AGE AND THE ACQUISITION OF ENGLISH AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE. María del Pilar García Mayo and María Luisa García Lecumberri (Eds.). Clevedon, UK: Multilingual Matters, 2003. Pp. xii + 209. $29.95 paper.

There have been a number of recent books devoted to the effects of age on language acquisition; this volume is different. It is the first book to examine the relationship of age to ultimate attainment in foreign language learning. One might wonder whether there is, in fact, any relationship between the age of onset and ultimate attainment in classroom learning where the language being taught is not spoken within the community. However, if one exists, then what is the optimal age to begin foreign language instruction?

THE OXFORD HANDBOOK OF APPLIED LINGUISTICS. Robert B. Kaplan (Ed.). Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xxvii + 641. $74.00 cloth.

This edited volume is undoubtedly one of Oxford University Press's flagship publications in the broad area of applied linguistics and second language studies. Edited by one of the best known scholars in the field—Robert Kaplan—with help from three equally distinguished colleagues—William Grabe, Merrill Swain, and Richard Tucker—the book contains 39 chapters written by leading international experts in their particular domains. Thus, it is a kind of “all-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-applied-linguistics” venture, and my overall conclusion is that the book successfully delivers what it promises: It is a collection of serious scholarly articles covering all of the key aspects of applied linguistics, with a good mix of classic topics and novel, forward-pointing concepts.

LANGUAGE PROCESSING AND ACQUISITION IN LANGUAGES OF SEMITIC, ROOT-BASED, MORPHOLOGY. Joseph Shimron (Ed.). Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003. Pp. vi + 394. $156.00 cloth.

This book addresses a fundamental question in the morphological analysis and representation of Semitic languages—namely, whether Semitic word morphology is root based or word based. As Shimron suggests, “there are reasons to view the templates, not the roots, as the more influential factor in determining Semitic morphology” (p. 5). Yet, as others would argue, there are reasons not to disregard the root-based hypothesis altogether. In the case of Arabic morphology, for example, verbal forms inherently contain three nonlinear levels: the consonantal root, the vowel pattern, and the templatic prosody. This nonlinear feature provided a perfect illustration of what has become termed in the literature as root-and-patterns morphology (McCarthy & Prince, 1986, 1990).

DISCOURSE AND TECHNOLOGY: MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS. Philip Levine and Ron Scollon (Eds.). Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2004. Pp. vii + 229. $49.95 paper.

This volume is a collection of selected papers from the 2002 Georgetown University Round Table on Languages on Linguistics (GURT). It contains 16 papers that are either loosely related to multimodal discourse analysis or address the relationship between discourse and technology, but not necessarily from the viewpoint of multimodal discourse analysis. The main strength of the volume is that it provides a rich variety of perspectives on discourse; the main weakness is that the perspectives do not seem to shed light on one single phenomenon or even a set of related phenomena, but, rather, the papers discuss various aspects of the multifaceted field of discourse studies.

LA CLASE MÁGICA: IMAGINING OPTIMAL POSSIBILITIES IN A BILINGUAL COMMUNITY OF LEARNERS. Olga A. Vásquez. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 2003. Pp. vii + 237. $27.50 paper.

In this volume, Vásquez accounts the detailed development of an after-school project specifically designed to assist and prepare Mexican-American students to acquire the “social and cultural capital (knowledge of know how to)” necessary to understand the workings of the dominant culture, which are directly related to the culture of higher education and education in general. To succeed or pursue higher education, the minority individual must have enough social and cultural capital. One purpose of the volume is to assist and provide the disadvantaged individual with this social and cultural capital. Another purpose is to promote intellectual and cognitive development as well as self-esteem among Mexican-Americans living in a predominantly Mexican community. For this reason, participants in this program are free to express themselves in Spanish or English or to mix both languages without any feelings of inferiority; that is, la clase mágica attempts to control for such notions that there is a dominant language and the idea that the teacher teaches and the student listens and learns. In this classroom, teaching and learning is a collaborative effort among equals. It also shows how information technology could be used to assist and educate not only younger individuals but also adults (e.g., undergraduates, graduate students, parents) willing to participate and collaborate in the process of discovery and symbiotic learning.

CORPUS PRESENTER: SOFTWARE FOR LANGUAGE ANALYSIS. Raymond Hickey. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2003. Pp. viii + 285. CD-ROM. $95.00 cloth.

During the last 10 years, there has been an increased interest in access to corpora and the ability to perform corpus analyses from both language researchers and language teachers. The questions of which corpus to use and what tools are available for helping to search a corpus often plague language teachers. This volume helps to address this question by providing a book and an accompanying CD-ROM that contains a corpus and 27 tools.

COGNITIVE GRAMMAR. John R. Taylor. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. xii + 621. $29.95 paper.

This volume is not aimed at SLA researchers but is a book that SLA researchers interested in usage- and frequency-based models will find valuable. Taylor provides a lucid, comprehensive account of Langacker's theory of Cognitive Grammar (CG) and along the way also offers a thoughtful introduction to Cognitive Linguistics (CL). Of the many approaches within CL, CG has a notably wide scope and high degree of internal consistency and, thus, is particularly worthy of SLA researchers' attention. CG's central premise is that language is inherently symbolic and that linguistic expressions symbolize—or represent—conceptualization. In the original, Langacker's writing is technical and detailed, with many unfamiliar formal conventions; Taylor provides the uninitiated with a thorough, clear introduction to this significant, innovative work. SLA researchers will find it a valuable resource that provides many access points into CG and CL.

Publications Received.

In addition to members of the Editorial Board and Advisory Board, the following colleagues have kindly consented to review submissions to SSLA in the course of the preparation of Volume 27. It is our policy to have each submission evaluated by at least three consultants. This extensive reviewing process guarantees maintenance of the quality of the journal. A great debt of gratitude is owed to colleagues who have conscientiously, thoroughly, and expediently examined submitted material.

Contents of volume 27.