Since Crowley first arrived as a linguistic fieldworker in Vanuatu in 1976, Bislama has become a major part of the author's linguistic repertoire. Crowley previously published a dictionary of the language in 1990 (updated in 1995 and 2003), and a grammatical account in 1987. The current work serves as a resource for people already fairly familiar with the language, and academic linguists with the sophistication to work out details of the examples themselves. Coverage includes a background to Bislama, pronunciation and spelling, parts of speech, nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases, simple sentences, and complex sentences. Annotation ©2004 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)