-switching tended to produce it less.

Chapter 5: Evershed Kwasi Amuzu. “Combining the Markedness Model and the Matrix Language Frame Model in analyzing bilingual speech.”

In this chapter the author tries to combine the Markedness Model and the Matrix Language Frame model in order to explain the structural and the conceptual patterns of code-switching in an Ewe-English bilingual community in Ghana. The results show that while speakers are not necessarily conscious of their code-switching they are capable of monitoring their speech and choosing not to code-switch if the situation requires it. Using English was sometimes an unmarked option in a dialogue between two bilinguals, since code-switching is very common among educated speakers in Ghana. At the same time, English can signify formality of the discourse or seriousness of the situation. Alternation and insertion appeared in both marked and unmarked types of code-switching.

Part 2: Multilingual interaction and social identity

Chapter 6: Gerald Stell. “Towards an integrated approach to structural and conversational code-switching through macrosociolinguistic factors.”

In this chapter the author analyzed code-switching patterns in three groups of bilinguals in South-Africa: White Afrikaans-English, Coloured Afrikaans-English (Coloured is the South African name for people of mixed race) and Black Sesotho-English. Stell wanted to investigate whether macrosociolinguistic factors, such as language prestige, would be more predictive of the percentage and type of code-switching in bilingual speech than typological factors (whether the languages are typologically close or distant). Unlike the findings in the previous chapter, there was a strong one-to-one relationship between socially meaningful paternal and grammatical patterns (alternation and insertion). On one hand, Afrikaans samples (both White and Coloured) show the tendency towards insertional CS, while Sesotho samples favored alternation. However, both Coloured Afrikaans and Black Sesotho samples also demonstrated a stronger tendency towards congruent lexicalization than the White Afrikaans sample. The author concludes that macrosociolinguistic factors seem to predict both conversational (percentage) and grammatical (type) patterns of code-switching.

Chapter 7: Eric A. Anchimbe. “Code-switching: Between identity and exclusion.”

The chapter provides an account of code-switching in multilinguals in Cameroon. The author analyzed a corpus of online interactions of Anglophone Cameroonians who switch to French and CPE (Cameroon Pidgin English) from a sociolinguistic perspective.The author argues that in post-colonial Cameroon none of the three languages can be an unmarked choice. English and French are a marked option that demonstrates education and class, as well as belonging to either an Anglophone or Francophone community. According to the corpus analysis, the authors of interactions consciously use code-switching in order to achieve pragmatic purposes. French is used to express negativity towards outsiders, while CPE, which is also primarily a language of the Anglophone community, is used to mark solidarity with the group. The author states that in order to analyze the pragmatic intent of CS, one needs to factor in colonial history, studies of ethnicity and identity and culture.

Chapter 8: Katherine Hoi Ying Chen. “Styling bilinguals: Analyzing structurally distinctive code-switching styles in Hong Kong.”

In this chapter, the author attempts to combine sociolinguistic and structural analysis of code-switching. According to the study, different structural patterns of code-switching in Cantonese-English bilinguals in Hong Kong signify different social identities they project. Code-switching between Cantonese and English is common among the local residents, especially among the youth. However, they normally insert English words into a Cantonese base sentence. At the same time, code-switching to English is stigmatized in the general culture and by older generations and considered to be a contaminating influence on Cantonese. People who returned to Hong Kong after living abroad exhibit different patterns of code-switching where alternation between English and Cantonese is prominent. This style of code-switching is stigmatized even among the code-switching local youth as it projects the Western identity over local. Thus, both styles of code-switching, structurally different, are used as linguistic markers of social identity.


Chapter 9: Bettina Migge. “The role of discursive information in analyzing multilingual practices.”

The author analyzes a corpus of recorded conversations of Nengee and Sranatongo Creole speakers from French Guiana and Suriname. Both Creoles are English-based and share many similarities, which makes the analysis of code-switching between them quite difficult. The corpus data also show that speakers code-switch not only content morphemes, but system morphemes as well. As a result, in order to analyze the hybrid structures combining two or more languages, it is not enough to rely on structural methodology. It is also important to consider “salience” – what is important or distinctive in a given language. It is not necessarily unambiguous which language is matrix language and which is embedded. The author calls for a fine-tuned sociolinguistic analysis that takes a close look into specific discourse of the interaction and situated language use, since the same pattern of CS can hold different meaning in different situations.

Chapter 10: Adam Blaxter Paliwala. “Creole/Superstrate code-switching: Structure and consequences.”

The author analyzes spoken conversation in Tok Pisin that took place in Madang and Port Moresby, as well as political speeches in the National Parliament. There is a discussion whether Tok Pisin and English in Papua New Guinea are fully separate languages or parts of a language continuum and whether the variation in Tok Pisin is a sign of developing decreolization and future language loss. Urban varieties of Tok Pisin appear to employ multiple switches to English, exhibiting insertion, alternation and congruent lexicalization. Urban population is often fluent in both languages and switch fluidly between them. Examples of the switches show that there are possible changes to the grammar of Tok Pisin, such as a consistent use of articles or double pluralization. However, it is not clear how stable are the changes and whether they will hold in the long term.

Part 3: Code-switching and social structure

Chapter 11: Klaus Beyer. “Multilingual speakers in a West African contact zone: An integrated approach to contact-induced language change.”

The articles focuses on multilingualism in a contact zone called Souroudougou between Burkina Faso and Mali, specifically on speakers of Pana. Pana speakers are a linguistic minority, while the main language of the region (acting as lingua franca) is Jula and French is the official language. One of the effects of the contact between the two languages is reduction in labialization of word-initial obstruents (present in Pana, but not in Jula). The data showed that speakers who are very integrated into the village community employ more labialization, while less socially integrated people are, apparently, less conservative in their language use and more affected by Jula and exhibit less labialization. The author suggests that contact-induced language change emerges here faster than in Western societies due to the fact that Pana is not used in education or media.

Chapter 12: Kofi Yakpo. “Code-switching and social change: Convergent language mixing in a multilingual society.”

This chapter focuses on code-switching in three Surinamese languages: Sranan (an English-based Creole), Sarnami (dialect of Bhojpuri) and Surinamese Javanese. Speakers of all three languages code-switch to Dutch (the sole language of education), in addition, speakers of Sarnami and Javanese also switch to Sranan (also serving as a local lingua franca). Code-switching is fairly pervasive in all three languages and speakers exhibit favourable attitudes towards it. However, the author argues that at the moment it cannot be said that there is one stabilized mixed language. There is some indication that there is a shift from Javanese to Sranan in younger speakers who exhibit limited proficiency in Javanese, however, it is not the case with Sarnami. Rise in education levels and urbanization led to extensive exposure of the population to Sranan and Dutch, which created a society in which most speakers are multilingual. Despite the fact that all three languages are typologically distant, the patterns of code-switching in all of them are very regular, which can point to a certain convergence of the languages caused by social factors (multilingualism and social interaction) rather than by the structures of the languages.

Chapter 13: Carmel O’Shannesy. “Typological and social factors influencing a new mixed language, Light Warlpiri.”

This chapter is about Light Warlpiri, a language that has recently emerged in Australia as a result of stabilizing and conventionalizing code-switching between Warlpiri (an Aboriginal language) and English/Kriol (local English-based creole). The author describes specific characteristics of the language which are different from both English and Warlpiri, such as the verbal auxiliary system which is used for the future-nonfuture distinction. Speakers of the language see it as a dialect of Warlpiri used by younger generations rather than a fully separate language.

Chapter 14: Sabine Ehrhart. “Continua of language contact.”

The chapter focuses on language ecology. Erhart argues for a holistic view of language contact situations and multilingual communities, where a notion of fully separate languages is not employed. The author compares classroom language policies in Luxembourg and New Caledonia. She states that code-switching and contact languages are the expression of the same phenomena, where creole languages appear as a result of prolonged code-switching. The author argues that code-switching should be seen as a normal and essential part of a multilingual society and it can create a positive environment in a multilingual classroom.

EVALUATION

The volume is aimed at linguists who study code-switching and multilingualism. It brings together different perspectives on code-switching in an attempt to form a holistic and integrative approach to the phenomenon. The studies published in this volume demonstrate that addressing just the pragmatics or just the grammar of code-switching might provide only a limited understanding of CS. Code-switching is viewed as a normal and even essential part of communication in multilingual societies and not as a sign of language shift or deterioration. An important contribution of the volume is that it focuses mostly on less studied languages and on societies in which bi- or multilingualism is the norm. The studies employ diverse methodology and provide interesting insights into the practices of code-switching around the world.

The editors state that they do not wish to accept a single definition of code-switching for the volume and leave defining these terms to the chapter authors. However, sometimes this might lead to confusion, as the authors of chapters use different and not necessarily compatible definitions. In addition, almost in every paper the authors spend a significant portion of the text on defining the Matrix Language Frame Model, Markedness model and types of code-switching. Defining the basic terms in the introduction of the first chapter and referring to them in the following chapters might have brought more cohesion to the volume. The chapters in the first two parts of the book connect to each other and look at the same issues from different sides. However, the third part of the volume seems to be less connected to the first two parts, and the chapters in it are less connected to each other than the chapters in the other two parts.

REFERENCES

Muysken, Peter. 2000. Bilingual speech: A typology of code-mixing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993a. Social motivations for code-switching: Evidence from Africa. Oxford: Calrendon Press.

Myers-Scotton, Carol. 1993b. Duelling languages: Grammatical structures in code-switching. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Liubov Baladzhaeva is a PhD student at the University of Haifa. She is interested in multilingualism, language acquisition and attrition.


[Linguist List announcement 27.941]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-912.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-912.html Valeria Buttini-Bailey <valeria.buttini@unibas.ch> Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:11:09 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4322.html

AUTHOR: Maurizio Santoro
TITLE: The acquisition of Italian morphosyntax in L2 settings
SERIES TITLE: LINCOM Studies in Language Acquisition 33
PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Valeria Buttini-Bailey, Universität Basel

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

INTRODUCTION

“The acquisition of Italian morphosyntax in L2 settings,” by Maurizio Santoro describes the process of acquisition of four morphosyntactic aspects of Italian grammar: (i) subject pronominalization; (ii) object pronominalization; (iii) the nominal system, with emphasis on Italian nominal modification; (iv) the verbal system, with emphasis on the aspect and tense distinction of Italian verbs. Data come from extensive research on the acquisition of Italian as a second language, and are analyzed within the generativist theoretical framework (Chomsky 1981, 1995, 2000, 2004).

The volume is organized into a preface and six chapters; it also includes an appendix with a list of abbreviations, and references. The chapters share a similar organizational structure, as they all start with an overview of the way a certain morphosyntactic structure has been described within the generativist theoretical background. Results from current L2 research are then presented, compared with those coming from research on other languages, and finally discussed.

SUMMARY

The Preface explains the book’s focus and organization, and briefly describes each chapter.

The first chapter, “Theoretical background”, serves as introduction to the generativist theoretical background. Notions such as parameter setting and resetting, functional projection activation, feature values identification and feature-checking operations are explained. The chapter also describes two contrasting positions and their discrepant hypotheses regarding the L2 initial and final acquisition state, namely the Full Access Hypothesis and the Differential Difference Hypothesis.

The second chapter, “L2 acquisition of Italian subject pronouns”, focuses on the acquisition of Italian subject pronouns. This is described as a gradual and quite slow process that appears to be strongly influenced by the complexity of the Italian subject pronominal system. Even at advanced levels, in fact, and regardless to their L1 grammar, learners often have difficulty in using null arguments in pragmatically appropriate contexts. The author explains that this is consistent with Sorace’s Interface Theory (2003), according to which acquiring operations that involve several linguistic modules is more problematic than acquiring operations comprising only one component.

The third chapter, “L2 acquisition of Italian object pronouns”, describes how learners of Italian use the clitic object pronouns. The author shows how the Italian clitics system involves a series of complex operations that implicate different linguistic modules and are acquisitionally problematic to L2 learners. He also shows that ''although Italian accusative and dative clitics both present an impoverished internal structure, they are quite different from a morphological and semantic perspective'' (p. 67). This interestingly reflects in their acquisition patterns, with the dative pronouns being acquired faster and better. Contrary to what is claimed by many syntacticians, this seems to be proving that the morphological features of Italian clitics do not develop uniformly.

Chapter four, “L2 acquisition of Italian DPs”, deals with the acquisition of Italian determiner phrases, such as definite articles, possessive and demonstrative pronouns, and descriptive adjectives. It is shown that the morphological features of gender and number displayed by Italian determiners ''are acquirable, but follow a slow and gradual acquisition process'' (p. 116). Furthermore, ''they do not develop uniformly'', and ''this irregularity is noticeable at any proficiency level'' (p. 116). This struggle in the acquisitional process ''may be attributed to an interface problem, resulting from a failure in applying the acquired syntactic knowledge'' (p. 119).

The fifth chapter, “L2 acquisition of Italian verbal system”, focuses on the acquisition of the morphologically rich Italian verbal system. This also proves to be ''a quite difficult (but not impossible) task to attain since it involves mastery of many linguistic components ranging from morphology to semantics'' (p. 155). Learners seem to be able to produce verbal morphology quite early in their acquisitional process, but keep struggling with the aspectual distinction of Italian tenses and relying on their L1 even when they have reached advanced and near-native levels.

Chapter six, “Conclusion and suggestions for future research”, summarizes the results and lists a series of suggestions for future research. As the author states, the acquisition scenario that comes out in the book ''appears to support a modular view of language acquisition, according to which linguistic modules develop independently from one another'' (p. 163). Some findings, such as the precocious appearance of forms (i.e. clitics, null pronominal forms and morphological endings on Italian determiners and verbs) that need a syntactic apparatus non-existent in learners’ L1 grammars, appear to be proof of the possibility to access the universal linguistic knowledge even in SLA (p. 165). Following White (2003), Santoro also suggests a Partial Transfer/Full Access Hypothesis: according to this, ''the initial state of L2 acquisition is partially determined by learners’ first language. L1 properties may affect the development of some linguistic components, especially if these modules are particularly complex and include properties that are complex and include properties that are fundamentally different from L1. L2 leaners, however, still have full access to their universal linguistic knowledge so that features and projections that are unspecified in their L1 can still be activated with the help of UG in response to L2 input'' (p. 166).

EVALUATION

Overall, I find Santoro’s book a pleasant and interesting reading that brings together a wealth of information on its topics of focus, and offers quite a good picture of the second language acquisition process from a generativist perspective.

However, a few inaccuracies sometimes undermine this general good impression, and substitute it with a feeling of lack of attention to details. In a few cases, it is a matter of typographical errors or forgetfulness: see for instance the use of an acute accent instead of a grave one on Italian words at page 70 and 92, or the missing reference for Chomsky 2004 cited at page 4. Elsewhere, the contents is more at stake. I will give here just three examples.
In chapter two, at page 36, while discussing the higher preference for lexical preverbal shown in matrix sentences by learners when compared to Italian natives, Santoro gives the following example:

Exper.: Chi parlerà?
Who speak-FUT?
‘Who will speak?’
Subject -?? Gianni parlerà.
John speak-FUT
‘John will speak’

The author explains that “this answer will be appropriate in English, but awkward in Italian, which would prefer the lexical subject, Gianni, in post verbal position”. While I certainly agree that a native would often prefer a post verbal subject in this context, I find the term “awkward” insufficient and hardly scientific. Since it was an oral exercise, it should have been observed that the acceptability of the sentence is actually a matter of prosody: with a prosodic focalization, the preverbal subject is correct and acceptable.

