Russian motion verbs for intermediate students By William J. Mahota (review)

212 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) rather than to linguistics per se. Accordingly, S has not only translated K's work but also added numerous annotations detailing the intellectual history of various concepts adduced in the original. S has also added footnotesjustifying his solution to a numberof terminological problems posed by such a translation. Like the manytypographical errors, these added footnotes may prove distracting to the reader. But for those who do not read German, these distractions will doubtless be more than offset by the fact that K's work is now more accessible to them thanks to S' s otherwise accurate and reliable French translation . [Gary H. Toops, Wichita State University.] Plastic glasses and church fathers: Semantic extension from the ethnoscience tradition. By David B. Kronenfeld. (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics , 3.) New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Pp. xii, 273. This book, parts of which draw on articles published by Kronenfeld since 1973, would be of particularinterestto linguistic anthropologists. It is divided into five parts of two to three chapters each. In Ch. 10, K presents his semantic theory, applies it to data in Ch. 11, and in the earner chapters introduces and discusses its intellectual antecedents and the major findings and problems that led to the theory. Part I, 'Introduction and linguistic background' (1-43), includes a discussion of Saussure's approach to language and meaning and of the contribution of the Prague School to componential analysis (in the form of distinctive feature analysis). In Part II, "The ethnoscience tradition' (45-70), K briefly explains ethnoscience and componential analysis, illustrating his discussion with the pioneering studies of Hanu- ??? pronouns by Harold C. Conklin, Pawnee and Seneca kinship semantics by Floyd G. Lounsbury, the meaning of American English kinship terms by Anthony F. C. Wallace and J. Atkins, and other articles . In his discussion of conjunctivity, marking, and information processing limits in Part III, 'Explanatory principles' (71-143), K points out that in the analysis of semantic structures there exists an upper limit of about ten dimensions that can be handled, and that to handle them sequentially would take time and pose problems of information storage and retrieval . K's theory is presented in Part IV, 'Semantic extension ' (145-94). According to K, 'a theory that has to treat "chair" (what we sit on) as being totally unrelated to the "chair" (the leader of our meeting) is . . . inadequate as a theory of our semantic competence ' (171). Very briefly (K's extended discussion must be greatly abbreviated), the application of K's theory involves distinguishing between core and extended referents (roughly Brent Berlin and Paul Kay's distinction between focal and nonfocal color terms, and Lounsbury's distinction between kernel and nonkernel referents of kin terms); acknowledging that core referents represent the entities through which sense relations and reference are tied together; making denotative and connotative extensions within the domain to which the core item belongs but making metaphoric extensions (in a broad sense) to an item outside the domain; and recognizing the need to distinguish between form and function (denotation versus connotation). Extended applications (under that title) are made in Part V (195-236) to the following topics: the domainof 'cups' and 'glasses' in English in comparison with similar domains in Hebrew and Japanese; the Blackfoot uses of the concepts 'full blood' and 'mixed blood' in tribal political discourse; the terms in which an opposition between certain religious groups was understood by the parties involved; and a 1980 study of a population of households in Los Angeles in which the wives worked as nurses at a local hospital (section titled '"Men's work" versus "women's work" in Los Angeles'). The work concludes with 'Appendix: Piagetian schémas' (237-42), a bibliography, and an index. [Zdenek Salzmann, Northern Arizona University.] Russian motion verbs for intermediate students. By William J. Mahota. (Yale language series.) New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1996. Pp. viii, 139. This useful and well-organized handbook is devoted entirely to Russian motion verbs, a notoriously complex and difficult area of grammar for Englishspeaking students. Mahota provides a thorough treatment of verb forms for students in the second and third year ofRussian language study, integrating...