Aphasia in atypical populations Ed. by Patrick Coppens, Yvan Lebrun, and Anna Basso (review)

Abstract

BOOK NOTICES 493 excluded in any conclusions). As is usual and appropriate in a dissertation, the author refers to a wide array of the relevant literature, citing for example both early transformational work (such as that ofVioleta Demonte) and more functionally-oriented work (such as Toan Hooper and Tracy Terrell) on Spanish but concentrating mainly on functionalist theoretical work, in particular that of Simon Dik, Talmy Givón, and M. A. K. Halliday. The analysis is based not on invented sentences but on examples drawn from the ARTHUS corpus ofSpanish text at the University ofSantiago de Compostela , which contains approximately one and ahalf million words from a variety of written and oral texts. (The corpus was being elaborated as work on this book progressed, so the examples tend more towards the literary, as these were the first works to be included in the corpus.) The first three chapters are essentially theoretical preliminaries and for most readers interested in the area are revisions rather than new material. The first chapter (15-37) defines the prototype of a subject and examines why the complement clauses which are the focus of the work should be considered subjects . The second chapter (39-57) deals with theoretical concepts such as events vs. facts (lohn Lyons, Zeno Vendler) or the various orders of terms (Simon Dik) and how these can be expressed in Spanish. The third chapter (59-81) examines the important notion ofpresupposition, discussing for example Tracy Terrell and Toan Hooper's analysis of Spanish complementation (A semantically based analysis of mood in Spanish. Hispania 57.484-94, 1974) in terms of presupposition and the importance of maintaining a theoretical distinction between semantic vs. pragmatic presupposition. Each of the following chapters selects one syntactic structure and examines groups of verbs (such as verbs of affect) or important and frequent individual verbs which can be used in the matrix clause in these structures. Cabeza Pereiro was able to find sufficient data in her corpus for four distinct structures: sentences with a subject complement clause and an indirect object as well as the predicate (83-121); sentences with a subject complement clause and a direct object (123-43); sentences containing a copula construction using verbs such as ser 'be', parecer 'appear', resultar 'result', and estar 'be' together with a subjectcomplement clause (145-65); and sentences containing existential-presentative constructions (with verbs such as existir 'exist', pasar 'happen', llegar 'arrive', entrar 'enter', and quedar 'stay') together with a subject complement clause (167-77). This book is a very relevant resource for those interested in Spanish complementation, particularly for its focus on subject complementation, which tends to be overlooked somewhat in favor of the more common object complementation. Its only failing is, perhaps, the feeling of being somewhat of a listing of verb groups which take subject complement clauses—while each chapter or section ends with a summary and conclusion, there is no overall examination of the similarities and differences between the various groups of verbs which take finite complement clauses in subject position. [Timothy Towan Curnow, Australian National University.] Aphasia in atypical populations. Ed. by Patrick Coppens, Yvan Lebrun, and Anna Basso. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998. Pp. xiii, 336. Research studies in aphasiology generally do not include—and often intentionally exclude—any subjects that do not meet certain criteria: 'Typical' subjects are monolingual, right-handed, adult or adolescent, literate speakers of languages that use an alphabetic writing system and that are not tone languages. As the editors of this volume point out, at least 75% of the world's population would have to be excluded by these criteria. Literature on 'atypical' populations does exist, often in the form of singlecase reports. Each chapter of this inspiring volume presents an overview of existing literature on some specific atypical population. While some chapters are best characterized as literature reviews, others also contain original research reports. Readers are advised to look beyond the unevenness of the editing as each chapter contains a wealth of useful information. Ch. 1, 'Aphasia in left handers', by Anna Basso and Maria Luisa Rusconi and Ch. 7, 'Crossed aphasia', by Patrick Coppens and Suzanne Hungerford together afford an excellent overview of language lateralization and handedness...