In chapter three, the author cites the results of one of his researches (Santoro 2008), where English native speakers learning Italian were tested on their use of Italian clitics. The participants were divided into three different groups according to the amount of instruction received. The author states that “the use of a pre-testing procedure to determine students’ proficiency levels became unnecessary because the completion of a language course provides an accurate indication of the L2 knowledge attained” (p. 68). This statement is, in my opinion, also unscientific. The completion of a language course can only offer a very rough idea of a student’s proficiency level. If this were not the case, language certifications would not exist.

As a last example, I will cite a wrong translation in chapter four, page 95. Here, both phrases “Le sue tre sorelle” and “Tre sue sorelle” are translated into English as “His three sisters”, while “Tre sue sorelle” should have been translated with “Three of his sisters”. It may seem trivial, but it is not, since the author is discussing the rising of determiners such as numerals and articles and the differences between Italian and English.

As the back cover states, ''because of its theoretical breath and user-friendly language'' the volume is intended as a tool for ''students that are interested [in] L2 acquisition issues'' and ''as a supplementary reading material for an introductory course in Second Language Acquisition''. This goal is certainly attained, but I personally find that in order to completely fulfill the expectations of such a public, extra care should have been observed. For instance, a few more key terms in the generativist framework could have been explained (see for example the term ‘c-command’, p. 14). I also find unfortunate that the book has almost no footnotes, because they could have helped in giving an impression of attention to details. A footnote would have been appreciated, for instance, when in Chapter Two the author mentions ''two additional functional categories labelled as Topic and Focus'' (p. 31). The two terms should have been explained, since they do not primarily belong to the generativist framework.

Despite my criticisms, the volume remains a valuable source and I would still recommend it as a complementary reading for courses in Second Language Acquisition.

REFERENCES

Chomsky, Noam 1981. Lectures on government and binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

Chomsky, Noam 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam 2000. Minimalist inquiries. In Step by step: Essays on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, R. Martin, D. Michaels, and J. Uragiereka (eds.), 89-155 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Santoro, Maurizio 2008.

Sorace, Antonella 2003. Near-nativeness. In Handbook of second language acquisition, M. Long and C. Doughty (eds.), 130-151. Oxford: Blackwell.

White, Lydia 2003. Second language acquisition and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Valeria Buttini-Bailey is currently lecturer and postDoc in Italian linguistics at the University of Basel. Her research interests lie in the fields of applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, second language acquisition, text linguistic, and syntax. She also teaches Italian as a second language at the University of Zurich.


[Linguist List announcement 27.912]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-911.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-911.html Stefan Hartmann <hartmast@uni-mainz.de> Fri, 19 Feb 2016 12:01:38 EST Discuss this message

Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3291.html

EDITOR: Nicola Grandi
EDITOR: Livia Kortvelyessy
TITLE: Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology
PUBLISHER: Edinburgh University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Stefan Hartmann, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The Edinburgh Handbook of Evaluative Morphology, edited by Nicola Grandi and
Livia Körtvélyessy, gives an overview of Evaluative Morphology (EM hereafter),
i.e. morphological patterns that serve evaluative functions in quantitative
and/or qualitative terms, including “diminution or augmentation, endearment or
contempt” (Stump 1993: 1). The editors take a decidedly typological approach:
all contributors to the first, more theoretically-oriented part of the volume
collect examples from many different languages. Part II of the volume
comprises descriptive chapters taking stock of evaluative morphology in 52
individual languages from 26 language families.

Chapter 1 of the first part, the editors’ Introduction entitled “Why
evaluative morphology?”, starts out with a critical appraisal of the criteria
for EM proposed by Scalise (1984: 133f.), who sees EM as a “third morphology”
in-between inflection and derivation. Like inflectional patterns, EM patterns,
according to Scalise, leave both the syntactic category and the
subcategorization frame of the base unchanged. At the same time, like
derivational patterns, they change the semantics of the base word, and they
allow for the consecutive application of more than one rule of the same type
(e.g. multiple diminution in the case of Italian “fuocherellino”
‘fire-DIM-DIM/nice little fire’). However, Grandi and Körtvélyessy point out
that “the idea of this third morphology is language-bound, and - consequently
- that it cannot be viewed as a universal feature of human languages.” (p. 4)
In the remainder of the chapter, the editors review the controversial
discussion on the place of EM within morphology as well as the research on EM
conducted in the wake of Scalise’s monograph. They mention numerous classes of
morphological constructions that have been identified in the literature as
instances of EM, including diminution and augmentation in quality and/or
quantity, age variation, approximation, intensification, endearment,
hypocorism, expression of social position, contempt, and prototypicality (p.
9f.). Defining the scope of EM, Grandi and Körtvélyessy put forward two
criteria to identify evaluative morphological patterns: first, on the
functional level, the pattern must assign a value that is different from the
standard or default; second, on the formal level, the evaluative construction
must include a) a linguistic form expressing, as a lexically autonomous unit,
the standard value, and b) an “evaluative mark” (p. 13), i.e. a linguistic
element specifically devoted to expressing the semantic shift. In addition,
the introductory chapter offers an overview of the individual chapters in part
I of the book as well as a list of languages mentioned in the volume.

Chapter 2, by Victor M. Prieto, deals with “The Semantics of Evaluative
Morphology”. Within the framework of cognitive semantics, Prieto argues that
the semantics of evaluatives is grounded in the physical property of size and
size perception, which he illustrates with the example of diminutives and
augmentatives, starting from the radial category model of diminutives proposed
by Jurafsky (1996). Rather than having full-fledged “meaning” on their own,
evaluatives, in his view, prompt meaning construction processes: they
“activate frames, promote mappings, and encourage the blending of information
from different domains.” (p. 30)

In Chapter 3, Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi discusses the relationship between
“Evaluative Morphology and Pragmatics”. Drawing on the theoretical model of
morphopragmatics developed by Dressler and Merlini Barbaresi (1994), she
conceives of meaning as “having both semantic and pragmatic invariant
features.” (p. 35) As such, the semantics of evaluatives encompasses
morphopragmatic meanings such as “fictive evaluation” - in the sense that “the
norms of the real world are suspended” (p. 39) - and non-seriousness in the
sense of “lowered formality” (p. 36).

Chapter 4, by Pavol Štekauer, gives an overview of “Word-Formation Processes
in Evaluative Morphology”. Striving to “provide a concise typological overview
that indicates the main tendencies as well as intriguing peculiarities of
evaluative formation” (p. 47), he demonstrates that cross-linguistically, EM
employs a wide range of word-formation processes. Among these processes,
affixation is clearly the dominant one for EM, while compounding does not play
a significant role in evaluative formation. In addition, he shows that EM is a
characteristic feature of Standard Average European languages and of Slavic
languages in particular.

In Chapter 5, entitled “Evaluative Morphology and Language Universals”, Livia
Körtvélyessy first identifies three language universals in the Universals
Archive (http://typo.uni-konstanz.de/archive/intro/) referring to EM patterns.
Then she briefly reviews three relevant contributions on EM and language
universals: Jurafsky’s (e.g. 1996) work on diminutives, Beard’s (1995)
framework of Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology in which he argues that
expressive derivations “reflect at least five functions universally: the
Diminutive, Augmentative, Pejorative, Affectionate, and Honorific” (Beard
1995: 67), and Körtvélyessy’s (2012) extensive study of EM in 200 languages.
In line with Štekauer’s observation mentioned above, she arrives at the
conclusion that EM is not a language universal but rather an areal phenomenon.

In Chapter 6, Nicola Grandi discusses “The Place of Evaluation within
Morphology”. Again drawing on Scalise’s criteria for EM, he shows that EM
patterns differ considerably across languages; all in all, however, he arrives
at the conclusion that EM shares more features with derivation than with
inflection and that “the supposed analogies between inflection and evaluative
affixation are often deceptive” (p. 89).

Chapter 7, also written by Grandi, deals with “Evaluative Morphology and
Number/Gender”. He shows that cross-linguistically, diminutives tend to have
neuter gender in tripartite sex-based gender systems while they tend to
maintain the gender of the base in two-part sex-based gender systems. For
augmentatives, he shows a systematic interaction with masculine gender in the
Indo-European languages. In terms of number, he demonstrates that in some
African languages, the evaluative meaning and the number value can merge in a
single affix and that in various languages diminutives form unexpected
plurals. In addition, he points out that there is a cross-linguistic
correlation between diminutives and singulatives on the one hand and
augmentatives and collectives on the other.

Chapter 8, by Lucia M. Tovena, deals with “Evaluative Morphology and
Aspect/Actionality”. Focusing on EM in the domain of verbs in Romance
languages, she shows that the application of evaluative affixes to telic bases
results in the loss of telicity, which goes in tandem with event-internal
pluractionality. This modification of aspect and actionality is linked up with
the general function of EM to quantitatively alter a gradable property of the
referent of the expression it modifies.

Chapter 9, by Livio Gaeta, discusses “Evaluative Morphology and
Sociolinguistic Variation”. Gaeta reviews a multitude of studies showing the
interaction between EM and different sociolinguistic variables such as gender,
age, and register. For instance, he mentions that for some languages, it has
been shown that female speakers employ more EM than do male speakers and that
diminutives are used particularly frequently in child-directed speech.
Regarding the sociopragmatic dimension, he argues that EM plays a particular
role in languages with full-fledged honorific systems.

In Chapter 10, Wolfgang U. Dressler and Katharina Korecky-Kröll address the
topic of “Evaluative Morphology and Language Acquisition”. Particularly
focusing on diminutives, they argue that in early child language, where
diminutive patterns tend to emerge simultaneously with inflectional and
compound patterns, the meanings of diminutives are invariably pragmatic in
nature, expressing “endearment, intimacy, warm feelings of affection, love and
kindness” (p. 139). Consequently, they see the pragmatic meanings of
diminutives as more basic than the semantic ones.

In Chapter 11, Katrin Mutz discusses “Evaluative Morphology in a Diachronic
Perspective”. Focusing on diminutives and augmentatives, she discusses the
role of grammaticalization and refunctionalization in the emergence of these
patterns in different languages. For example, she shows that diminutives have
emerged through grammaticalization in many African and Asian languages, e.g.
Vietnamese “bàn con” ‘small table’ < “con” ‘child’. In many Indo-European
languages, by contrast, diminutive affixes have been recruited from other
derivational domains, e.g. the diminutive suffix “-aster” < derivational
suffix “-aster”, e.g. “patr-aster” ‘stepfather’. In addition, she discusses
pathways of semantic and functional change in diminutive affixes and
etymological aspects of augmentative affixes.

Chapter 12, by Giulia Petitta, Alessio Di Renzo and Isabella Chiari, discusses
“Evaluative Morphology in Sign Languages”. They first introduce basic notions
of morphology in signed languages such as the distinction between simultaneous
and sequential morphology. In sequential morphology, signs are concatenated,
while in simultaneous morphology, a particular aspect of the sign itself is
altered. Focusing on augmentation and diminution in Italian Sign Language,
they distinguish manual sequential, manual simultaneous, non-manual, and
reduplicative strategies to encode evaluation. For example, diminution and
augmentation can be expressed by adding a specific handshape indicating size
(often accompanied by non-manual signs) or by reducing or enlarging the
handshape of the sign, the distance between the hands, or the movement.
Non-manual strategies attested across different signed languages include
“puffing cheeks out for augmentatives and sucking cheeks in for diminutives”
(p. 164).

Chapter 13 on “Evaluative Morphology in Pidgins and Creoles”, by Barbara
Turchetta, then concludes the first part of the volume. She first addresses
the question if EM is attested at all in pidgins and creoles. Given their
tendency towards isolating patterns, she argues that in terms of EM, pidgins
and creoles mainly rely on reduplication. However, she also points out that
pidgins and creoles can change rapidly and “develop quite impressively in
grammar” (p. 177). This can lead, for example, to the grammaticalization of
derivation patterns such as the agentive-augmentative/iterative Jamaican
Creole suffix “-sha”, which probably goes back to “she”, e.g. “laafiisha” ‘a
person who laughs a lot’.

The second part of the volume starts with an introduction by Livia
Körtvélyessy outlining the rationale behind the choice of the 52 languages
covered in the descriptive chapters. The individual languages described in
Part II are: Basque (Xavier Artiagoitia), Catalan (Elisenda Bernal), Georgian
(Manana Topadze Gäumann), Hungarian (Ferenc Kiefer & Boglárka Németh), Israeli
Hebrew (Noam Faust), Ket (Edward J. Vajda), Latvian (Andra Kalnača),
Luxembourgish (Peter Gilles), Modern Greek (Dimitra Melissaropoulou), Nivkh
(Ekaterina Gruzdeva), Persian (Negar Davari Ardakani & Mahdiye Arvin), Slovak
(Renáta Gregová), Swedish (Arne Olafsson), Tatar (Fatma Şahan Güney), Telugu
(Pingali Sailaja), Udihe (Maria Tolskaya); Apma (Cindy Schneider), Chinese
(Giorgio Francesco Arcodia), Lisu (David Bradley), Muna (René van den Berg),
Tagalog (Carl Rubino), Tibetan (Camille Simon & Nathan W. Hill), Yami (D.
Victoria Rau & Hui-Huan Ann Chang), Dalabon (Maïa Ponsonnet & Nicholas Evans),
Iatmul (Gerd Jendraschek), Jingulu (Rob Pensalfini), Kaurna (Rob Amery),
Rembarrnga (Adam Saulwick), Warlpiri (Margit Bowler), Yukuta, Kayardild, and
Lardil (Erich Round), Berber (Nicola Grandi), Classical and Moroccan Arabic
(Nora Arbaoui), Ewe (Yvonne Agbetsoamedo & Paul Kofi Agbedor), Kɔnni (Michael
Cahill), Sɛlɛɛ (Yvonne Agbetsoamedo & Francesca Di Garbo), Shona (Rose-Marie
Déchaine, Raphaël Girard, Calisto Mudzingwa & Martina Wiltschko), Somali
(Nicola Lampitelli), Zulu (Andrew van der Spuy & Lwazi Mjiyako), Cabécar
(Guillermo Gonzáles Campos), Choctaw (Marcia Haag), Dena’ina (Olga Lovick),
Huautla Mazatec (Jean Léo Léonard), Huave (Maurizio Gnerre), Inuktitut
(Richard Compton), Plains Cree (Arok Wolvengrey), Slavey (Dene) and other
Athabaskan languages (Olga Lovick & Keren Rice), Jaqaru (Olga Birioukova &
M.J. Hardman), Kwaza (Hein van der Voort), Lule (Raoul Zamponi & Willem J. de
Reuse), Toba (Paola Cúneo), Wichí (Verónica Nercesian), Yurakaré (Rik van
Gijn).

EVALUATION

Three decades have passed since Scalise (1984) introduced the term “Evaluative
Morphology” to the morphological discussion. His proposal has sparked the
interest of morphologists across different frameworks. Grandi and
Körtvélyessy’s Handbook represents the first attempt to bring together a broad
variety of theoretical and descriptive contributions on EM in a comprehensive
and authoritative volume. The fact that despite (or perhaps because of) the
widespread interest in the topic no agreed-upon criteria for EM have been
identified so far makes the editors’ achievement all the more impressive. They
have succeeded in compiling a highly informative, well-structured and
well-written volume that will be the standard reference work for anyone
interested in EM for the years to come.

