A classic psycholinguistic problem is parole, in its modern formulation, ‘performance’. This paper looks at aspects of parole or performance from a new direction, arguing that it is organized as a dialectic of unlike cognitive modes, a dialectic of gesture imagery and language. This dialectic is the key to the evocation, organization, and ultimate execution of meaningful actions shaped to take linguistic form in discourse — imagery, as embodied in the gestures that accompany speech, and the categorical-sequential thinking of speech itself. Both modes are essential components of psycholinguistic performance. A dialectic moreover naturally incorporates the context of speaking in an integral way and we shall develop a theoretical description of context as part of the analysis of performance. Such a dialectic model is self-motivating, self-directed and does not need a guiding hand (hidden or otherwise) of an executive.

Ce livre — qui est une version raccourcie de la thèse qui a valu le degré de Ph.D. à son auteur — traîte de la variation et du changement des voyelles nasales en français parisien moderne. Le sous-titre indique que le sujet est étudié dans ses aspects linguistiques, sociolinguistiques et perceptuels. Le seul fait qu'un travail d'une telle envergure ait été conçu et entrepris, à Paris, par une jeune sociolinguiste danoise vivant à Copenhague, a de quoi impressionner. — On n'en revient pas quand on apprend qu'elle l'a accompli en 4 ans (1991-1995), au cours desquels elle a donné naissance à deux enfants.

This book is the second volume of ‘The Dative’ series. In this volume some theoretical considerations, contrastive and diachronic aspects are presented. As in the first volume, this book gives us a typologically limited survey of ‘dativity’ since the languages investigated are mostiy Indo-European (mainly Germanic and Romance) languages. The traditional notions of case was developed on the basis of Ancient Greek and Latin, in which the main function of the dative was to mark the indirect object. As Blake (1994:20) points out, this traditional description of case systems presents two major problems. One is the problem of distinguishing the cases. How do we determine which argument is the dative when there is no case marking in a language? The second problem is how to describe the meaning and function of the dative. Traditionally cases are described as having various roles, for example, Goal, Experiencer, Possessor and Beneficiary. But there is another tradition in which cases have a single abstract meaning, and the concrete meanings are derived from this abstract meaning. In this book, eight different authors contribute to illuminating these problems.

In this article I propose a system of tests for answering the question what is a compound. Since this type of question is not common in present-day linguistics, I begin by showing the importance of having a motivated answer. Then I develop a framework for the application of a definition of compounding in the identification of constructions in any language as belonging to the phenomenon of compounding and in the identification of expressions as instances of these constructions. By imposing certain conditions on a definition, the framework guides the search for an appropriate formulation. The definition found is valid for all languages. It is at the basis of tests whose general applicability is suggested on the one hand by the solution of some apparent problems, on the other hand by some examples from English and Turkish* I would like to thank Elisabeth Engberg-Pedersen, François Grosjean, Ellen-Petra Kester, and Cornelia Tschichold for their comments on earlier versions of this paper. Of course they are not responsible for any remaining errors. I also thank audiences of the 1993 Autumn meeting of the LAGB in Bangor (Wales) and the 1994 Workshop on Compound Nouns in Geneva, where I had the opportunity to discuss some of the views presented here.

In this review I will, rather than discuss the individual contributions to the book under review, address two central issues that recur in several of the papers. In addressing the first issue, i.e. the question whether linguistic phenomena should be approached from a universal or a language-specific perspective, I will look at the book from the perspective of a language typologist. In addressing the second issue, i.e. the differences between Danish and Dutch functional grammar, I will take the perspective of a Dutch functional grammarian.

John Hawkins's performance theory of word order (1993) presents a challenge to functionally oriented models of word order. Only one functional motive power is recognized of the development and organization of word order patterns, namely the weight principle, in Hawkins' theory subsumed under the principle of Early Immediate Constituents (EIC). EIC in Hawkins' wording says that “The human parser prefers linear orders that maximize the IC-to-non-IC ratios of constituent recognition domains” (Hawkins 1993:77) What this covers is plainly a preference for structures that allow constituent recognition after as few words (non-ICs) as possible.

English is probably the most thoroughly investigated language of the world. There exist extensive studies of English phonetics and of nearly all aspects of English linguistics. Therefore the reader might ask if this new "Manual of English Phonetics" is likely to bring something new or if it is merely a compilation of research results, a kind of encyclopedia of English linguistics.

The 16 papers in this rich and themadcally focused volume grew out of a workshop at the 4th International Pragmatics Conference in Kobe, Japan, July 1993.

In this paper we will present an overview of the legacy of Roman Jakobson (1941/1968, 1971) in the fields of developmental and clinical phonology, concentrating especially on theories that have continued his communication oriented approach involving the phoneme, distinctive features and markedness theory. We will specifically show how André Martinet (1955) shifted the emphasis from the teleological focus of Prague School phonology to a more human oriented, ‘therapeutic’ phonology based on the principles of asymmetry and economy of effort We will first present the theory of Phonology as Human Behavior, developed by William Diver and his students, which combines aspects of the communication factor inherent in Prague School phonology with aspects of the human factor inherent in Martinet's diachronic phonology. The major parameters of the theory are presented according to the definition of language as a sign system used by human beings to communicate. The fundamental axiom underlying the theory is that language represents a struggle between the desire for maximum communication (the communication factor) with minimal effort (the human factor). This principle was originally presented as a means to explain the non-random distribution of phonemes in various languages. It is further maintained that developmental and clinical phonology represent a more extreme version of this “mini-max” struggle where the human factor clearly overrides the communication factor as a means of explaining the non-random distribution of developmental and clinical data.