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864 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 4 (1992) SWAPO-ruled Namibia. Such an inference is, however, difficult to assess—especially as it underrates the influence of political decisions (in particular the proclamation of English as the official language of Namibia) on individuals who, at the time of publication, were already exposed to rapid changes from a quasicolonial territory with a conservative administration to a young nation-state whose government is most anxious to spread and use English even as a lingua franca. Virtually all domains of public life, including schools, are affected by this policy ; and, whether people like it or not, they have to adapt to this situation and to do their best to implement it as efficiently as possible. That this is a long-term objective could easily be inferred from H-J's conclusions and from recent news reports. Despite the fact that the survey was conducted under different political conditions, its findings and recommendations deserve to be taken seriously both by educators and by language planners. This publication is particularly useful for scholars who deal with the complex issues of language and education in sub-Saharan Africa, because it enriches the ongoing debate on African languages vs. English in schools with data and arguments from a South West African perspective. [Karsten Légère, University of Leipzig.] Modèles en tonologie (Kirundi et Kinyarwanda). Ed. by Francis Jouannet. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1989. Pp. 272. This collection of papers focuses on the feature of tone in (iki-)Rundi and (ikinya-)Rwanda. Although bearing different names, these East African Bantu languages are mutually intelligible and thus linguistically considered as dialects within a cluster ofother similarly closely-related languages. The publication consists ofeight papers (three ofthem written in English) and a sample of short texts, five of which were compiled by the editor. Besides the editor, four other scholars (among them one native speaker of Rwanda and one of Rundi) contributed to the book. This broad approach facilitates a comprehensive description of the two languages' tonal phenomena, which, as is emphasized in the editor's Introduction, are quite complicated and so far lack a systematic , rule-oriented analysis. Nevertheless, despite this collective approach, one still regrets the absence of experts like André Coupez of Brussels among the authors; and even young scholars from East Africa might have wished to tackle this issue. The topics discussed in the papers range from tonal patterns in verb constructions (affirmative , negative, and relative) and in nomináis to the function ofparticular morphemes and lexical elements, including their tonal structure. More attention is paid to Rwanda than to Rundi, not only in this volume but also in the linguistic literature more generally. The papers contain much data illustrating current tone patterns in Rwanda and Rundi. In particular, the authors focus on accounting for leftward high tone displacement , although they arrive at different rules. In general, the material collected for and analyzed in the book displays a certain onesidedness in the study of living languages, concentrating on lists of paradigms that reflect a more or less artificial and incomplete picture of a language as a system. One would wish to find appropriate examples from actual conversation , and discussion of how they fit the authors ' descriptions of tone patterns. It is claimed in the Introduction that, apart from linguistic aspects, the book also aims at studying tone structures which confuse foreign learners. Accordingly, one would have expected the papers to deal more clearly with constructions and paradigms that students mostly require. But one wonders whether a learner will ever master those sophisticated verb forms, including their tones, which are abundant in various papers; the practical aspect could have played a greater role. The collection under review belongs to a type of publication that is so far quite rare in the field of Bantu linguistics. With its focus on a particular linguistic aspect and language area, it carries on a tradition that started in this part of East Africa with Belgian descriptions of Rwanda and Rundi, Alexandre Kimenyi's papers on Rwanda tone, E. Byarushengo's work on Haya, and Francis Jouannet's book on Rwanda lexical structure. To sum up, it...

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