One critical remark that could be put forward is that the theoretical part as
well as some chapters in the descriptive part focus a little bit too much on
diminutives and augmentatives. On the one hand, this is understandable given
that these categories are seen as prototypical instantiations of EM. On the
other hand, a closer look at more peripheral examples, such as ameliorative
and pejorative morphological patterns that do not derive from augmentatives
and diminutives, might prove even more insightful for delineating the scope of
EM. Most importantly, the diachronic dynamics of evaluative semantics
potentially become much clearer in cases that do not involve diminution or
augmentation. While the semantic pathway from quantitative to qualitative
augmentation or diminution is quite straightforward, things are more complex
when contextually conditioned pragmatic meanings become part of a pattern’s
semantics. For instance, Dammel (2011) shows that the German agentive suffix
“-ler” gradually assumed a pejorative meaning which then, however, was largely
lost again. Importantly, the observation that a linguistic construction can
gradually assume evaluative meaning has been made for specific idiomatic
patterns on the syntactic level as well. For example, Bybee (2010: 28f.)
discusses the case of “What’s X doing Y”, e.g. “What’s that fly doing in my
soup?”, which has come to systematically express disapproval. As such, one
question that might deserve more attention in future work is how EM relates to
evaluative patterns in other domains.

Speaking of future work, the Handbook also makes it perfectly clear that much
of EM is still uncharted territory, both in terms of description and in terms
of theory. As such, the Handbook does not only provide a highly welcome
overview of what has been done so far but will hopefully also draw more
attention to the domain of EM and instigate further studies on the evaluative
potential of morphological patterns.

REFERENCES

Beard, Robert (1995): Lexeme-Morpheme Base Morphology. A General Theory of
Inflection and Word Formation. Albany: State University of New York Press.

Dammel, Antje (2011): Wie kommt es zu rumstudierenden Hinterbänklern und
anderen Sonderlingen? Pfade zu pejorativen Wortbildungsbedeutungen im
Deutschen. In: Jörg Riecke (ed.): Historische Semantik. Berlin, New York: De
Gruyter.

Dressler, Wolfgang U. & Lavinia Merlini Barbaresi (1994): Morphopragmatics.
Diminutives and intensifiers in Italian, German and other languages. Berlin,
New York: De Gruyter.
Jurafsky, Daniel (1996): Universal Tendencies in the Semantics of the
Diminutive. In: Language 72 (3), 533–578.

Körtvélyessi, Livia (2012): Evaluative morphology from a cross-linguistic
perspective. Habilitation Thesis, Eötvös Lorand University Budapest.

Scalise, Sergio (1984): Generative Morphology. Dordrecht: Foris.

Stump, Gregory (1993): How peculiar is evaluative morphology? In: Journal of
Linguistics 29, 1–36.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Stefan Hartmann is currently a research assistant at the University of Mainz,
Germany. His research interests include historical and corpus linguistics,
Cognitive Linguistics, morphology and morphological change, sociolinguistics,
psycholinguistics, and language evolution research.
[Linguist List announcement 27.911]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-910.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-910.html Boris Yelin <byelin@purdue.edu> Fri, 19 Feb 2016 11:54:29 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-3026.html

AUTHOR: Roger Berry
TITLE: From Words to Grammar
SUBTITLE: Discovering English Usage
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Boris Yelin, Purdue University

Reviews Editor: Helen-Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The proposed audience of “From Words to Grammar,” by Roger Berry, is undergraduate students of English and trainee teachers on postgraduate courses. It aims to teach syntax in a bottom-up fashion, where lexical items are the topic of discussion, and English syntax is discovered by analyzing word usage. It is an exercise book that contains many examples of authentic corpus text with short explanations of the grammar. Essentially, the student internalizes the concepts through practice. The book begins with an introduction explaining the conventions of the book, including information about concordance lines (taken from the British National Corpus), which highlight the word in question. Otherwise, the main text consists of twelve chapters: Nouns, Personal pronouns; Pronouns and determiners; Adjectives; Prepositions; Adverbs; Verb patterns; Modal auxiliaries; Multi-word verbs; Question words, relative words, and subordinators; Multi-functional words (I), and Multi-functional words (2). Most of the chapter titles speak for themselves, but a few are worth clarifying. The Verb patterns chapter focuses on transitivity and complements and adjuncts of verbs. The Multi-word verbs chapter covers phrasal and prepositional verbs. Lastly, both Multi-functional words chapters examine words that belong to several word classes. The book concludes with a combined glossary/index that either defines words not defined in the main text or refers readers back to the appropriate section to review a certain definition.

In order to more easily envision how the book is structured, I offer here an exercise from the text (pgs. 66-67), which, in the text, immediately follows an explanation of the uses of ‘still.’

Activity 6.1

Decide whether ‘still’ on these lines is:
a. an aspect verb
b. a linking adverb
c. a degree adverb
d. an adjective

Hint: look at the position of ‘still’

1. The thirty year old is STILL at home.
2. STILL, he does realize that service companies will feel the pinch too…

EVALUATION

As stated above, “From Words to Grammar”, is really a beginner’s roadmap to syntax. However, no mention of the word syntax is ever made in the text, a smart move on the part of Berry, since students are more familiar with grammar and what they learned in school. Essentially, this book teaches what I would call syntax-lite with good tests to determine word class and without syntax trees; this makes it an effective link between what students think they know about the words they use and the reality. With respect to its intended audience, I think it would only be appropriate as an undergraduate (pre)introductory text to syntax, and in the hands of a skilled instructor, this book is very helpful to illuminate much of the polysemy and homonymy in English. However, since graduate students often dive into more complex syntactic notions and operations, it would most likely be an insufficient graduate text. Also, the book can sometimes be unclear or difficult for someone who has little to no experience with grammar, and the directions may seem unclear. Thus, this book would not be ideal for self-study since it could greatly benefit from students’ working through at least a few problems with an instructor.

Though this book is targeted at learners of English syntax, the application of the knowledge in this book would be infinitely useful to second language learners that have English as their first language. Often beginning (and even higher-level) learners will adopt a strategy of one-to-one translation correspondences, but this book would show them, for example, that the word ‘that’ assumes so many roles, which makes it highly likely to be rendered in a variety of ways in other languages, e.g. Spanish or French. Moreover, learning the specific roles of words and how they relate to each other would boost the metalinguistic knowledge of students so that they may learn additional languages more systematically, struggling less with the grammar. This book could also be useful for high-level English as a Second Language (ESL) learners. Often, they get confused by multiple meanings and uses for words, or they cannot use certain prepositions in a native-like manner due to their first language; this confusion can last for a long time. However, the motivated ESL instructor and learner could use this text to tease apart the similarities and differences in word usage as well as pinpoint specific difficulties.

With respect to the content, probably the most difficult chapter of the book is Modal auxiliaries, given that people often have trouble discriminating the uses of modals. Beyond the grammatical explanations, by pointing out pragmatic differences, such as ‘could’ and ‘might’ potentially being more tentative than their counterparts ‘can’ and ‘may,’ Berry exposes the reader to word functions that are often hard for speakers to articulate.

Two of the most positive aspects of this book are the acknowledgement of dialectal differences and a firm stance against prescriptivism. As an example of the former, Berry points out the differences in grammatical usage, e.g. the use of ‘yet’ and ‘already’ with the present perfect In British English and the past in American English. Nevertheless, if used in an American classroom, some of these differences would have to be explicitly stated (as dialectal differences) to the students, since occasionally, some phrasing sounds quite unnatural to at least some American English speakers, e.g. ‘the committee are’ and ‘government are’, where the verb agreement implies a plural nature to the singular nouns. As to battling prescriptivism, there are numerous examples of uses the author accepts as legitimate (that are often criticized) peppered throughout the text: ‘they’ as a singular neuter pronoun, ‘hopefully’ as a sentence adverbial, ‘less’ used with countable nouns, ‘like’ as a quotative, etc…

One aspect I found missing is the occasional lack of alternate nomenclature, such as ‘subject pronoun’ for ‘subjective pronoun’ and ‘object pronoun’ for ‘objective pronoun’--designations which are more well-known to those with at least basic grammatical knowledge. Another example is the use of the terms ‘intrinsic modality’, encompassing permission, obligation, intention, and promise, and ‘extrinsic modality’ encompassing possibility. Though the author mentions that there are other terms, it would be helpful for the readers to know the more commonly used terms ‘deontic modality’ and ‘epistemic modality’ if they wanted explore the topic further.

Since language is complex, and individual differences exist, there were a few times where after looking at the solution guide I was not convinced of some of the classifications. For instance, in Activity 3.11, the reader is asked where ‘a’ can be inserted before ‘few’ to create a positive impression, and the following sentence is on that list: “Very few people at all would ever … say that…” (p. 40). Unless the author meant that ‘very’ could be replaced by ‘a’, “Very a few people…” at best sounds unnatural, and in either case the reader is left slightly confused. In another instance, Activity 12.1 C asks the reader to identify concordance lines in which ‘that’ can be omitted. I happened to include one instance in my list that was not in the author’s, but I was at a loss as to why ‘that’ would be necessary in this sentence.

Essentially, the examples above of discrepancies point to the need of an instructor to help the reader through the text and to foster discussion. This would create an environment allowing the student to imagine more examples and to examine other words beyond the book. Overall, this book is successful in teaching grammar contextually through word classes and would be helpful to any language learner exploring word meanings and syntax.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Boris Yelin is currently a doctoral student in Applied Spanish Lingustics at Purdue University. His main interests are SLA and Pedagogy with a focus on L3 acquisition. Past research has included looking at the intersection of language variation and semantics with respect to mood. His current career trajectory is teaching language for the government.


[Linguist List announcement 27.910]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-902.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-902.html Ildiko Porter-Szucs <ildips@yahoo.com> Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:51:52 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-3511.html

AUTHOR: Karolina Janczukowicz
TITLE: Teaching English Pronunciation at the Secondary School Level
SERIES TITLE: Gdansk Studies in Language - Band 1
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Ildiko Porter-Szucs, Eastern Michigan University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

The author, Karolina Janczukowicz, intended “Teaching English Pronunciation at the Secondary School Level” for teachers of English in junior and senior secondary schools who would like to teach pronunciation in a way that does not interfere with the regular school curriculum. In the introduction, she clarifies some concepts fundamental to the ensuing discussion: communicative efficiency (definition based on Hawkins, 2004), phonetic vs. phonemic transcription (settling on using the term ‘phonetic’ to refer to ‘phonemic’, a usage that will be adopted in this review as well), the phonetic systems of English vs. that of select European languages (i.e., French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish), and standard vs. native English. The actual book consists of four chapters (pp. 17-132) on the following topics: (1) phonetic transcription, (2) teaching the phonetic system, (3) teaching individual vocabulary words, and (4) going beyond communicative efficiency. Chapter 1 argues fervently for the necessity of introducing phonetic transcription into the classroom. After discussing some strategies for doing so, the author examines the advantages and disadvantages of several conventions of transcription. Chapter 2, the longest, discusses various aspects of teaching the phonetic system of English. It begins with select aspects of pronunciation that are important to foreign learners (vowel and consonant sounds, word stress, and sound-to-spelling relationships). Chapter 2 continues with a discussion of the conscious (based on Chomsky, 1965; Chastain, 1971; and Marton, 1975) and unconscious (Krashen, 1981) learning of languages. The chapter closes with a chapter-by-chapter examination of five textbooks used in European secondary schools. The author points out opportunities each textbook presents to focus on pronunciation in English class. Chapter 3 is devoted to the learning of vocabulary. The author briefly offers advice on which aspects of words to include when teaching students new vocabulary before methodically analyzing the treatment of words whose pronunciation has already been learned incorrectly. This includes an examination of the difficulty involved in changing incorrect pronunciation, the automaticity of incorrect pronunciation, habit-forming mechanisms (i.e., mental vs. behavioral learning), and steps to be taken to reverse a bad habit. Special emphasis is placed on the attitudinal and motivational aspects of changing one’s pronunciation. Chapter 4 presents two activities – public speaking and theater – that allow students with some proficiency in English to shift their attention away from communicative efficiency yet engage in meaningful practice of the language. In the Conclusion, the author offers case studies of two learners who benefited from explicit pronunciation instruction. The book contains a list of references, an author index, and a select list of subjects. The book concludes with two appendices. They include one transcript of a student’s persuasive public speech and excerpts of four plays performed by secondary-school students. In each transcript words are marked up whose pronunciation presented challenges for the student performers.

EVALUATION

As demonstrated by the summary above, the book contains a puzzling selection of topics on the teaching of English pronunciation at the secondary-school level. Regrettably, Dr. Janczukowicz does not justify her choice of these topics over others. The book reads like a collection of essays, loosely connected by the thread of pronunciation. There are enough omissions of fundamental concepts to leave the novice teacher under equipped to teach pronunciation comprehensively. Yet the number of basic concepts discussed at length is likely to cause the practicing teacher to skip over various chapters. On the issue of comprehensiveness, the last fifty years of the 20th century witnessed the pendulum swinging between (on the one hand) prioritizing proper pronunciation, as if equating the teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) to the teaching of pronunciation, and (on the other hand) the questioning of the utility or even feasibility of teaching pronunciation, leading to the abandonment of the enterprise in many ESOL classrooms and textbooks (Morley, 1991). Already in the late 80s and especially in the decades since Morley’s article, most of the field has moved on. The pendulum swings have become less extreme. An examination of the texts most often used to prepare teachers to teach pronunciation (Avery & Ehrich, 1992; Brown, 1991; Celce-Murcia, Brinton, & Goodwin, 2010; Dalton & Seidlhofer, 1994; Kenworthy, 1987) reveals a striking agreement on the fundamental concepts needed to accomplish the task. They typically include discussions of the basics: segmental features (vowel sounds, consonant sounds, and their transcription) and suprasegmental features (connected speech, word stress, sentence stress, tonic stress, rhythm, and intonation). Topics that further develop the future teacher of pronunciation include discussions of speech, intelligibility, spelling, common learner errors, and pedagogical techniques (such as drills, chants, and drama). Dr. Janczukowicz has included some idiosyncratic additional topics and excluded some of these fundamental topics. For example, of the basics, segmentals, phonetic transcription, and to a lesser extent word stress are covered. However, sentence stress, rhythm, and intonation are omitted. This is unfortunate because many have noted the important role suprasegmental features of speech play in intelligibility: nonnative English speakers with intelligible pronunciation of segmentals and standard grammar can still be incomprehensible if their suprasegmental patterns are unnatural (e.g., Munro & Derwing, 1999). Thus, there seems to be a consensus in the field that novice teachers require a grasp of all of the aforementioned fundamentals to effect positive change in their learners. Experienced teachers, however, will already be familiar with most of the basic themes, which leads to the question: who might benefit from reading Dr. Janczukowicz’s book? I would cautiously recommend it to anyone who is interested in a) the treatment of mispronounced words, b) the role motivation and attitude play in the study of pronunciation and c) the incorporation of public speaking and drama into English class. These three areas may be of interest to teachers.

REFERENCES

Avery, P., & Ehrlich, S. (1992). ‘Teaching American English Pronunciation’. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Brown, A. (1991). ‘Teaching English pronunciation: A book of readings’. Routledge.

Celce-Murcia, M., Brinton, D., & Goodwin, J. (2010). ‘Teaching pronunciation in the teaching English as a second or foreign language’. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Chastain, K. (1971). ‘The development of modern language skills: Theory to practice’. Philadelphia, Pa: The Center for Curriculum Development.

Chomsky, N. (1965). ‘Aspects of the theory of syntax’. Cambridge, Mass: The MIT Press.

Dalton, C., & Seidlhofer, B. (1994). ‘Pronunciation’. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hawkins, J. (2004). ‘Efficiency and complexity of grammars’. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kenworthy, J. (1987). ‘Teaching English pronunciation’. Essex: Longman.

Krashen, S. (1981). ‘Second language acquisition and second language learning’. Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Marton, W. (1978). ‘Dydaktyka jezyka obcego w szkole sredniej: Podejscie kognitywne’. Warszawa: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe.

