Creole and dialect continua By Geneviève Escure (review)

158LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) language acquisition. With the publication of all five volumes, one of the goals of CSLA is achieved, namely, monumentalizing (and inspiring more) interest in how children learning different languages both vary and resemble each other. The data chapters are a tremendous resource for the study of child language learning; the interpretive chapters indicate some of the ways in which those data can be employed to advance understanding of child language. Like the earlier essays in Vol. 2, contributions to Vol. 5 are written from variously antigenerativist perspectives so that the uncommitted reader might want to peruse critiques of Vol. 2 like that of Pinker (1989) alongside Vol. 5. In addition, I would point out that, in its embrace of cross-linguistic variation, CSLA tends to downplay generative research into how languages differ. Generativist research is not single-mindedly absorbed in what is universal across languages; rather, it seems to me to share with S's approach a concern for both similarities and differences. Where generative research parts ways with S and with other authors of the essays in Vol. 5 is in the role it attributes to the concept of the poverty of the stimulus as a device for discerning what is of greatest value in child language data. Returning to the question of putting CSLA to good use, the books' nitty-gritty mechanics are not irrelevant. S's imposition ofcommon abbreviation and glossing practices enhances readability and comparison across the data chapters. All five volumes have been meticulously edited and produced, with several reader-friendly features: bottom-of-the-page footnotes, individual chapter outlines citing page numbers, and volume-by-volume subject indices cross-referenced by language , so that, for instance, a reader of Vol. 4 may quickly locate references to locatives in any of ten specific languages. All these touches are necessary, granted the enormous weight of data contained in CSLA. The editor and publishers did as good a job as possible of enhancing the utility of this material; a further step would be to make Vols. 1, 3, and 4 accessible electronically. It is worth noting that Erlbaum discounts prepaid orders for CSLA, reducing the cost of Vols. 4 and 5 to under $50 each, and of the five-volume set to $220. REFERENCES Pinker, Steven. 1989. Review of 'Crosslinguistic evidence for language-making capacity', by Dan Isaac Slobin, and 'What shapes children's grammars?', by Melissa Bowerman. Review ofThe crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vols. 1 and 2, ed. by Dan Isaac Slobin by Richard M. Weist et al., Journal of Child Language 16.429-75. Slobin, Dan Isaac (ed.) 1985a. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 1. The data. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. ----- (ed.) 1985b. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 2. Theoretical issues. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. ----- (ed.) 1992. The crosslinguistic study of language acquisition: Vol. 3. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Program in Linguistics Slavic and Eastern Languages Department Boston College Chestnut Hill, MA 02467 [thomasm@bc.edu] Creole and dialect continua. By Geneviève Escure. (Creole language library 18.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1997. Pp. x, 307. Reviewed by Clancy Clements, Indiana University This volume offers convincing evidence that, at least in one respect, the register continuum of a creóle language is essentially no different from the continuum of dialect varieties in any given noncreole language. But it goes further: it posits the presentational structure, as opposed to repetition and fronting, as the universally preferred topic-marking strategy in casual, primarily oral language. Escure compares the structural similarities and differences between what might seem to be two different types of developmental continua: for the creóle continuum, E studies REVIEWS159 the use of the basi-, meso-, and acrolect in Belizean Creole English (BCE), and for the second dialect continuum, she examines the Beijing Putonghua and Wu varieties of Chinese (the standards ) as used by speakers of nonstandard dialects of Chinese. The focus of the book, topic marking, is studied using extensive data, painstakingly collected, catalogued and analyzed, from primarily spontaneous discourse of a standard and/or prestige language variety as spoken by native speakers of nonstandard varieties. To explain the strong preponderance of the presentational...