Directionality and logical form By Josef Bayer (review)

BOOK NOTICES 203 defined in Ch. 11. A final minor problem for my midwestern students is the book's Britishness. They were completely thrown, for example, by an exercise asking them to discuss alternate pronunciations for words like comely, shone, and ate. In the end this may have been a good thing, though; it led to some interesting discussions of dialect. On the whole, this textbook provides a thorough and quite effective review of traditional English grammar, but it is much less satisfactory as an introduction to linguistic ways of thinking about grammar . [Catherine Rudin, Wayne State College.] La philosophie du langage. By Sylvain Auroux. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996. Pp. 442. Sylvain Auroux writes an enlightening and entertaining treatise on the philosophical, esoterical, and rhetorical aspects oflanguage. He offers someunique and impressive views on the scientific study of language as well as on the role of language in relation to oneself. Covering most areas within the field of linguistics—semantics, phonology, morphology, and even grammatology, A wastes no time discussing what is the philosophy of language. In 'Le langage humain' (17-46), A attempts to answer, and in my opinion, successfully, the question Pourquoi la nature du langage est-elle problème philosophique? This seemingly simple question has boggled the minds ofphilosophers, linguists, and laymen for millennia. In answering this question, A progresses through several theories on language—both ancient and modern. He goes from the functions of language to characteristic traits of human language to the questionable origin of languages. In Ch. 2, 'L'écriture' (47-78), A leads into several discussions, dealing with the philosophical stance of writing, written language in opposition to oral language , grammar, and the pseudo-functioning ofwritten expression. Ch. 3 deals with 'La nature du signe linguistique' (79-124), while Ch. 4, 'Langage et ontologie : L'être et les mots' (125-60) and Ch. 5 'Langage et ontologie: La relativité linguistique' (161-92) are a three-part sequence on the problems and various theses about the relativeness of language in relation to philosophical concerns. In the next three chapters, 'Pensée et langage' (193-220), 'Langage et subjectivité (221-52), and 'La mécanisation du langage' (253-86), A discusses the various linguistic aspects of language in relation to philosophical treatises by such philosophers as Heidegger, Lacan, Wittgenstein, and Freud. With these three chapters as the base, A then leads into the quintessential area of his work: Ch. 9, 'Philosophie de la linguistique' (287-324) and Ch. 10, 'Ethique linguistique' (325-52). Here, A defines the philosophical nature of language along with the problems of language as well as the universality of linguistics. Furthermore he discusses the ethics of language in relation to the scientific community, the racism of language, and how individuals dispose of their own language in various ways. One of the best parts in these two chapters is his discussion of Plato and the condemnation of rhetoric. A concludes with a brief discussion on the enigmas of linguistics and language—'Connaissances et énigmes linguistiques' (353-58). Two appendixes follow A's main work, one on the 'chronologie de la réflexion linguistique' (359-94) and the other on 'systèmes formels, machine de Turing, calculabilité et langages formels' (395-414). I found the first appendix to be worth the weight and cost of the book itself. It's a wonderfully written and well researched chronology of linguistics , philosophy and rhetoric from prehistoric times up to 1994 ce. A deserves accolades for this excellently written tome. It's currently available only in French, and I feel it should be translated into several other scholarly languages as soon as possible to give it its realm of needed support. [Richard L. Tuttle, Eastern Washington University.] Directionality and logical form. By Josef Bayer. (Studies in natural language and linguistic theory, 34). Dordrecht : Kluwer, 1996. Pp. xv, 328. This book defends the interesting thesis that canonical government is crucial for licensing syntactic movement. Bayer uses constructions with the focusing particles only and even to argue that both overt and LF movement are possible only out of a canonically governed position. If B's claim is correct, it throws doubt on Richard Kayne's proposal...