Morley, J. (1991). The pronunciation component in teaching English to speakers of other languages. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 481-520.

Munro, M. & Derwing, T. (1999). Foreign accent, comprehensibility, and intelligibility in the speech of second language learners. Language Learning, 49(Suppl. 1), 285-310.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ildiko Porter-Szucs is Assistant Professor of TESOL/ESL at Eastern Michigan University, USA. She prepares teachers of ESOL at the undergraduate and graduate levels. She teaches courses on introductory linguistics, pedagogical grammar, second language acquisition, and teaching methodologies. Her primary research interest includes teacher formation. She is also interested in formulaic language and second-language assessment.


[Linguist List announcement 27.902]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-900.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-900.html James Corcoran <james.corcoran@utoronto.ca> Thu, 18 Feb 2016 14:42:09 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1488.html

EDITOR: Yasemin Bayyurt
EDITOR: Sumru Akcan
TITLE: Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca
SERIES TITLE: Developments in English as a Lingua Franca [DELF] 6
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: James Corcoran, University of Toronto

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

With the introduction of its own academic journal (JELF) and the development of multiple corpora (VOICE; ELFA) over the past decade and a half, ELF has become a highly visible paradigm, movement, and area of investigation (Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey, 2011; Sifakis, 2014). Foundational English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) scholars such as Seidlhofer (2011), Jenkins (2014), and Mauranen (2012) propose that a dynamic understanding of language use (and language teaching) should be based more closely on how English is actually used as a global lingua franca by (mostly) those labeled as non-native English speakers (NNESs). As part of the “Developments in English as a Lingua Franca” series, “Current Perspectives on Pedagogy for English as a Lingua Franca” builds on this proposal and fills a gap in applied linguistics literature by presenting “what we as teachers, teacher educators, developers, and scholars need to consider in the education of future users of English as a Lingua Franca” (p. 7). In the introduction, Bayyurt & Ackan (eds.) forcefully argue that, while ELF studies have grown exponentially over the past decades (Baker, 2015), particularly in the description and analysis of ELF use, there is “little consensus concerning the implications for ELF pedagogy” (p. 1). Thus, this volume, aimed primarily at EFL teachers and teacher educators (but also at researchers), aims to raise awareness of ELF pedagogy in order to stimulate deeper understanding(s) of the connections between ELF issues and practice and policy in English language teaching and language teacher education. Each of the volume’s four sections is summarized and evaluated in this review.

SECTION 1: TEACHING & LEARNING

“Adjusting pedagogically to an ELF world: An ESP perspective” by Lynne J. Flowerdew

Flowerdew describes her teaching experiences preparing multilingual graduate students in Hong Kong for writing grant proposals. Highlighting students’ tensions surrounding ELF use in academic writing, Flowerdew discusses the pedagogical potential of using ELF examples from corpora (e.g. MICUSP) to stimulate in-class discussion of the politics and acceptability of non-standard language use. She suggests the need for English for academic/specific purposes educators in adapting their teaching to better consider use of ELF from multilingual scholars. In considering how far the boundaries of ‘legitimate’ English use in genre-specific academic writing can stretch, Flowerdew wonders how and whether ‘gatekeepers’ (particularly NES ones) are ready to consider accommodating to ELF (see also Mur Dueñas, 2013; Paltridge, 2015).

“Integrated practice in teaching English as an International language (IPTEIL): A classroom ELF pedagogy in Japan” by Nobuyuki Hino & Setsuko Oda

Hino & Oda describe the potential and limitations of an Integrated Practice in Teaching English as an International Language (IPTEIL) approach in undergraduate Japanese university classrooms. The authors compare and contrast an English as an international language (EIL) vs. World Englishes (WE) approach, suggesting the benefit(s) of including explicit discussion of actual language use unhinged from nation-based Englishes when teaching practical communication skills.

“A pedagogical space for ELF in the English classroom” by Kurt Kohn

Kohn discusses the implications of ELF research and theory on English as a foreign language (EFL) teaching in high school classrooms in Germany. Suggesting content and language integrated learning (CLIL) as the ideal space for discussion of ELF perspectives and language use, the author criticizes global ELT based on unrealistic NES norms and models. Kohn includes specific examples of in-class and e-learning activities that develop pragmatic fluency based on ELF norms while increasing students’ self-esteem, suggesting the importance of such an approach in challenging SE models that ignore dynamic variations in language use and position NNS students as deficit users of English.

“ELF and early language learning: Multiliteracies, language policies and teacher education” by Lucilla Lopriore

Lopriore describes longitudinal research into ELF in primary EFL classrooms across Europe. The author describes several features of ELF apparent in teacher and student language use, including dropping third person –s, omission of articles, non-standard word order, lack of s-v agreement, code-switching, etc. Lopriore suggests findings show that this language use is seen as deficient across stakeholder groups, suggesting little awareness of ELF among student, teachers, and parents. She argues that there is a need for increased awareness of ELF features among teachers and teacher educators in order to produce curricula that better correspond to actual language use.

SECTION 1 EVALUATION

Flowerdew’s engaging essay – which includes useful pedagogical suggestions for English for academic purposes (EAP) instructors working with multilingual graduate students – alludes to how including ELF issues in ELT (in this case EAP) pedagogy raises tensions between the apparent need for adaptation of teaching and learning to ELF and the need to provide students with skills to successfully navigate contexts where traditional standard English (SE) and native speaker (NS) norms must be recognized and/or adhered to. It should be noted that this type of instruction could be greatly facilitated by use of the recently completed Writing of English as a Lingua Franca (WrELFA) corpus. The recurring theme of tensions between NS and SE norms is widely addressed throughout this volume without consensus on how to balance the need to recognize and incorporate dynamic variation with existing language norms. While Lopriore (pan-European) adds a strong argument for the need to normalize ELF interactions in elementary classrooms across Europe, Kohn provides the strongest argument in highlighting the inadequacy of NS norms and the effect of such norms and resulting views of language use on NNS teachers. These back-to-back essays serve to highlight the different approaches researchers take in advocating for greater equity in English language teaching (increasing awareness versus a more aggressive approach aimed at addressing social relations of power). Overall, Section 1 includes contributions that, while potentially interesting and engaging for language teachers, scholars, and ELF researchers, are at times difficult to digest as presented due to the differing geo-linguistic and institutional contexts (e.g. Chinese graduate EAP focused on grant writing followed by Japanese undergraduate computer assisted language learning followed by German high school CLIL, etc.).

SECTION 2: TEACHER EDUCATION

“Evolving a post-native, multilingual model for ELF-aware teacher education” by Andrew Blair

Blair discusses a recent investigation of MA teacher education programs in the UK. The author outlines how MA candidates show simplistic understandings of ‘proper’ English and insufficient awareness of the dynamic nature of language use. He suggests these findings point to a need for teacher education that encourages ELF perspectives and demonstrates a “post-native model of language pedagogy” (p. 98) that reflects the sociolinguistic realities of global language use. Blair suggests operationalization of such an approach via reflective learning diaries, links between discussion of pedagogical goals and ELF, and challenging key ELT constructs and assumptions.

“Bringing new ELT policies and ELF to teacher training courses” by Luísa Azuaga & Lili Cavalheiro

Azuaga & Cavalheiro present results from a case study into pre-service teacher education at five universities across Portugal. The authors suggest overwhelming evidence that teachers are tied to ideals and hierarchies associated with a NS model of language use. They further suggest that these results point to the problematic nature of policies and materials based on such models, including the Common European Framework of Reference for languages (CEFR). The authors then argue for language teacher education that attends to ELF issues by developing language teachers who are aware of language variation as well as its creative potential.

“Time to wake up some dogs! Shifting the culture of language in ELT” by Martin Dewey

Dewey describes results of an ongoing investigation into teacher beliefs regarding ELF among MA TESOL students in the UK. The author argues that survey results demonstrate the pervasive nature of NS norm-based teacher education and language learning, suggesting a large cultural shift that challenges this ideological model. He argues for a more critical teacher education that prepares teachers to consider language use as a dynamic social practice rather than a static, abstracted system. While forcefully arguing for a critical approach to language teacher education, Dewey warns that such a shift in perspective will likely be slow to take hold and should be carried out in collaboration with teachers.

“Re-considering the language teacher education programs in Turkey from an ELF standpoint: What do the academia, pre-service, and in-service teachers think?” by Dilek Inal & Ezra Özdemir

Relaying results from an investigation into perceptions of varying stakeholders in Turkish teacher education, Inal & Özdemir report that less experienced teachers are more accepting of an ELF approach and more critical of NS norms. The authors suggest this disparity may be due to the advantages accrued by more entrenched stakeholders in upholding standard or conservative language norms. They point to the potential of including ELF as an independent subject of study in teacher education programs as a way of inspiring reform in Turkish ELT.

“Drawing upon Greek pre-service teachers’ beliefs about ELF-related issues” by Areti-Maria Sougari & Roxani Faltzi

Sougari & Faltzi report findings from a survey study into Greek pre-service teacher beliefs regarding ELF. The authors point to a greater openness to ELF perspectives of those candidates with prior intercultural experiences, an overall preoccupation across candidates with the formal properties of English, and widespread confidence and comfort among candidates with their accents and overall L2 proficiency levels. Based on these findings, the authors call for incorporating ELF awareness components into the teacher education curriculum as a way of influencing pre-service teacher beliefs prior to entry into the field.

“Can we change the subject, please? A pedagogic perspective on EFL” by Elisabeth Weber

Weber highlights findings from an investigation into stakeholder attitudes towards NS ‘language assistants’ employed in Austrian university classrooms. The author highlights findings demonstrating positive attitudes among students and teachers towards NSs. Citing policies and frameworks that support such widespread ideological beliefs (e.g. the superiority and greater authenticity of NS communication), she suggests changes to the language assistant program that reflect actual language use, including that by NNSs who are potentially more experienced and appropriate users of ELF in an Austrian context.

SECTION 2 EVALUATION

Section two is the most compelling of the volume, with coherent contributions from teacher educators and researchers across Europe. Due to the shared contexts of pre- and in-service teacher education programs at European post-secondary institutions, the contributions flow well into one another, contributing to the authors’ stated goals of raising awareness of operationalization of ELF pedagogy. As Seidlhofer claims, “change always has to start somewhere and…the obvious place to start is in language teacher education” (2011, p. 201). Overall, this section provides models for curriculum that suggest how teacher education programs can attend to ‘glocal’ issues related to ELF theory and language use. In particular, Blair and Dewey’s respective essays provide models for inducing an ideological shift in language teacher education, one that challenges the “language ideologies [that] create and uphold systems of power” (Godley, Carpenter & Werner, 2007, p. 103). Other contributions demonstrate that, while increasing awareness of ELF issues can be a central element of such a project, challenging such pervasive ideologies can be particularly challenging across contexts. Contributions in this section could have formed a stand-alone contribution to ELF scholarship. Inal & Özdemir’s contentious assertion that early introduction of ELF issues in pre-service teacher education could lead to a greater shift in teacher beliefs is one that should be deeply considered by teacher educators and policy makers; however these findings could get overlooked in such a lengthy volume.

SECTION 3: ASSESSMENT

“Reconceptualizing norms for language testing: Assessing English language proficiency from within an ELF framework” by Kimberly Chopin

Chopin outlines and critiques the Test of Oral English Proficiency for Academic Staff (TOEPAS), an assessment given to NNS staff at universities in Denmark when evaluating their communicative competence and teaching ability. She argues that the TOEPAS should be modified to better reflect norms related to real language use of Danish post-secondary students. Taking into consideration ELF issues, such an assessment would gravitate away from NS norms based on natural fluency that reward ‘native speakerness’ towards norms of evaluation based on teaching ability and intelligibility. Ultimately, the authors wonder if such a modified TOEPAS could be used as a global assessment for post-secondary teaching staff.

“Engaging with ELF in an entrance test for European university students” by David Newbold

Newbold describes the development of an assessment tool (provisionally named Test of English for European University Students or TEEUS) aimed at evaluating European undergraduate students’ receptive language skills. The test includes an ELF element (authentic communication situations) the author claims is missing from other major assessments (e.g. TOEIC, TOEFL, and IELTS) when attempting to distinguish between CEFR levels A2, B1, and B2. Newbold calls for assessment measures that take into account authentic ELF communication in Europe, one that is user-centred and norm-defocused, suggesting the TEEUS as a potentially viable option.

SECTION 3 EVALUATION

As Jenkins, Cogo & Dewey (2011) point out, “given that testing exerts such a massive influence on language teaching and, hence, on spoken and written language use, a major challenge for ELF over the next few years is to make the strongest possible case to the large ELT examination boards that they should start to take account of the findings of ELF research” (p. 309). The two contributions in this section contribute to such ELF research, highlighting, as others have done (Jenkins, 2006; McNamara, 2010) the call for modifications of language assessment tools to better take into account actual language use(rs). Suggestions for modification of assessment tools aimed at multilingual university instructors (Chopin) and students (Newbold) are important in that they demonstrate the emergence of alternative models of assessment that challenge the hegemony of rubrics (such as that outlined by the CEFR) based on NS norms. This section lays the framework for a potentially larger collection of contributions focused solely on issues of ELF and language assessment. I would have preferred to see more space dedicated to these issues in this volume.

SECTION 4: TEACHING MATERIALS

“Beyond Madonna: Teaching materials as windows into pre-service teachers’ understandings of ELF” by Telma Gimenez, Luciana Cabrini Simöes Calvo & Michele Salles El Kadri

In an investigation of Brazilian pre-service teacher candidates and teaching materials, the authors evaluate how students take up ELF issues when given a 60-hour component aimed at increasing their awareness of ELF issues. Findings point to an increased awareness of ELF use among teacher candidates but a lack of genuine ‘unlearning’ of entrenched ELT ideas. The authors suggest pre-service education as an ideal place for such unlearning but admit the difficulty of such a task given time constraints as well as demand for focus on form in teacher education programs.

“English as a Lingua Franca and ELT materials: Is the “plastic world” really melting?” by Domingos Sávio Pimentel Siqueira

Siqueira describes a textbook analysis investigating English language teaching materials from three textbooks (Passages, World Pass, and Skyline). The author concludes that such texts demonstrate what he describes as an uncritical presentation of global English use that inculcates the learner with ideas that elevate English language and culture. The author argues (see also Siqueira, 2010) that these textbooks continue to serve an imperialist project, both linguistically and culturally, despite recent efforts by publishers to include representations of English as a global or international language within teaching materials.

SECTION 4 EVALUATION

The final section of this volume highlights strong theoretical positions for a more responsive production of EFL materials that better reflect authentic language use as well as a more critical teacher education pedagogy focused on ‘critically’ engaging with and utilizing teaching materials in the EFL classroom. In an excellent contribution once again supporting the potential of addressing ELF issues in teacher education programs, Gimenez et al. provide useful suggestions for how a more critical approach could be realized in Brazilian pre-service teacher education programs and beyond. Siqueira’s contribution, while compellingly written (indeed I agree with much of his premise), provides insufficient empirical evidence to support his strong conclusions (i.e. that teaching materials are part of a larger implicit imperialist project to acculturate the global masses in favor of English values and interests). Siedlhofer’s (2011) suggestion that “what is crucial is not WHAT [my emphasis] teaching materials are used but HOW [my emphasis] they are used” (p. 201) rings even more true after reading these two contributions. Overall, this section provided a much needed South American perspective; however it read as more of an afterthought to the European contributions in previous sections.

