book reviews from issue 48:1 of word

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WORD

ISSN: 0043-7956 (Print) 2373-5112 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwrd20

Reviews

Istvn Btori, John D. Bengtson, Ruth M. Brend, Mike Cahill, Eduardo O.Faingold, Eduardo D. Faingold, Grazia Crocco Galas, Ray Harris-Northall,Masataka Ishikawa, Masataka Ishikawa, Mark Janse, Roger Lass, Alan R.Libert, Eugenio Ramn Lujn Martnez, Eugenio Ramn Lujn Martnez,Stephen J. Matthews, Stephen O. Murray, Nick Nicholas, Charles Peck,Edgar C. Polom, Edgar C. Polom, Heidi Quinn, Leonard Rolfe, W. WilfriedSchuhmacher, Jyh Wee Sew, Jyh Wee Sew, Yuri Tambovtsev, Masako Ueda &

Paula West

To cite this article:Istvn Btori, John D. Bengtson, Ruth M. Brend, Mike Cahill, Eduardo O.Faingold, Eduardo D. Faingold, Grazia Crocco Galas, Ray Harris-Northall, Masataka Ishikawa,Masataka Ishikawa, Mark Janse, Roger Lass, Alan R. Libert, Eugenio Ramn Lujn Martnez,

Eugenio Ramn Lujn Martnez, Stephen J. Matthews, Stephen O. Murray, Nick Nicholas,Charles Peck, Edgar C. Polom, Edgar C. Polom, Heidi Quinn, Leonard Rolfe, W. Wilfried

Schuhmacher, Jyh Wee Sew, Jyh Wee Sew, Yuri Tambovtsev, Masako Ueda & Paula West (1997)Reviews, WORD, 48:1, 69-161, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1997.11432464

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1997.11432464

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2/94

R VI WS

DAVID G. LOCKWOOD, Morphological analysis and description A real-

izational approach (with a Supplementary section: Solutions to problems and

other exercises ). Textbook series in the Language Sciences. Tokyo, Taipei,

Dallas: International Language Sciences Publishers, 1993. 340 43 pp.

Reviewed by ISTVAN BATORI

David Lockwood has written a course book for morphology,

devised for American and Chinese students having no direct experience

with agglutinating languages. In this context it is both sensitive and use-

ful to treat the basic concepts o morphology, which typically remain

unexplained, if the author

o

the course book addresses himself to a

European audience.

The book is divided into two parts:

1.

basic concepts o morpholo-

gy (4 chapters) and 2. the presentation of the realizational approach 5

chapters). The main body o the presentation is followed by a volumi-

nous glossary o terms used, a selected but rather short bibliography,

and an index

o

the key words. The book

is

accompanied by a supple-

mentary booklet containing the solutions to the exercises. The chapters

are designed uniformly as 1. explanations, 2. list o technical terms and

3. exercises, which should be done by the students. The exercises are

drawn from a wide variety o languages. All languages (including the

English examples) are presented in phonetic transcription o their

underlying deep representation (and not in the normal orthography).

In the first part o the book Lockwood introduces the basic concept

o morphology, concentrating on inflectional morphology and treating

word formation only briefly (derivation or derivational morphology as

key words do not occur). The introductory chapters explain the internal

structure of the word, the morphological categories and processes very

69

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70

WORD VOLUME 48, NUM ER I (APRIL, 1997)

much in the style

of

traditional linguistics, i.e. trying to show the diver

sity

of

actual language forms used

in

the inflectional patterns of natural

languages, and their restrictions. Lockwood explains allomorphy, sup

pletion, morphological class, stem, root, word form and so on, illustrat

ing all these categories by examples from Czech,

1

Yiddish, Turkish,

Hopi, etc. His point is, as in traditional linguistics in general, to explain

the following phenomena: how the inflected words are organised, what

is to be expected in the morphological inventory of natural languages

(and not to present a formalism for the description

of

the morphological

categories), apparently without raising theoretical claims.

2

This is mis

leading, because Lockwood's informal introduction prepares the

groundwork for his own realizational theory.

Unfortunately Lockwood does not relate his realizational ap

proach to any other competing linguistic theories; in particular there

are no references to realizational morphology as it is conceived in the

works

of

Stampe (1992) and Erjavec (no date). Lockwood's realiza

tional approach to morphology can be contrasted to the generative

approach. In the generative approach morphology was considered in the

broad framework

of

a language understanding system. Such a system

accesses full (complete) words, carrying a number

of

markers taken

over from the dictionary:

[Bri.ider; N,

Gender: 1, Number: 2,

(Chomsky 1965: 171). For the generative approach the markers are pro

vided; the task of the model

is to take care of the proper usage of the

word forms. In the informal style of the introduction (chapters 1-4),

Lockwood presents his realizational approach to morphology, which

addresses itself to the problem

of

how word forms arise.

3

He explains

p. 134): It is not a process

of

change or mutation replacing one struc

ture with another. Rather, it is a constructive process which builds an

additional representation

of

the words involved . Words

as

they occur

in

actual texts are not given in advance in the lexicon: they are construct

ed (realized) out of stems and combinatory lexical rules. The realiza

tional model of morphology constructs the word forms, which can be

manipulated in a subsequent syntactic model.

Lockwood's realizational model operates with four types

of rule

( formulas ):

1. Construction formulas, which are comparable to ordinary phrase

structure rules without recursion,

2. Class-membership formulas, which correspond to disjunctive

lexical substitution rules,

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REVIEWS

71

3.

Morphemic realization formulas, which are filtering rules on the

level of morphemes, and

4.

Morphophonemic realization formulas, which are filtering rules

on the phonemic level p. 189).

The realization formulas (both morphemic and morphophonemic) are

ordered. They rely on the

elsewhere condition

o Paul Kiparsky, and

allow a compact notation. A good, comprehensive listing o the realiza-

tional variants is presented on p. 137. However, Lockwood fails to cor-

relate his formulas to other formally described systems. He merely

explains the use o his formulas and illustrates their applications: The

descriptive power o the rules, their restrictions and other formal prop-

erties are not discussed further.

As

already mentioned, Lockwood illustrates his realizational mor-

phology abundantly by an impressive number o languages with rich

inflection. However, the descriptive power of his realizational system is

limited and does not offer an adequate description for a number of

important morphological configurations (which present no problem to

common phrase structure grammars for morphotactics; cf. Spencer

1991, also listed by Lockwood in his bibliography, p. 328):

1.

Lockwood s construction formulas do not allow recursion. With-

out such a device the internal structure o the words cannot be

treated adequately: How can we describe suffix layers or interme-

diate stems, which occur typically e.g. in participial forms (even

in English), like

surprisingly annoyingly

which require a stratal

structuring as in Figure 1, not Figure 2. These types o construc-

tion are very common e.g. in Uralic languages.

dv

' '7. 1 sr,,

su lris-

Jg

y

Figure 1

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72 WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER

I

(APRIL, 1997)

Adv

Sfx1 Sfx2

I

I

surpris- mg

ly

Figure 2

2 How can the system state the restriction that in the case

o

dis

continuous morphemes, like

Gr

le-lu-ka-men le-lu-ka-te the

proper affixes (the first and the third: reduplication and perfect)

belong together? Or how is it to be dealt with that in modem Ger

man, the participial suffix

-tl-en

must be selected with the prefix

ge- e.g. in: ge-lem-t vor-ge-schalag-en, hin-iiber-ge-rett-e-t-e?

3 Morphophonemic realization should cover all sorts o changes

which accompany affixation (suffixation) both in the stems as

well

as

in the affixes. The changes invariably concern adjacent

segments (units). The formulaic description does not contain this

restriction, e.g. how to paraphrase gradation for Finnish: ka-t-u

street Nom Sg , ka-d-un street Gen Sg , lu-k-ee he reads , lu

et you read , in which the closing of the syllable by a suffix

affects the initial consonant

o

the preceding stem syllable?

But the main problem with Lockwood's realizational model is its

growing complexity. The descriptions in the closing chapters cannot be

treated in an ad hoc manner; they would require testing facilities (cf.

Sproat 1992) and they need a theoretical foundation, which Lockwood's

book lacks. He does not make reference to generally known descriptive

models belonging to mainstream linguistics, like Gazdar's GPSG,

Koskenniemi's Two-level Morphology, or to Pullum and Sag's HPSG,

which deal with morphology in a theoretically substantiated framework.

