Book Notices 105

literacy campaigns, job training, women in the labor market, workplace literacy, literacy in the
home and its relation to school demands, family-based literacy programs, literacy curricula,
individual and national literacy assessments, and program evaluation. She uses examples from
Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States.
McKay's book is clearly and concisely written. While she indicates her support for sociocul-
tural and participatory approaches to literacy, she does an excellent job of covering the issues
and options from a variety of perspectives. The book is a good overview, especially for those
relatively new to the area, as well as a good statement of the "big picture" for those who have
heretofore immersed themselves more narrowly. It is rather issue- and topic-oriented and so
gives somewhat less of a feel for the nature of the extended arguments that have played a role
in various areas. Nevertheless, the book achieves quite well the agenda it sets for itself.

(Received 10 March 1994) James Paul Gee

Clark University

ENGLISH VERB CLASSES AND ALTERNATIONS: A PRELIMINARY

INVESTIGATION. Beth Levin. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1993. Pp.
xvii + 348. $45.00 cloth, $18.95 paper.

This book is not only a "preliminary investigation," it is also an accessible and well-organized
reference source on the lexical semantics and syntax of English verbs, based on the hypothesis
that the syntactic behavior of a verb is predictable from its semantics. Part 1 details the types
of verb alternations that are central to English. The presentation of each pattern begins with a
list of references for source studies and includes a list of verbs that show the behavior and some
general comments summarizing relevant research. For example, for the locative alternation
(pp. 49-50), 55 references are listed for English (12 for other languages). The category is then
divided into three groups: spray/load, clear, and wipe. Each of these subgroups is listed with
examples, related verbs that do not allow the alternation, and a short discussion. In part 2,
Levin demonstrates how the syntactic alternations outlined in part 1 are, in different configura-
tions of cooccurrence, associated with semantically coherent verb classes.
Levin is eclectic in her selection of sources, and she aims to remain neutral with respect to
syntactic theory. She acknowledges that readers will most certainly disagree with some details
of her categories, a perennial issue for research findings based on acceptability judgments. As
with any reference that compiles an inventory of findings from diverse sources, the book
demands an initial investment of time for learning one's way around it. Finally, while the work
emerges from a theoretical concern with connections between syntax and semantics, relevance
to other areas of linguistic research is ensured by Levin's style: Her introduction provides
straightforward definitions, presuming no one research program (though clearly presenting her
own). The volume will be useful for applied linguists interested, for example, in examining
particular semantically based verb classes in actual use or in exploring the manner in which
such categories arise in interlanguage development.

(Received 28 March 1994) Cecilia E. Ford

University of Wisconsin-Madison

https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100013917 Published online by Cambridge University Press