More Englishes: New studies in varieties of English 1988-1994 By Manfred Görlach (review)

BOOK NOTICES Fonética y fonología actual del español. By Francesco D'Introno, Enrique del Teso, and Rosemary Weston. Madrid: Cátedra, 1995. Pp. 478. This thorough and technical treatise, in Spanish, is on the phonetics and phonology ofSpanish as well as on contemporary phonological theory generally. The first chapter, 'La fonética en los estudios del lenguaje' (11-137), runs the gamut from a review ofNewtonian physics through acoustic, auditory, and articulatory phonetics. Details along the way include the geometry of vector quantities (14, n. 1), kinds of sound spectrogram equipment (59-62), chemistry of different inner-ear fluids (66), and much more. Equal thoroughness is granted to the treatment of acoustic and articulatory phonetics in spite ofthe latter's perhaps greater accessibility to the general reader's intuition . The second chapter, 'Fonemas y alófonos del espa ñol' (139-313), includes not only presentation of the structuralist phonemic inventory but also detailed treatments of topics such as secondary stress (169-73) and glide fortition (241-58). The chapter generally follows Tomás Navarro Tomás's Manual de pronunciación española (12th edn., Madrid: CSIC, 1965), both in theoretical approach and in the choice of dialect for description, namely educated Madrilenian speech. The third and final chapter, 'Fonología generativa ', devotes subsections to SPE (315-48), autosegmental (348-84), CV (384-96), lexical (397-99), and 'nonderivational' (i.e. optimality theory , 442-61) phonologies. It also includes up-to-date surveys of work on Spanish syllable structure (400-10) and stress (41 1-36). Intonation is reviewed briefly (131-35, 436-42). The SPE framework and its successor theories are each introduced organically , i.e. with clear rationales as to what existing theoretical inadequacies they were intended to remedy. Ch. 3 differs from Chs. 1 and 2 in giving more frequent citations of sources in the literature, and—especially after the SPE section—the discussion is more about current phonological theory than about that theory as applied to Spanish. While linguists such as James Harris and William Cressey have produced entire treatments of Spanish phonology ostensibly in the SPE framework, no such broad studies for this language have yet appeared under the successor theories. The text is supported graphically by diagrams, spectrograms, and tables. The bibliography (463-68) cites some 115 titles. Self-reference includes a subject index (469-71) and a finely-dissected table of contents (473-78). Although highly technical in subject matter, the book is written with clarity and consideration for the neophyte reader. Invisible phenomena are explained by analogies to familiar experiences: the vibration of complex sound waves is compared to a column of elastic balls bouncing one on top ofanother; autosegmental tiers are imagined like notebook pages radiating at different angles from their spiral binding; and so on. My only complaint is about the fatigue of reading closely-spaced lines of 11-point type on an off-white stock. A larger print and/or a brighter white paper would have been easier on the eyes. [Steven Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale .] More Englishes: New studies in varieties of English 1988-1994. By Manfred Görlach. (Varieties of English around the world, G13.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia : John Benjamins, 1995. Pp. 276. $49.00. Manfred Görlach's editorship of the journal English World-Wide (EWW) and the series Varieties of English around the world as well as his own research have made him a prominent name within English studies. This collection brings together eight of his more recent articles, several of which have appeared elsewhere in slightly different form: Four are reprinted outright, with three from his own tenure at EWW. The 'reprinted' nature of this fine volume raises the question of who can really afford to buy such a relatively expensive book when many of the individual articles may be found elsewhere. But concerns of this nature are usually offset by the convenience of having the articles collected in one accessible source, and this is certainly the case here. All things considered, this collection of papers will interest researchers whose work falls across the areas ofsociolinguistics, applied linguistics, creóle studies, and dialectology. The book is divided into eight chapters...