La variation diatopique de l'intonation dans le domaine roumain et roman. Adrian Turculet (ed.) (2008) Iasi: Editura Universitatii ''Alexandru Ioan Cuza''. Pp. 272 ISBN: 978-9-737-033949-7Reviewed by Cristina Bleortu and Alba Garcia Rodriguez1Over the last decades, intonation research presented special challenges for many scholars. The idea of this book grew out of The International Symposium on Prosody La variation diatopique de l'intonation dans le domaine roumain et roman held at Iasi on 21 and 22 October. This event was viewed as a meeting of the AMPER (Atlas Multimedia Prosodique de l'Espace Roman) research groups.The editor of this volume, Adrian Turculet, professor of Dialectology and Phonetics at the University Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi, is the coordinator of the Romanian research group which belongs to the international prosodic research atlas (AMPER). Following the methodology of AMPER, the linguist has attempted to offer a wider view of the Romanian prosody contributing to the realization of another Romanian atlas (AMProm) that studies a larger range of survey points. Both projects are in full swing. The initial results of the surveys, which were released in ten cultural centres in Romania and the Republic of Moldavia, are discussed in this volume. Indeed, this research presents different intonative patterns which depend not only on the dialects but also on the level of standard language.This book is meant as a source of information for Romanian researchers concerning the state of investigation in prosody. Until now it was a difficult task to study the Romanian intonation, given that Laurentia Dascalu-Jinga's works are based only on analysis of standard language. Her approach was a traditional one: she focused on the intonation as the 'melody of the speech' concerning the use of the syntaxis, and less on the pragmatics involved.The volume might also be put to good use outside the Romanian space, and in particular in Europe, fulfilling a useful function.As far as the structure of the book is concerned, it can be divided into two strands. First, there are papers that focus on Romance varieties and second, there are those that focus on the prosodic features of certain languages (Romanian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Sarde and Occitan).The twelve papers here constitute a point of entry for prosody in the whole Romance languages area. Another issue on which this volume sheds light is the international project AMPER (Atlas multimedia prosodique de l'espace roman). These papers allow clear recognition of the importance of this project, which launched a series of empirical investigations in the intonation field.Linguist Michel Contini in 'Vers une typologie intonative des varietes romanes' presents the essence and a detailed description of the AMPER project. Contini emphasizes that there are important aspects of the dialectal variation of the Romance languages that have been leftuntouched.The study of Romanian intonation is outlined by Turculet, Botosineanu, Minut and Mladin. Much of the discussion is devoted to the main intonative features that are present in ten cities: Baia Mare, Brasov, Bucarest, Cluj-Napoca, Craiova, Iasi, Oradea, Sibiu, Timisoara and Chisinau. The authors touch upon such questions as F0 and duration. The first point they noticed was that the speakers were mainly influenced by the dialect of the surrounding area, an influence that stems from the local differentiation. This fact, however, is a rather typical characterization of interrogative utterances, while the affirmative statements might go unnoticed.A further dimension for intonation is added in 'Aproximacion al estudio de la entonacion de la region de Murcia: Caravaca de la Cruz y Bullas', by several researchers of AMPER-CAT (Martinez Celdran, Fernandez Planas and Roseano) who study Murcia intonation. The results of their study took into account the affirmative and interrogative statements with SVO structure without subject and object. …