Nevertheless the didactic chapters

o

the book may prove to be useful in

explaining and illustrating basic morphological notions to linguistics

students.

Institut fiir Computerlinguistik

Universitiit Koblenz-Landau

Rheinau

3 4

D-56075 Koblenz

Germany

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REVIEWS

73

ENDNOTES

1

Czech

is

spoken

in

the Czech Republic; Czechoslovakia does not exist any more,

as is

said

mistakenly on

p.

43.

2

Lockwood borrows uncritically from traditional linguistics. On

p.

71

for example

he

states:

Inflection involves a set o distinctions signaled by the morph forms o a language . Inflection

does not necessarily signal distinctions; inflection involves just

as

much well formedness.

3

The same opposition applies also to Stampe's Model.

REFERENCES

Chomsky, Noam. 1965.

Aspects of he theory ofsyntax.

Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Erjavec, Tomaz. No date. Formalising realizational morphology in typed feature structures.

Unpublished manuscript, Ljubljana, Slovenia: J6zef Stefan Institute.

Spencer, Andrew. 1991. Morphological theory. Oxford: Blackwell.

Sproat, Richard. 1992. Morphology nd computation. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

Stampe, Gregory

P.

1992. Position class and morphological theory. Yearbook of morphology

/992. Eds. G Booji and

J.

van Marie. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Pp. 129-80.

HELMA VAN DEN BERG, A grammar of Hunzib with exts and Lexicon).

L/NCOM Studies

in

Caucasian Linguistics 01.)

Miinchen, Newcastle: LIN

COM EUROPA, 1995. 366 pp.

Reviewed by

JoHN

D ENGTSON

The author is a Dutch scholar who wrote this book as a doctoral the

sis at Leiden University in January 1995, so this a book o great fresh

ness. The field work it is based on was just completed in 1993, on the

last o three periods beginning in 1990, mostly at Stal'skoe in lowland

Daghestan, Russia.

There are only about 2,000 Hunzib speakers, Sunni Muslims whose

homeland lies in the Caucasus highlands, tucked between Georgia on

the south and west, and other Daghestanian neighbors including the

Avars on the east and north. The Hunzib villages

aul,

Hunzib

aX

prop

er, N axada, Garbutli, and Gunzib, lie some 50 or 60 kilometers east o

the border o Chechnia (Chechnya), but in the mountains traveling dis

tances are

o course much longer. The Hunzib and other Tsezic peoples

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74

WORD,

VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)

share a sorrowful history o deportation and forced migration with the

Chechen and Ingush, some

o

which is told by van den Berg (pp. 10-13;

see also Nichols [ 1995]). It will remind North American readers o their

own woeful past (e.g., the Cherokee Trail o Tears). Fortunately, the

social conditions o the Hunzib and other Tsezic peoples are more sta

ble these days. Many now live in lowland cities like Stal'skoe, sur

rounded by Kumyk (Turkic) speakers, and only about 700 Hunzib

remain in the mountain villages (p. 8).

Hunzib (often Gunzib in Russian transcription) is not a written lan

guage: Russian and Avar (another Daghestanian language) function as

written languages in western Daghestan, and loan words from both

o

these languages (as well as others, e.g. Georgian, Turkish, Arabic)

abound in Hunzib. Hunzib speakers also understand Bezhta, the Tsezic

language closest to Hunzib (p.

9).

Hunzib is classified as a member o the Tsezic (=Dido) branch o

the Avar-Andi-Tsez = Avar-Andi-Dido) branch o the Northeast

Caucasian

=

Nakho-Daghestanian) language family (see Ruhlen

[1987:74], Schulze-Fiirhoff [1992:190-92] for various subgrouping

proposals). A (North) Caucasian family, uniting Northeast Caucasian

with Northwest Caucasian

=

Abkhazo-Adygan) is widely accepted

(Ruhlen 1987:73; 1994; Catford 1991; Bengtson 1994), but apparently

not by van den Berg (p. 3). (Henceforth, Caucasian will be used here

in the meaning North Caucasian, which I believe is genetically distinct

from Kartvelian.)

The Hunzib language itself does not deviate far from the Daghes

tanian norm. The consonantal system is fairly simple, as Caucasian lan

guages go. The only consonants outside o the core consonantal fea

tures found in all Caucasian [including Kartvelian] languages (Catford

1991: 241) are the laterals

X

X ,

A

the glottals

?

and

h

and the loan

phonemes

x

voiceless velar fricative),\' (voiced pharyngeal fricative),

and n(voiceless pharyngeal fricative). The latter three are apparently due

to Avar influence, but also assist in assimilating Arabic (Islamic) loan

words complete with pharyngeals, e.g. \ amal 'behavior' and nurmat

'respect'. However, n is commonly found in the rendition o laughter as

nenene (e.g., p. 196).

Vowels, on the other hand, are rather more plenteous in Hunzib

than in most Caucasian languages. The eight vowels i, i

u

e a , o a

a)

can all also occur with long or nasalized variants, though nasaliza

tion is apparently a recessive feature associated with older speakers (p.

21). Hunzib lacks the pharyngealized vowels heard in Tsez and

Khwarshi (Bokarev 1959).

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REVIEWS

75

The Hunzib noun morphology is quite intricate. As in 27 other Cau

casian languages (Catford 1991 :250), nouns are classified into classes

(genders), but here the system

of

five classes is even more complex than

that

of

its progenitor, Proto-Northeast Caucasian, which had only four

classes (Diakonoff and Starostin 1986:10; Schulze-Fiirhoff 1992).

Agreement with co-referant verbs and adjectives is marked by prefixes,

or for class 1 the absence of a prefix

0

. Thus gudo b-iq .1a-r the hen

grew up (class 4) but q a ra

r-iq .la-r

the child grew up (class 5,

p.

79). Other features

of

the Hunzib noun include

13

plural markers (pp.

17, 39-41), four syntactic cases and seven local cases (pp. 41-9).

A feature

of

the Hunzib personal pronoun system, shared with

some other Daghestanian languages, is that the second person singular

pronoun ( thou ) is suppletive, with a nominative/ergative form

ma

but

the stem

di-- di-

-

du-

in other cases (p. 60).

The Hunzib verb is also complex. The verb stem may be preceded

by a class prefix (as in the examples cited above) and/or followed by a

variety

of simple and complex suffixes denoting tense, aspect, or num

ber. There is ablaut in some verbs, but it denotes the class

of

the Sub

ject/Patient of the sentence rather than tense or aspect, e.g.:

iyu-l kid

gil

er

mother put the girl down (class 2) but iyu-l

q a

ra

gul-ur mother

put the child down (class 5, p. 80). (As also in some Indo-European lan

guages, child belongs to the inanimate or neuter class.)

Hunzib syntax is

of

the SOY AN type, like many (but not all)

Nakh-Daghestanian languages. This type also seems to be areal, found

also in nearby Kumyk and Azerbaijani (Turkic), Zan (Kartvelian), and

Armenian (Indo-European) (Ruhlen 1975). Also prevalent in the Cau

casus region is the ergative construction, e.g. in Hunzib: oi-di-1 kid

he he-r the boy hit the girl but

oie

ut -ur the boy slept (p. 122). In the

first sentence

oie

boy has the oblique marker -di- and the ergative

marker-/, while the patient

kid

girl is in the nominative case. In the

second sentence the verb is intransitive, and oie boy is in the unmarked

nominative case. Hunzib also has particles denoting certainty xa, with

uvular fricative) and probability za, p. 133).

Van den Berg provides much more than a grammar

of

Hunzib. The

introduction gives a brief geography and recent history of

the language

and people, with maps and statistical tables. The comprehensive gram

mar proper is followed by 25 texts, for each

of

which the author pro

vides a morphological analysis and a free translation. The Hunzib lexi

con

of

some 2,000 words includes all the words in the grammar and

texts, and also additional lexical material from the author s fieldwork.

Each word is glossed with morphological information, its meaning,

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WORD, VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)

characteristic endings, and foreign counterparts in the case

o

a loan

word, e.g.:

birindzi n5 'rice'; -yo; no PL; cf. Geo. brindzi,

Tu.

pirin


10/94

REVIEWS

77

LEONARD NEWEL, Batad lfugao dictionary: With ethnographic notes. (Spe

cial Monograph Issue, 33.) Manila: Linguistic Society

of

the Philippines, 1993.

xviii 744 pp.

