Methods for assessing children's syntax Ed. by Dana McDaniel, Cécile McKee, and Helen Smith Cairns (review)

REVIEWS177 absence of */p/ in written sources to its most characteristically sound-symbolic nature. Since */p/ was central to the sound-symbolic system and consequently most expressive, it might not have been accepted into the older literary genres (205-6). This view is not new and can be found, for example, in Toyama 1982:197. H's hypothesis thus addresses the familiar difficulties in the historical reconstruction of expressions not belonging to the acceptable written style in the past. The third part of Ch. 5 concerns the mimetic vocalic system. H's analysis of vowels in Chs. 3 and 4 reveals anomaly of Id as reporting vulgarity. It also presents loi as the most unmarked vowel, yielding an interpretation 'obscurity'. H finds that this description represents a mimetic correlate of the reconstructed pre-Old Japanese four-vowel system in which loi is the most basic vowel and Id is absent. In short, Ch. 5 not only proposes solutions to problematic aspects of the sound-symbolic system but it also positions the mimetic system with respect to the two major strata in Japanese: the Sino-Japanese stramm and the native Yamato stramm. H's analyses reveal that mimetic words may have originated within the native Japanese stratum but reacted to innovations differently from the latter, preserving certain aspects of the old system more faithfully. It should be noted that many of the motivations used in explaining sound changes in this chapter assume that soundsymbolism was functioning in approximately the same way as in the current Japanese. With formal delineation of the central core of mimetic words, diachronic analyses of key issues in the system, and detailed synchronic analyses of the data, H successfully demonstrates that mimetic words have a highly structured system with rigid phonological constraints and semantic consistencies and occupy a unique place within the language. In this monograph mimetic words -receive the systematic treatment and careful attention they deserve. The study will not only serve as a useful reference for authors of future Japanese language textbooks but also provide a possible model for the analysis of sound symbolism in other languages. REFERENCES Chang, Andrew C. 1990. A thesaurus ofJapanese mimesis and onomatopoeia: Usage by categories. Tokyo: Taishûkan. Hayata, Teruhiro. 1977. Seisei akusento-ron. Nihongo 5: On'in [Japanese 5: Phonology], ed. by Susumu Ôno and Takeshi Shibata, 323-60. Tokyo: Iwanami. Kakehi, Hisao; Ikuhiro Tamori; and Lawrence C. Schourup (eds.) 1996. Dictionary of iconic expressions in Japanese. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Toyama, Eui. 1982. Kôza kokugo-shi: Kindai no on'in. On'in-shi, moji-shi. ed by Norio Nakata. 173-268. Tokyo: Taishûkan. Ueda, Kazutoshi. 1898. Gogaku sôken: P-onkô. Teikoku Bungaku 4.41-47. Box E Department of Slavic Languages Brown University Providence, RI 02912 Methods for assessing children's syntax. Ed. by Dana McDaniel, Cécile McKee, and Helen Smith Cairns. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996. Pp. xviii, 390. Cloth $49.50, paper $20.00. Reviewed by Mari Broman Olsen, University ofMaryland, College Park Journal articles in psycholinguistics devote most of their space to experimental results and conclusions; methodology discussions must be brief and specific. McDaniel, McKee, and Cairns highlight the contribution of methodology to results in child language acquisition: experimental psychology's demands for replicability and noise control must be balanced with a linguistic interest in potentially variable data (from restless little language producers). This collection 178LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 1 (2000) achieves its two objectives admirably: providing a how-to manual for scholars to select and execute experimental methods and a framework within which to evaluate research. Written by researchers with experience in the methods, the survey is comprehensive and suggests much interesting future work. The book reads well cover-to-cover; individual chapters stand alone as references on a given method, each with theoretical and practical advice not found elsewhere. The writers work in the principles and parameters model of language acquisition. The editors claim the methods apply to other frameworks; little space, however, is devoted to explaining how a theory might affect the experimental design (but see Crain & Thornton 1998). Student psycholinguists should read the last chapter first, by Jennifer Ryan Hsu and Louis Michael Hsu (303-41...