Examines "Grammaticalization" (P. J. Hopper and E. C. Traugott), a linguistics textbook that focuses on the establishment of grammaticalization as both a process and a topic. Argues that the significance of the work is that it offers a genuine attempt to explain linguistic change in terms of a realistic conception of what is actually…

Discusses Victor Henry's innovative presentation of some underlying contradictions in the premises on which linguistics is founded, cast in the Kantian form of antinomies. The review argues that no science remains more strongly contested than linguistics, a science whose origins are paradoxical and that contains outdated concepts. (30 references)…

Three books are discussed: Andresen's "Linguistics in America 1769-1924: A Critical History," Crowley's "Politics of Discourse: The Standard Language Question in British Cultural Debates," and Crowley's "Standard English and the Politics of Language." (36 references) (LB)

Agrees with King's (1994) scenario of language emerging over a continuum with each step requiring an adaptive motivation. The article explores the major themes in King's work, including information donation and acquisition, gesture and information transmission, the evolution of social information transfer, the beginnings of language, and…

Notes that the "Comparative Austronesian Dictionary" (CAD) is one of a series of comparative dictionaries planned to cover the major world language families. The CAD provides detailed information on 80 languages and additional data on the history of the Austronesian (AN) languages. Adds that the CAD gives reliable citations in a broad…

Reviews Robert Phillipson's "Linguistic Imperialism," a book about the imposition of English on former colonies of Great Britain. Notes that the book taps into the guilt felt by the rich North about the poor South and that the role of language in an imperial enterprise is important. (22 references) (Author/CK)

Maintains that language as humans now produce and comprehend evolved from languagelike precursors in the communication systems of nonhuman primates. The article reviews "Gesture and the Nature of Language" (GNL) (1995) and notes that GNL derives syntax incrementally without diluting it to an element not recognizable as a property of language. (37…