Reviewed by

RuTH

M BREND

This is indeed a remarkable dictionary. Its subheading is much too

modest-much

more than ethnographical notes are included. In fact,

one might well ask what else there

is

to know about lfugao language and

culture that is not included here. It

is

designed for an English speaker

seeking to know more about Batad Ifugao.

The Batad Ifugao Dictionary (hereafter BID) begins with a gram

matical sketch

of

over 90 pages. Far from being a mere

sketch

it pre

sents a brief phonological account, a section on symbolization and

orthography, morphophonemics, word classes, roles

of

clause and sen

tence constituents, phrases, affixes, and various types

of

sentences. A

most useful index to the

sketch is

included and that, together with the

Table

of

Contents, should allow a reader to find the information sought.

Following the dictionary entries there are 35 Appendices which are

primarily lists

of

lexical items grouped by activities or lexical

fields

e.g., Appendix

3:

Parts of a traditional house and yard; Appendix

5:

Cal

endar

of

rice agriculture; Appendix

3

Kinds

of

chicken; Appendix

22:

Pond-field payments. (The latter presents a good deal

of

information

concerning such payments.) Other intriguing appendices cover Fines,

Omens, Calls and cries

of

animals and birds, and Wash verbs.

The BID entries themselves usually contain

much

more informa

tion than one finds in a dictionary (all descriptions are in English). For

example the first entry

is

which signals that a substantitive has an

undergoer relationship . Besides an example

of

how it combines with

another prefix and with a suffix, references to three sections of the gram

mar are given. The entry for

higib a

small housing cluster' gives a large

amount

of

information as to how housing clusters function in the

Batasociety, and includes a list

of

hamlet and subdivisions of the central

hamlet

of

Batad. The entry for

taboh a

lead percussion instrument'

besides a variety

of

senses, gives a chart

of

the synchronized rhythm

of

percussion instruments for one measure

of

music (to me, much like a

description

of

the beats played by different instruments in a Javanese

Gamalan).

Roots containing prefixes are included as

separate entries, with

only instructions to see the corresponding root. For example, for

pama-

hangel

the reader

is

instructed to see

bahangel

and under that entry one

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78

WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 (APRIL, 1997)

will find listed an explanation of the prefixed form also. (In addition,

separately, there is a very long entry for the prefix paN-, which also con

tains cross references to two sections of the grammar.)

The BID concludes with an English-Ifugao Index. Generally the

entries contain only an English word or phrase followed by one or more

Batad Ifugao words. A beginning note states that the intended use of this

section of BID is "to aid the user to find Ifugao words" in the main part

of the dictionary.

In short, this is a monumental work obviously the work of a life

time by one who is intimately acquainted with the Batad Ifugao lan

guage and culture. Anyone involved in the preparation of a dictionary

for whatever use would be well advised to note the BID's innovative

presentation and the useful information which is included. I found the

explanations to be especially clear and helpful, and I am envious

of

per

sons seeking to learn Batad Ifugao.

I would think that a similar dictionary for English, designed to be

consulted by those trying to learn English (at various stages) would be

invaluable. Obviously one of the first decisions for a prospective com

piler would be which culture and dialect to

describe American?

British? both? or other(s)? All foreign language learners would benefit

greatly by having such a dictionary available if only one had been

when I was struggling with a variety of languages But, to my knowl

edge, none of those currently available come even close. Younger schol

ars please take note

[No address is given in the volume for the publisher, but I have

learned that it is available (at a cost of U.S. $42.95) from the Summer

Institute of Linguistics Bookstore, 7500 W Camp Widom Road, Dallas,

TX 75236-5626, U.S.A.; fax 972-709-2433; e.mail:academic.books

@sil.org]

3363 Burbank

Dr

Ann Arbor

M 48105

OMAR KA,

Wolofphonology and morphology

Lanham, MD: University Press

of

America, 1994. 160 pp.

Reviewed by

MIKE

CAHILL

Wolof belongs to the West Atlantic branch of Niger-Congo, and is

one of the relatively few sub-Saharan languages which is not tonal. In

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REVIEWS

79

spite

of

the title, Ka does not pretend to give a complete picture

of

either

Wolof phonology or morphology. Within the chosen topics, however, it

is a good reference for Wolof. In this work, Ka includes chapters on

Vowel Harmony, Complex Segments and the Syllable, Syllable-Sensi

tive Rules, and Reduplication Processes.

The Introduction includes a review

of

previous literature on Wolof,

which is fairly extensive compared with many other West African lan

guages. Ka then describes his theoretical framework, which is basic

autosegmental phonology, utilizing syllabic, CV and melodic (featural)

tier levels. Particularly crucial to Ka is the notion

of

syllable

as

a distinct

unit.

Though this work was published in 1994, there appears to be no ref

erence to theoretical advances after Ka s 1988 dissertation; the theoret

ical viewpoint is of the middle to late 1980 s. For example, he accepts

all three

of

Goldsmith s (1976) well-formedness conditions and con

vention associations. Also, though one would expect a reference to to

1986 in a work stressing syllables, it is not mentioned; neither is

Clements 1985 with reference to feature geometry.

Chapter One (pp. 7-62 deals with vowel harmony in Wolof. Ka

motivates an eight-vowel system, with ATR (advanced tongue root)

contrast. The high vowels have no [-ATR] counterparts, the mid vowels

do, and the low vowel /a/ has a schwa as its [+ATR] counterpart. Length

is contrastive, except there is no long schwa in native words. Vowels in

a root, generally speaking, agree in [ATR] value. Suffixes are

of two

types, those whoseATR values agree with the root and those whose ATR

value never varies. (Present-day Wolof has no productive prefixes.)

When an additional suffix follows a non-alternating suffix, the second

suffix agrees in ATR with that suffix. [ATR] is thus specified once for

each root and spread to all vowels, including the alternating suffixes,

which have no independent

ATR

value. Non-alternating suffixes have

their own values of

ATR.

However, the behavior of the high vowels [i, u] adds interest to this

otherwise well-behaved pattern. Word-initially, [i,

u]

act as any other

[+ATR] vowel and agree in ATR with the other vowels in the word.

However, word-medially, they are transparent and can occur in an oth

erwise [ ATR] word, e.g. [ktlifa] leader . Ka treats these with two dif

ferent mechanisms. Initial high vowels are lexically specified with

[+ATR], which then spreads by a harmony rule. Non-initial high vow

els are assigned a default [+ATR], crucially ordered after the harmony

rule, and then other vowels get [ ATR] by default.

The long vowel /aa/ is non-alternating, as is the suffix /-kat/, and

both are considered to have a lexical value

of

[-ATR].

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8

WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 (APRIL, 1997)

Ka describes nominal and verbal morphology in terms o X-bar

theory, and shows that there is a mismatch between prosodic phrasing

and syntactic structure, illustrated by the span o vowel harmony.

Especially in this chapter, the reader must mentally adjust to the

fact that Ka gives data in the Wolof orthography rather than standard

IPA symbols. Thus, orthographic

b

is phonetic [e], is [e], is

[o], etc.; the orthographic accent marks have nothing to do with either

accent or tone.

In Chapter Two (pp. 63-86), Ka examines complex consonants and

their relationship to the syllable. Wolof complex consonants consist o

geminates and pre-nasalized obstruents. Word-initially, only simple

consonants and voiced pre-nasalized consonants occur. Ka lists a pre

nasalized and a geminate uvular stop, but not a simple one, though the

simple one does occur in some data.

Geminate consonants alternate morphologically with simple ones,

but the alternations are not always the expected ones. For example,

[b]

- [bb] in [ub ], [ubbi] to close, to open , but continuants alternate with

geminate stops as in [f] - [pp] in [sof], [soppi] to join, to disjoin and

[ ] [kk] in [dee], [dekki] to die, to resuscitate . Ka analyzes the lat

ter as having underlying stops which spirantize when not geminate

(except for [k], which deletes).

Ka then gives examples o syllable types in Wolof. There are no

vowel or consonant sequences except geminate consonants, and vowels

and prenasalized consonants. Prenasalized consonants are represented

as two melodies linked to one C-unit on the CV tier; geminates are one

melody linked to two C or V units.

Chapter Three (pp. 87-118) delves into syllable-sensitive rules o

Wolof, including gemination and degemination, vowel coalescence,

vowel and glide insertion, and prenasalization.

