Understanding the lexicon: Meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics knowledge in lexical semantics. Ed. by Werner Hüllen and Rainer Schulze (review)

BOOK NOTICES 193 & Fodor, since, according to G, their theory has been particularly influential in psycholinguistics . Certain inadequacies with model-theoretic semantics are also pointed out, but it is not clear that they are inherent in this approach and could not be remedied by extending semantic and pragmatic theory within the model-theoretic framework. Since this thesis was published 6 years after it was written, a 20-page postscript has been added to cover recent theoretical and experimental work. There have been exciting developments in this area since 1981 . G discusses the work of Barbara J. Grosz, Candace L. Sidner, Bonnie Lynn Webber, Hans Kamp, Irene Heim, Jon Barwise & John Perry, and Philip JohnsonLaird , all of which is consistent with the ideas advanced by G. Perhaps the biggest omission is a formally precise account of mental models, but the experimental evidence should prove revealing to anyone interested in discourse representation . [Alex Franz, University of Pittsburgh.] Untersuchungen zum Russisch-niederdeutschen Gesprächsbuch des Tönnies Fenne, Pskov 1607: Ein Beitrag zur deutschen Sprachgeschichte. By an Autorenkollektiv under the direction of Hans Joachim Gernentz . Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1988. Pp. 267. DM 42.00. The facsimile copy of the unique manuscript of a Russian-Low German conversation manual by one Tönnies Fenne, a late Hanseatic merchant in Pskov during the Russian 'Time of Troubles', was published in Copenhagen, 1961, as a first volume under the title Tönnies Fenne's Low German manual ofspoken Russian, Pskov 1607, edited by L. L. Hammerich, Roman Jakobson , and others. A second volume. Transliteration and translation, was published in 1970. Projected third and fourth volumes, analyzing the manuscript's Russian and Low German language materials respectively, have not appeared. Since the appearance of Transliteration and translation, Soviet Slavicists especially have studied the (Old) Russian texts of Tönnies Fenne's conversation manual. Publication of studies dealing with the manual and its (Middle) Low German texts, however, was to await the volume under review here, representing the efforts of an author-collective made up of East German Germanists at the University of Rostock and Latvian Germanists at the University of Riga. It should be noted particularly that the subtitle of the volume reflects the author-collective 's view that its 'investigations' are a contribution to the history of (modern) German— that is, High German, not Low German. In the first chapter (13-86) Hans Joachim Gernentz, Tamara Korol, and Irmtraud Rosler locate Tönnies Fenne's conversation manual in both its textual tradition and its historical setting of Hanseatic-Russian trade. In the relatively short second chapter (87-103), Ilga Brizna compares the manual's Low German and Russian personal common names. The third chapter (105-237) comprises three separate studies: Christa Prowatke on the conversation manual's Low German vowel spellings (105-47); Christa Kopplow on the function and form of its Low German clauses (149-92); and Reinhold Tippe on the formation of its Low German complex substantive stems (193-237). In a completely unrelated appendix (239-52), Kira Kalnina discusses the phonological form and semantic sphere of Middle Low German loanwords in Lettish. A bibliography (253-67) follows the appendix. I have never understood the notion, shared by the author-collective of this volume, that the history of Low German is an integral part of the history of High German. To put it simple-mindedly and tautologically, the history of Low German is the history of Low German and the history of High German is the history of High German. [B. J. Koekkoek, State University of New York at Buffalo.] Understanding the lexicon: Meaning, sense and world knowledge in lexical semantics. Ed. by Werner Hüllen and Rainer Schulze. (Linguistische Arbeiten, 210.) Tübingen : Niemeyer, 1988. Pp. viii, 445. DM 158.00. This collection of 'thirty-three papers read at a symposium on problems of lexical semantics at the University of Essen from November 19 to 21, 1987 ... provides readers,' the editors believe , 'with a representative sample of current investigations into the field' (1). The list of contributors (444-5) suggests, however, some limits on representation. Though all the papers but 194 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 66, NUMBER 1 (1990) one are in English, more than two thirds...