Tense and aspect is grounded in Gustave Guillaume's notion of “chronogenesis,” the staged development of a complex time image. Within this framework, the historical development of the tense and aspect systems of all branches of Indo-European is analyzed with clarity, demonstrating their divergence from a common model. The approach is based on the notions of Descending (moving-world) versus Ascending (moving-ego) Time, with ω-moments as memory and α-moments as imagination. The position of consciousness in relation to these moments is essential for characterizing aspect.

Hellinger and Ammon have compiled a volume of 21 papers that cover a broad range of sociolinguistic topics, with a primary focus on Western Europe. In their introduction, the editors consider approaches to sociolinguistics, grounding this volume in Hymes' original discussion of language as a social phenomenon. According to the editors, the authors of these papers “seek to relate findings to underlying social, cultural or political structures” (p. 4).

The focus of this book is the very early stages of language acquisition, with (an inevitable) particular focus on phonological and lexical development. As such, it might have been better if enfantsin the original title had been translated as “infants,” because the main title might mislead one into thinking that the book would illuminate a longer developmental path than it actually does. That said, there is much in this volume that might interest a second language researcher interested in second language phonology and lexis who would like to be reminded of what the human animal does under the natural circumstances of first language acquisition. It presents a particularly clear picture of the sensitivities of infants to human sounds, as well as a detailed account of how those sensitivities become tuned to particular language characteristics very early on.

This volume is a collection of articles that explore language acquisition through the lens of current phonological theories, such as Optimality Theory, Lexical Phonology, and Feature Geometry. It is divided into one section on first language acquisition (L1) and another on second language acquisition (L2). There is an introduction by the editors.

The chapters of this book come from the 1997 Finnish Conference on Linguistics and the Scandinavian Summer School on Language Diversity. A number of the contributions focus on endangered languages, in particular, Ingrian Finnish. Hallamaa discusses developing appropriate methodologies to study endangered languages and evaluate individual language proficiency. Chapters by Koko and Riionheimo describe the loss of Ingrian through shift to Estonian. Ingrian is, again, the topic for Savijiirvi, who compares and provides a detailed sociohistory of four Balto-Finnic languages: Votian, Ingrian, Estonian, and Finnish. Duray writes about language death, focusing on the extralinguistic factors that have caused a community-wide shift to Russian by the Nganasan-speaking people.

The series to which this volume belongs was designed to provide, “. . . a large scale view . . . of language study” (p. ix), with the goal of the present volume being to introduce the reader to the “comprehensive discipline” of psycholinguistics. The volume begins with a survey of the topic in four chapters: introduction, language acquisition, language competence (comprehension and production), and language dissolution. Section 2 contains abstracts of selected readings followed by study questions, and section 3 lists annotated references. Both of these sections are organized by topic area in order to guide further study. The fourth section is a succinct glossary. The author has accomplished the goal for this volume, producing a text that is comprehensive, scholarly, and easily readable.

This collection includes 19 of the 27 papers presented at the Generative Approaches to Second Language Acquisition Conference held at McGill University in 1997. Also included are the plenary presentations by Margaret Thomas and Claire Lefebvre. After a short preface, the papers are presented in alphabetical order, each preceded by an abstract. French translations of the abstracts are given at the end of the volume.

Written in French, this work reports the results of a longitudinal study of past-time reference in the interlanguages of four Swedish learners of French. Unlike most previous studies of L2 acquisition of temporal expression, which have focused on early interlanguage, Kihlstedt shifts the focus of inquiry in this study to the oral production of advanced L2 learners. Kihlstedt discusses evidence supporting a modified interpretation of Andersen's (1991) developmental stages in past temporal expression and proposes an ordering of aspectual value assignment to the passé composé and imparfait constructions in Swedish-French interlanguage.

This book is designed as a textbook to introduce students to language typology and language phenomena. Although not intended to be an introduction to linguistics or a reference book, the wealth of information it contains will provide interesting and rewarding reading for language professionals and students alike.

This book explores and aims to elucidate the process of Japanese language acquisition by English-speaking students. More specifically, it examines the effects of various types of teachers' language on comprehension among American university students studying intermediate Japanese.

Well known for their work in first language (L1) acquisition, Crain and Thornton (henceforth C&T) have produced with their Investigations in Universal Grammar a thorough review of the innovative experimental techniques they developed to investigate the acquisition of syntax. In this sense, the volume would appear to be a kind of research-methods book. The volume is a great deal more, however. Indeed, in the volume's three main sections (16, 8, and 16 chapters, respectively), C&T present examinations not only of the nature of human-language grammars but also of the factors that conspire to result in linguistic performance. What makes the C&T volume superior is that they integrate theoretical framework with methodological practice so seamlessly.