Ka assumes (but does not demonstrate) that medial geminates as in

[teggi] to remove are split between two syllables. He considers but

rejects the idea of a floating C being responsible for gemination, saying

instead that there is a morphologically-restricted gemination rule which

must precede a second round

o

syllabification. Similarly, there is a mor

phologically-restricted degemination rule. A glide [w] or [y] is inserted

between vowels o separate morphemes to preserve syllable structure,

except that when there is a polysyllabic, V-final stem and a short V-ini

tial suffix, there is vowel coalescence.

Two types

o

vowel epenthesis occur. When a stem ends in a gem

inate consonant and a suffix begins with a consonant, schwa is inserted.

When a stem ends in a cluster o non-identical consonants (not allowed

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8

on the surface), a copy o the preceding stem vowel is inserted, analyzed

as

spreading the relevant vowel features.

Prenasalized consonants can be either underlying or derived.

Derived ones come from prefixation o a nasal segment to a verbal stem

to nominalize ([baax] 'to be good', [mbaax] 'goodness') or to a nomi

nal stem to make into a diminutive or general ([doom] 'child', [ndoom]

'small child'). The interesting cases come when the derived words begin

with a stop ([fo] 'to play', [po] 'play', [addu] 'to speak', [kaddu]

'speech'). There is the same alternation o fricatives and stops found in

gemination. Ka, after again considering whether prenasalized conso

nants should be represented with NC or C on the CV tier, concludes,

somewhat reluctantly, that it is simpler for them to be a single C slot.

Chapter Four, the final one (pp. 119-38), analyzes Wolof redupli

cation. Reduplication in Wolof serves various derivational functions. In

each case, the reduplicant and stem are identical, and from the data

given, there is no way to tell which o the two is original stem and which

is the reduplicant. Suffixes occur on some forms, e.g. [bey-bey-aat] 'to

cultivate repeatedly'. The reduplicated forms are usually identical with

the input stems, with two exceptions. The initial consonant may alter

nate, in the pattern with stops and fricatives that is becoming familiar:

[fas] 'to fasten', [pas-pas] 'node'. Also, the final consonant may degem

inate: [degg] 'to hear, understand', [deg-deg] 'news, understanding'.

Ideophones are always reduplicated forms.

Ka postulates a morphemic tier in which syllables are subsumed

under morphemes - In reduplication, the entire morpheme - (and its

constituent syllables, CV units, and melodic units) is copied as a word

formation process. He symbolizes the reduplicant as being prefixed, but

as noted, this is an arbitrary choice. Ka takes a standard Lexical Phonol

ogy approach. Since the reduplicant and stem are identical, there are

some phonological rules that precede the morphological reduplication

process. Since some reduplicated forms have suffixes which show alter

nations, some phonological processes could also occur after reduplica

tion. He uses up to five cycles to derive actual words from an underly

ing stem.

A Bibliography and Subject Index are also included.

One minor irritation is that in each chapter, some sets o data are

left unnumbered.

As mentioned, the theoretical stance

o

this work is several years

behind its publication date. Many o the rules mix SPE-like formalisms

with autosegmental ones, as in the vowel epenthesis rule, which com

bines a word-boundary symbol#, deletion

o

an association line to a syl-

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82 WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 (APRIL, 1997)

lable, insertion of a V into a space

_

and spreading of aF of a vowel

to the inserted V place A more thorough feature geometric approach

would help on consistency of representation and rules. The main

strength of the book lies elsewhere, in the data itself and in the patterns

elucidated.

Some current phonological writings are woefully short on actual

data, forcing the reader either to take the writer's assertions on faith, or

go

back to other sources. In contrast, the abundant data in this work

make it an easy task to check Ka's assertions and if desired, to formu

late alternative theoretical explanations.

The Ohio State University

Linguistics Dept.

220 Oxley Hall

1712 Neil Ave.

Columbus

Ohio 43210

REFERENCES

Clements, G.N. 1985. "The geometry

of

phonological features". Phonology 2:223-50.

Goldsmith, John. 1976. "Autosegmenta1 Phonology." Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

Ito, Junko. 1986. "Syllable Theory in Prosodic Phonology." Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.

MARfA ANGELES ALVAREZ MARTINEZ, a

Gramatica Espanola en

America. Tenerife, Spain: Universidad de la Laguna, 1994. 53 pp.

Reviewed

by

EDU RDO D. F INGOLD

This book is a short but informative and erudite annotated bibliog

raphy of recent books and articles dealing with Latin American Spanish

morphology and syntax. The book covers some

250 descriptive as well

as

theoretical papers and books which the author consulted in person at

the Harvard University library (see, especially, Hernandez Alonso

1992); it includes also conference papers (e.g. ALFAL, Asociaci6n

Chilena de Profesores de Lengua y Literatura, international linguistics

conferences

in

Puerto Rico, etc.) and works produced at language

research centers in Latin America and the US (e.g. Instituto de Filologfa

y Letras Hispanicas

Dr

Amado Alonso in Buenos Aires, Instituto de

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8

Filologia de la Universidad de Chile, Instituto Caro y Cuervo in Bogota,

Instituto de Filologia Andres Bello in Caracas, Centro de Lingtiistica

Hispanica in Mexico, The University

o

Southern California in Los

Angeles).

The bibliography covers a wide range o grammatical phenomena

such

as

verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, personal pro

nouns, and coordinate as well as subordinate clauses. The author notes

most rightly that a modern linguistic approach to the study of Latin

American Spanish calls for the construction o a systematic i.e. non

compartmentalized) grammar

o

the latter, along the lines shown in sys

tematic studies of Spanish phonology Canfield 1981, Resnick 1975).

According to Alvarez Martinez, the book

is

intended as a step in that

direction.

Alvarez Martinez draws on earlier attempts to provide a systemat

ic account of Latin American Spanish morphology and syntax Montes

Giraldo 1987, Moreno de Alba 1988); she provides a comprehensive list

of grammatiCal phenomena which according to this author are worthy

to have a place in a systematic grammar

o

Latin American Spanish,

including: i)

voseo

and other related pronominal and verb forms e.g.

cantds, cantdis, cantai, tu tenes, vos tienes, usted tienes,

etc.), ii) idio

syncratic pronominal syntax e.g.

a yo, para yo)

and pronominal neu

tralization e.g.

uno-una, le-les),

iii) variation in the use

o

gender e.g.

ellla calor, el/la azucar, etc.), iv) idiosyncratic uses

o

number e.g.

papas-papaes-papases, un cafe, tres cafe,

etc.), v) diminutives, com

paratives, and superlatives, vi) noun derivation with a variety

o

affix

es, metaphor, and other word-coining means, vii) idiosyncratic uses

o

the imperfect e.g.

Queria rogarle unfavorcito),

future, impersonal con

structions e.g

hubo/hubieronfiestas, se vende n) naranjas),

and verb

periphrasis, viii) prepositional constructions, including

queismo

and

dequeismo,

idiosyncratic usage

o

prepositions e.g.

caer en a) cama,

con base en a),

etc.), and ix) subordinate and coordinate clauses, word

order, and topicalization e.g. Quiere es vino).

This short book should be

o

great interest to all students and schol

ars o Spanish, since it provides a most valuable key for future research

in Latin American Spanish morphology and syntax; it is also, no doubt,

a small but firm step toward the construction

o

a systematic grammar

of Latin American Spanish.

Department o Languages

The University

o

Tulsa

Tulsa, Oklahoma 74104-3189

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84 WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 (APRIL, 997)

REFERENCES

Canfield, D. Lincoln. 1981.

Spanish pronunciation

n

the Americas.

Chicago: University of Chica

go Press.

Hernandez Alonso, C., ed. 1992.

Historia

y

Presente del Espafiol de America.

Junta de Castilla y

Le6n:Pabecal.

Montes Giraldo, J. J. 1987.

Dialectol6gia General e Hispanoamericana.

Bogota: lnstituto Caro y

Cuervo.

Moreno de Alba, J. G. 1988.

El Espafiol en America.

Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Econ6mica.

Resnick, M. C. 1975.

Phonological variants and dialect identification in Latin American Spanish.

The Hague: Mouton.

RAJEND MESTHRIE,

English in language shift. The history structure

nd

sociolinguistics ofSouth African Indian English. Cambridge: Cambridge

Uni-

versity

Press 1992. xix 252 pp.

