Theorie und Praxis des Lexikons Ed. by Frank Beckmann and Gerhard Heyer (review)

BOOK NOTICES 595 lucid, emphasizing conciseness and clarity; it should be suitable for advanced learners of English as a foreign or second language. Technical terms are used where needed, in every case printed in bold-face on their first appearance, where they are also clearly defined. There is thus no need of a glossary. An introductory chapter, 'What is language?', describes the attitude of the linguist and briefly reviews the field, from phonetics and phonology to language universale and typology. This is followed by a chapter on The flux of language', which discusses language change and the methods ofhistorical and comparative linguistics. All this is introductory to the next seven chapters, which deal successively with periods in the history of English from Indo-European to presentday English as a world language. A concluding chapter on 'English today and tomorrow' describes the nature and status of present-day English and ventures some speculations about its future. Throughout, B shows his complete command of his subject. He uses brief samples from each period, with translations immediately following. Although the basic type of English described is that of England, he shows knowledge of other varieties, especially American, but also Australian , West Indian, and other institutionalized Englishes. There is even a brief discussion of pidgins and créoles. A nine-page bibliography and a full index complete the volume. This book is recommended not only for students at the nontechnical level, but for general readers interested in their language—where it came from and how it got to be what it is today. [W. N. Francis, Brown University.] Theorie und Praxis des Lexikons. Ed. by Frank Beckmann and Gerhard Heyer. (Grundlagen der Kommunikation und Kognition.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1993, Pp. 348. DM 198.00. This volume, honoring Professor Helmut Schnelle on his 60th birthday, contains articles presented at a colloquium held at the Ruhr-University Bochum in November, 1992. In his introduction, editor Frank Beckmann admits the difficulty of trying to group 17 disparate articles in a meaningful way. He uses four basic types of 'motivation' (3) as points of orientation: (1) 'theoretical-structural and semantic ' (15-100), (2) 'lexicographie-lexicologie' (103-37), (3) 'cognitive' (141-204), and (4) 'computer linguistic' (207-333). A summary sketch of each article is included in his introduction . The different perspectives offered on the lexicon show the interdependence of theory and practice, of the traditional lexicography/lexicology and the relevance to today's computer application . Not surprisingly, the most space is devoted to the latter, concentrating on themes such as theory-driven vs. application-/resultdriven approaches to language processing. Addressing these themes, editor Gerhard Heyer argues in his article for a language technology based on practical application. He believes that the dictionary should serve as a data base for machine language processing (207-17), an opinion shared by other authors; e.g. NicoLETTA Calzolari et al. (274-315), Rebecca Bruce et al. (250-73), and Maurice Gross (218-36). Other articles focus on specific topics of the lexicon: Christoph Schwarze discusses space lexicalized in French verbs (103-22), Udo Figge describes 'converse nets' in geben vs. nehmen (123-37; the term 'deixis' does not appear in the index), and Wolf Paprotté proposes a formula for reducing redundant information in German (316-33). Representing the theoretical approach in a general way are authors Horst Singer (74-86) and Peter Bosch (87-100), who argue against the traditional separation of language knowledge and world knowledge. In a similar vein, Gert Rickheit & Hans Strohner accord equal status to linguistic and nonlinguistic information in their model for language processing ( 141-63). Renate Bartsch uses a more specific approach in her discussion of the mental lexicon (15-42), as does Willem Levelt in his explanation of lexical processing (164-72). Working within the framework of semantic theory are Dieter Wunderlich (54-73), with his theory of lexical embedding, and Siegfried Kanngiesser, with suggestions for reusing and transferring lexical information as part of an expanded lexical system (237-49). Petr Sgall views lexical items as being syntax-dependent (43-53). Several articles are more exploratory, thereby pointing to complex problems. Examples are Wolfgang Klein's description of spatial expressions (191-204) and Reinhard 5...