848LANGUAGE, VOLUME 68, NUMBER 4 (1992) 1986 collection (Weltens et al.) represents a more obvious continuation of the original Lambert & Freed interests and stresses one strong European concern, the decline of dialects under pressure from standard languages, which is represented only by Schmidt's discussion of Boumaa Fijian in the present volume. For the student of attrition phenomena, it is encouraging to have seen three such wide-ranging collections appear within a decade. The scope of the volume Seliger & Vago have put together, and the quality of many of the individual studies, make theirs a welcome addition to the literature. REFERENCES Lambert, Richard D., and Barbara F. Freed (eds.) 1982. The loss of language skills. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Mertz, Elizabeth. 1989. Sociolinguistic creativity: Cape Breton Gaelic's linguistic 'tip'. Investigating obsolescence, ed. by Nancy C. Dorian, 102-16. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Weltens, Bert; Kees de Bot; and Theo van Els (eds.) 1986. Language attrition in progress. Dordrecht: Foris. Box 704, RRl[Received 8 June 1992.] South Harpswell, Maine 04079 Bilingualism. By Suzanne Romaine. (Language in society, 13.) Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1989. Pp. xii, 337. Paper $17.95. Reviewed by Ilse Lehiste, Ohio State University According to the editor's preface, the book is intended as an introduction to the field of bilingual studies for beginners, and as a source of information for those who are involved in the practical and educational aspects of bilingualism. It is also designed to provide wide-ranging and contemporary coverage of all the central linguistic and sociolinguistic theoretical issues concerning bilingualism . The primary aim of the book is thus to survey the field rather than to make an original contribution. The field is partly defined by inclusion and exclusion of topics in the survey. Relatively little space is devoted to language change due to language contact, and concepts such as language convergence areas and Sprachbund phenomena are not discussed at all. Linguistic theory is involved in a very special way: almost the entire book constitutes a counterargument to certain prevailing theories ofuniversal grammar. The book begins and ends with references to Chomsky , who is quoted in the first paragraph of the Introduction (Chomsky 1965) as having defined the scope of reference for the study of languages as a homogeneous speech community populated by ideal speaker-listeners who know their language perfectly. Romaine demonstrates the weakness of this assumption by bringing counterexamples to practically every claim. The emphasis in the book is on sociolinguistic and psycholinguistic aspects of bilingualism, from a synchronic point of view. The introductory chapter (122 ) treats approaches to the study of bilingualism, offering definitions and descriptions of various types of bilingualism and degrees of bilingualism, and REVIEWS849 discussing problems connected with identifying the mother tongue of a bilingual person. The author goes on to describe the bilingual speech community in Ch. 2 (23-75); the bilingual brain and the bilingual individual in Ch. 3 (76-109); code-switching and communicative competence in Ch. 4 (110-64); bilingual language acquisition and other characteristics of the bilingual child in Ch. 5 (165-215); and bilingualism and education in Ch. 6 (216-55). Attitudes toward bilingualism are discussed in Ch. 7 (256-80); Ch. 8 (281-87) contains a summary and conclusions. The eight chapters are followed by six pages of notes, 27 pages of references and bibliography, and a 14-page index of topics, languages, countries, and (a subset of) names of authors whose work has been discussed in the text. There is a great deal of information here, organized in an easily accessible fashion. The author is clearly in supreme command of a vast amount of data. She also appears to strive for impartiality. In presenting results of earlier research , R quotes opposite views with equal respect, until it becomes difficult to discern what her own view might be. Typical are the last paragraphs of the conclusions, where she cites first Max Müller (1873) and W. D. Whitney (1881), who had said that there exists no such thing as a language with a mixed grammatical apparatus, and then quotes Strevens (1982) to the effect that the notion of a 'language' is but a convenient and necessary fiction—that the facts reside in...