Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics 4th edn. Ed. by David Crystal (review)

230 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 1 (1998) Hungarian phonetic-historian has written the descriptive history of Hungarian phonetics, A magyar leíró hangtan tórténete az újgrammatikusokig [The history of Hungarian descriptive grammar to the new grammarians ], Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1980. To sum up, K's book is a high-level, instructive, interesting, and valuable book which may be profitably used by specialists interested in this field. [Imre H. TÓTH, JózsefAttila University, Szeged, Hungary.] Pitch movements under time pressure: Effects of speech rate on the melodic marking of accents and boundaries in Dutch. By Johanna Caspers. (HIL dissertations , 10). The Hague: Holland Institute of Generative Linguistics, 1994. Pp. ix, 239. Caspers's published dissertation (Leiden University ) examines how speakers adapt their speech when under severe time constraints. Within the framework of laboratory phonology/experimental phonetics, C looks specifically at how prosodie marking in Dutch is affected when speakers are asked to produce an utterance at a faster than normal rate. 'Fast' is a rate anywhere from 23% to 42% faster than a reference ('normal') rate. C considers whether markings are removed, altered, and/or substituted and what the results of these adaptations are phonetically. The experimental technique of identifying crucial features of a speech cue by forcing speakers to talk rapidly hinges, of course, on the assumption that the more important a cue is the less likely it will be eliminated or altered. Cs well laid-out book consists of six chapters of discussion comprising roughly 150 ofthe 250 pages; the remainder is taken up primarily with a wealth of appendices. The first chapter clearly and briefly states the goals, the next four chapters deal with the separate subhypotheses in logical fashion, and the concluding chapter basically summarizes the findings . The reader is never unclear as to where the writer is in her argumentation; the attentive reader may find the reiteration of her progress somewhat repetitious at points. Cs first question (Ch. 2, 'The deletability of pitch accents and melodic boundary markings under time pressure') asks whether accents are deleted in fast speech. Her basic finding is that accent-marking pitch changes are not deleted, while boundary-marking pitch changes may be. Ch. 3 considers the possibility that speakers will choose a marking in fast speech different from the one used in normal speech (they don't, although there is some evidence for speakers adopting a simplification strategy). Ch. 4, perhaps the most interesting chapter, investigates the effect of an increased speaking rate on the phonetic realization of the (accent-lending) rise and fall. With regard to the former, the movement is shortened and steepened, with its onset still anchored at the syllable onset and its offset moved to an earlier position. This suggests that the alignment rather than the length and slope of the rise is more important than its timing, the opposite of the case, surprisingly, with the fall. Here the shape seems to be the most important feature . Ch. 5 looks at the location or 'anchoring' of the rise (accent-lending pitch rise), specifically, whether it is the onset or offset of the rise that was anchored in segmental structure. C finds that speakers prefer a rise which starts at the syllable onset to a rise which is synchronized with the vowel onset (all tokens are CVC syllables). Besides clearly answering a number of questions, Cs book raises still others. For example, one wonders what would happen if speakers were asked to speak slowly. Would the expectation be that more boundary markers would appear? How would the accent markers be altered? One would have also liked some comparison to what happens at the segmental level. How are the processes at work here similar to what has been called 'articulatory undershoot'? [G. Tucker Childs, Portland State University.] Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. 4th edn. Ed. by David Crystal. Oxford : Blackwell, 1997. Pp. xvi, 426. By the time a dictionary has reached its fourth edition, it is both well known and proven in its usefulness . Such is the case with Crystal's Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics, which has become a standard reference work and will deservedly continue to be recommended to all those entering...