William A. Foley

Gender and Language in Ethnographic and Evolutionary Perspectives

Much research in the field of language and gender has been hampered by unquestioned a priori dualistic assumptions about contrasting gender roles for men and women. The works reviewed here all demonstrate that simplistic dualistic beliefs about what are typical male or female ways of speaking do not hold water. The variables that determine speech styles are complex and mutually interactive: place of residence, class, formality, age, and gender, and others. Women are just as capable of directive speech as men, and men, of hedged speech. Dualistic thinking about gender serves only to reinforce current hegemonies.

Comparative grammar and typology: Essays on the historical grammar of the Austronesian languages by Alain Lemaréchal (review)

This is a very difficult volume to review. It consists of a series of papers previously published in French, translated into English, and now collated together here. From a number of comments in the text, it is clear that the author feels that his work has been snubbed and not given its fair due in the heavily English language dominant academic environment of Austronesian linguistics: hence this translated collection. While it is certainly true most academics based in the English-speaking world, and that includes the overwhelming majority of Austronesian specialists, only rarely read materials in languages other than English, as we shall see, there are quite likely other compelling reasons why the author’s publications in comparative and historical Austronesian linguistics have been rarely referred to. While the data collected and the breadth of the author’s reach is quite impressive, this book is in most respects very much in left field in Austronesian linguistics. The author has clearly been involved in research on comparative Austronesian linguistics for several decades, but has done this largely on his own and with little engagement with wider work in the field. His reading of its scholarly literature appears very partial. He jumps upon what will support his claims, but ignores most things that contradict them. There is little or no true argumentation. The exposition is essentially an iteration of bold claims, with no true rigorous argumentation to back them up. The text is littered with “coulds” and “mays.” Although reconstruction of the prehistory of Austronesian languages necessarily works with unattested forms, the standards of argumentation expected are still higher than mere possibilities (although it needs to be admitted that these textual laxities could simply be an artifact of translation). Further, his use of the comparative method and its central and indispensable law of regularity of sound change are lax indeed. Irregular consonantal correspondences are brushed aside with nary a comment, and vowels seem to count for nothing. Floating morphemes with slippery, almost ghost-like, meanings proliferate. His conclusions are sweeping and, if found to be true, would require a complete rethink of everything we know about the prehistory and grouping of Austronesian languages. Given such profound implications, we would demand a much higher burden of proof and solid argumentation. And all of this is not helped by the extremely terse writing and dense presentation of the book; it will take a very dedicated scholar of comparative Austronesian linguistics to wade through it. But beyond all these negative comments, Lemaréchal does highlight some very important data and brings up some central and as yet unaddressed questions in comparative Austronesian linguistics, and for this we are all in his debt. He has compiled the data, so that now these questions can be researched, and researched rigorously. In a way, he has raised a ques-

GERRIT VAN ENK & LOURENS DE VRIES , The Korowai of Irian Jaya . (Oxford studies in anthropological linguistics, 9). New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. xiv, 321. Hb

One mainstay of the Boasian tradition in anthropological linguistics is the notion that adequate documentation of a language must consist of at least three volumes: a grammar, a dictionary, and a collection of texts. This convention grew out of Boass dogged insistence on the collection of copious texts in the native languages as a way of documenting the cultures of Native North Americans, which he believed were breaking down and disappearing. Obviously, if one were actually to make use of such texts, a grammar and a dictionary were also needed; so this practice of a necessary trilogy was established, a tradition that has continued in academic departments which carry on the Boasian heritage (illustrated by the postgraduate work and resulting publications of the editor of this journal).

95.00.

List of tables List of figures Preface Abbreviations 1. Theoretical preliminaries 2. The semantic structure of the clause 3. Case marking 4. Intraclausal syntax 5. Juncture and operators 6. Nexus 7. Systems of discourse cohesion: reference-tracking mechanisms List of tables List of figures.