Language patterns of poverty children By Nicholas J. Anastasiow and Michael L. Hanes (review)

772 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) analysed data (the grammatical sketch is too short, but still promising; cf. also the insightful treatment of morphophonemics in Harrison 1971). It has some interest as an application of theory, but its value as an introduction to the language or as a reference grammar (for the Asurinis themselves, say) is strictly limited. I hope Harrison will do more. [Pamela Munro, UCLA.] Discourse grammar: studies in indigenous languages of Colombia, Panama, and Ecuador. Edited by Robert E. Longacre and Frances Woods. (Summer Institute of Linguistics, Publications in linguistics and related fields, 52.) Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1976. Pp. vii, 445; x, 299; vii, 377. $15.00. This book consists of articles which analyse the discourse patterns of twenty-two different languages of Latin America. The first volume contains an introduction by the senior editor, plus three short monographs which discuss in detail the structure ofsentences, paragraphs, and discourses in Guanano, Guajiro, and Paez. The authors of these monographs present the various types of sentences and paragraphs found in their languages; they show how different types of paragraphs are structured with respect to different types of sentences, and how different types ofdiscourses are in turn structured with respect to different types of paragraphs. The second and third volumes contain shorter articles which are more limited in their scope. One article deals with different types of discourse, ten discuss the flow of discourse in relation to the cohesion and prominence of the various parts of the discourse, three concern participant reference, three consider the function of dialog in discourse, and five deal with sentence and paragraph structure. The final article discusses the results of a syntax questionnaire which was used to discover how notions such as causativity and contrafactuality are encoded in nine Tucanoan languages. Despite the fact that all the languages discussed are relatively close to one another geographically, this book is rich in data for all linguists working within the scope of what the senior editor terms the ' discourse revolution '. Because each article is preceded by either an outline or a summary, discourse data can be readily located. One possible drawback to the book is that all the articles are written in the tagmemic framework, the vocabulary of which may prove unfamiliar to many linguists. However, the over-all usefulness of this book and the data it contains far outweigh any initial difficulties created by its terminology and theoretical orientation. [Thomas Gally, University of California, Santa Barbara.] Language patterns of poverty children. By Nicholas J. Anastasiow and Michael L. Hanes. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas, 1976. Pp. 166. An examination ofthe problems ofassessing language ability of the child from a lower socio-economic group, along with the results of the authors' current research in this area, are the main foci of this work. The book looks at current and recent approaches to this problem, and in doing so provides the reader with background information in both psychology and linguistics as applied to the issue. A&H's development ofthe relationships between developmental psychology and linguistics is presented, expounded, and exemplified . The approach is basically this: the cognitive development of a child occurs in stages; the ability to abstract arrives when it does, and no sooner. Such ability, or the signpost of such ability, is revealed through the child's capacity to perform well when using function words in sentence repetition tasks. ?&? state that their studies were based on two assumptions : ' 1. Children would omit from sentences they were asked to repeat those portions that were beyond their level of development. This score is called function word omissions. 2. Children who were asked to repeat sentences would change portions of the sentences to conform to their own dialect. This score we have called reconstructions.' Through the use of tests employing function words, the child's ability (level of cognitive development) can be revealed in a culture-free way; this helps to bypass the well-founded criticism of cultural bias leveled against current methods oftesting. The use of such tests as diagnostic tools will better enable schools to determine where a child belongs in a program, and at what point reading should be taught. Too often children BOOK...