FULL VOLUME EVALUATION

“ELF empirical work and theoretical discussions have raised profound questions about current principles and practices in ELT…the pedagogical implications of ELF should include key areas like knowledge base of language teachers, language syllabus, approaches and methods, language assessment, and, of course, teaching materials.” (Jenkins, Cogo, & Dewey, 2011). The reviewed volume highlights how ELF issues are being taken up by global language teachers and teacher educators in these myriad areas related to English language teaching (ELT). A recurring theme throughout the volume is the need for broad reconceptualization of language in relation to ELT, a reconceptualization more in line with the potential of language use rather than its limited form(s) as understood by many practitioners and educators in the field. This volume succeeds in its goal of stimulating greater awareness of ELF issues in varying contexts, suggesting most convincingly in the ‘teacher education’ section how such a reconceptualization is ideally instigated in teacher education classrooms and programs where we, as teacher educators, can forward “a framework [ELF focus] that would privilege process over form and awareness over certainty, and it would treat knowledge of language and knowledge about language as equally important” (Seidlhofer, 2011, 204-5). Such a framework would logically, as Jenkins (2006) suggests, “abandon the native speaker as the yardstick and…establish empirically some other means of defining an expert (and less expert) speaker of English, regardless of whether they happen to be a native or nonnative speaker” (p. 175).

Some serious questions arise, however, from this volume in relation to the epistemological, ontological and theoretical underpinnings of ELF. For example, how does ELF compare and contrast with other understandings of ‘global’ English such as EIL and WE? Certain contributions in this volume explicitly denote differences in such understandings (e.g. Flowerdew) while others seem to somewhat conflate them (e.g. Chopin). Further, many of the contributions in this volume take a strong position on the ethical imperative for considering ELF as part of an anti-hegemonic project aimed at addressing asymmetrical relations of power in ELT (e.g. Dewey) while others seem to suggest that the goal of ELF-inspired pedagogy should be simply to raise awareness of the dynamic nature of language use and its resulting variations among NNS users (e.g. Sougari & Faltzi). Moreover, while there is ample discussion of ELF in relation to issues of equity for NNSs in ELT, there is little discussion of ELF in the face of the consequences of the spread of English (and ELT) on global linguistic diversity (see Phillipson, 2008). Although Seidlhofer (2011) has suggested ELF is a call for change rather than a new paradigm, contributions in this volume suggest a continued ontological and epistemological uncertainty among its proponents.

Rather than providing answers to theoretical debates about the nature and objective(s) of ELF, this volume presents diverse perspectives potentially useful for stimulating critical reflection surrounding ELF issues; it is well placed to serve as a potential resource for both researchers and, importantly, teacher educators looking to introduce a critical angle to their curricula, whether to stimulate greater awareness of ELF or to show connections between language use (including ELF) and local/global relations of power. Both of these approaches for using this volume as a teaching tool, I would argue, can serve to increase awareness of and address inequity in global ELT. However, I would argue that this volume is ideally used by teacher educators in in-service MA programs where teachers have both previous classroom experience and a greater understanding of language teaching pedagogy.

As suggested by the diverse global perspectives presented in this volume, a project of increasing awareness of ELF and related issues for ELT pedagogy is most certainly a global endeavor that must be taken up in all contexts, including those understood as ‘centre’, ‘periphery’, or ‘semi-periphery’ ones. However, this volume is highly Eurocentric, failing to include sufficient global perspectives, with no contributions from Africa and North America and few from Asia and South America. Surely, as Blair and Dewey suggest in their contributions, the project of increasing awareness of ELF issues and incorporating such perspectives in ELT globally includes doing so in centre contexts (e.g. North America) as well? When reading the excellent contributions throughout this volume, I was left wondering about how I would insert ELF issues in my teacher education classroom and curricula in Canada given the expectations for teachers to meet particular norms (many of which are based on language ideologies surrounding ideal language use(rs) (see Cook, 2001; Moussu & Llurda, 2008; Phillipson, 1992). In my experience, many multilingual language teachers are concerned with their ability to establish and maintain credibility in a profession that values (perhaps to a lesser extent all the time) NS norms and models. The big question for those looking to insert ELF materials into their teaching or teacher education is, how can I provide enough space to challenge such ideological norms (and the resulting social and economic inequity) while concurrently attending to student and teacher communicative and professional needs?

Ultimately, this volume is an excellent contribution to a growing body of empirical studies focused on ELF pedagogy and includes many contributions that provide concrete examples potentially useful for teachers and teacher educators. More such volumes would be welcome in Applied Linguistics, particularly those that address the connections between ELF and inequity in global ELT (Dewey, 2012; Seidlhofer, 2011; Sifakis, 2014; Widdowson, 2012).

REFERENCES

Baker, W. 2015. Culture and complexity in English as a Lingua Franca: Re-thinking
competences and pedagogy in ELT. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 4(1), 9-30.

Cook, V. 2005. Basing teaching on the L2 user. In E. Llurda (ed.) Non-native language
teachers: Perceptions, challenges, and contributions to the profession, 47-62. New York:
Springer.

Dewey, M. 2012. Towards a post-normative approach: Learning the pedagogy of ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 141-370.

Godley, A., Carpenter, B. & Werner, C. 2007. “I’ll Speak in Proper Slang”: Language
Ideologies in a Daily Editing Activity. Reading Research Quarterly, 42(1), 100-131.

Jenkins, J. 2006. The times they are (very slowly) a-changin’. ELT Journal, 60(1), 61-2.

Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. 2011. Review into development in research into English as a Lingua Franca. Language Teaching, 44(3), 281-315.

Jenkins, J. 2012. English as a Lingua Franca from the classroom to the classroom. ELT Journal, 66, 486-494.

Jenkins, J. 2014. English as a lingua franca in the international university: The politics of academic English language policy. London: Routledge.

Llurda, E. 2009. Attitudes toward English as an international language: The pervasiveness of native models among L2 users and teachers. In Farzad Sharifan (ed.), English as an international language: Perspectives and pedagogical issues, 119-143. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF. Academic English shaped by non-native speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Moussu, L. & Llurda, E. 2008. Non-native English-speaking English language teachers:
History and research. Language Teaching, 41, 316-348.

Mur Dueñas, P. 2013. Spanish scholars’ research article publishing process in English medium journals: English used as a lingua franca, Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 2(2), 315-340.

Paltridge, B. 2015. Referees' comments on submissions to peer-reviewed journals: When
is a suggestion not a suggestion? Studies in Higher Education DOI: 10.1080/03055079.2013.818641

Pennycook, A. 2010. Language as a local practice. New York: Routledge.

Phillipson, R. 1992. Linguistic imperialism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Phillipson, R. 2008. Lingua franca or lingua frankensteinia? English in European integration and globalisation. World Englishes, 27(2), 250–267.

Seidlhofer, B., & Jenkins, J. 2003. English as a lingua franca and the politics of property. Cross Cultures, 65, 139–156.

Seidlhofer, B. 2011. Understanding English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sifakis, N. C. 2014. ELF awareness as an opportunity for change: A transformative perspective for ESOL teacher education. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca, 3(2), 315-333.

Siqueira, D. 2012. Se o inglês está no mundo, onde está o mundo no ensino de ingles? In: Denisen Scheyerl and Sávio Siqueira (eds.). Materiais didáticos para o ensino de línguas na contemporaneidade: contestações e proposições. 311-354. Salvador, Brazil: Editora da Universidade Federal da Bahia.

Widdowson, H. 2012. ELF and the inconvenience of established concepts. Journal of English
as a Lingua Franca, 1(1), 5-26.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

James Corcoran, PhD, is an instructor at The University of Toronto and Brock University where he teaches courses on critical academic reading and writing, discourse analysis, and second language acquisition theory/methodology. His research interests include (critical) applied linguistics, academic writing for publication (instruction), English as a lingua franca of academic communication, and language teacher education. Having recently graduated from the Language and Literacies Program in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education/University of Toronto, James is currently working on publications related to his recently completed doctoral thesis entitled, ''English as the international language of science: A case study of Mexican scientists' writing for publication''.


[Linguist List announcement 27.900]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-817.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-817.html Robert Cote <rcote@email.arizona.edu> Fri, 12 Feb 2016 13:51:27 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/25/25-4731.html

EDITOR: Bill VanPatten
EDITOR: Jessica Williams
TITLE: Theories in Second Language Acquisition
SUBTITLE: An Introduction, 2nd Edition
SERIES TITLE: Second Language Acquisition Research Series
PUBLISHER: Routledge (Taylor and Francis)
YEAR: 2014

REVIEWER: Robert Arthur Cote, University of Arizona

Reviews Editor: Sara Couture

SUMMARY

'Theories in Second Language Acquisition: An Introduction' is an informative yet challenging text comprised of thirteen chapters written by some of the field’s most notable authors who explore various topics in SLA. Although it is described as a text written for the novice reader, there is an overwhelming variety of complex topics, and the reader will likely require previous knowledge of the SLA field in order to fully access much of the content.

VanPatten and Williams begin Chapter 1, ''Introduction: The nature of theories'', by defining necessary terms that will be utilized throughout the rest of the book. These include basic words like theory, model, hypothesis, constructs, and explicit and implicit learning and knowledge. This chapter also introduces 10 possible essential observable phenomena that can be identified in different theories of SLA (pp. 29-30). These observations are as follows:

''Exposure to input is necessary for SLA'' (p. 9).
''A good deal of SLA happens incidentally'' (p. 9).
''Learners come to know more than what they have been exposed to in the input'' (p. 9)
''Learners output (speech) often follows predictable paths with predictable stages in the acquisition of a given structure'' (p. 10).
''Second language learning is variable in its outcome'' (p. 10).
''Second language learning is variable across linguistic subsystems'' (p. 10).
''There are limits on the effects of frequency on SLA'' (p. 10).
''There are limits on the effect of a learner’s first language on SLA'' (p. 11).
''There are limits on the effects of instruction on SLA'' (p. 11).
''There are limits on the effects of output (learner production) on language acquisition'' (p. 11).

This chapter defines and further explains the observable phenomena as they relate to SLA. They are important to note because they are all referred back to throughout the remaining chapters whenever a particular theory involves any of them. It is important for the reader to realize that not all theories are comprised of all 10 of the phenomena. Due to the general nature of Chapter 1, it is very accessible to most readers.

The editors continue explaining basic SLA terminology and information in Chapter 2, ''Early theories in SLA''. Here, they explore the major, seminal theories in the field including behaviorism/structural linguistics and Krashen’s Monitor Theory (see Krashen, 1985). The behaviorist topics include classical conditioning, its associated role of stimuli frequency, and the reality of the extinction of abilities due to lack of exposure and/or use (p. 18). Operant or behavioral conditioning is also mentioned, stating that with regards to language learning, ''Active participation by the learner is considered a crucial element of the learning process'' (p. 19). This section also mentions L1 to L2 language transfer, interference, and degree of contrast.

Chapter 2 continues with Krashen’s Monitor Theory. Distinctions are made between language learning and language acquisition, and the three major hypotheses – Natural Order Hypothesis, Input, and Affective Filter – are briefly introduced. It is interesting to note that in the chapter’s conclusion, the author’s mention the theory and its component parts having ''considerable criticism over the years'' (p. 31), but then go on to state ''yet for many practitioners (and learners), the most powerful evidence for Monitor Theory is their own experience'' (p. 31).

Chapter 3, ''Linguistic theory, universal grammar, and second language acquisition'' by White, investigates the topics of linguistic competence, Universal Grammar (UG), poverty-of-the-stimulus, and interlanguage. The chapter is difficult material to digest for a novice, and in my opinion, this chapter should have been placed further back in the book to avoid scaring away less knowledgeable readers. Early on, the chapter focuses on how children become fluent in their L1, whereas adult learners of second languages do not in their L2. The chapter brings up the notion of an innate, 'unconscious knowledge [that] does not have to be learned in the course of L1 acquisition; it is derived from UG' (p. 34). It explains that children also have the ability to create original and unique utterances that are grammatically correct without having heard them before (poverty-of-the-stimulus). On the other hand, adult second language learners exhibit interlanguage, a systematic and rule-governed language competence that does not adhere to the linguistic rules of the target language (p. 36) (see Selinker, 1972).

Chapter 3 also explores in detail ''four common areas of misunderstanding about generative SLA research'' (p. 41). These include ''the scope of the theory, lack of native-like success in L2, transfer and methodology'' (p. 41). This section of the chapter is well-written and clear for all readers.

One challenging aspect of this chapter is the use of wh-movement in both English and Chinese as examples. It seems to me that the reader would need a solid background in English (and/or Chinese) syntax to fully understand these explanations. Another difficult concept is Government and Binding Theory (see Chomsky, 1981) and its principles, parameters and constraints components. These are all explained in one page, a daunting concept to absorb so briefly.

In Chapter 4, ''One functional approach to SLA'', Bardovi-Harlig begins by defining functionalist approaches to language as those in which ''language is primarily used for communication and does not exist without language users'' (p. 54). The chapter gives good explanations of the function-to-form, also known as concept oriented, approach which ''identifies one function, concept, or meaning and investigates how it is expressed'' (p. 54). The focus here ''is that adult learners of second or foreign languages have access to the full range of semantic concepts from their previous linguistic and cognitive experience'' (p. 55). The challenge for the speaker is utilizing this knowledge and knowing when and how to correctly apply and express it. The chapter explores longitudinal research studies aimed at observing productive speech or output, in particular, reverse-order-reports or retelling of stories by second language learners. The most important findings include ''how various linguistic means convey temporal reference, how they relate to each other, and how the balance changes over time'' (p. 68).

Ellis and Wulff focus on ''Usage-based approaches to SLA'' in Chapter 5, initially stating that language learning is primarily based on learners’ exposure to the target language and that learners induce the rules of their L2 by using general cognitive mechanisms (p. 75). The approaches discussed are so varied that the authors caution they should be considered more of a framework than a theory. Usage-based approaches are composed of the following five constructs: constructions, associative language learning, rational cognitive processing, exemplar-based learning (connectionism), and emergent relations and patterns (pp. 75-76). All are explained in further detail in the first half of the chapter.

Although usage-based approaches are strongly supported by reliable corpus-based analyses, there are several misunderstandings regarding them, especially related to exemplar-based learning. These include labeling usage-based approaches as a new form of behaviorism, ''that connectionist models cannot explain creativity and have no regard for internal representation, and that cognitive approaches deny influence of social factors, motivational aspects, and other individual differences between learners'' (p. 84). However, the chapter shows that eight of the ten observable phenomena in SLA are present in this usage-based framework. Overall, this is one of the most accessible chapters.

In Chapter 6, ''Skill acquisition theory'', DeKeyser ''accounts for how people progress in learning a variety of skills, from initial learning to advanced proficiency'' (p. 94), and that this is done via three stages of development known in the literature by varying names: cognitive, associative and autonomous (see Fitts & Posner, 1967); declarative, procedural, and automatic (see Anderson, 2007); or presentation, practice and production (see Byrne, 1986) (p. 95). It is important to note that these stages can be applied to learning any number of skills, not just language. The key element that allows someone to progress from one stage to the next is automatization as a result of extensive practice (see Segalowitz, 2010). The chapter also introduces the power law of learning, which ''describes the specific way reaction time and error rate decline as a function of practice…[where] power refers to the exponent in the mathematical equation describing the learning curve'' (p. 283).

Chapter 6 also mentions several shortcomings of Skill Acquisition Theory. One is the rarity of empirical research associated with the theory because of the large number of participants required and the length of time needed to conduct studies, both which result in copious data that require a great deal of time and manpower to analyze. Other issues are misunderstandings regarding the theory itself. These include the notion that Skill Acquisition Theory either ''explains everything about second language acquisition or nothing at all'' and ''that it is incompatible with a variety of empirical findings in the field'' (p. 101). DeKeyser clearly explains that both of these misunderstandings are simply not true.