Reviewed by

EDUARDO

D.

FAINGOLD

This book studies the emergence

of

South African Indian English

(SAlE) among indentured workers brought in the 1850s to the planta

tions of the Natal area and their descendants in South Africa. SAlE is a

new variety of English spoken by some three-quarters of a million peo

ple-a "language shift English" similar to the Englishes of other eth

nic (e.g. Amerindian, Hispanic, etc. English in the U.S.; Irish, Scottish,

Welsh, etc. English in Great Britain) and immigrant communities (e.g.

Yiddish English in New York; Pakistani English in Great Britain) in the

anglophone countries. But as the author of the book argues convincing

ly

SAlE is not your garden-variety of immigrant or ethnic language.

This language can profitably be studied with the tools employed in pid

gin and creole studies, since it evolved from several substrate languages

in contact with English in a multilingual situation in which English was

not the majority language. In this interesting and well researched book

the author explores both the sociohistorical and linguistic results

of

language shift in an immigrant situation, as well as parallels between

first and second language acquisition, pidginization, and creolization,

including universals of second language acquisition and transfer from

substrate languages. The book discusses also parallels between SAlE

and other varieties of Indian English (e.g., "Butler English"), other

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REVIEWS

85

dialects

of

South African English, and English worldwide. The focus is

on syntactic development (the relative clause and word order) but it also

discusses some non-syntactic variation among different social classes in

the South African Indian community.

The book contains seven chapters, followed by three appendices,

notes, sources and references, and a subject index, as follows:

Chapter

1

Historical background: the shaping

of

a new English

(Pp. 1-33) presents the focus (i.e. it reveals the means by which SAlE

became established in the Indian community) and the main aim of the

study (i.e. it examines diachronic patterns

of

variation and processes of

language acquisition), defines SAlE

as

a variety

of

New English (see

above), and sketches linguistic and sociohistorical patterns of develop

ment in the Indian community in South Africa from the time

of

immi

gration and indenture in the 1850s until the post-indenture period in this

century.

Chapter

2

Variation in SAlE: a first glimpse (Pp. 34-70) presents

the methodology of data collection (i.e. a sample of 150 speakers of

SAlE from various parts

of

Natal interviewed with state-of-the-art so

ciolinguistic techniques) and defines SAlE

as

a polylectal complex (i.e.

in terms

of

a range of overlapping varieties or

lects-basilect

mesolect,

and

acrolect-such

as those found in creoles).

Chapter 3, Syntactic variation: the relative clause (Pp. 71-100)

and Chapter 4, Word-order principles (Pp. 101-127) examine so

ciolinguistic patterns and theoretical principles of syntactic variation in

detail, while Chapter 5, Non-syntactic variation (Pp. 128-151) offers

a short phonetic, morphological, and lexical description

of

SAlE as well

as

a brief comparison between SAlE and other varieties of English in

South Africa and elsewhere.

Chapter

6

Perspectives from second-language acquisition (Pp.

152-182)

is

concerned with syntactic (and some morphological) trans

fer from ancestral languages as well

as

with second language universals

(e.g. copula deletion, the use

of

on y and too

as

focus markers, relative

clauses, and the use of articles before adjectives), Chomsky's Universal

Grammar (UG) (e.g. negation, pro-drop, word order), and general

strategies of production in second language acquisition (e.g. economy

of production and reduction of ambiguity). Most interestingly, the

author concludes that the substrate is not very influential in the emer

gence

of

SAlE, but its syntactic development shows a strong parallel to

universals

of

first and second language acquisition. He shows also that

second language acquisition in a language shift setting cannot profitably

be studied with the tools employed by UG, since [I]n SAlE (and the

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86


New Englishes generally) the parameters do not stay set [my empha

sis] (p. 174). In contrast, general principles of second language acqui

sition such as economy of production (e.g. regularization, selective pro

duction

of

redundant markers) and reduction

of

ambiguity (e.g.

transparency, maximising salience) are quite useful for explaining

developmental patterns in New Englishes.

Chapter 7, Perspectives from pidgin and creole studies (Pp.

183-221) shows convincingly that there exist strong parallels between

the development

of SAlE and that of creole languages. For example,

SAlE's basilect has a strong resemblance to creoloid systems in South

Africa (e.g. Afrikaans) and elsewhere (e.g. Singapore English, Reunion

French); similarly, the developmental processes attested in SAlE's

polylectal complex are parallel to decreolization processes found in

other post-creole settings.

Appendices A B and C give, respectively, a comparison between

the SAlE sample in this book and census data for Natal Indians (con

sidering such variables as education, ancestral language, age, rural

urban domicile, and gender), the types of relative clauses used by speak

ers (standard, non-standard, and zero relative clauses), and rank orders

for the use of relative clauses, topics, and morphology in the pre

basilect, the basilect, the mesolect, and the acrolect.

This book is written in a scholarly but lively style. The typescript

was produced with the high degree of editorial care usually found in

such major publishers as Cambridge University Press: I have found only

one typo on p. 32.

This book is

of

great relevance to the study

of

language develop

ment in a wide sense (language acquisition, language death, pidginiza

tion, creolization, koineization, etc.), and it makes a substantial contri

bution to our understanding

of

sociohistorical, psycholinguistic, and

linguistic processes of language shift involved in the emergence of new

languages and dialects, as well as the loss

of

ancestral languages, in

South Africa, in other parts of the English-speaking world, and in nat

ural settings in general.

t

can be recommended also to linguists inter

ested in such varied fields as quantitative variation of the Labovian kind

and Chomsky's generative linguistics,

as

well as second language stud

ies, since in this book all these areas are approached in a non-partisan

and mostly jargon-free

fashion one

which is sadly lacking in much

of

linguistics nowadays. Also, this book is

of

relevance to educators in

South Africa and elsewhere, since SAlE is clearly not bad English,

but a social dialect of South African English in its own right. Educators

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REVIEWS

87

in the U.S. and Britain cannot fail

to

see the parallel with the use

o

Black English in the schools there.

Dept. o Languages

The University o Tulsa

Tulsa, Oklahorrw 74104-3189

KANG-HO LIE,

Verbale Aspektualitiit im Koreanischen und m Deutschen.

Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1991. 244 pp.

Reviewed by

GR ZI CRocco

G LE S

Lie s book is an illustration o the category o aspect in Korean and

German, particularly focussed on some verbal periphrases (e.g. Ger

zum Ausdruck kommen to express oneself , zum Vorschein kommen to

come to light , zum Vorschein bringen to bring to light ). Such

periphrases are characterized by verbs Funktionsverben

or

verba

adiecta)

which in other contexts show full verb behaviour and whose

semantic value is typically related to the notion o movement and spa

tial collocation (e.g. Germ. kommen to come , bringen to bring sein

to be ;

Kor ota

to come ,

kata

to go ,

issta

to be ). The theoretical

framework o Lie s study is given by Eugenio Coseriu s structural-func

tional linguistics, with special regard to Coseriu s treatment o the

Romance verbal system (Coseriu 1976). Despite the strong dependence

on the analysis put forward by the Romanian scholar, Lie s work is not

devoid

o

any novelty and is interesting

as

well. In

my

opinion the book

is remarkable for three main reasons. First, it offers a description of the

Korean tense-aspect system, which differs from the very few previous

attempts. Second, in dealing with the problem o aspectual verbal

periphrases, it points out striking analogies between two typologically

different languages. Third, its approach is not merely contrastive, but

rather functional and onomasiological; the two languages, German and

Korean, are analyzed independently, although from a unitary semantic

oriented perspective.

As far

as the objections are concerned, one cannot help but noting

that in Lie s discussion o the topic some major viewpoints in the liter-

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WORD


ature are neglected. The author does not take sufficiently into account

the general debate on tense and aspect. There is very little mention of

Comrie (1976, 1985) and Dahl (1985) and, on the whole, the references

cited do not include many important contributions from recent years.

The author s arguments are supported by a limited range

o

works that

essentially represent only one angle

o

the research. Furthermore, the

theme o verbal periphrases and the auxiliaries which are involved in

them has recently been dealt with by the theory

o

grammaticalization.

