The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors Ed. by Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (review)

476 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 76, NUMBER 2 (2000) responded to it. Michael Krauss, "The scope of the language endangerment crisis and recent response to it' (101-13), estimates the likely number of threatened languages in the world today. He also summarizes , in extremely broad strokes, the types of reactions that indigenous communities, academics, and the public have had to the realization that so many languages may disappear in the relatively near future. Stephen A. Wurm, 'Methods of language maintenance and revival, with selected cases of language endangerment in the world' (191-21 1), covers some of the same ground, but his focus lies more in presenting a plan of action to help protect against the loss of endangered languages. He advocates, inter alia, promoting ethnic self-awareness, confronting apathy among young people, identifying social contexts in which traditional language use can be fostered , and fighting against the perception that multilingualism is cumbersome and without great benefit. He then surveys instances of successful language maintenance or revival from around the world, a profitable exercise in that it demonstrates the unique circumstances and needs ofcommunities who speak endangered languages. Akira Y. Yamamoto, 'Linguists and endangered language communities: Issues and approaches' (213-52), furnishes an excellent summary of cooperative efforts towards language/culture preservation going on between native communities and professional linguists in the U.S. In the process, Yamamoto lists a number of attitudes which are common in native communities and must be understood before such collaborative projects can be undertaken. These attitudes are as varied as a belief that native languages are sacred to the concept that acquiring the language ofone's own tribe should be relatively easy even when that language is rarely spoken in the community. Willem F. H. Adelaar, "The endangered situation of native languages in South America' (1-15), E. Annamalai, 'Language survival in India: Challenges and responses' (17-31), Matthias Brenzinger , 'Various ways of dying and different kinds of deaths: Scholarly approaches to language endangerment on the African continent' (85-100), and Vida Yu Mikhalchenko, 'Endangered languages of Russia: An informational database' (1 15-42) all provide valuable information about endangered languages in a particular region of the world, as well as social issues particular to those regions. Most ofthe remaining articles present case studies. As would be expected given the location of the conference and expertise of the contributors, these are mostly drawn from eastern Asia. Two explore the situation of Ainu, a language that has, on occasion, been labeled extinct prematurely: 'On the objectives of linguistic research on the Ainu' (143-48) by Osami Okuda and "The present situation of the Ainu language' (177-89) by Harumi Sawai. Suwilai Premsrirat, 'On language maintenance and language shift in minority languages ofThailand: A case study of So (Thavung)' (149-75), examines the structural changes occurring in So due to contact with Thai. Finally, David Bradley offers a comparison of the national language policies of China, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam, and Laos in 'Minority language policy and endangered languages in China and Southeast Asia' (49-83). Bradley explores the curious fact that despite policies which explicitly promote linguistic diversity in most of these countries, languages continue to be lost at a rapid pace. [Lindsay J. Whaley, Dartmouth College.] The projection of arguments: Lexical and compositional factors. Ed. by Miriam Butt and Wilhelm Geuder (CSLI lecture notes 83). Stanford: Center for the Study ofLanguage and Information, 1998. Pp. vii, 363. The ten papers in this collection examine the role of both structural and semantic factors in the determination of argument projection in syntax. The first four papers (following the editors' introduction) by William Croft, Gillian Ramchand, Malka Rappaport Hovav and Beth Levin, and Elizabeth Ritter and Sara Thomas Rosen constitute a coherent group of works that examine the role of event structure in determining argument projection. In the mold of much of his earlier work, Croft argues in 'Event structure in argument linking' that argument-linking is largely determined by what he terms 'force-dynamic' relationships between event participants and by profiling of verb meanings into semantic classes rather than by the intermediary notion of thematic roles. The papers by Ramchand ('Deconstructing the lexicon') and Ritter and Rosen ('Delimiting events...