Bridges between psychology and linguistics: A Swarthmore Festschrift for Lila Gleitman Ed. by Donna Jo Napoli and Judy Anne Kegl (review)

BOOK NOTICES 865 Syllables, tones, and verb paradigms. (Studies in Chinantec languages, 4.) Ed. by William R. Merrifield and Calvin R. Rensch. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1990. Pp. vii, 130. Paper $10.00. This slim paperback contains six papers written in the 1970s, originally intended to comprise the first volume in a series on the Chinantec languages. (The Chinantec languages are spoken in a northern area of the Mexican state of Oaxaca.) Due to delays in publication, this book is instead the fourth volume in SIL' s Chinantec series. In tone and quality this collection resembles a set of departmental working papers. The expositions are sketchy in places, sometimes requiring a greater familiarity with Chinantec data than one can acquire from the article at hand. The editors' introduction does not explain why they have pulled together these particular papers , which have little in common as a set other than their focus on Chinantec. The authors often cite their own previous work, as well as the work of other authors in this book. For these reasons the publication seems targeted more for 'in-house' consumption than for the attention of linguists at large. 'Comaltepec Chinantec tone' (3-20), by Judi Lynn Anderson, Isaac H. Martinez, & Wanda Pace, discusses the interaction of tone, stress, and syllable structure, with particular attention to sandhi phenomena. A stressed syllable may bear one of seven different surface tone configurations: a level tone low, mid, or high, or a contour low-mid, low-high, high-mid, or high-low. In 'Comaltepec Chinantec verb inflection ' (21-62), Wanda Pace derives the surface tones from five underlying tones (L, M, H, LM, LH), discussing in addition some of the sandhi rules that give rise to the surface tone patterns. This analysis serves as an introduction to the complex verbal system, in which person, number, aspect, and lexical class are indicated largely by variations in tone, stress, and vowel length in the verbal root. In 'The Lealeo Chinantec syllable' (63-73), James E. Rupp relates the shape of the Chinantec syllable to tone. Calvin R. Rensch, in 'Phonological realignment in Lealeo Chinantec' (75-89), traces the development of certain features from ProtoChinantec to the Lealeo dialects. 'Quiotepec Chinantec tone' (91-105), by Richard Gardner & William R. Merrifield, presents the tonology of the Quiotepec dialect. Finally, in 'Moving and arriving in the Chinantla' (107-30), David O. Westley & William R. Merrifield describe the syntax and semantics of Chinantec verbs ofmotion, focussing on the intriguing way in which deixis is grammaticalized m the verbal inflection system. The exposition in some of these papers is weakened by the use of idiosyncratic descriptive devices. It is, of course, the norm for areal studies to have a distinct lingo; but then the editors of this sort of anthology owe it to the reader to footnote some of the less common descriptors early on in the book. The theoretical underpinnings of some analyses are also unclear , and this problem is exacerbated by some sloppy rule-writing (24) and other uninsightful attempts at 'formalizing' generalizations (70). Taken together, though, this collection of papers is a fairly good source for some fascinating Chinantec data. [Brian M. Sietsema, MerriamWebster Inc. and Westfield State College.] Bridges between psychology and linguistics : A Swarthmore Festschrift for Lila Gleitman. Ed. by Donna Jo Napoli and Judy Anne Kegl. Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991. Pp. xii, 299. Lila Gleitman is well known among linguists for her research on language and cognition in blind and deaf children, 'motherese', and reading . The 14 articles in this volume honor her four years at Swarthmore College, where she founded linguistics and psycholinguistics in 1968. Almost all of the authors are Swarthmore alumni, most have studied under Gleitman, and several have included personal acknowledgements attesting to her influence on their careers. The papers are succinctly previewed in the Introduction (vii-xii), but the inappropriateness of the title's bridge metaphor soon becomes apparent . These diverse articles may form a continuum from psychology to linguistics, but they do not explicitly address links between the two. Most do not reflect Gleitman's particular research interests, and only three of her publications are cited in the entire book (a fourth is...