Focus on South Africa Ed. by Vivian de Klerk (review)

REVIEWS879 frequently, however, he uses these references to point out related phenomena in other, mainly Niger-Congo, languages. Within each chapter, sections are numbered, enabling cross referencing of related topics found elsewhere in the book, a technique C makes good use of. The book also contains a wealth of examples which rarely stray far from surface representations as in the following example from page 191. (52) Bases ending in i or u pluralized a.tembi teembuu 'wean' timbi tiimbuu 'loosen, unite' tuisituusuu'unload' b.candu caanduu 'praise' landu leendu'hang' nanu necnuu 'bend' And in the case of phonology, mies are more often than not stated in prose that emphasizes more what is going on than a given formalism, e.g. 'The first way of forming the Plural involves the somewhat iconic process of vowel lengmening: the vowel stem is lengthened, and the second syllable ends in -uu when the bases end in -i ((52a)) or -u ((52b)).' Syntactic constructions are dealt with by type (e.g. basic word order, question formation, negation, etc.) without going into how they are generated or transformed or represented in one model or another. This is something C leaves up to his readers if they are so inclined. What one finds, in this substantial and very accessible volume on Kissi grammar, is a language rich in morphology, spawned in large part by its noun-class system, which in tum gives rise to a large number of phonological phenomena both segmental and prosodie. A grammar of Kissi will no doubt serve the needs of a wide range of users from linguist to learner to speaker. REFERENCES Dalby, David. 1965. The Mel languages: A reclassification of Southern 'West Atlantic'. African Language Studies 7.171-9. Mukarovsky, Hans. 1948. Die spräche des Kisi. Vienna: University of Vienna dissertation. Department of Anthropology 354 Baker Hall East Lansing, MI 48824 Focus on South Africa. Ed. by Vivian de Klerk. (Varieties of English around the world, G15.) Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1996. Pp. 325. Reviewed by M. Lynne Murphy, Baylor University This is the first internationally marketed book to bring together information and debates on the various South African English (SAfE) varieties and their use. This fact in itself is reason for interest and celebration. However, it is not really a handbook on SAfE, owing in part to the limits of the research done to date on SAfE varieties and, more regrettably, because of editorial oversights. After an introduction by the editor, the book is organized into five sections: 'An historical perspective', 'Pan-ethnic varieties', 'The problem of standardisation', 'Issues in education and society', and 'The northern neighbours'. The first section consists of chapters by Len Lanham (? history of English in South Africa', 19-34) and Bill Branford ('English in South African society: A preliminary overview', 35-51). Both are authors of admirable works on the varieties used by white native speakers of English in South Africa, but here both present chapters on essentially the same topic, albeit with varying details. From here, we are thrown into the section on 'Pan-ethnic varieties', in which four chapters detail the history, features, and social status of 880LANGUAGE, VOLUME 73, NUMBER 4 (1997) English in four South African communities: David Gough's 'Black English in South Africa' (53-77), Rajend Mesthrie's 'Language contact, transmission, shift: South African Indian English ' (79-98), Susan Watermeyer's 'Afrikaans English' (99-124), and Karen Malan's 'Cape Flats English' (125-48). The astute reader will notice a problem here: What happened to the variety of English spoken by South African white native speakers (the descendants of British colonists and other European immigrants)? While this variety sets the standard for SAfE in the media and education and while it is spoken by a larger group of people than two of the four other ethnic varieties, the features of 'standard' SAfE that differentiate it from British and other Englishes are only to be found by chance in comparisons of 'ethnic' varieties ofSAfE to 'standard' SAfE. So, this volume has little to say about the usual referent of the term 'South African English'. Section C, 'The problem of standardisation', consists of four chapters. The first three deal...