This theory has drawn particular attention to the categories

o

tense and

aspect, their mutual relations, their expression by means o auxiliaries

and verbal periphrases with quasi-auxiliaries. On the contrary, Lie

examines the question of aspectual periphrases in German and Korean

without revealing knowledge of an important and vital part of linguistic

research. t seems rather evident that the author s purpose is simply to

employ the armamentarium of Coseriu s functional semantics to

explore a linguistic domain that is partially still to be investigated (par

ticularly Korean). In this sense his analysis

is

restrictively oriented and

lacks the contribution

o

a number

o

diverse perspectives.

Lie claims that the goal

o

his study

is

to present two different real

izations (i.e. belonging to two different languages) of the grammatical

category

o

aspect. The following statement is typical

o

Lie s struc

turalist-semantic approach: whenever there

is

a systematic correlation

between semantic values and individual forms, we can consequently

recognize a semantic phenomenon

o

a given language and assign to

that language proper grammatical categories. In other words, grammat

ical categories are expressed by morphemes and morphemes represent

grammatical categories. According to Coseriu s definition, Lie regards

a periphrasis as a concrete, compositional linguistic sign that has a sin

gle, unitary meaning, e.g. a compositional signifiant corresponding to a

simple

signifie.

The meaning

o

the periphrasis is certainly related to the

meaning

o

its parts, but it is not merely the sum

o

them. In particular,

a verbal periphrasis is one that altogether functions as a verb. Unlike the

single verb though, it is divisible into a lexical and a grammatical

domain. For instance, in the German periphrasis

in Anrechnung kom-

men

to be reckoned , the grammatical part is represented by the verb

kommen

whereas the lexical

is

expressed by the noun

Anrechnung.

The

verb constitutes the non-lexical component

o

the verbal periphrasis, but

it

assigns the categorical status

o

verb to the whole periphrasis. One

could observe that the kind o verbal periphrases addressed by Lie dif

fer radically from those he calls grammatical periphrases (e.g

r ist

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REVIEWS

9

gekommen

'he has come', er

hat gegeben

'he has given'). He seeks to

define the difference on semantic grounds. However, he fails to recog

nize the categorial status of the verb. In cases such as

er ist gekommen

'he has come' the verb

sein

'to be' behaves as an auxiliary, that is to say

an item typically denoting distinctions of tense, aspect and/or modality.

Auxiliaries are neither clearly lexical nor clearly grammatical units, but

they also occur as main verbs (e.g. er

ist ein Lehrer

'he is a teacher').

They may not be the semantic main predicate

of

the clause and do not

have a meaning of their own, but rather they are synsemantic or syncat

egorematic to the lexeme to which they apply, i.e. the main verb. These

are, among others, some

of

the properties showed by auxiliaries. On the

contrary, in cases such as

in Anrechnung kommen

'to be reckoned' or

n

Bearbeitung sein

'to be in processing' the verbs

kommen

and

sein

are

not auxiliaries because they occur as main verbs. Thus, despite the use

of

the term verbal periphrasis by the author for both

instances er ist

gekommen

and

in Bearbeitung

sein the function of the verb

sein

'to

be'

is

quite different; in the first case

sein

behaves like an auxiliary, in

the second case it is rather a main verb. Lie focusses on the German

verbs

kommen

'to come,'

bringen

'to bring,'

sein

'to be,' and

haben

'to

have' arguing that these verbs are instrumentally used in the verbal

periphrases, whereas in other contexts they appear

as

full lexemes. I

agree with the author about the fact that the above mentioned verbs

reveal a peculiar semantics when combined in periphrases such as those

he interprets as aspectual verbal periphrases, but I would not call them

nichtlexematische Hilfsverben

non-lexical auxiliaries , because they

do not show the properties

of

the auxiliaries.

In conclusion, the study is rich in implications and is very impor

tant

as

a comparative research on the interrelations of tense and aspect,

on the one hand, and the aspectual verbal periphrases of two different

linguistic systems, on the other hand.

Dipartimento di Linguistica

Universitii degli Studi di Pavia

Corso strada Nuova 65

1-27100 Pavia

Italy

REFERENCES

Comrie, B. 1976.

Aspect.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Comrie B. 1985.

Tense.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Coseriu,

E.

1976.

Das romanische Verba/system. Til

bingen: Gunter

Narr.

Dahl,

b.

1985.

Tense

nd

aspect systems.

Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

HANS-JOSEF NIEDEREHE,

Bibliografia cronol6gica de la lingiiistica, la

gramatica y la lexicografia del espafiol desde los comienzos hasta el afio 1600

BJCRES). Studies in the History

of

the Language Sciences, 76.

Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1995. 457 pp.

Reviewed by RAY HARRIS NORTHALL

Scholars of the history of linguistics in Spain have undoubtedly

received, with the publication of this volume, a fundamental contribu

tion to their field. Niederehe brings together in this bibliography almost

one thousand entries covering printed books and manuscripts known to

have been produced before the year 1600 concerning Spanish linguis

tics in the broadest sense, including, for example, grammars for speak

ers of other languages, works containing glosses on pronunciation, and

lexicographical volumes. The only criterion for inclusion in the bibli

ography,

N

points out in his introduction, is the presence of the Span

ish language, either

as

the object of study, or

as

the language of descrip

tion.

Each of the entries in the bibliography is made up of several parts,

all consistently and clearly distinguished in such a way as to enable the

reader to consult an entry rapidly and with ease. The first field gives the

date

of

the edition and the author,

if

known. This

is

followed by the sec

ond field, in which

N

reproduces all of the information on the title page,

including, as well as text, any other information such as signs, printers

marks, portraits, and so on, given in angled brackets. The transcription

procedures followed in the reproduction

of the title page are discussed

briefly

in

the introduction. The next field contains the place of publica

tion (or where the copy was produced, in the case of manuscripts), and

the name of the printer.

All this information on the edition itself is expanded by another

three fields: comment, library, and bibliography, respectively. The com

ment field contains a variety of types of information considered relevant

by the compiler: number of pages or folios, signature marks, descrip

tions quoted from other bibliographical sources, and so forth. Known

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25/94

92

WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 (APRlL, 1997)

graphical errors, a feat

of

some considerable merit in a publication such

as this. In all, it is a valuable and finely produced contribution to a field

which, outside

of

N.'s own dedication, has only recently begun to

receive the attention

of

specialists.

Department o Spanish and Portuguese

University

o

Wisconsin-Madison

Madison WI 53706

WILLIAM A. FOLEY, ed.

The role

o

theory

n

language description.

Berlin:

Mouton de Gruyter, 1993.

viii

467 pp

Reviewed by

MASATAKA ISHIKAWA

The present volume grew out

of

a conference with the same title

as

that of the book, which was organized by the editor and held in Ocho

Rios, Jamaica, in November 1987. The volume consists of 5 papers

preceded by an Introduction by the editor, and followed by a Language

Index and a Subject Index. According to the editor, the conference dealt

with the following four distinct, yet interconnecting , issues; (i) the

gap between linguists and anthropologists with respect to their theoret

ical and descriptive concerns; (ii) the nature of the linguists' object of

study ; (iii) how to reconcile formal approaches with pragmatic

approaches focusing on language-based social interactions; (iv) the lin

guistic data base (pp.

1-2 .

Broadly speaking, the contributions can be

divided into two groups; the structural-formalist approach and the non

autonomous functionalist approach. The former attempts to account for

linguistic phenomena in terms of a grammatical (coding) system. The

latter tries to describe them within an inference-based framework (based

on both grammatical and discourse factors). Within the latter, there are

two subgroups, one which considers pragmatics as a principal ingredi

ent of language (description) and the other which emphasizes the inte

gration

of

formal and functional approaches. Given the space allowed

for the present review, I will comment on individual papers mostly in

regard to the general theme

of

the book, namely the (relation between)

theory and representation/description in linguistic studies.

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93

Mark

C.

Baker ( Noun incorporation and the nature

o

linguistic

representation , pp. 13-44) deals with the question

o

whether the

(native speaker's) linguistic representation is abstract or concrete. Based

on the analysis o Noun Incorporation phenomena in native languages

o

the Americas, B argues that important cross-linguistic generaliza

tions about these polysynthetic languages and the typologically differ

ent languages

o

Europe can be captured only

i

one assumes that a

speaker's knowledge of language is represented at the relevant level of

abstraction, at which the geometrical relations o arguments are similar

in both types

o

languages. Joan Bresnan ( Interaction between gram

mar and discourse in Chichewa (Bantu) , pp. 45-60), like Baker,

is

con

cerned with capturing general properties o human language. In her

framework (LPG), because of the independence

o

lexical structures,

configurational structures, and functional structures in the grammar, dif

ferent (grammatical) functions are not necessarily represented by dif

ferent configurational representations (unlike Baker's GB approach). B

concludes that only by combining formal and functional analyses one

can capture [d]eeper insight into the nature of language

p.

