This article presents an analysis and review of Ljiljana Progovac's "Negative and Positive Polarity: A Binding Approach" (1994). It concludes that by pushing a syntactic analysis of polarity to, if not beyond, its limits, Progovac has focused attention on the work that remains for any approach to polarity to resolve. Contains 59…

Margaret Speas'"Phrase Structure in Natural Language" is reviewed. It presents three recent innovations in phrase structure research that offer new tools to explain data and solve old problems: the VP-internal subject hypothesis, the layered VP hypothesis, and the articulated IP hypothesis. (Contains 19 references.) (LB)

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no science remains more strongly contested than linguistics, a science whose origins are paradoxical and that contains outdated concepts.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)…

Reviews Tesar and Smolensky's, "Learnability in Optimality Theory" (2000). Discusses the main tenets of the book as well as the different topics included in each chapter. (Author/VWL)

Reflections on Tobin's "Semiotics and Linguistics" and Shaumyan's "Semiotic Theory of Language" are offered. (23 references) (LB)

Reviews Gabrielle Maguire's book "Our Own Language: An Irish Initiative" and Joshua A. Fishman's "Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages." (seven references) (JP)

Monik Charette's "Condition on Phonological Government" is reviewed. It is the first book-length study written in the framework of Government Phonology (GP), a theory that makes a dramatic break with the classical generative approaches to phonology. (Contains 10 references.) (LB)

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)

Critiques Smith and Tsimpli's (1995) book, "The Mind of the Savant," in which a single case study is used as evidence for the modularity of language. Smith and Tsimpli respond to comments by Bates. (Author/VWL)

Two books are reviewed: "The Discourse of Advertising," by Guy Cook, and "Competing Discourses, Perspectives and Ideology in Language," by David Lee. Each focuses on several issues central to discourse studies as the catalyst of critical thought and critique of traditional methods in language and linguistics. (Contains one…

Presents a postmodernist critical analysis of the second language acquisition (SLA) theory-building literature as primarily represented in the writings of Beretta, Crookes, Eubank, Gregg, Long, and Schumann. Argues that there is no foundational reason to grant privileged status to the modernist view of SLA espoused by these scholars. (67…

Reviews Barbara J. King's detailed observations of free-ranging baboons in Amboseli, Kenya; these observations contain a mass of recent research and report studies of divergent theories in primatology and paleontology. King's studies supply direct evidence about primate behavior that conveys information and show how natural information transfer is…

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…

"Analysing Genre," by Vijay K. Bhatia, is a timely addition to the literature on genre analysis in English for specific purposes. It is divided into three parts: the first provides theoretical background; the second explains how genre analysis works in different academic and professional settings; and the third exemplifies the…

Presents an extended review of Eleanor Wilson Orr's "Twice as Less: Black English and the Performance of Black Students in Mathematics and Science." Argues that the work sustains the fantasy of intellectuals that the basic injustices of society are subject to relatively simple technical correction. (RS)