Theoretical issues in Korean linguistics Ed. by Young-Key Kim-Renaud (review)

BOOK NOTICES 405 The collection is completed by Per Wärter's intriguing essay on how the automatic 'tagging' ofboth Low German and Scandinavian morphology can be used to simulate the manner in which language contact affects listeners' perception ofcomprehensibility (177-98). He concludes that competing grammars were notpresent; rather a single overall system, albeit with Scandinavian converging upon Low German models. Throughout the collection, the influence of the seminal Language contact, creolization, and genetic linguistics (Sarah Grey Thomason and Terrence Kaufman, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988) can be felt. One of that book's central tenets is that language change caused by contact is primarily a matter of structural transfer. Adhering too closely to this view has prevented this collection from discussing the level to which the presence of the Low German 'irritant' within the Scandinavian speech community encouraged the intralinguistic development of analytical structures. This is a small quibble, however; the reader will be impressed more by what has been covered in such a short collection than by what has not. [Robert McColl Millar, University ofAberdeen.] Pragmatics of Chinese as native and target language. Ed. by Gabriele Kasper. (Technical report, 5). Honolulu : University of Hawai'i, 1995. Pp. ix, 302. These six data-based studies on the pragmatics of Mandarin Chinese greatly enrich a relatively impoverished field. Five of the studies focus on Chinese native speakers and strategies they employ in a variety of speech acts. The sixth is unique in its focus not on the native speaker but rather on the learner of Chinese as a second or foreign language. In the study of the nonnative speaker, Gabriele Kasper and Yanyin Zhang present an interviewderived description of the processes whereby the learner of Chinese deals with the complexities of such interculturally complex issues as refusals and expressions of thanks. Explicit applications for language teaching and learning are provided. Two separate studies by Yanyin Zhang deal with requests. The first one develops a categorization of request strategies and the contextual variables influencing their selection, derived from responses to a production questionnaire. The second study focuses upon indirect requests. Through the use of two roleplay scenarios, Zhang clearly and compellingly demonstrates that indirectness in Chinese is a discourselevel rather than utterance-based phenomenon. Xing Chen, Lei Ye and Yanyin Zhang present an analysis of Chinese refusals, specifically refusals of requests, suggestions, offers, and invitations. Responses to a production questionnaire with a design based upon variables of relative status, social distance , and initiating act provide the empirical foundation for a categorization scheme with a basic dichotomy between substantive and ritual refusals —the former signalling fundamental noncompliance and the latter utilized as a politeness strategy. In her study of three types of face-threatening acts, Jinwen Steinberg Du also employs a production questionnaire analytical model, leading to the identification of general strategies (for example, 'joking' for giving bad news), with variation based to some degree on goal and relationship. A more general pattern ofChinese face-threatening acts seems to be performance based upon cooperation rather than confrontation. Perhaps the most surprising work is that of Lei Ye on compliments. The longest and most statistically rigorous study of the six, it provides a solid empirical contradiction to the conventional wisdom that the prototypical response to compliments in Chinese is rejection. What criticism can be levelled at Kasper's volume is primarily of a cosmetic nature, and particularly in the initial pages of the work—somewhat ironically in the one article co-authored by the book's editor. There is clearly a missing line (or perhaps lines) at the top ofpages 8 and 16. The same apparent pagination problem produces one line repeated at both the bottom of page 6 and top of page 7 and three lines repeated at the bottom of page 14 and top of page 15. There are as well some smaller technical errors in the placement of tone marks (36, 45), as well as the occasional omitted character in the appendices (117). In summary, the collection is a valuable resource for more theoretically-oriented applied linguistic researchers while simultaneously helping meet the practical needs of learners and teachers of modern standard Chinese. [Scott McGinnis, University of Maryland...