VanPatten continues his contribution to the text by writing Chapter 7, ''Input processing in adult SLA'' where the general notion is that input processing (IP) should be viewed as a phenomenon that comprises ''one part of a complex set of processes that we call acquisition'' (p. 129). A fundamental assumption of IP is that ''acquisition cannot happen if comprehension does not occur'' because ''acquisition is dependent upon learners making appropriate form-meaning connections'' (p. 113). The author then leads the reader through an in-depth discussion of basic tenets of IP that address different aspects of creating successful form-meaning connections. This includes the following 10 principles: Primacy of Content Words, Lexical Preference, Preference for Non-redundancy, Meaning before Non-meaning, First-Noun, L1 Transfer, Event Probability, Lexical Semantic, Contextual Constraint, and Sentence Location (pp. 115-122).

VanPatten next presents research based on sentence interpretation tasks and eye-tracking studies as examples of evidence of IP. He continues by disproving numerous, erroneous assumptions concerning IP including the beliefs that IP “is a model of acquisition; discounts a role for output, social factors, and other matters; is equivalent to noticing; is a meaning-based approach to studying acquisition and ignores what we know about syntactic processes; is a pedagogical approach'' (pp. 124-25). All of these topics are clearly explained and thus accessible to all readers.

One final feature worthy of mention is the extensive list of notes provided at the end of the chapter. They are useful not only for the further explanations they give related to the chapter’s content, but they also offer further resources in addition to the suggested further reading and references.

Chapter 8, entitled ''The declarative/procedural model: A neurobiologically motivated theory of first and second language acquisition'' by Ullman, concentrates substantially on psycholinguistics, and novice readers will surely struggle with its content. There is a great deal of discussion on the anatomy and chemistry of the human brain and its declarative and procedural memory systems. There is also very transitory mention of Broca’s and Brodmann’s areas of the brain, as well as ''the famous patient H.M.''. However, no further information is provided about H.M., who suffered from medial temporal lobe (MTL) damage and whose memory disorder was studied by brain scientists for years (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Molaison for a brief overview).

The section on evidence to support the declarative/procedural model is the most extensive in the book. It presents correlational studies as behavioral evidence (p. 144-45), studies on brain lesions as neurological evidence (pp. 145-46), and brain measurement activities, or Event-Related Potentials (ERPs) as electrophysiological evidence (pp. 146-47). Lastly, PET (positron emission tomography) and fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) are provided as functional neuroimaging evidence (p. 147-48). Unfortunately, all of these complex topics would need to be researched elsewhere to obtain basic, simplified, foundational knowledge of the concepts before attempting to understand them in this chapter. Furthermore, not all of the information presented focuses on the neurological aspects of second language acquisition in particular, forcing the reader to look elsewhere (see Abutalebi, 2008).

In Chapter 9, Pienemann and Lenzing discuss ''Processability theory'', or PT, which is a theory of second language development whose core concepts are ''formed by a universal processability hierarchy based on Levelt’s (1989) approach to language production'' and ''is formally modeled using Lexical Functioning Grammar'' (p. 160) (see Bresnan 2001). The chapter relies quite heavily on grammar to explain PTs handling of second language issues including ''developmental problems (i.e., why learners follow universal stages of acquisition)'' and ''logical problems (i.e., how do learners come to know what they know if their knowledge is not represented in the input?)'' (p. 161).

Examples from English syntax continue in the section on Pienemann’s (1998) processability hierarchy, which ''is based on the notion of transfer of grammatical information within and between the phrases of a sentence'' (p. 161). The significance of the hierarchy, which contains six components or procedures, is based on the beliefs that ''every procedure is a necessary prerequisite for the next procedure, and the hierarchy mirrors the time-course in language generation. Therefore, the learner has no choice but to develop along this hierarchy'' (p. 163).

The chapter becomes more and more complex as it explores topics like hypothesis space, transfer of grammatical information and feature unification, lexical mapping, unmarked alignment, and the TOPIC hypothesis, and Multiple Constraints Hypothesis (MCH). Fortunately, not only are these concepts described in detail within the chapter, but most of them are also succinctly defined in the glossary at the back of the book for quicker and easier reference. Oddly, the chapter has no conclusion section.

Chapter 10, ''Input, interaction, and output in second language acquisition'' by Gass and Mackey, can be summed up as follows:
The central tenet of the approach is that interaction facilitates the process of acquiring a second language, as it provides learners with opportunities to receive modified input, to receive feedback, both explicitly and implicitly, which in turn may draw learners’ attention to problematic aspects of their interlanguage and push them to produce modified output. (p. 199)
The chapter presents various aspects of input and output hypotheses, including noticing, working memory, attention, interaction, negotiation for meaning, automaticity, and implicit and explicit feedback. One very useful approach is the use of real-world examples of spoken interaction in both English and Spanish. This brings the text to life by clearly demonstrating to the reader certain concepts.

Chapter 10 also mentions the importance of various types of empirical studies that support the claims associated with input, interaction and output. This includes studies having longitudinal and cross-sectional designs, case studies, and involving ''learners in a range of carefully planned tasks'' (p. 192). In fact, the authors provide one of their own studies as an example. Finally, there are seven pages of suggested further readings and references, the most of any chapter, giving the reader many options.

In Chapter 11, Lantolf, Thorne, and Poehner present a thorough explanation of ''Sociocultural theory and second language development''. The premise here is the undeniable importance of human interaction with others as well as with one’s physical surroundings, known as cultural artifacts. Historically significant names such as Hegel, Spinoza, Marx and Vygotsky are mentioned at the start of the chapter, and terms like private speech, internalization, and Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD) are explored. The authors write that both lower and higher mental processes play important roles in language acquisition. One important focus is on second language ''development in instructed settings, where activities and environments may be intentionally organized according to theoretical principles in order to optimally guide developmental processes'' (p. 208). In fact, the authors state that ''higher order mental functions, including voluntary memory, logical thought, learning, and attention, are organized and amplified through participation in culturally organized activity'' (p. 221). Lastly, several pages are dedicated to Vygotsky and semiotics, symbols, and ZPD, all worthy of further exploration by the reader but beyond the scope of this review.

Larsen-Freeman wrote Chapter 12, ''Complexity theory'', which begins by explaining how the theory is typically used by scientists to describe and trace ''emerging patterns in dynamic systems in order to explain change and growth'' (p. 227) in non-language systems. Term such as self-organizing, open, adaptive, non-linearity and iteration are first introduced as they occur in non-linguistic settings and then applied to second language acquisition, however, only briefly. The chapter leaves the reader with unanswered questions regarding CT in a second language context, requiring further reading elsewhere. A good reference source is Larsen-Freeman & Cameron (2008), which provides more details on Complexity Theory and its role in ''language, language development, discourse and classroom interactions'' p. 240).

The sections on what counts as evidence and common misconceptions are short and do not address much in the way of second language acquisition. In addition, the longitudinal exemplary study by Eskildsen (2012) was based on only two participants, hardly a sufficient sample size to make any general deductions. The most comprehensive part of the chapter was the extensive explanation of observed findings in SLA, which included six of the ten.

The final Chapter, ''Second language learning explained? SLA across 10 contemporary theories'', by Ortega, differs greatly from the rest of the textbook in that it does not follow the same pattern of offering recurring sections that are addressed in each of the previous chapters. Instead, it provides brief summarizes of portions of each chapter as they relate to certain important topics in SLA. This includes language knowledge and cognition (pp. 246-250), interlanguage (pp. 251-54), the role of first language (pp. 254-256), linguistic environment (pp. 256-262), and the role of instruction (pp. 262-266). There are several informative and useful tables spread throughout the chapter, which serve as easy-to-read references. Ortega’s chapter plays an important role as a type of overall summary of the book, closing with areas of research she believes will need to be further explored in future SLA research.

EVALUATION

There are many positive aspects of this book. One is the first chapter’s list of ten essential observable phenomena that can be identified in different theories of SLA (pp. 29-30). The ten phenomena are discussed in each subsequent chapter whenever they are relevant and observable. Another good component is the conformity of each chapter beginning with Chapter 2. There are numerous recurring sections that are addressed in every chapter as they relate to a specific topic including the following: The Theory and Its Constructs, What Counts as Evidence, Common Misunderstandings, Explanation of Observed Findings in SLA, the Explicit/Implicit Debate, and Exemplary Studies. Although the individual chapter themes may be very different, presenting them using the same format makes it easier for the reader to compare and contrast the different approaches to SLA.

Throughout the textbook, key terms are bolded, not only alerting the reader to their importance, but also because they are listed and further explained in the glossary at the end of the book. There are numerous discussion questions at the end of each chapter, as well as comprehensive lists of suggested further readings and references. Worthy of note is that many of the suggested further readings are immediately followed by a sentence describing their content and why they are worthy of reading. Finally, each chapter could stand alone or be read in any order based on the needs and interests of the reader. As a result, each chapter, except for Chapter 13, addresses only one primary topic and functions well independently.

Despite its worthy attributes, there are so many different terms that are presented so briefly that it would be impossible for the reader to internalize them all during a semester long course. In addition, due to the complexity of some of the topics, certain chapters are challenging to read and require a great deal of background knowledge on the part of the audience. The book comes across as highly academic, resulting in a text that is not very approachable to novices in the field of SLA. The level of language is less of a problem; it is the quantity of advanced concepts and the brevity of the explanations that are the issue. In all honesty, I would not be able to use several of the chapters with undergraduates getting their first glimpse into the field of SLA. Novice readers will have to explore some of the topics in more depth in a more accessible text (see Gass, 2013).

In conclusion, VanPatten’s and Williams’ book touches upon the most pressing theories and questions in the field of SLA today. It would serve well in master and doctoral level studies as well as a reference book but not so much as an introductory text as it was originally intended. It is simply impossible to give the amount of attention required for each topic in a 15 to 20-page chapter.

REFERENCES

Abutalebi, J. (2008). 'Neural aspects of second language representation and language control. Acta Psychologica 128, 466-478.

Anderson, J.R. (2007). 'How can the human mind occur in the physical universe?' New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

Bresnan, J. (2001). 'Lexical-functional syntax'. Malden, MA: Blackwell.

Byrne, D. (1986). 'Teaching Oral English' (2nd Ed.). Harlow, England: Longman.

Chomsky, N. (1981). 'Lectures on government and binding'. Dordrecht, Netherlands: Foris.

Eskildsen, S. (2012). 'L2 negation constructions at work'. Language Learning, 62, 335-372.

Fitts. P. & Posner, M. (1967). 'Human performance'. Belmost, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Gass, S. (2013). 'Second language acquisition: An introductory course'. New York, NY: Routledge.

Krashen, S. D. 1985. 'The input hypothesis: Issues and implications'. London: Longman.

Larsen-Freeman, D. & Cameron, L. (2008). 'Complex systems in applied linguistics'. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.

Levelt, W.J.M. (1989). 'Speaking: From intention to articulation'. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

White, L. (2012). 'Research timeline: Universal Grammar, crosslinguistic variation, and second language acquisition'. Language Teaching, 45, 309-328.

Segalowitz, N. (2010). 'Cognitive bases of second language fluency'. London, England: Routledge.

Selinker, L. (1972). 'Interlanguage'. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10, 209-231.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Robert Cote holds a PhD in Second Language Acquisition & Teaching. For over 20 years, he has worked as a classroom instructor, administrator, and teacher trainer in high schools, community colleges, IEPs and universities around the world. His interests include second language writing, peer review, L1 culture and identity, Generation 1.5 students, special needs and CALL. He currently holds two Assistant Directorships at the University of Arizona’s Center for English as a Second Language and the Writing Skills Improvement Program and also serves as the Associate Editor of Arab World English Journal.


[Linguist List announcement 27.817]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-813.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-813.html Pejman Habibie <phabibie@uwo.ca, habibiepezhman@gmail.com> Fri, 12 Feb 2016 12:07:14 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1309.html

AUTHOR: Ken Hyland
TITLE: Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of Knowledge
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Applied Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Pejman Habibie, University of Western Ontario

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

“Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of knowledge” presents a multifaceted picture of some of the key issues surrounding knowledge production and dissemination through scholarly publication in the current academic context. The book consists of nine chapters which are thematically independent but all together weave a narrative about scholarly publication as the focal point of the book. The book begins with a preface that provides an overview of the significance and imperative to publish in English-medium scholarly journals in current academia and outlines the author’s approach to data collection and ethical issues in writing this monograph.

In Chapter One, Hyland focuses on the “publish or perish” ideology governing current scholarship and its social and intellectual implications for the professional lives of academics. More specifically, he deals with the underlying reasons for scholarly publication. He highlights the fact that, traditionally, inspirations for scholarly publication mainly came from the classical mission of academia, as well as the scholarly and ethical responsibilities of academics for knowledge construction and dissemination. However, in today’s global context of scholarship, material rewards, instrumental motivations, and assessment regimes justify academic productivity of institutions and scholars to a greater extent.

In the next chapter, the author highlights the fact that although the participation of peripheral English as an additional language (EAL) scholars is increasing in global scholarship, the knowledge production and dissemination industry is still controlled by a gatekeeping system dominated by the Anglophone centre. He explains that this screening system defines and hierarchically categorizes knowledge as local versus global and determines what knowledge is worth dissemination through prestigious international journals. Consequently, peripheral EAL scholars face serious challenges in meeting the agendas set for them and participating in the practices of the so-called core community.

In Chapter Three, Hyland focuses on the language variable in knowledge production and dissemination in current academia. He addresses the rise, spread, and significance of English as the default language of scholarship and its implications for other languages and for the scholarly publication practices of EAL scholars. He discusses the attitudes of EAL scholars towards publishing in English and examines evidence for linguistic inequality imposed on EAL scholars as a result of the current status of English. More interestingly, he problematizes the Anglophone/non-Anglophone divide and the supposed linguistic advantage of Anglophone scholars in publication in English-medium international journals.

In the following chapter, the author points out that academic authoring is a social practice that involves engagement in both the research practices and the rhetorical discourses of a discipline. He explains how discipline-specific rhetorical conventions provide the framework for presentation and validation of disciplinary knowledge. Focusing on interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary collaborative research and multi-authored publishing, he discusses the pros and cons of co–authorship, the differences across disciplines with regard to authorship, and the problems and threats that multi-authored publishing can generate for knowledge production and dissemination.

In Chapter Five, Hyland underlines the key role of community in knowledge production. He indicates that discourse communities and communities of practice provide a social framework which shapes and develops researchers’ expertise in academic text production. He discusses how novice scholars, especially EAL emerging academics, get initiated into the discourses of their communities, negotiate scholarly identities, and develop expertise. He also highlights the key role of participation in the practices of one’s community and expert mentorship in learning scholarly publication. However, he stresses the power dynamics inherent in an expert-novice relationship and the fact that not many novice scholars learn scholarly publication through participation in the practices of their communities and in an apprenticeship-like situation.

In the following chapter, the author focuses on academic genres, especially the journal article genre, and their role in the construction of knowledge. He explains genre chains and networks, connections among academic genres, and how some of them can transform into others. Highlighting the role of online platforms in transforming the presentation of traditional genres and promoting the emergence of new online genres, he discusses how digital technologies have changed scholarly publishing and the challenges and affordances that they offer for knowledge production. He also underlines the fact that both writers and readers need to adjust and reorient themselves to digitally transformed genres in new ways.