58).

Dealing with the Burmese verb phrase structure in its semiotic and

semantic aspects,

A L

Becker ( The elusive figures

o

Burmese gram

mar: An essay , pp. 61-85) concerns himself with the issue oflocal (vs.

universal) explanations in language description. His view is that the

importance o linguistic theory in language descriptions is to highlight

dissimilarities between languages, which may lead one to a relativis

tic, non-universalist attitude toward languages (p. 81). Andrew Pawley

( A language which defies description by ordinary means , pp.

87-129), studying Kalam, a language o the New Guinea Highlands,

stresses the importance

o

the description

o

idiomatic competence. P

suggests that one should pay more attention to aspects

o

untidy and

fuzzy areas o language that both grammarians and speakers have to

cope with (such as lexicon)

p.

126).

In The conceptual basis

o

grammatical relations (pp. 131-174),

William

A

Foley argues that grammatical primitives

o

language struc

ture are relational categories that are universally definable in semantic

terms (e.g., actor and undergoer) and that notions such

as

subject and

object cannot be universal categories that all languages necessarily pos

sess. He claims that a more conceptually-based approach to grammati

cal relations (according to the logic

o

a particular culture involved),

as

opposed to configurational definitions, can describe human language

more accurately. In a condensed article ( The expanse

o

grammar in

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WORD VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)

the 'waste'

of

frames , pp. 175-191), Michael Silverstein points out the

lack

of

theoretical ideas which concern themselves with the under

standing

of

the relationship between formal properties

of

linguistic cat

egories and textual cohesion. S argues against discern[ing] levels of

abstractness isomorphic to the significant segmentations and calling

these the objects

of

grammatical description (and theory) (p. 189).

John

J

Gumperz's paper ( Culture and conversational inference ,

pp. 193-214) analyzes how linguistic knowledge and socio-cultural

knowledge are used (by both speakers and listeners) to assess what is

intended (p. 194) in the act

of

transmitting information. According to

G, since dialogue coherence depends crucially on socially constructed

shared background knowledge, linguistic descriptions should account

for variability of form and interpretive processes (p. 207), rather

than absolute truth value of verbal songs in isolation. M. C

O Connor

( Disjoint reference and pragmatic inference: Anaphora and switch ref

erence in Northern Porno , pp. 215-242) considers that an inference

based approach to interpretation in terms of the discourse parameter of

point

of

view (e.g., logophoricity) is superior to (morpho)syntactical

ly-based accounts since it can give a unified account of both within

clause and across-clause uses

of

[anaphors and pronouns] (p. 221).

Nicholas Evans's interpenetrationist view ( Code, inference,

placedness and

ellipsis , pp. 243-280) argues against a strict comple

mentarist position, i.e., demarcation between the (modular) coding

system (grammar) and the (non-modular) inferential system (pragmat

ics). E underlines the integration

of

socio and ethno-linguistics into for

mallinguistic theory and characterizes it as a challenge for the field in

the next century. Viewing language as a pragmatically driven coding

system, Doris L. Payne ( Meaning and pragmatics of order in selected

South American Indian languages , pp. 281-314) proposes that dis

course pragmatic factors must be built into grammatical models as

fundamental principles of word order (rather than merely appended to

them) (p. 281).

Christian Lehmann ( Theoretical implications of grammatical

ization phenomena , pp.

315-

340), who considers language a (crea

tive, goal-oriented) human activity with two basic dimensions (cogni

tive/epistemic and communicative/social), discusses what concepts and

assumptions any linguistic theory will have to include. From a diachron

ic point

of

view, L argues that linguistic theory should be based on the

view that grammatical levels and grammatical categories (seen as the

product of grammaticalization) are points on a continuum. L further

suggest that the gradient nature of general grammaticalization process-

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REVIEWS 95

es have important implications for both the theory

o

language and the

theory

o

grammar

=

a model

o

linguistic description). Adopting a

socio-historical and ethno-political view of language, Geoffrey Ben

jamin ( Grammar and polity: The cultural and political background to

Standard Malay , pp. 341-392) maintains that linguistic descriptions

are incomplete unless one goes beyond syntactic structures and takes

into consideration factors such

as cultural contexts.

Examining starred vs. unstarred judgments in standard and local or

colloquial varieties, Anthony Diller ( Diglossic grammaticality in

Thai , pp. 393-420) warns o the danger of basing the construction o

grammatical theory on the grammaticality judgments

o

decontextual

ized sentences isolated from social and cultural settings. The paper by

Mohamed H. Abdulaziz ( Language use and language development:

Review

o

sociolinguistic theory , pp. 421-435) looks at the issue

o

language planning and language development in society (such as lan

guage variation/shift) in the context

o

societal modernization and cul

tural change in Africa and urges (especially) sociolinguists to develop

integrated (and more comprehensive) theories o language use and lan

guage development. Jane H. Hill's article ( Formalism, functionalism

and the discourse

o

evolution , pp. 437-455) addresses the issue

o

lan

guage evolution from the formal and functional perspectives, and sug

gests that the study

o

language evolution should take into consideration

the difference between the 'general architecture'

o

human language

and the specific ways in which this is elaborated and implemented in

local ways

o

speaking p. 453).

Each contribution takes a quite different view on what constitutes

language description and linguistic theory. Although it is certainly ben

eficial to be exposed to diverse viewpoints on grammar , language ,

linguistic theory , and description

o

language , it would have been

more useful

i

the articles had been organized around a common point

o

reference with respect to conceptions

o

(language) description and

(linguistic) theory (for example, concentrating on one

o

the four issues

addressed in the book). (As Silverstein puts it, we need to have first a

coherent denotatum

o

the term linguistic theory p. 178). In the

absence

o

some common point

o

departure, it would also have been

more instrumental i the book had included comments by the partici

pants on each others' ideas. To be fair, individual papers make valid

points in the respective areas

o

research, and point to directions for fur

ther research with interesting and thought-provoking suggestions.

These observations, and the fact that some articles are rather incon

clusive, should not discourage linguists interested in this general topic

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96 WORD,


from reading this volume. The field certainly needs,

as

Diller points out,

broader perspectives for grammatical theorizing.

Department

of

Foreign Languages

Hiroshima University

Kagamiyama 1-7-1

Higashi-Hiroshima, 724

Japan

MICHAEL

L.

MAZZOLA, ed. Issues nd theory in Romance linguistics:

Selected papers from the linguistic symposium on Romance languages XXIII.

Washington D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1994. xiii 546 pp.

Reviewed by

M S T K ISHIKAWA

The Twenty-third Annual Linguistic Symposium on Romance Lan

guages was held at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, on April

1-4, 1993. The volume is divided into two parts: Phonology and Syn

tax. As in many of the previous LSRL proceedings, syntactic studies

predominate in the present volume. Although Spanish and French are,

as

usual, the two most studied languages, it is pleasant t see that many

of the articles are comparative in scope, dealing with two or more

Romance (and in some cases non-Romance) languages or dialects.

Part I (Phonology) contains seven papers. Barbara E. Bullock

argues that all underlying segments are licensed by the syllable (with

out making any distinction between heavy and light syllables) in

the prosodic structure

of

French. Luigi Burzio and Elvira DiFabio sug

gest that [m]orphomes maintain fixed accentual properties

p.

22) in

stress preservations in word formation (e.g., English propaganda

propagandist and morpheme suppressions (e.g., Italian finisco/jinia

mo .

Steven R. Hoskins takes up secondary stress in French, while

Haike Jacobs analyzes epenthesis in Gallo-Romance and Old French,

arguing against the existence

of

segmentally empty, but prosodically

relevant constituents. Next, John

M.

Lipski proposes that the spread

of

[+vocalic] (postvocalic) or [+continuant] (postconsonantal) is involved

in the fricative articulation

of

voiced obstruents in Spanish. In the penul

timate paper of the phonology part, Pilar Prieto considers that vowel

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REVIEWS

97

lengthening in northern Italian dialects is conditioned by interactions of

optimization

of

segmental and prosodic structures. In the final paper,

Irene Vogel examines three types

of phonological interface (phonology

morphology; phonology-syntax; phonology-semantics) in Italian in

terms ofmapping algorithms between the structures of two components

involved.

