Linguistics, language acquisition, and language variation: Current trends and future prospects ed. by James E. Alatis, Carolyn A. Straehle, Maggie Ronkin, and Brent Gallenberger (review)

BOOK NOTICES 663 ence ofthe Institutfür deutsche Sprache (IDS, March 14-16, 1995, at the institute's headquarters in Mannheim ). The contributions are grouped under well-defined headings, one introductory and seven more specific: 'V2 and the sentence bracket and their consequences for the rest of grammar', 'Negation and wandering', 'Determination in lexical fields', 'Grammaticalization and "mixed types'", 'Pronouns: Strong, weak, or clitic', 'Morphologic variation', and, finally, 'Phonology and graphology'. Working on a budget of some DM 14 million (approximately $8 million) annually, the IDS generates a great deal of scholarship and related activities, duly listed as an annual report in the yearbook (637-95). The 1995 conference (IdS's 31st) was co-organized with members of a recently founded research institute located in Berlin, known as FAS (Forschungsschwerpunkt Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, Typologie und Universalienforschung or 'Research concentration in general linguistics, typology, and the study ofuniversals ', established 1992), whose work clearly coincides with the topic chosen for the conference and the subsequent publication of the proceedings. With the exception of one essay in English, Christer Platzack's 'Germanic verb second languages' (92-120), the yearbook is in German. Whereas some contributions contrast German with one other language (most often English), a few authors include data from dozens of languages. In this respect the volume represents a fair cross-section of comparative /typological investigation. Ewald Lang's 'Das Deutsche im typologischen Spektrum' (7-15) provides a brief overview of the volume while reflecting on the uses of typological research, outlined by Lang as being related to the search for linguistic universals, to 'grids' of grammatical options, and to first and second-language acquisition . Somewhat more in-depth and employing concrete examples is Bernard Comrie's 'Sprache und Sprachen: Universalien und Typologie' (16-30), which addresses case markers, 'tough movement' [sic; English technical terms are quite common in German linguistics], relative clauses and nominal clauses, and tense/aspect. Comrie argues that categories such as 'universals' must constantly be reevaluated and reapplied in the light of new data. Or, to paraphrase Lang, we should be ready to 'differentiate among connections and connect differences' (15). Lang, by the way, recommends Mark Twain's "The awful German language' as a proven means for getting students interested in typological research (9). The advantages and limits of bifocal 'contrastive grammar' analysis are the topic of Ekkehard König 's essay (31-54). John Ole Askedal's concise and insightful remarks at the beginning of his discussion of 'German as a "typologically mixed [language] type' " (369-83) best convey the theoretical parameters of the essays collected here and, indeed, of much of current linguistic investigation: cognitivepsychological (generative) on the one hand, pragmatic -functional (semiotic) on the other. Following the three introductory papers, four essays treat aspects of German verb syntax, specifically how it relates to semantics, to topicalization (Platzack , mentioned above), to various perceptions of German word order, and to ellipsis. The three essays on negation all refer to Otto Jespersen's Negation in English and other languages (1966 [1917]. Copenhagen : Munksgaard) while attempting to go beyond (or below) the Dane's seminal discussion. The remaining issues are varied and interconnected, including verbal semantic categories, particle verbs (contrasted with English), prepositions, etc., all in relation to notions of language typology. Three essays (on Askedal, see above) look at German as a 'mixed [language] type', with the bulk of these discussions centered on the verb. The final chapters contain a number of issues of special interest to learners ofGerman: gender assignment ofnouns, morphological structural evolution, and the hot potato 'orthography reform', at this writing still underjudicial review in the Federal Republic. The quality ofthe essays is high. Well-chosen and numerous examples characterize the contributions throughout. Although each essay contains an abstract and its own references at the end, the volume lacks an index and a bibliography, thus limiting its usefulness for a reader who might wish to quickly locate the discussion(s) of a particular issue. The payoff for this shortcoming is, perhaps, the relative proximity of the publication date to the date of the conference, an accomplishment worth recognizing. This is a nicely bound, carefully edited, compact collection of grammatical questions clearly at the cutting edge of...