Chapter Seven concerns the role of academic journals as venues for academic communication where “scholarship is adjudicated and new knowledge orchestrated”. (Hyland 2015, p. 137). The author discusses how the prestige and impact factors of journals have become the main criteria for judging the value of the knowledge produced and how scholarly journals project the efficiency of everybody associated with them including publishers, editorial boards and contributors. He highlights how bibliometrics and evaluative systems in current academia have oriented knowledge production process and authors towards quantity rather than quality. Focusing on commercial and promotional aspects of the practices of scholarly journals, he also discusses predatory publishing, and explains how open access as an initiative can promote a more equitable approach to knowledge dissemination.

Chapter Eight deals with the significance of the gatekeeping process in knowledge production and dissemination and its implications for academic institutions, the academic lives of individual researchers, and the research orientation of different disciplines. Hyland discusses the purposes, practices and challenges of the review process and how this evaluative system is a major marker of the prestige and reputation of a scholarly outlet. Drawing on current literature and research, the author discusses different aspects of the review process including focus, framework, and feedback. Focusing on the negotiation process, he provides useful advice on communication with journal gatekeepers, especially for novice scholars. He also discusses criticisms of and threats to the current review process and presents suggestions for making it more accountable.


In Chapter Nine, the author presents an overview of English for Research Publication Purposes (ERPP) as a fast-growing area within English for Academic Purposes (EAP) and the issues and opportunities facing teachers and students in ERPP courses. He discusses the underlying assumptions, curricula, and textbooks of such courses. Focusing on the pedagogy of ERPP, he highlights the fact that ERPP instruction addresses both writing and publishing processes and informs novice researchers of discursive and social practices involved in scholarly publication. He also stresses that further research is needed in order to gain a better understanding of the specific needs of students attending ERPP courses.

EVALUATION

In a time when knowledge construction in the form of scholarly publication is the major marker of the “efficiency of both individual scholars and academic institutions” (Belcher, 2009,p. 2), Hyland’s book provides a comprehensive account of both conceptual issues and empirical evidence on key socio-political aspects of scholarly publication including: the status of English as the lingua franca of global scholarship, the Anglophone-dominated gatekeeping system, scholarly publication in digital era, the pedagogy of scholarly publication, and controversial issues such as scholarly publication in Kachru’s (1985) Inner, Expanding, and Outer Circles and the geolinguistic advantage (Lillis & Curry, 2010) of Anglophone scholars in the construction and dissemination of knowledge.

What distinguishes this book from other publications in this domain is that it is one of the few publications that examines scholarly publication at this scale and summarizes thirty years or so of literature and research in this domain. Moreover, it draws on a diverse range of areas such as bibliometrics, applied linguistics, the philosophy of science, library studies, the sociology of science, publishing, and language education as well as Hyland’s personal experiences as an established scholar, a prolific author, and an experienced editor. Most importantly, it presents an impartial and research-informed approach, rather than a speculative or a biased one, to issues involved in the construction of knowledge in the form of scholarly publication . Hyland’s impartial approach crystallizes to a great extent in Chapters Two and Three where he discusses publishing from the periphery and the language variable in global scholarship and problematizes the Anglophone/non-Anglophone dichotomy. Unlike a lot of researchers who have jumped on the “desperate EAL scholar” bandwagon, and interpret the current status of English as a conspiracy plot for linguistic hegemony or cultural imperialism, he adopts a critical stance towards this accepted orthodoxy. That is, he does not portray Anglophone scholars in the Inner Circle as an undifferentiated population who is “endowed with economic, cultural and symbolic capitals, and thus able to respond to the demands of the core academic discursive practices with relative ease” (Uzuner, 2008, p. 261). Neither, does he present a deficit model of EAL peripheral scholars’ academic literacy competency and depict them as “an undifferentiated mass which is handicapped by a lack of proficiency in English,” “at greater risk,” and therefore “in greater need” of help (Hyland, 2015, p. 186). Drawing upon empirical evidence and reliable statistics, he provides a fair picture of the realities of scholarly publication. He stresses that in spite of the Anglophone-dominated gatekeeping system, the participation of EAL peripheral scholars in both production and evaluation of scholarship is on the rise, academic literacy competence is nurtured not natured, and non-discursive issues play a more determining role in the construction and dissemination of knowledge.

Considering that the pedagogy of scholarly publication is one of the underrepresented and under-researched areas in this domain, another strong-suit of the book is that it presents a theoretically-informed educational approach to the pedagogy of scholarly publication in higher education in the last chapter. In spite of pedagogical practices and techniques presented in other publications which usually divorce the writing component from the publishing component, this approach frames both aspects of scholarly publication, proposes well-organized curricular activities, and highlights the fact that the pedagogy of scholarly publication needs to step beyond technical and discursive issues and address the social dimension as well.

“Academic Publishing: Issues and Challenges in the Construction of knowledge” is a must-read reference book for those involved in research into scholarly publication, especially novice researchers. The book has successfully provided a timely contribution to the knowledge base on scholarly publication and presented a state of the art survey of the literature and research in this domain. There is no doubt that a book of such a high caliber can only be produced by stellar scholars such as Ken Hyland, whose distinguished status is clear to anyone within the field of EAP and whose invaluable insights have always triggered disciplinary discussions and pushed the boundaries of disciplinary scholarship forward.

REFERENCES

Belcher, W. L. (2009). Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.

Hyland, K. (2015). Academic publishing: Issues and challenges in the construction of knowledge. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

Kachru, B. B. (1985). Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English language
in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. Widdowson (Eds.), English in the World (pp. 11-34).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lillis, T. M., & Curry, M. J. (2010). Academic writing in global context: The politics and practices of publishing in English. Abingdon, UK: Routledge.

Uzuner, S. (2008). Multilingual scholars’ participation in core/global academic communities: A
literature review. Journal of English for Academic Purposes, 7(4), 250-263. doi:10.1016/
j.jeap.2008.10.007


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pejman Habibie holds a PhD in Applied Linguistics and is currently a part-time faculty in the Faculty of Education at The University of Western Ontario, Canada. His research interests include English for professional academic purposes, academic writing and publishing, genre analysis, and doctoral education.


[Linguist List announcement 27.813]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-811.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-811.html Bruno Maroneze <maronezebruno@yahoo.com.br> Fri, 12 Feb 2016 12:00:12 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-1923.html

EDITOR: Hendrik J. Kockaert
EDITOR: Frieda Steurs
TITLE: Handbook of Terminology
SUBTITLE: Volume 1
SERIES TITLE: Handbook of Terminology 1
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Bruno O. Maroneze, Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

This Handbook of Terminology, edited by H. Kockaert and F. Steurs, intends to cover a broad range of topics within the field of Terminology, a domain closely related to Linguistics (especially Lexicology), but which has independent origins and its own methodologies (see Cabré, 1993). Its 25 chapters are divided into six different parts, preceded by an introduction and a foreword. Each chapter is written by a different author (mostly academics, but also authors working in environments other than universities, like terminology management institutions) and has a short abstract and keywords list at the beginning.

The introduction, written by the two editors, states the purposes of the volume and also announces the subject of the second volume, which is terminology management in the context of language communities and the global computing environment. The text closes by presenting short descriptions of the following chapters.

The foreword is written by Dirk Geeraerts, currently one of the most important scholars in the field of lexical studies. His text emphasizes the links between Terminology and Linguistics, stating that the disciplines had different origins and went through different paths, especially because Terminology was “lexically oriented rather than focusing on syntax, with an applied and language-specific rather than universal and theoretical perspective, and based on a theoretical framework that largely derived from structuralist lexicology” (p. xvii). But nowadays, the growing interest in the lexicon has been an opportunity for both fields to “narrow the gap” and, as a result, Terminology studies may now incorporate the new descriptive models of the lexicon from Linguistics. Geeraerts also emphasizes the importance of the digital revolution for the recent developments in Terminology, especially in three aspects: “the abundant availability of digital texts”, forcing terminologists to work together with corpus linguists; the digital form in which terminographical products may now be presented; and the fact that specialized language becomes less specialized because of the massive access to specialized texts.

Part I is entitled “Fundamentals for term base development”. The first contribution, by Pius ten Hacken, is “Terms and specialized vocabulary: taming the prototypes”. The author opposes the traditional terminological definition (based on necessary and sufficient conditions of a concept) to the idea that concepts are based on prototypes. An important distinction established by ten Hacken is that of terms and specialized vocabulary (which he bases on Temmerman, 2000). For him, a word found in a specialized context constitutes a term only when it is attributed a terminological definition, which happens mainly in two contexts: that of legal disputes and that of scientific claims. Otherwise, there is no need of terminological definitions and the concepts may be described based on the notion of prototype. This approach seems slightly different from other contributions in the same volume, such as Depecker’s.

The second chapter is entitled “Frames as a framework for terminology”, by Pamela Faber. She presents Frame-Based Terminology (FBT), an approach which brings contributions from Cognitive Linguistics (especially Frame Semantics) and other recent models. FBT is divided into three micro-theories: (1) a semantic micro-theory, drawing on concepts from the Generative Lexicon theory; (2) a syntactic micro-theory, based on events and on verb predicate classes (Aktionsarten); and (3) a pragmatic micro-theory, which addresses specialized communication.

Loïc Depecker’s contribution is entitled “How to build terminology science?” and addresses the problem of building a language for terminology work, the “terms of terminology”, so to speak. He emphasizes the distinction between “sign” and “term”, saying that terminology science deals with the relation between a term (which is a linguistic sign), a concept and an object. Depecker also clarifies notions such as “technicity”, “specialized language”, “special” (as in “language for special purpose”), and explains some of the decisions that were taken in the elaboration of ISO norms on Terminology.

The next contribution, by Kyo Kageura, is entitled “Terminology and lexicography”. The author begins by stating the three meanings of the word “Terminology”: (1) “the set of practices and methods used for the collection, description and presentation of terms” (p. 45); (2) the theory that explains the relationship between concepts and terms; (3) “A vocabulary of a special subject field” (p. 45). He continues with the definitions and characteristics of terms, distinguishing them from ordinary words (Section 2), and discusses the theoretical and practical status of the terminology understood as a set of terms (section 3). In Section 4, the author establishes a distinction between terminology and linguistics, on one side, and between terminology and epistemology, on the other, and finishes the article (Section 5) by differentiating terminography and lexicography. It becomes clear that, for the author, terminology and linguistics are two clearly separate (though related) domains, a claim that is not consensual.

The chapter “Intensional definitions” is signed by three authors: Georg Löckinger, Hendrik J. Kockaert and Gerhard Budin. It focuses on practical issues with definitions, preceded by a short theoretical section. The authors mention that this kind of definition has a history traceable back to Aristotle and present many practical examples. Of great practical and didactic interest are the “Rules for writing and assessing intensional definitions” (Section 5), also very rich in examples, which render the text easier to understand. At the end of the chapter, the authors present the Unified Modeling Language (UML), a modeling language suited to represent intentional definitions, especially in computational settings.

The next chapter, “Enumerations count”, by Henrik Nilsson, makes an interesting counterpoint to the previous one, by focusing on extensional and partitive definitions. Beginning by establishing a difference between “enumerations in definitions” and “enumerations as definitions), the author proposes a very thorough typology of definitions in which there is some element of enumeration. The chapter ends with some prescriptive remarks as to whether enumerations should be used as definitions and in which cases one cannot avoid using enumerations. More discussion of this subject appears in the “evaluation” section, below.

The chapter “Associative relations and instrumentality in causality” is written by Paul Sambre and Cornelia Wermuth. The chapter presents a description of the associative relations of instrument, cause and time in titles of medicine articles. It is different from previous chapters in that it has a more descriptive, rather than prescriptive, goal, and it presents a fully linguistic semantic analysis, rather than establishing a clear difference between terminology and linguistics. In fact, it could be considered an analysis of scientific texts, more than of terms. It is theoretically dense and relies heavily on cognitive linguistic concepts, such as cognitive grammar and frame semantics.

The chapter “Ontological definition”, by Christophe Roche, deals with the subject of ontology, understood as a description of concepts and its relationships. The author clearly distinguishes between concepts (units of knowledge) and meanings (linguistic dimensions of the concepts) and, therefore, between term definition (the description of the linguistic meaning) and thing definition (the description of the object), with a third concept, name definition (a link between term and concept), in-between. The article also deals with artificial languages best suited to represent concepts. It is worth noting that the chapter has a great number of footnotes, which somewhat compromise the ease of reading.

In “Domain specificity”, Claudia Santos and Rute Costa present the results of research that focused on the methodology for term extraction and knowledge representation. They discuss the dichotomy between semasiology and onomasiology, arguing that both have their role in terminology theory and practice, especially in extracting terminological data. They also stress the importance of working with a team of specialists in the domain.

The last contribution of the first part is entitled “Getting to the core of a terminological project”, by Claudia Dobrina. It is a very practice-oriented chapter, that first presents a typology of terminological projects and then describes two examples of projects in a very didactic way, aiming at people who intend to work in this field.

This last contribution prepares the second part of the book (“Methods and Technology”), with articles focusing on methodological matters. “Automatic Term Extraction”, by Kris Heylen and Dirk De Hertog, describe many diverse methods of term extraction by computer, like statistical and linguistic approaches. The second article, “Terminology tools”, by Frieda Steurs, Ken De Wachter and Evy De Malsche, is a review of five very important terminology software programs, commonly used for knowledge management, document management and translation work.

In “Concept modeling vs. data modeling in practice”, Bodil Nistrup Madsen and Hanne Erdman Thomsen describe how the clarification of concepts is done by means of terminological data modeling. They describe terminological ontologies and the Unified Modeling Language (UML, also mentioned in other chapters). The chapter ends with two concrete examples of concept modeling.

The last chapter of the second part is “Machine translation, translation memory and terminology management”, by Peter Reynolds. He describes the use of terminology resources in machine translation and translation memory technologies, as well as presents a survey with translators on how they use these resources.

The third part has the title “Management and quality assurance (QA)”, and contains six papers on commercial and industrial applications of terminology. The first one is “Terminology work and crowdsourcing”, by Barbara Inge Karsch, a very interesting paper on the possibilities that the new concept of crowdsourcing can open to terminological work. The author describes which terminology tasks could be more suited to a crowdsourcing and which should be made by an individual terminologist.

The next chapter, “Terminology and translation”, by Lynne Bowker, is the second one in the book that deals specifically with the subject of terminology applied to translation. The author describes many situations in which translators may use terminology resources and also those in which they need to create theirs; this would be a main difference between term banks (produced by terminologists) and term bases (produced by translators). Another important aspect is that of training translators in terminology, in face of the new available technologies.

Another very interesting chapter on terminology and the “business world” is “Managing terminology concepts”, by Silvia Cerrella Bauer. The author explains how terminology management can be done in enterprises and organizations in general, with very useful thoughts for the terminologist who is not accustomed to the business administration world.

In “Terminology management within a translation quality assurance process”, Monika Popiolek explains how terminology work can be integrated into QA (Quality Assurance) models for translation processes, including guidelines and computer tools to help these tasks.

Kara Warburton, in her chapter “Managing terminology in commercial contexts”, has an approach which is slightly different from the other chapters in this third part. The author proposes to rethink which terminology concepts should be revised in order for Terminology theory be useful in commercial environments.

The last chapter of the third part, by Alan K. Melby, presents TBX, a XML-based terminology exchange format. The title of the chapter is “TBX: A terminology exchange format for the translation and localization industry”. The author first presents which would be the most important characteristics of such a format and describes some previous attempts; he then makes an evaluation of TBX based on those parameters and concludes by presenting the format’s current status and possible future refinements.

