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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
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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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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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76
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
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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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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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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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REVIEWS
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
WORD, VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)
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
VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)
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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90
WORD, VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)
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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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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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,
VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)
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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WORD
VOLUME 48, NUMBER I (APRIL, 1997)
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