Studies on universal grammar and typological variation Ed. by Artemis Alexiadou and T. Alan Hall (review)

204 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 75, NUMBER 1 (1999) reference information on the area under consideration . The five papers that make up Section 3 (253-337) on 'Language use and attitudes towards language(s)' concern themselves with attitudes towards the use of the standard or a dialect in Antwerp, towards French and German in Switzerland, towards the Alemannic dialect in France and Germany, and towards different varieties of Krio in Sierra Leone. Eugene Casad's paper, 'Language assessment tools: Uses and limitations ', is not concerned with attitudes and should have been placed in Section 1. Section 4 (341-421) investigates 'Code-switching —One speaker, two languages' . Of the three papers , two deal with theoretical issues in the study of codeswitching, while the third one provides a localized study of codeswitching in Soweto. In summary, this volume provides many valuable case studies of language contact situations in a wide variety of settings, particularly African and European . However, it would have been better to stay with the original conference title, 'Language contact and language conflict' . As it is, the book seems packaged under the wrong title: Language choices had led me to expect at least some contributions with a focus on individual agency and on multilingual constructions of identity. [Ingrid Piller, University of Hamburg.] Manchuria: An ethnic history. By Juna Janhunen. (Mémoires de la Société Finno-Ougrienne 222.) Helsinki: The Finno-Ugrian Society, 1996. Pp. xiv, 335. Janhunen is perhaps the foremost authority in the world on the ethnolinguistic composition of the geographical expanse which includes northern China, Korea, Mongolia, Japan, and southern Siberia (or 'Greater Manchuria' for J). He uses this book to showcase that expertise. Drawing on many years of fieldwork and an expert command of the relevant literature, J accomplishes two main goals. First, he provides an overview of the current distribution of the indigenous populations of this region (Ch. 2, 31-90). Because these groups belong to various language families (Mongolie, Turkic, Tungusic, Ainu, Amuric, Japanese, and Korean) and because they are scattered over terntory controlled by six different nations , information about them has rarely, ifever, been synthesized in one place. This is unfortunate since much about the traditional cultures and languages of the area has been born out of contact operating without regard to modern political boundaries or linguistic classifications. Therefore, J's book is an indispensable reference for anthropologists, linguists , and historians of northeastern Asia. The second purpose of this book is to reconstruct the region's ethnohistory, by which J means 'the overall system of ethnic processes in relation to time and space' (17). He weaves together a narrative about the sociopolitical forces of the last 2000 years which have effected ethnogenesis, initiated migrations, or decreased the ethnic diversity of the region. Though his ultimate concerns are not linguistic, J presupposes that language is a better indicator of ethnic identity than any other cultural characteristic and so draws quite heavily on facts about language classification to justify his claims about ethnohistory. This discussion is divided into four chapters, each based on a major dynastic cycle of Chinese history: Ming-Qing (1368-191 1 ce) in Ch. 3, Sui-Tang-Song (589-1368 ce) in Ch. 4, Qin-Xin-Han-Wei (221 bce-534 ce) in Ch. 5, and the prehistorical period in Ch. 6. J's claims become increasingly speculative with each chapter as the documentary evidence becomes sparser and harder to interpret. Though much of the ethnohistory J examines will be of interest to a limited audience, he also addresses issues which are of obvious concern to anyone dealing with the history of eastern Asia: the relationship between the Jurcher, the Jurchen, and the Manchu; the position of Korea in the greater Manchurian context; early Han Chinese interaction with northern minorities; and the origins of the Japanese, to name a few. In the context ofprehistory, J takes on the question of whether there exist distant genetic links among the ethnic groups of greater Manchuria. Significantly, he rejects the notion of an Altaic language family both in the narrow sense (i.e. Altaic includes Turkic, Mongolie , and Tungusic) and in the broader sense (i.e. narrow Altaic plus Japanese and Korean), though he accepts the...