Linguistics and computation Ed. by Jennifer Cole, Georgia M. Green, and Jerry L. Morgan (review)

BOOK NOTICES 205 basic issues as methodology, since investigators have come from several fields (Ch. 1, 'Introduction', 1-6). Chin and Pisoni attempt to consolidate this diverse literature, and indeed each author brings his own area of expertise to the task; C is a linguist, and P is a psychologist, but both authors share an interest in various facets of phonetics. Linguists should read Ch. 2, "The nature and pharmacology of alcohol' (7-23), which explains the properties of alcohol, its absorption and measurement in the body, and its effect as a depressant on the central nervous system. Phoneticians may skim Ch. 3, 'Speech production and speech acoustics' (24-63), though the material in Sec. 3.1.2 ('Neurological aspects of speech production', 29-39) may be less familiar. Terminology like intraperitoneal will be as daunting to linguists as alveopalatal affricate will be to alcohol researchers, but explanations may be found in the 'Glossary' (349-56). Ch. 4, 'Research methodology' (64-99), summarizes traditional research paradigms, subjects, materials, and quantitative and qualitative measures of alcohol in the body; this chapter will appeal to readers interested in methodological issues, but the same information is scattered throughout the succeeding three chapters. The bulk of the book (Chs. 5-7, 100-283) is a chronological review of modern research on the impact of alcohol on speech, and the subsections for each study describe their subjects, procedures, and results. Ch. 5 (100-27) covers the years 1915-64, and effectively distills the linguistic aspects of research in this period, which had the broader objectives characteristic of experimental psychology. Greater sophistication emerged in 1966-82 (Ch. 6, 128-66), owing to the precision offered by new equipment for sound recording and analysis and by the ability to measure alcohol exposure noninvasively with the breathalyzer. This trend was refined in 1985-96 (Ch. 7, 167-283), with many acousticphonetic studies seeking to uniquely identify intoxicated speech—a potential application of which (it was hoped by General Motors) would be an ignition interlock system to prevent impaired driving. Properties of intoxicated speech that have been observed in English include deaffrication, devoicing, lengthening , and misarticulation of /s/ and liquids. In all, 47 studies are summarized in these three chapters. A forensic application of alcohol and speech research is discussed in Ch. 8 ('Case study: The U.S. tankship Exxon Valdez and novel scientific evidence ', 284-3 12). The tanker grounded near Valdez, AK, resulting in the largest oil spill in US history, and the ensuing litigation contested the sobriety of the ship's captain. Lacking toxicological samples from the captain, plaintiffs in the civil trial summoned coauthor P as an expert witness since he had identified acoustic cues of intoxication in recordings made at the time ofthe grounding—but the proposed testimony was ultimately ruled inadmissible. Ch. 9 ('Conclusions', 313-22) suggests directions for future research, and three appendixes (323-9) contain the English and German words and texts that were read aloud by subjects in some of the experiments reported in Chs. 5-7. This book is eminently readable and occasionally even entertaining—as, for example, when we are assured that nine male students who were experimental subjects were 'transported home in a prepaid taxi' (174). Picturesque images are likewise conjured by the assertion that 'Positional alcohol nystagmus [involuntary jerking of the eyes] . . . occurs when the head of an alcohol-intoxicated person is placed laterally ' (20). Alcohol and speech is a valuable consolidation of research in a multidisciplinary field of study. [Taylor Roberts, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.] Linguistics and computation. Ed. by Jennifer Cole, Georgia M. Green, and Jerry L. Morgan, (CSLI lecture notes no. 52.) Stanford, CA: CSLI, 1995. Pp. xi, 296. These papers, presented at the Computational Linguistics and the Foundations of Linguistic Theory workshop held in June 1991, are mostly theoretical and reflect an early stage of the field. However, all of the papers are significant, and the volume itself is an important book for anyone interested in computational linguistics. The papers cover a wide range of topics and are divided into three main areas. Part I covers 'Syntax and computation'; Part II, 'Automated parsing and generation' ; and Part III. 'Phonology and computation' . Unfortunately...