Part II (Syntax) includes 23 papers. Nancy Mae Antrim proposes an

incorporation analysis of adverbial agreement in Italian (e.g., Maria

parlava sveltalsvelto

Maria was speaking fast (130)). Deborah Artea

ga hypothesizes that the verb agrees either with the postverbal NP or

with impersonal

l

in Old French impersonal constructions. Although

technical details of the analysis are left open, specific proposals made in

this article should be taken seriously in future study. In the third paper

(by Julie Auger), Picard clitics are analyzed as inflectional morphemes

with the second person clitics having two morphological subcategoriza

tion frames (allowing their dual positioning with respect to the verb),

while the first and third person clitics have only one. Valentina Bianchi

and Maria Cristina Figueiredo Silva argue that the contrasts between

Italian and Brazilian Portuguese with respect to (i) the possibility of

having referential null objects and referential null subjects and (ii) the

clitic placement can be accounted for by postulating different sets of

independent functional heads (Person/Number/Gender) for the two lan

guages. Next, Reineke Bok-Bennema and Brigitte Kampers-Manhe

claim that clitic climbing in Spanish and Italian and quantifier/manner

adverb climbing in French are in fact manifestations

of

one and the

same process (T-Incorporation). This paper is a good example of solid

scholarship illustrating how one hypothesis (with a couple of secondary

assumptions) can account for various phenomena in different languages

in a straightforward manner.

J

Clancy Clements advances a unified account of Topicalization

and Left Dislocation in Spanish by proposing that (indefinite) object

drop involve null partitive pronouns. Richard Danford and Kutz Arrieta

Stemen s paper deals with double complementizer constructions in

Spanish (e.g., Me pregunt6 mi madre que) quien llam6

My

mother

asked me (*that) who called (p. 259)) and postulates that [Spec, IP] is

the landing site for wh-elements (i.e., [Spec, IP] is an A -position).

Maarten de Wind proposes that the subject clitic (in AgrS) assigns Case

to the lexical subject in [Spec, AgrSP] under agreement in French com

plex inversion sentences. According to Natalia Dfaz-Insense, extraction

of nominals out of DP is possible if resulting chains do not violate

strong crossover. D-I s proposal seems to have interesting consequences

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9 WORD, VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)

for movement/extraction phenomena in clauses (e.g., relativization), as

well.

The contribution by Pilar Garcia-Mayo and Paula Kempchinsky

compares Spanish and English parasitic gap constructions. They claim

that differences (e.g., clause-boundedness and tensed-vs.-non-tensed

asymmetry) follow from the possibility in Spanish of having pro in

object position with a null operator generated in [Spec,

CP], contrary to

English, which, without recourse to pro, adjoins a null operator (gener

ated in the gap (

=

A-) position) to

CP

Luis Lopez attributes different

possibilities in Spanish and English with respect to VP-Ellipsis to dif

ferent movement possibilities in the two languages. Nicole Maier con

siders the placement

of

the embedded subject and complement (clitics)

in Portuguese causative constructions with interesting comparisons of

French and Portuguese in terms of Case-assignment patterns.

In a technical, but carefully written paper, Enrique Mallen argues

that the contrast in the licensing of empty elements in [Spec, TP]

between German and Spanish in multiple wh-questions can be account

ed for by assuming that Tense governs [Spec, TP] at LF in Spanish,

while Comp antecedent-governs [Spec, TP] in German. Johan Rooryck

characterizes the apparent optional nature

of

clitic climbing

as

the

optionality in the way Relativized Minimality can be satisfied. Mario

Saltarelli provides a morphosyntactic analysis of voice in Latin and

Romance in which the voice (morpheme) is analyzed as

the head con

stituent of

IP

Uthaiwan Wong-opasi hypothesizes that Romance Verb

complement compounds are derived by deleting the (underlying) agent

head (N) from the proposed endocentric structure in accordance with

syntactic principles.

Three papers are concerned with impersonal (se) constructions.

Julia Herschensohn (French psych

se

and Amaya Mendikoetxea (Span

ish ARB SE) both examine the constructions in terms of Case-absorp

tion by se, while Robert

E

Vann attempts to unify middle se, inherent

se, and no fault se in Spanish. Also included in the volume are papers

py Sarah Cummins and Yves Roberge (a morphological analysis of

Romance clitics at the proposed Lexicon-syntax Interface level); Clau

dia Parodi (on morphological (in the minimalist sense) differences

between Spanish and English DPs); Liliana Sanchez (on emphatic and

adverbial readings associated with the DP modified by mismo 'self' in

Spanish); and Karen Zagona (a ditransitive analysis

of

the temporal

argument structure ofth Spanish compound perfect tense).

The present volume, as the previous LSRL volumes, contains a

number of excellent papers dealing with both familiar and new problems

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REVIEWS 99

with thought-provoking proposals. Especially, comparative approaches

taken by many papers in this volume should stimulate further research

on a wide variety

of

topics covered here. Also, as most

of

the previous

proceedings coming out of this annual conference in North America, the

majority of the contributions are written in the generative framework. In

this sense, some papers may not so easily be accessible to non-followers.

There are some missing references and typological infelicities, but this

seems to be unavoidable in proceedings of this size. One final comment.

Although broad geographical areas are covered in synchronic studies,

diachronic comparative) investigations are under-represented. Person

ally, I would have liked and certainly hope in future volumes) to see

more diachronic contributions. Speaking of the valanced representation,

the same applies to contributions in the areas of phonology and mor

phology. All in all, I predict that many Romance linguists especially

synchronic syntacticians) will find this volume a valuable source of

information.

Department o Foreign Languages

Hiroshima University

Kagamiyama 1-7-1

Higashi-Hiroshima 724

Japan

JOEL

A.

NEVIS, BRIAN D. JOSEPH, DIETER WANNER and ARNOLD

M

ZWICKY, eds. Clitics: A comprehensive bibliography 1892-1991. Amster

dam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1994. xxxvii 274

pp.

Reviewed by M RK

JANSE

1

Introduction The last twenty-five years have witnessed a veritable

explosion of research on eli tics and related phenomena. This is not sur

prising in view

of

the fundamental problems clitics pose for any theory

concerned with the organisation

of

grammar, particularly with the inter

action of discourse, syntax, morphology and phonology. Clitics typical

ly share properties of words on the one hand and affixes on the other.

Their exact location on the word-to-affix cline, however, varies from

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one clitic to another: some are more word-like, others more affix-like.

Again, this is not at all surprising, since historically, clitics generally

develop from words into affixes. As a consequence, it is not at all clear

that all the items which have been called clitics are similar in kind, nor

is it clear at what level(s) of

grammatical description they should be

treated.

The linguist interested in clitics and related phenomena now has at

his/her disposal a precious bibliography covering exactly one hundred

years of research and comprising over 1,500 titles. The bibliography has

been compiled by Joel A. Nevis, Brian D. Joseph, Dieter Wanner, and

Arnold M. Zwicky, each

ofwhom

has published extensively

on clitics-

Nevis on Finno-Lappic languages, Joseph on Modern Greek, and Wan

ner on Romance languages. Zwicky is of course best known for his pio

neering work in proposing a first typology of clitics, and in establishing

diagnostic tests for distinguishing clitics from both words and affixes.

The compilers have taken 1892 as the starting-point for their bibli

ography, the year in which Jacob Wackernagel's famous article on what

has come to

be

known as Wackernagel's Law was published. Wack

ernagel observed that in the ancient Indo-European languages (particu

larly in Ancient Greek) (en)clitics were frequently placed in second

position after the first stressed word or constituent of the clause. Wack

ernagel's Law is one of the few generally accepted statements about

Indo-European word order. n addition, the phenomenon of second

position enclisis has now been reported in numerous non-Indo-Euro

pean languages as well (the present bibliography contains up to 250

titles referring to Wackernagel's Law). Given the importance

ofWack-

ernagel's 1892 article, it was only logical to take 1991 as the cut-off

point, thus commemorating its centennial.

The bibliography is laid out as follows. After the preface and

acknowledgements, Joseph presents a sh

book reviews from issue 48:1 of word

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