Part IV of the book has the title “Case studies”, containing two chapters. The first one, “Using frame semantics to build a bilingual lexical resource on legal terminology”, by Janine Pimentel, is a description of JuriDiCo, an online resource of legal terminology in a bilingual (English-Portuguese) setting. The article focuses on the study of verbs, a word class that is very important in legal terminology, and, for that, frame semantics proves to be a very useful theoretical support.

The second article in this part is entitled “Terminology and localization”, by Klaus-Dirk Schmitz. The author focuses on software localization and the importance of terminology for this subject. He describes criteria for creating a new term or selecting a preferred term, as well as some other issues on terminology management for localization.

Part V is on “Language and terminology: Planning and policy” and contains two chapters: “Language policy and terminology in South Africa”, by Bassey E. Antia, and “Language policies and terminology policies in Canada”, by Nelida Chan. Both chapters present the sociolinguistic situation of each country (South Africa and Canada) and describe the importance of terminology within language policies. In the South African case, the author shows an implementation of a terminological data base in some minority languages. In the Canadian case, Nelida Chan describes policies that are very specific to each province, focusing on English and French, but also including minority languages like Inuit.

The sixth and last part, “Terminology and interculturality”, contains only one chapter, “The social and organizational context of terminology work”, by Anja Drame. After first presenting the importance and reasons for investing in Terminology (both social and economic) and of terminology policies, the author introduces the concept of stakeholders, “individuals who are in a position to influence and be influenced by corporate decisions” (p. 515), who could be customers, employees, government, the media, among others. Stakeholders must be taken into account in any terminology management project, because they may provide support and also be the target groups. The author then focuses on showing how stakeholders may be integrated in terminology projects.

EVALUATION

Volume 1 of The Handbook of Terminology is certainly a very useful book for terminologists and other professionals who deal with this subject. It contains a good variety of subjects and a strong focus on practical matters.

It should be noted, however, that some absences could be pointed at. First of all, it is clear that purely descriptive (linguistics-based) terminology is not a major concern for the editors; diachronic terminology, which has been an important subject in descriptive approaches (and is a main area of interest for this reviewer) could also be remarked as an important absence (Dury; Picton, 2009 may be mentioned here).

It is also worth remarking that many theoretical chapters in Part I present a view that is not shared by many researchers in the field, especially by terminologists working on more linguistics-based approaches (including this reviewer). For example, Depecker’s chapter presents a clear separation between terminology science and linguistics: “terminology science and terminology work deal with two elements other than those commonly used in linguistics” (p. 36). This could be contrasted with the following quote from Cabré: “Para mí, los términos no son unidades distintas a las unidades del léxico, sino unidades del léxico que adquieren características específicas en su uso discursivo.” [To me, terms are not units distinct from lexical units, but lexical units which acquire specific traits in their use in discourse] (Krieger; Santiago; Cabré, 2013).

This strong “separatist” view can also be noted, for instance, in the chapter on intensional definitions (by Löckinger, Kockaert and Budin). Here, the authors present some shortcomings of this kind of definition (p. 67), but there is one aspect that is never mentioned: the now famous criticism to Aristotelian concepts made by prototype theory (for instance, Geeraerts, 2006). Although one can disagree with prototype theory, it is worth noting that it has often been applied to terminology theory (as in the first chapter, by ten Hacken).

Prototype theory could also be remembered in the chapter on extensional definitions. On pages 97-98, Nilsson mentions the difficulty of finding an intensional definition for the concept of “narcotic drug”, although it is not so difficult “to answer the question if a certain substance is a narcotic drug” (p. 98). Here, understanding the concept of “narcotic drug” as a prototype-based concept would help us to explain why it is so difficult to find a set of common defining traits for it, even if one recognizes, by prototypicality effects, what should or should not be considered a narcotic drug.

Having noted that the theoretical perspectives of the book do not always represent consensus in the field, one should praise the great emphasis on practical matters, which are not often seen in academic terminology works. Parts II, III and IV, together with the last chapter of Part I (which maybe would be better placed in Part II), present a rich variety of practical subjects, dealing with fields highly diverse from linguistics, like business, commerce and management. This emphasis on practice, in the view of this reviewer, is the greatest contribution of this book, because it helps terminologists (especially those with academic, theoretical background) to also be inserted in terminology works outside academic circles.

REFERENCES

CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 1993. La Terminología. Teoría, Metodología, Aplicaciones. Barcelona: Editorial Antártida/Empúries.

DURY, Pascaline & PICTON, Amélie. 2009. Terminologie et diachronie: vers une réconciliation théorique et méthodologique? Revue française de linguistique appliquée. XIV. 31-41.

GEERAERTS, Dirk. 2006. Prospects and problems of prototype theory. In: GEERAERTS, Dirk (ed.). Cognitive Linguistics: basic readings. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 141-65.

KRIEGER, Maria da Graça; SANTIAGO, Márcio Sales; CABRÉ, Maria Teresa. 2013. Terminologia em foco: uma entrevista comentada com Maria Teresa Cabré [Terminology in focus: an annotated interview with Maria Teresa Cabré]. Calidoscópio 11/3. 328-332. http://revistas.unisinos.br/index.php/calidoscopio/article/view/cld.2013.113.11/3771 (22 Sept. 2015)

TEMMERMAN, Rita. 2000. Towards new ways of terminology description: the sociocognitive approach. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Bruno O. Maroneze completed his Ph.D. in the University of Sao Paulo in 2011. His Ph.D. thesis focuses on Brazilian Portuguese neologisms formed by suffixation. His main research interests are on Lexicology, specifically word formation, neologisms and diachronic studies of the lexicon. He is currently teaching in the Faculty of Communication, Arts and Letters of the Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados, MS, Brazil.


[Linguist List announcement 27.811]]]> http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-789.html http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-789.html Teresa Ong <ongtesa@gmail.com> Thu, 11 Feb 2016 14:40:23 EST Discuss this message


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/26/26-2141.html

EDITOR: Mikko Laitinen
EDITOR: Anastassia Zabrodskaja
TITLE: Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe
SUBTITLE: Materials and Methodological Solutions
SERIES TITLE: Sprachkönnen und Sprachbewusstheit in Europa / Language Competence and Language Awareness in Europe - Volume 7
PUBLISHER: Peter Lang AG
YEAR: 2015

REVIEWER: Teresa Ong, Griffith University

Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry

SUMMARY

‘Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe’ is a collection of articles from a workshop which took place in autumn 2010 in Jyväskylä. The workshop is organised by Mikko Laitinen and Anastassia Zabrodskaja and funded by the Academy of Finland (2006-2011). In the sociolinguistic subfield of linguistic landscape research which flourishes from the work by Landry and Bourhis (1997), the editors offer a range of articles which investigate language and signs displayed in public spaces across Europe during the early 21st century. The focus in this volume ranges from aspects of multilingualism to tension and conflicts across borders, to aspects of mobility of languages, to linguistic choices in cities and rural places. Apart from a general introduction by the editors, there are ten chapters under three headings: (i) Mobility, globalization and signs in space, (ii) Semiotic landscapes and signs in virtual space, and (iii) Exploring linguistic landscapes in the former Eastern bloc. This collection adds fresh insights by looking at languages from a range of different methodological perspectives.

In the first chapter of this volume, Hagen Peukert examines the visibility of linguistic diversity on signs in the district of St. Georg, a multicultural and multilingual landscape in Hamburg by combining different methodology from linguistics and urban sociology. This study brings together the concepts of ‘actual utilization of a concrete spatial unit involving social actions and practices independent of the functions of language’ (Peukert, 2015, p. 30). Peukert perceives the city of Hamburg as a macro space, the streets as a meso space and the details of houses, floors and flats at St. Georg as a micro space. His quantitative analysis reveals that two streets which share a common property – shopping areas – have the highest percentage of language diversity. Peukert concludes that the selection of space for data collection/observation is important because the concept of relational space with the actual presence of signs has yet to be explored in a satisfactory manner.

Chapter 2 by Amei Koll-Stobbe examines the hairdressers’ shop names in Lancaster City and the West End of London with additional data from a German city. By studying the shop signs as a genre in advertising discourse, Koll-Stobbe categorises hairdressers’ shop names according to stylistic choices and traditional forms versus stylistic innovations. Her results show that hairdressers’ shop names may serve two indexical functions: codified identifiers (identify the business and its services) and ideofiers (trigger an image for commodity purposes). Koll-Stobbe’s small-scale analysis acts as a starting point for future studies which aim to examine the on-going changes of various types of shops in the writing city.

In two urban districts in Oslo, Karine Stjernholm compares the expression of local social culture in a more affluent district in the west (Majorstua) with a more working-class district in the east (Grünerløkka), both qualitatively and quantitatively. Various languages found on the store names in both districts were counted and the differences were compared. An interesting observation is that a large part of the Oslo population’s language skills are not represented in the linguistic landscape of both districts – this shows the low status of non-western languages, which are invisible and not marketed. On the other hand, the qualitative analysis demonstrates the concept of iconography as an analytic method for interpreting visual art. In Majorstua, international expressions make up the main theme of the district whereas in Grünerløkka, the linguistic landscape tends to express a close relationship to the local environment.

By employing Kachru’s (1985) paradigm of English, Mikko Laitinen looks at the presence and usage of English in the public spaces in Finland and examines its implications for future studies. The data were collected in two bicycle field trips: (i) from Helsinki to Oulu, and (ii) in the winter sports center of Ylläs. Laitinen analyses the types of mobility of the collected English signs by focusing on the space and time of the placement of the signs which could lead to future research on linguistic globalization. He also examines the local elements in English texts. From the analysis, Laitinen concludes that the understanding of English usage in public space requires an ethnographic approach, such as interviews with sign producers and audiences, which could provide different angles on the topic.

In her analysis of semiotic signs in digital space, Mia Halonen examines the uses and functions of a hybrid lexical element, “siisdaa” and its spelling variations employed by Finnish adolescents in various social media spaces. “Siisdaa” is an informal register and originates from spoken languages. It consists of the Finnish particle “siis” which means ‘like’ and “daa” which comes from English ‘duh’. Her results show that “siisdaa” is positioned ambiguously in different activities – the reason is participants are engaged in communicative activities but prefer to distance themselves from sounding serious about their discussions. This might relate to a feeling of insecurity and defensiveness by the participants.

An interesting contribution by Christoph Marx and Marek Nekula which combines the theory of language management (cf. Neustupny and Nekvapil, 2003) with visual semiotics (cf. Scollon and Scollon, 2003), examines the semiotic landscapes of a binational and bilingual German-Czech organisation. Marx and Nekula employ ethnomethodology with the assumption that ‘social structures are negotiated and re-produced in interactions’ (Marx and Nekula, 2015, p. 150). The data consists of photographs of the building and rooms of the organisation, printed texts published by the organisation, public events of the organisation and internal interactions. This chapter demonstrates that the construction of a cross-border space in a bilingual semiotic landscape can be seen as heterotopy (cf. Foucault, 1991).

By employing both quantitative and qualitative approaches, as well as discourse analysis of visual semiotics, Petteri Laihonen investigates the linguistic situation in two villages in South-West Slovakia where the majority of the population are the minority Hungarians. He compares both mono and bilingual signage to highlight the language ideologies and discourses encompassing them. According to the 2011 Census, Reca is bilingual (and shifting to Slovak) whereas Vásárút is predominantly monolingual Hungarian. However, Slovak is dominant in the public space of both villages. According to the study, the regional dominating language is not mirrored in the public space of these villages to avoid tension with officials and offence to state sovereignty.

Chapter 8 reports on research examining the ruralscapes of a self-declared republic, Transnistria – a result of the breakup of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Sebastian Muth collected his data based on signs from two towns (Rybnitza and Dubossary) and three villages (Erzhovo, Saratei and Bolshoi Molokish): each of the settlements had a distinctive demographic composition but the characteristics of their ruralscapes were similar. He aims to show a connection between the ongoing efforts to construct a unique Transnistrian political and cultural identity. His results reveal that the common categories of ‘derussification’ and ‘de-sovietization’ which were observed in most parts of the former USSR do not occur in Transnistria. In contrast, the use of Russian is widely promoted as a lingua franca and an important part of the post-Soviet identity.

Based on theoretical foundations of multimodal research, Olga Bever analyses the contradictory display of Russian and Ukrainian in Cyrillic script rather than Roman script in Ukrainian’s politically, linguistically and culturally contested spaces. At the main street of Zaporizhzhya where there is a high density of private and governmental signs; Bever looks at the font, sizes, colours, images and text prominence which constitute the multimodal elements of a multilingual sign. This study accounts for the linguistic identity and language choices in modern Ukraine as well as the underlying linguistic tension that is happening between eastern and western Ukraine.

The final chapter by Monica Perotto deals with the vitality and usage of the Italian language in Moscow. The number of Italians in Moscow is rather low but there is high demand for Italian courses – this suggests that the Italian language reflects good values such as prestige, beauty, elegance and creativity. Perotto examines how the Italian language is used in Moscow’s commercial signs. She concludes that the Russian language dominates the public spaces despite the fact that Moscow is multicultural and multilingual. Nevertheless, the presence of Italian words in the Russian language is perceived as cultural and attractive to the country’s industry.

EVALUATION

The book offers a great collection of articles where scholars focus on the linguistic landscape of Europe, expanding to the semiotics of space (i.e. visual and social semiotics), mostly employing both qualitative and quantitative approaches. There is also a focus on the former Eastern bloc where the Russian language is used in most parts but where there are traces of other minority languages. As pointed out by Shohamy and Waksman (2009, p. 328), closer and more comprehensive analysis of the visible signs is required to understand the significance and design of public space. The scholars in this book have achieved a deep and complex investigation of the various spaces across Europe which includes integrating language choices and the semiotic system to achieve a holistic understanding of the visual data. The articles discuss the elements fundamental to understanding the meaning of signage in the public spaces of Europe. This is a recommended book for scholars who are interested in the linguistic landscape of Europe, in particular the former Eastern bloc, which offers many opportunities for work on tension and conflict of language policy and language choices.

REFERENCES

Kachru, B. (1985). Standards, Codification and Sociolinguistic Realism: The English Language in the Outer Circle. In R. Quirk and H. Widdowson (Eds.). English in the World: Teaching and Learning the Language and Literatures (pp. 11-30). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Landry, R. and Bourhis, R. Y. (1997). Linguistic Landscape and Ethnolinguistic Vitality: An Empirical Study. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 16, 23-49. DOI: 10.1177/0261927X970161002.

Marx, C. and Nekula, M. (2015). Constructing a Cross-Border Space through Semiotic Landscapes: A Case Study of a German-Czech Organisation. In M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (Eds.). Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe: Materials and Methodological Solutions (pp. 149-167). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Neustupny, J. V. and Nekvapil, J. (2003). Language Management in the Czech Republic. Current Issues in Language Planning, 4(3 & 4), 181-366. DOI: 1466-4208/03/030181-186.

Peukert, H. (2015). Urban Linguistic Landscaping: Scanning Metropolitan Spaces. In M. Laitinen and A. Zabrodskaja (Eds.). Dimensions of Sociolinguistic Landscapes in Europe: Materials and Methodological Solutions (pp. 29-51). Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Scollon, R. and Scollon, S. W. (2003). Discourses in Place: Language in the Material World. London: Routledge.

Shohamy, E. and Waksman, S. (2009). Linguistic Landscape as an Ecological Arena: Modalities, Meanings, Negotiations, Education. In E. Shohamy and D. Gorter (Eds.). Linguistic Landscape: Expanding the Scenery (pp. 313-329). New York and London: Routledge.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Teresa Ong is a PhD student at Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. Her research interest includes linguistic landscape, sociolinguistics, language planning and policy, language and culture, multilingualism and social semiotics.


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