212 BOOK REVIEWS

The bibliography of Longacre's publications includes twelve monographs, ranging from Proto-Mixtecan (1957) to his Grammar of Discourse (1983), and ninety.four articles, including such different topics as "Five Phonemic Pitch Levels in Trique" (1952}, "Systemic comparison and reconstruction" (1967), "Sentence Structure as Statement Calculus" (1.970), "The Discourse Structure of the Flood Narrative (1979), "The Search for Context" (1983), and "Discourse as Music" (1986). The fact that four­teen of these articles were written in collaboration with other persons indicates the extent to which Longacre, as a consultant of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, helped other linguists to grapple with complex problems in languages throughout the world.

The majority of articles in this volume were written by present or former members of the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and for the most part they reflect various aspects of tagmemic theory. The number of languages and the diversities of subject matter are unusually great (e.g., "Topics in Mofu·Gudur," "Language Typology in Relation to Narrative Texts of Indigenous Language in Latin America, • "Reported Speech in Obolo Narrative Discourse,• "Speech Act Verbs and the Words of Jesus," and "The Function of Time Words in Guarayu•). One of the important features of these articles, as in most published research by SIL members, is the wealth of linguistic data presented in readable form and with helpful bibliographical citations.

Shin Ja J. Hwang's article on "The Functions of Negation in Narration" is of special interest because he assumes a social-act orientation and points out that negation may mark a turning point or a high·tension point at the global level. Ivan Lowe explores in a very useful manner the role of conditional clauses as crucial factors in discourse, because they so often link contents of the conditional clause to previous information and provide significant information about the actual or possible world of the text. William R. Merrifield's article, "Concerning Otomanquean Verbs of Motion," exhibits a healthy view of linguistic theories. In an introduction the author claims that "linguistic theorizing is fun if we do not take ourselves or our theories too seriously," and in the conclusion he admits that his understanding of the data is possibly only partial or wrong. Such scholarly modesty is a welcome antidote to the many global claims made by some linguists.

A number of linguists who are not members of SIL but who have great appreciation for Longacre's contributions to the field of linguistic scholarship have also provided helpful articles. Wolfgang Dressler's article on "Marked and Unmarked Text Strategies within Semiotically Based NATURAL Textlinguistics" is especially interesting because of the way in which he treats certain key elements of texts, namely, iconicity, indexicality, transparency (as well as opacity), and figure and ground. The relevance of those features is effectively illustrated by the way in which they function in the translation of texts into different languages.

"Syntax-88: The New Binarism" by Walter Cook, S.J., is essentially a review of X· bar syntax as proposed by Jackendoff (1.977) and Radford (1988). This radical binarism, which seems designed more for computers than for languages, is systematically described in a readable and summary fashion. This is an extremely useful introduction !<>~-bar syntax in that it not only describes the major features of the theory, but also md1rectly exposes many of the arbitrary elements designed to highlight the formal rather than the semantic relations.

Henry Hoenigswald's article on "Minimum Freedom and the Sentence" asks the perennial question about the nature of a sentence. I loenigswald insists that in a one· word sentence such as Yes! there is not only the lexical morpheme, but the stress morpheme and the intonation. Furthermore sentence stress and intonation arc e~sentially features of discourse because their r~nge of relevance includes more than a smgle sentence. Accordingly, what is frequently regarded as a minimal free utterance

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(i.e., a sentence) is actually part of a larger discourse segment because the stress and intonational patterns link it structurally to what precedea or follows.

For many people perhaps the most useful article in this volume is ·Relational Discourse Structure: A Comparison of Approachea to Structuring Text by 'Contrast•• by William Mann (Summer Institute of Linguistics) and Sandra Thompson (Univen~ity of California at Santa Barbara). In it Mann and Thompson have employed the features of contrast, frustrated expectations, and surprise to provide a snapshot view of what has been done in discourse studies and what might be done in the future. They make an important distinction between semantic orientation, speech-act orientation, and social­act orientation. The semantic orientation involves the truth value of the claim and evidence in any statement, while the speech-act orientation adds the role of the speaker, and the social·act orientation afftrms the speech-act orientation and adds the role of the hearer. Many of the differences in the diverse approach to discourse are accordingly attributed to differences in orientation. The authors then proceed to discuss the fmdings of Longacre, Beekman and Callow, Eugene Winter, Michael Hoey, ~tkhael J ordan, Halliday and Hasan, Halliday (1.985), Martin, Grimes, and van Dijk, as well as their own Rhetorical Structure Theory.

