Linguistic databases Ed. by John Nerbonne (review)

BOOK NOTICES 209 Linguistic databases. Ed. by John Nerbonne . (CSLI lecture notes 77.) Stanford , CA: CSLI, 1998. Pp. xxi, 243. The papers in this collection were originally presented at the 'Linguistic Databases' conference, University of Groningen, 23-24 March, 1995. Because ofthe almostproverbial rapidity with which information technology develops, the collection as a whole is dated already, but there is still much of interest to be found. Not all papers read at the conference are in this volume, but the papers cover a wide range of subjects, mostly practical in nature, not theoretical. After a clear and readable introduction by Nerbonne , the papers are presented in no particularorder, though the editor groups the papers in five main areas: syntactic corpora and databases, phonetic databases , applications in linguistic theory, applications, and extending basic technologies. The papers themselves are not presented according to this grouping, however, and at first sight the book appears rather disorganized. The wide variety of subjects can be deduced from the titles of the papers presented: 'Test suites for natural language processing', 'From annotated corpora to databases: The SgmlQL language', 'Markup of a test suite with SGML', 'An open systems approach for an acoustic-phonetic continuous speech database: The S_tools database-management system ', "The reading database of syllable structure', ? database application for the generation of phonetic atlas maps', 'Swiss French polyphone and polyvar: Telephone speech databases to model inter- and intra-speaker variability', 'Investigating argument structure: The Russian nominalization database', "The use of a psycholinguistic database in the simplification of text for aphasie readers', "The computer learner corpus: A testbed for electronic EFL tools', 'Linking WordNet to a corpus query system', 'Multilingual data processing in the CELLAR environment ' . The issue whether to use open free systems or closed proprietary systems is addressed in several papers. Some papers present applications developed both in open and closed systems. This is one area where developments have been going very fast, and nowadays freely available databases are often as capable as their commercial counterparts. Some of the applications presented in this collection are available from the Internet, and url's are often given. The collection can serve as a good introduction to the field for relative outsiders as ample references and links are given. The papers themselves vary greatly in subject matter so not all will be of interest to every reader. My particular favorite was 'From annotated corpora to databases: the SgmlQL language '. [BOUDEWUN REMPT.j Understanding phonology. By Carlos Gussenhoven and Haike Jacobs. (Understanding language series.) London: Arnold, 1998. Pp. xii, 286. This textbook is intended as an introduction to phonology aimed at 'students with little or no prior knowledge of linguistics' (back cover). As in many other textbooks, it uses exercises as a learning tool. Two types ofexercises are proposed. The ones identified by a key, 'intended as an expository aid' (xi), are provided with a solution in an appendix (though it is not always so much a clear cut answer as a guide for reflection, which is, to my view, a lot better). The ones identified by a dot are intended as practice material, and no solution is offered. I thought the idea of having two types of exercises a good one since it gives the reader the opportunity both for individual work and for discussion with others. Also, whenever it may apply, an optimality theoretic analysis is offered to describe a phonological process. Ch. 1, "The production of speech', is a basic introduction to phonology, phonetics, and phonation. Ch. 2,'Some typology: Sameness and difference', cleverly covers the universal and language specific aspects of phonological structures and typology. Ch. 3,'Making the form fit', addresses phonological grammar and adaptation by presenting the nativization of loan words in both the rules and the constraints approaches. Ch. 4, 'Underlying and surface representations', Ch. 5, 'Distinctive features', and Ch. 6, 'Ordered rules', deal with the basic notions of generative phonology within the SPE type formalism and introduce the reader to the school of linear phonology. Ch. 7, ? case study: The diminutive suffix in Dutch', shows how these notions are applied. In Ch. 8, 'Levels of representation', Gussenhoven and Jacobs present an intermediate level of representation between the underlying representation and...