Salish languages and linguistics: Theoretical and descriptive perspectives Ed. by Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins and M. Dale Kinkade (review)

186 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 75, NUMBER 1 (1999) search data with a number of examples of French verbs, nouns, and other word categories found in Swahili-French codeswitching. French discourse markers and their specific role in oral texts with Shaba Swahili as the matrix language are dealt with in Ch. 7, 'Discourse markers' (123-71). (Ch. 8, 'Repetition in Shaba Swahili/ French discourse' (173-98), analyzes repetition and lexical cohesion—here the author focuses on French nouns vis-à-vis near synonymous Swahili nouns in their rhetorical value, as e.g. emphasizers. A summary of the major findings rounds out the book in Ch. 9, 'Conclusion' (199-203). A bibliography and a Dutch abstract are found at the end (205-17, 219-21, respectively). This interesting study has been accepted as a doctoral dissertation by the University of Amsterdam. R's supervisors were P. Muyskens and J. Fabian, well known for their contribution to contact linguistics and Lubumbashi Swahili. The way R analyzes and comments on discourse structure in Shaba/French conversation is convincing , but somehow one-sided, as it omits discussion of parallels found in discourse strategies which are not marked by codeswitching. In fact, lexical cohesion which is achieved by reiteration is a salient feature in orature where the audience is reminded time and again of what has been previously said. It is this well-established discourse phenomenon peculiar to oral traditions that finds a logical reflection even in conversation on modern issues. Thus, similarities between traditional discourse strategies and R's data are striking but far from being accounted for in this book. (Karsten Légère, University ofNamibia.) Salish languages and linguistics: Theoretical and descriptive perspectives. Ed. by Ewa Czaykowska-Higgins and M. Dale Kinkade. (Trends in linguistics, studies and monographs, 107.) Berlin & New York: Mouton, 1997. Pp. x, 575. Cloth DM 268.00, US $178.70. With the publication of Jan van Eijk's The Lillooet language: Phonology, morphology, syntax (1997. Vancouver: UBC Press), a special issue of International Journal of American Linguistics (1997. 63.289-438) on Salish languages, and now the firstever book collection of articles devoted to Salish, 1997 marked a productive year in Salish linguistics. Four of the attested languages in this family are extinct , and the remaining ones are highly endangered, and so this research is of the highest importance. While the articles in this book comprise the current research of contributors, the heart of the volume is surely the editors' introduction. Organized around linguistic phenomena, 'Salish languages and linguistics ' (1-68) cites scholarship on the classification and history of Salish languages as well as topics in phonetics, phonology, morphology, ethnosemantics, discourse, and lexicography. The arrangement ofmaterial in this essay is uniquely helpful to linguists, and its bibliographical scope is extensive, citing studies in a variety of research traditions from the nineteenth century until the present, many of which are unpublished and—until now—have been difficult to locate. This review of the literature and the characteristic properties of Salish languages will be an indispensable resource for years. The first two parts of the volume contain five papers each. In Part I, 'Phonetic and phonological studies ' (71-216), Bruce Bagemihl discusses syllable structure in Bella Coola; Dawn Bates and Barry F. Carlson relate syllable structure to reduplication in Spokane; Nicola J. Bessell considers phonetic aspects of retraction in Interior Salish; Ewa Czaykowska -Higgins explores the phonology-morphology interface in Columbian; and M. Dale Kinkade simplifies the underlying vowel inventory of Upper Chehalis. In Part II, 'Morphological and syntactic studies' (219-346), Philip W. Davis and Ross Saunders develop a semantically based typology of relative clauses and claim that Bella Coola does not distinguish propositions from participants; Steven M. Egesdal and M. Terry Thompson outline the inflectional morphology ofTillamook (now extinct), drawing from fieldwork with the last speakers in the 1960s; Dwight G. Gardiner provides a generative analysis of three distinct preverbal positions in Shuswap that are related to topic, focus, and WH-words; Donna B. Gerdts accounts for Halkomelem voice and transitivity alternations within mapping theory, a framework in which a level of grammatical relations feeds a level of morphosyntactic argument structure; andEloise Jelinekconsiders how the syntax ofprepositions in Straits Salish bears on...