Mann and Thompson end their paper with a discussion of current issues leading to

a series of probing questtons about the nature of discourse. For example: How many different kinds of relations exist in discourse? Does discourse structure consist entirely of relations? Do texts have unique structures or can several structures apply legiti­mately to a single text? What are the hierarchies of relations?

The first of Longacre's important contributions to discourse was the fact that he asked precisely such questions of discourse in scores of languages, and his answers are cogently described in his various monographs. The second, and even more important, contribution has been his ability to get other people to ask such questions. He is both a creative researcher and an inspiring teacher.

Studying and Describing Unwritten Languages. Luc Bouquiaux and Jacquehnt. M. C. Thomas. Translated from the French text of 19~6 by James Roberts. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics, 1992. Pp. xi + 725 :\ p.

Reviewed by William J. Samarin, UniL!ersity of Toronto

This volume is the English translation of the second edition of a 1976 work that had first appeared in 1971. Suitable mdeed for those who are working in languages throughout the world unde r the auspices of the ummer Instttute of Linguistics (Societe Internationale de Linguisttque in French, retaining the well-kno·wn abbre· viation SIL), it is understandable that it should have been published by them. But dOcs it. have value for any others who are anticipating workmg on or learning languages for which there are no or only inadequate grammars? And can it be used in cou~s m field linguistics? Without knowledge of the present publication. one of my colleague . Paul Newman, had called the edition of 1973 a ·superb. but poorly known" work (Fieldtcork and Field Methods in Linguistics. California Linguistic Notes 23(2): 1, 3-8. Fullerton: Department of Linguistics, California State University, 1992). Its publication in English, along with this review, will make it better kno,vn. Whether or not one agrees that it is "superb," one may ask, Can it be used with profit today? ~ly answer is yes.

The major part of the book (548 pp.) is devoted to what the authors call question· naircs-that is, what should be elicited, which ,viii be discussed below. (Because some of the chapter are authored by others, it is curious that only two names appear on the title page. The collaboration of the other authors is, of course, fully acknowledged

BOOK REVIEWS

I h · the book.) General matters arc treated in only t.wo chapt.crs ("lnt.roduct.ion e sew ere m . . . An 1 · • ) h " h to Fieldwork." pp. 3-95, and "Concepts of Lmgu1st1c . a y~1s, ~P: 95- 174 , w 1c can be supplemented by Newman's Fieldwork and my Field LtngutstlCs (New York: Holt,

Ri h l d Winston 1967). Because this is a translation and not an updated version, ne ar an • 1 h · d " · f

it is in many ways as outdated as my own work. For e~am~ e~ t ere 1s no ISCUSSIOn o the use of computers, which have changed not only hngu1sttc fieldwork bu_t als~ t.he

t. h. of field linguistics in universities. (One of my colleagues at the Umvers1ty of eac mg h · 1 · ·

Toronto requires that his students go immediately from ~ etr c ass transcriptions to a Macintosh.) Even in 1976 the authors were recommendmg ~- 93) the use of carb~n paper instead of mechanical reproduction! .<:'he _tra~lator m1ght h~ve noted that m France a carbon paper especially for handwntmg IS st.11l produced, wh1ch I used to great advantage in the seventies and eighties for my research on the origin of Sango in the Central African Republic. Indeed, it is surprising that the authors and translator could not have agreed on some such editing either in the text or in footnotes.)

If technological advances are absent in the book, so are linguistic innovations. At the time of the original publications the authors had not adopted transformational­generative grammar in any form (nor h~ve th~y since), a~d they ac~owledge th~ir indebtedness as linguists only to Andre Martmet, Andre C. Haudr1cot, and Em1le Benveniste-scholars, it should be added, with unimpeachable reputations. For this reason the section on grammatical analysis is written from a "descriptive" and "French" point of view. It should not, however, prove daunting, even when the reader finds words like moneme, synthematic, functioneme, and syntaxeme. One could, of course, condemn this book for its not having been updated but simply translated. Whether or not a book on field linguistics should be based on contemporary theoretical linguistics of one vari­ety or another, readers would have profited from what has been learned in the last sixteen years. Since the authors discuss the analysis of tone, that topic alone could be cited because technology and theory have both contributed to understanding the use of pitch in language. (It is curious that an SIL publication does not mention SIL's CECIL hardware and software for analyzing pitch in the field.)

