218 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 62, NUMBER 1 (1986) Marvin Folsom, 'Prepositions with the da five or accusative in written and spoken German ' (19-32), gives the relative occurrence of various prepositions based on frequency counts. He finds that, in his large sample, prepositions which can occur only with the dative case appear in 46% of the total number ofprepositional phrases, those which occur with either the dative or the accusative appear in 40%, those with the accusative alone in 12%, and those with the genitive in 2%. F then investigates more closely the prepositions that govern both the dative and accusative cases; he concludes that, over-all, über is used mostly with the accusative (91%); an, auf and in are used equaUyvfrequently with both the dative and accusative ; and vor, neben, unter, hinter, and zwischen are used predominantly with the dative (90%). F suggests that textbooks should reflect this frequency of usage in the type of exercises they present. J. A. Pfeffer & Beth Linder, "The inflection ofadjectives after indefinites in written and spoken German' (135-62), discuss the inflection of descriptive adjectives after 18 indefinites, in both the singular and the plural. As indefinites they classify such words as alle, beide, folgende , andere, einige, and sämtliche. They examine what five well-known grammars (Curme, Duden, Erben, Jung, and Schulz-Griesbach) say on the subject, and note that these grammars often contradict each other. By examining one large corpus of spoken German and two ofwritten German, P&L conclude that the standard grammars are right only 25% ofthe time in their treatment of this topic. A seven-page summary table gives a guide to the often puzzling variation in these adjective endings—e.g., irgendwelch - + des. adj. in pi., 42.1% strong adjective ending (e.g. irgendwelche schwierigEProbleme) vs. 57.9% weak (e.g. für irgendwelche fehlendEN Arbeitskräfte); irgendweich- + des. adj. in sg., 50% strong (e.g. irgendwelches politischES Vorurteil) vs. 50% weak (e.g. irgendwelches anderE Gebäck). Several articles attempt to classify the possibi üty of the occurrence of certain phrases, or combinations of phrases into groups. Bjarne Ulvestad, 'Goal-directional cumulative expansibiUty in German' (33-53), deals with directional prepositional phrases, as in Er setzte sich neben sie an den Tisch. U estabUshes six groups of such directional phrase pairs, which aUow him to classify about 90% of his large corpus of examples. G. Lee Fullerton, 'Subjective modals, assessment adverbs and source phrases in German' (97-114), sets up confidence levels such as 'high confidence', 'certainty', 'probabi üty', and 'skepticism' to categorize the use of certain modal verbs and such assessment adverbs as zweifellos, wahrscheinlich, and möglicherweise . F investigates these in relation to source phrases such as nach Marie 'according to Marie' . J. A. Pfeffer & Scott E. Morrison, 'The genitive singular with -s and/or -es in spoken and written German' (9-18), modify the prescriptive rules given in weU-known grammars and textbooks for adding -s or -es to singular mascuUne or neuter nouns. Burkhard Schaeder , 'The verb geben in dictionaries and in fact' (115-34), gives an assessment of valence theory ; he describes how two dictionaries based on this theory give different—and, according to S, unsatisfactory—entries for the verb geben. Edward G. Fichtner, 'Topicalization of nuclear elements in independent finite clauses' (55-73), demonstrates in a tagmemic framework how rules would deal with topicaUzation. Edwin A. Hopkins, 'Fronting in German and the interlanguage of German-English learners' (75-95), based on his own classroom experiences, discusses the different functions offronting in German and EngUsh in relation to the interaction of word position, intonation, and stress. He deals particularly with the fronting of accusative objects in German which presents difficulties to Germans when they try to render these constructions into EngUsh, thus producing faulty interlanguage sentences. AU articles are quite readable; the book suffers only from an unwelcome number of easüy recognized typesetting problems. [Wolfgang P. Ahrens, York University, Toronto.] En nasjon av skrivefetre: Om utviklinga fram mot allmen skriveferdighet pâ 1800-tallet. By Kjell Ivar Vannebo . (Oslo-studier i sprâkvitenskap , 2.) Oslo: Novus, 1984. Pp. 208. Kr. 106.00. This book deals with the development ofwriting skiU in Norway during the 19th century...