The Linguist is a languages magazine for professional linguists, translators, interpreters, language professionals, language teachers, trainers, students and academics with articles on translation, interpreting, business, government, technology
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28 The Linguist Vol/57 No/4 2018 ciol.org.uk/tl REVIEWS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 Across 7. Low-income dwelling in Brazil. (6) 8. Business sense in ancient rome. (6) 9. Biblical character banished to the Land of Nod. (4) 10. old-fashioned communications. (8) 11. Fairground stalls. (4-3) 13. Pasta in shape of feathers. (5) 15. The world's longest continental mountain chain. (5) 17. with Principe, one half of a lusophone island nation. (3,4) 20. Destructively throw a clog in the works. (8) 21. Used to magnify a small French mining town. (4) 22. Latin twins. (6) 23. wat, stupa, e.g. (6) Crossword no.20 Solution, opposite Down All down answers are a capital city. Clues give the official language(s) (as in Wikipedia) you might expect to meet there. 1. French. (6) 2. german, French, Italian, romansh. (4) 3. Spanish and indigenous languages. (7) 4. Arabic. (5) 5. Hungarian. (8) 6. german. (6) 12. English, Afrikaans and many others. (8) 14. French. (7) 16. French. (6) 18. English, Filipino. (6) 19. French. (5) 21. Spanish, Aymara, Quechua. (4) aided by registering micro-changes in pitch, syllable length and loudness. Departures from the norm will result in overlaps and interruption (too fast) or awkward pauses (too slow). The interjections 'uh' and 'um' function as signals. The former, at the beginning of an utterance, indicates an unexpected/ undesired response to a yes/no question. The latter, used mid-utterance, indicates a favour to be asked or the introduction of a new piece of information. Enfield's biggest single claim is that the interjection 'huh', used interrogatively (to mean 'pardon?'), is universal across the 5,000 or so languages in the world. The sound is produced when the mouth is relaxed and slightly open. Field research involving 15 languages (English and seven other European languages, plus seven lesser-known languages from around the world) points towards a similar phoneme performing the same function across this range of languages. Enfield presents a persuasive case for this widespread use of certain interjections, but much more research would need to be done to establish that such features are universal. How We Talk tells us some interesting things about the micro-mechanics of everyday conversation and would be of value to interpreters, discourse analysts and those with an interest in the psychology of language. Graham Elliott MCIL How We Talk N J Enfield Basic Books 2017, 272 pp; ISBN 978- 0465059942 Hardback, £20.99 Everyday conversation between native speakers is a finely-tuned juxtaposition of utterances and pauses, separated by split- second timing that drives the dialogue forward. This is the main thesis of N J Enfield, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Sydney, in How We Talk: The inner workings of conversation. Enfield and others working in behavioural psychology and social anthropology have amassed a body of data on the norms governing conversation. This is gleaned from recordings of couples in conversation, laboratory experiments and radio phone-ins. Among the more interesting findings are that a one-second window following a question allows us to gauge whether a response is quick, on time, late or unlikely to occur; the average time taken to respond to a question is 200 milliseconds (ms); following a question, a 'yes' response will come quicker than a 'no' response "no matter which language is spoken". given such rapid turn-taking, what signals does a speaker use to indicate the approach to an end of a turn? Instinctively, we note a drop in pitch, eye movement, gesture etc, but Enfield says that more is at play here. For the new turn-taker, "intention to articulation" takes up to 600ms, and yet response times of 200ms are routine. So, how do we respond as quickly as we do? The new turn-taker is gearing up in advance of the speaker finishing. This preparation is B 1 B 2 C 3 C 4 B 5 B 6 F 7 A V E L A A 8 C U M E N M R R I D R C 9 A I N A 10 I R M A I L S K C O P I H 11 O O P 12 L A S P 13 E N N E R S P 14 S A 15 N 16 D E S S 17 A O T O M 18 E I T P 19 P A S 20 A B O T A G E L 21 E N S M R R E I I G 22 E M I N I T 23 E M P L E Y A S E A A Crossword solution Puzzle, opposite CIOL moves to Fleet Street CIoL is moving to 167 Fleet Street, London EC4A 2EA in August. The new office provides an affordable and flexible alternative to the property in Farringdon, where CIoL has been based for five years.