But as old cameras-without all the latest technological advances-can still take good pictures, this book has much of value in it. Students taking Field Linguistics {or Field Methods, or whatever the course might be called) should be required to consult it, and even though it weighs nearly two pounds, it should be included in the novice field­worker's baggage-if only for the "questionnaires." Contributed by a number of people and tested over a period of several years, they will stimulate the researcher to go deeply into the language (both in its grammar and lexicon) and culture. The latter concept must be stressed, as the authors do: " ... language is equally an instrument of commu­nication and an expression of a social reality. One cannot stand without the other, and neither of these two aspects may be neglected" (p. viii). For this reason this book is not only a tool for the linguist, who is interested in the language for itself or for what it may reveal about the nature of human language; it is also a tool for any anthropologist who works with linguistic data. Therefore, in spite of its title, I would consider this a tool for linguistic anthropology. There are, for example, questionnaires for eliciting information about traditional technologies, ethnobotany, ethnozoology, and so forth, in many cases accompanied by line drawings. Given the language-in-culture-and-society orientation of the authors, it is surprising and disappointing, however, that readers are not guided more systematically in the ethnography of speaking, which, because it covers topics like child language, baby talk, gender differences, expressivity, and so forth, might very well have been dealt with by some of the book's contributors.

So much space is devoted to the questionnaires, t.hat one wonders at the purpose of some of them-or parts of some of them. For instance, what kind of person "studying and describing" some unwritten language would be interested in eliciting words dealing

B OOK REVJI-;WS 215

with the fetus in the uterus {p . 588): placenta, amniotic fluid, cervical opening, and so on?

One criticism I have of t he book is t hat it is based primarily on one method of obtaining data: elicitation. Moreover, it depends heavily on someone who is called a "reference speaker" (who used to be called an informant), t he preferred one, according to the authors, being educated at least to the level of Certificate of Primary Studies. As they describe this person, one gets the impression t hat he or she is a research associate or collaborator playing an important role in the research. When that happens, the researcher is very fortunate. But it is well known that such an assistant is not available in many places in the world. In any case, there are-or may be-problems in relying heavily on an "educated" assistant. Working recently with such persons in the Central African Republic, I was amazed at how poorly they sometimes followed instructions. With luck a field worker, of course, might find just the r ight person. In any case, he or she ought to count on a considerable amount of time in training the assistant and in supervising the person's work.

A corollary of the authors' methodology is that they do not appear to consider extemporaneous discourse (in tape -recorded form), certainly important for certain matters. Having recently seen how influen ced by French the elicited material from Central Africans can be in Sango or what they consider their ethnic languages (in which they might have less competence than a rural person), I am convinced that elici­tation by translation must be used with great circumspection . For example, every per­son who translated for me from French into Sango the sentence "I don't know if my \\iJe is going to arrive before me (be fore I dor put the negative marker ape after the first clause, which violates the syntactic rule of negation: it must occur at the end of the sentence. Constructing a sentence according to this rule has always been a challenge to

me. The subjects in my study obviously ignored the challenge and followed the model of French. It would be foolish indeed to give the list of 6,406 sentences to be translated (arranged alphabetically according to one italicized key word) to an assistant who has not been very, very carefully trained in the art of translation. I would certainly count the cost before I asked a French-speaking Gbaya to translate (to take just one of the authors' suggested sentences) "He has a )·outhful enthusiasm."

In criticizing this book one must point out that because the authors' field v.""Ork was done mostly or exclusively in Africa, there is a bias throughout for tha t continen t.

The translation is commendable, and typographical errors are rare. No matter what aspect of language a person may be interested in and no matter

what theoretical orientation that person may have, he or she ought to get all t he help there is in making fieldwork successful and enjoyable. (In my book I said that fieldwork was fun, and that is part of the reason why, almost forty years later and in • retire­ment, • I am still going back to the Central tVrican Republic.) Therefore note should be taken of Newman's valuable contribution, cited above. He deals w1th heal th, ch ildren , gender and sex, professional and personal ethics, and money-topics that 1 had over ­looked discussing, and cites some works in anthropology that are also helpful.

In sum, while dated in many ways the book under review contributes significantly to the meager literature on field linguistics. This is true partly because many aspects about attempting to study and describe unwritten languages have not changed and will not change in the years to come. For all the changes that have taken place and for those that will take place, another book will have to be written. May all veterans, wherever they are, convince others of the need for fieldwork, the best ways to carry it out, and the pleasure (not without risks) of ·working in the laboratory.·