Hispanics in the United States: An Anthology of Creative Literature by Gary D. Keller and Francisco Jiménez (review)

BOOK REVIEWS65 Overall the book is well argued and makes a good casefor empiricism. However, Kates's careful selection of her opposition may well have alot to do withit. Fora book concerned with semantics and pragmatics, much space is given to trying to debunk TG grammar. Her arguments against the underlying level of syntactic structure become meaningless in the light of Gazdar's (1979a) demonstration that Chomsky's TG grammar produces a context-free language, and that his PS-grammar without transformations can overcome all of Chomsky's (1957) objections to PS-grammars. Moreover, many scholars would insist that Chomsky has never given a clear and useful definition of pragmatics. It is thus easy for Kates to contrast her "pragmatic" solution with Chomsky's inadequate "syntactic" solution. But when Kates objects that a grammar cannot define all and only the grammatical sentences of a language because "a speaker must also takeinto account unsystematic, contextual factors that condition linguistic intuitions in an essential way" (p. 34), one would have expected at least some discussion ofthe relevant pragmatic literature. Andyet the book makes no mention of researchers such as Labov, who have been trying to formalize speechact notions, nor is there a single reference to researchers who have formalized aspects of pragmatics, such as Gazdar, Cole, Karttunen, Keenan, Stalnaker, Montague , Partee, and Thomason. In short, while Kates's empiricist solution may well have a lot to offer, her arguments fail because she has failed to direct them against her real opponents. Even if Chomsky's underlying structures and transformations can be eliminated, Kates empiricist proposal still has to contend with Gazdar, who has stated: "Stalnaker (1972, 1974) has proposed that the MEANING ofa sentence be identified with a function from contexts into propositions. Such functions can be straightforwardly defined given the formal system provided in this chapter" (1979b: 157-8). It is unfortunate that Kates has totally ignored all research in formal pragmatics even though it is more relevant to the topic of the book than Chomsky's syntactical model. References Gazdar, Gerald. 1979a. ? context-free language.' Forthcoming. --------------. 1979b. Pragmatics: implicature, presupposition, and logical form. New York: Academic Press. HELMUT ESAU, Texas A&M University Gary D. Keller, and Francisco Jiménez. Hispanics in the United States: An Anthology of Creative Literature. Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press, 1980. 165 p. Es indudable que en la últimadécada ha existido un gran interés porlaliteratura de los diferentes grupos hispanos en los Estados Unidos, como lo indican los diferentes trabajos de creación literaria, antologías, libros, revistas y artículos de investigaci ón publicados durante este periodo. Desafortunadamente, hasta la fecha, no existia un mecanismo apropiado que recogiera la labor creativa de los autores de estos grupos en un solovolumen. Sin embargo, es grato saberque los profesores Gary Keller y Francisco Jiménez, en un esfuerzode extraordinariovalor, han condensado en esta estupenda antología la obra creativa de veintisiete poetas y prosistas chicanos , puertorriqueños y cubanos. Además de proporcionar una acertada introducción y notes biográficas acerca de los autores escogidos, los editores han dividido la antología en las ocho siguientes 66ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW secciones: Arte y puro arte, la cual se concentra en recalcar el valor estético de las obras incluidas en esta sección; Tradición, humor yfolklore, cuyasseleccionesmuestran el aporte de los creadores hispanos a este rico campo; Justicia y razón, sección que recoge el afán por parte de los hispanos de obtener la debidajusticia; Coping con América, la cual nos brinda la vida del hispano en una cultura diferente a la suya; Enajenación hispana, cuyas obras recogen la búsqueda por la identidad y los valores tradicionales; La hispana, sección donde vemos el importante papel que desempe ña la mujer hispana; Schooíing for Hispanos, sección que revela las ilusiones y desengaños del estudiante bilingüe dentro del sistema escolar que ni quiere ni trata de comprender sus necesidades; y Death, Transmogrification and other Mysteries, en la cual se brinda de una manera muy efectiva las preocupaciones metafísicas del hispano. Sería tan arriesgado como pretencioso tratar de analizar individualmente el valor de las obras incluidas en...