Issues in the phonology and morphology of the major Iberian languages ed. by Fernando Martínez-Gil and Alfonso Morales-Front (review)

640LANGUAGE, VOLUME 74, NUMBER 3 (1998) demonstrate how individual English speakers could be argued to hold more than one world view. Elsa Gomez-Imbert in Part IV compares systems of nominal classifiers in the languages of the Vaupés multilingual setting as used by bilinguals in intermarrying communities to reveal an underlying fundamental shared system which eases bilingual learning. These papers underscore the challenge of handling a phenomenon which is manifested both individually and universally. The papers in this collection are very much in an exploratory mode rather than aimed toward a definitive solution. Many are quite long, giving authors the opportunity to develop arguments in a fair amount of depth, using extended examples. Beyond the goal of dispelling widespread misunderstandings about linguistic relativity, the overriding message of mis collection is to alert readers to the exciting theoretical and research possibilities created by revisiting and expanding the notion of relativity. This is especially the case in the papers in Parts III and IV in their consideration of relativity in context, praxis, and discourse. While this book provides no new definitive answers about linguistic relativity, the phenomenon has been rejustified, pertinent issues have been clarified, and the scope ofquestioning has been broadened. With these reformulations , we are now poised to ask the right kinds of questions about the relationship between language, thought, and culture. Department of Geography and Anthropology Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA 70803 Issues in the phonology and morphology of the major Iberian languages. Ed. by Fernando Martínez-Gil and Alfonso Morales-Front. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv, 694. Reviewed by Barbara E. Bullock, Pennsylvania State University Over the last fifteen years, and particularly within the last five, phonological theory has exploded with new approaches, allowing researchers to revisit longstanding problems in wellstudied languages. This edited book gives us twenty chapters dedicated largely to providing new theoretical analyses of various aspects of the phonologies of Basque, Catalan, Galician, Portuguese , and Spanish. Many of the issues raised in these chapters will be familiar to linguists who have some knowledge of Spanish phonology. These topics include spirantization, rhotic distribution, sonorant representation, prosody/syntax interface, (de)palatalization, syllabicallymotivated processes, and especially, stress. With the exception of a contribution by James Harris on Spanish imperatives, morphology is addressed only with respect to phonology. This volume is organized in five sections that correspond to the five Iberian languages under consideration and these are apparently sequenced alphabetically. A list of the contributors and their affiliations is included as part of the introductory material along with a preface from the editors that outlines the contents of the chapters to follow. The chapters are essentially standalone articles with the relevant notes and bibliographic references following each contribution. There is no index to this volume. The section on Basque includes two papers. In the first, Gorka Elordieta (3-78) analyzes the accent and intonational system ofthe Biscayan dialect ofBasque. The analysis closely follows the hierarchical model of intonational units established by Pierrehumbert and Beckman (1988) as do a number of other chapters in this volume. The argument for the intonational units is supported by 45 pitch tracking figures. In the second paper on Basque (79-99), José Ignacio Hualde reworks his own previous lexical phonology analysis ofnasal assimilation and palatalization in Biscayan Basque. He argues that constraint-based theories provide approaches to phonological phenomena that are superior to those provided by derivational ones since they allow us to describe the facts in a more insightful way. Eulalia Bonet and Joan Mascaro open the section on Catalan with a syllable structure REVIEWS641 account of rhotic distribution in Catalan, Portuguese, and Spanish (103-26). They exceptionally mark the flap in intervocalic position (in contrast to the standard assumptions about rhotic distribution ) and assume that relative sonority and core syllabification impact the overall patterning of rhotics in these languages. Sonorants are also the subject of the next chapter by Maria-Rosa Lloret who examines dissimilation across Iberian languages (127-50). She proposes that most models of feature geometry are too weak to account for the gradient properties of dissimilation. Instead, the author favors a hierarchical model of sonorant feature organization where the nasal and lateral sonorants...