112 Book Notices

difficult to see, however, just how this book would actually fit into a linguistics curriculum,
especially one focused on second language acquisition and applied linguistics.

(Received 25 May 1994) Lynn M. Berk

Florida International University

ENGLISH HISTORICAL SYNTAX: VERBAL CONSTRUCTIONS. David Denison.

London: Longman, 1993. Pp. xiv + 530. £42.00 cloth, £22.00 paper.

For historical more than theoretical reasons, the majority of diachronic linguistic studies con-
centrate on phonological or morphological change, rather than on syntactic change. For this
reason a work as comprehensive as Denison's on syntactic diachrony in English is likely to be
a welcome addition to the field.
Denison begins by giving a short history of English in general and of word order specifically.
This presentation is too brief by itself, but Denison is straightforward and concise in providing
further sources. Then, rather than attempting to discuss the whole of diachronic English syntax,
Denison concentrates on a specific and important subgroup of syntactic phenomena, verbal
constructions. Denison further subdivides verbal constructions into several important construc-
tion types, each of which he handles in a separate chapter.
The strengths of English Historical Syntax are the depth of research on the subjects discussed
and the broad array of viewpoints presented. Except for the introductory chapters, chapters
are logically divided into three sections. First, Denison presents the problem discussed in the
chapter. Then, he provides a large selection of relevant data. Finally, he presents a broad range
of analyses by various researchers of the problem in view of the data. He also provides a few
questions for the reader to stimulate further thought and research.
However, its strengths are, in a way, also its weaknesses. The length of the chapters makes it
inconvenient as a response work, except when in-depth viewpoints are sought. It is apparently
designed to be a textbook, since its emphasis is not on Denison's own opinions, but its specializa-
tion limits it to a small range of graduate-level linguistics (and perhaps English) courses.
All in all, it is well written and concise for the material it presents and may be a useful
volume for the library, more because of its interesting and different content than because of
any immediate and obvious utility.

(Received 25 May 1994) Paul Kershaw

Michigan State University

LINGUISTICS FOR NON-LINGUISTS: A PRIMER WITH EXERCISES (2nd ed.).

Frank Parker andKathryn Riley. Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1994. Pp. v + 337.

As the authors themselves describe it, this book is essentially a primer for linguistics: a short
work covering the basics of the field. Chapters 2-6 cover the theoretical areas of pragmatics,

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100014029 Published online by Cambridge University Press

 Book Notices 113

semantics, syntax, morphology, and phonology, respectively, while chapters 7-11 cover the
applied areas of language variation, first language acquisition, second language acquisition,
written language, and the neurology of language. Each chapter begins with examples of empiri-
cal observations and research questions in the particular subarea of linguistics, defines some of
its key terms and issues, and briefly describes theoretical attempts to address the research
questions. Suggestions for further reading and practice questions and exercises are included at
the end of each chapter.
Some of the questions that introduce research in second language acquisition are the follow-
ing: How can we explain the learner's construction of an interlanguage that is like neither the
source nor the target language? Why do second language learners seem to go through some of
the same stages of development that children acquiring their h'rst language do?
Given the breadth of the material covered in this book, many important details and areas of
interest are inevitably missing; for example, the chapter on second language acquisition ex-
cludes issues having to do with classroom instruction. While the book is not meant to stand
alone as an introductory text in linguistics, it provides the nonspecialist reader with a highly
accessible overview of the field, and it well may be used as supplemental reading in an
introductory linguistics course.

(Received 6 June 1994) Cheryl Fantuzzi

University of California at Los Angeles

NEW SOUNDS 92: PROCEEDINGS OF THE 1992 AMSTERDAM SYMPOSIUM

ON THE ACQUISITION OF SECOND-LANGUAGE SPEECH. Jonathan Leather
and Allan James (Eds.). Amsterdam: University of Amsterdam, 1992. Pp. 222.

This volume is a collection of 17 papers presented at the Amsterdam Symposium on the

Acquisition of Second-Language Speech in April 1992. In addition to the papers, there is, at the
end of the book, a short synopsis of a research workshop in which a four-member panel (J.
Flege, R. Major, J. O'Hala, and H. Wode) discussed five prearranged questions dealing with
constructing an acquisition model of second language speech.
The papers are not grouped into sections but are simply arranged alphabetically by author;
no foreword or introduction is provided. The contributions deal with a variety of topics and
issues in L2 phonology, though a few of them overlap and impinge on the same or similar
problems. Thus, the papers by Carlisle and Major both deal with epenthesis in consonant
clusters; the contributions by Husby and Klove treat the acquisition of Norwegian by speakers
of Vietnamese and Cantonese, respectively; two selections, by van der Haagen and Koet, use
matched-guise tests for assessing British and American accents; two of the papers discuss the
acquisition of stress (Archibald and Busa), and two others (Pennington and Treichel) discuss
discourse aspects of L2 phonology. Three of the articles, those by Hancin-Bhatt and Bhatt, by
Bonn, and by Collins and Mees, have L2 pedagogy as their main focus, and the last two, though
not related to each other, deal with interesting topics: the development of English by second
and third generation Indian immigrants (Verma, Firth, and Corrigan) and the applicability of
the subset principle to L2 phonology (Young-Scholten).
All of the contributions to this volume are interesting, and some of them are quite good.

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100014029 Published online by Cambridge University Press