Review of Dependency Syntax: Theory and Practice by I. Melcuk

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Alan R. Libert, Joseph Clancy Clements, Martha S. Ratliff, Thomas A. Lovik,
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Reviews
IGOR A. MEL'CUK. Dependency Syntax: Theory and Practice. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 1988. xx + 428 pp.
Reviewed by
ALAN
R. LIBERT
Syntactic theories can be divided into two general types: those

which are based on phrase structure, and those based on dependency.
In North America, theories using phrase structure analysis (particularly
the various versions of Transformational Generative Grammar) are far
more popular and widely-known than dependency theories. Indeed
some syntax students may be completely unaware of the existence of
dependency syntax. This book may be seen as an attempt to correct the
situation, and this is a laudable goal. The field of linguistics would be
a healthier one if linguists paid more attention and gave more respect
to their colleagues working in different frameworks. An open-minded
reader can thus easily be sympathetic to Mel'cuk's effort, and Dependency Syntax is a generally well-done and convincing presentation of
one brand of dependency analysis, namely the Meaning-Text theory
(MTT).
Dependency Syntax may be worthy of a detailed commentary and
analysis, but in this short review I can only give a superficial overview
of the work, in the hope that readers will become interested enough to
read and judge it for themselves. Further, I shall say little about the
MTT theory itself; rather I shall concentrate on Mel'cuk's presentation
of this theory. I shall make some general points about the book as a
whole, and then give an account of the contents of individual chapters.
One should first note that this book does not consist entirely of new
material; much of it is made up of revised versions of older papers,
some of which were written with other scholars.
There are several factors that make Dependency Syntax unneces223
224
WORD,
VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)
sarily difficult to read. Some of Mel'cuk's endnotes are very long,

which may make it hard to follow the arguments of the main text. For
example, note 5 of Chapter 7 is more than three pages, while note 4 of
chapter 5 is almost five pages long, which must be some kind of
record. On the other hand, the endnotes are cross-referenced with the
main text, which is helpful. Those readers who do not know Russian
may not be able to fully appreciate the book, as Mel'cuk takes many
of his examples from that language. It should however be noted that
there does exist an extensive study of English in the MTT Framework
(Mel'cuk and Pertsov 1987), for those who would like to see this
framework applied to English. There are a small number of typographical and grammatical errors, not enough to be annoying, but perhaps
enough to be noticeable.
A general problem is that one may judge all types of dependency
grammar on the basis of this book, and so perhaps not get an accurate
picture of dependency theory as a whole. That is, if for one reason or
another, one is not impressed by Mel'cuk's ideas, one may take on a
negative attitude towards all dependency-based frameworks, just as
one might form a prejudice against all frameworks of the generative
tradition, just because he found one particular framework within that
tradition (e.g., Generalized Phrase Structure Grammar) to be inadequate. This may be an unavoidable type of problem for a book of this
sort, but it should be noted that there are many different points of view
under the general heading of dependency theory, and one should not
judge all of them on the basis of MTT.
Part I ("Dependency Syntax: An Overview") may be the most
interesting and useful part of the book for those unfamiliar with dependency grammar. Here Mel'cuk gives a general picture of dependency theory, including a welcome bibliography of work of this school
(Chapter 1), and an introduction to Meaning-Text theory (Chapter 2).
The latter chapter presents some difficulties for the reader. First, this
chapter, as well as much of the rest ofthe book, seems to contain a large
number of items in lists, e.g. "A generalized lexeme is one of the
following four items" (p. 60), "A DSyntRel [=Deep-Syntactic Relation] is one of the following nine binary relations'' (63), ''The SSyntR
of a sentence consists of four structures" (67), "The Semantic Component must be able to perform eight main operations'' (73). This can
make for tedious reading, although I do not know how one could
express the ideas in a better fashion. What are more annoying, and more
difficult to follow, are the figures illustrating the semantic, deep-syntactic, and surface-syntactic representations of sentences (e.g. Figures
2-3, p. 54).
REVIEWS
225
These are considerably more complex than the phrase structure

trees of transformational grammar. While one can not blame Me!' cuk
for the complexity of the representations, since they should reflect the
complex interrelations holding among linguistic constituents, it would
have been preferable to use simpler sentences than ''As the American
press says, the President believes that a duty of the people of the
United States is active aid to the development of the economy of
African countries." Mel'cuk does realize the difficulty of following
such representations; as he says (53), they "may stun a newcomer ....
I had the choice between using a toy SemR [ =Semantic Representation] or exposing the reader to the astonishing complexity of the real
thing. Not without hesitation, I opted for the second alternative." I am
not sure whether the right choice was made.
With regard to the MTT framework itself, I shall just mention that
perhaps its most distinctive characteristic, aside from the fact that it is
a dependency theory, is the fact that it is not a generative model, but
rather a mapping system, which links the set of texts to the set of
meanings. Thus it is rather different from transformational theories;
nothing is transformed or generated; as Mel'cuk says (45), the rules
"simply match" meanings and texts (or the intermediate levels between them). For those used to some of the better known North American schools of linguistics this may be a new and interesting way of
viewing linguistic processes.
Part 11 (''An important concept of Dependency Syntax: SurfaceSyntactic Relations") contains a single chapter in which various types
of dependency relation-morphological, syntactic, semantic) are discussed. It is important to realize that there are different sorts of dependencies, and that a dependency of one kind does not imply the
existence or directionality of dependencies of other kinds. This can be
seen in Mel'cuk's section on "Possible Combinations of Syntagmatic
Dependency" (118-128).
Part Ill begins the examination of the practice of dependency
theory. This part deals with the difficult problems involved in the study
of ergative constructions (Mel'cuk rejects the term ergativity), specifically with whether there is an ergative construction in Dyirbal (Chapter
4) and Lezgian (Chapter 5). A definition of subject is clearly crucial to
a decision on whether a construction is ergati ve, and so Mel 'cuk spends
some time on the characteristics of subjects in Dyirbal and Lezgian. His
conclusion is that neither language has an ergative construction: the GS
[Grammatical Subject] of what had been considered ergative constructions is a semantic object and not a semantic subject (Mel'cuk's def-
226
WORD,
1mtion of ergative construction is ''a non-nominative construction

whose GS refers to the 'semantic subject"'), while Lezgian simply
lacks transitive verbs (and thus can not have an ergative construction).
These conclusions may still be open to debate, but Mel'cuk has presented good arguments. One is made aware of the importance of definitions of such notions as subject; discussion of ergative constructions
is meaningless until one knows what a subject is. The third and final
chapter of Part Ill is not concerned with a particular language, but is
concerned with defining ergative construction. The definition is basically the same as that given before, in Chapter 4, but this chapter is of
value because Mel'cuk gives a "typology of predicative constructions'', where these constructions are classified on the basis of relations
among three levels, namely semantics, (surface) syntax, and (deep)
morphology. This three-way correlation is significant, because while it
is common to analyze any construction in which the grammatical subject
does not correspond to either the semantic subject or the nominative NP
of a sentence, Me!' cuk reserves the term ergative construction for those
constructions in which grammatical subjects and the semantic subjects
correspond, but do not bear nominative case. Thus Me!' cuk' s definition
is narrower than those of some other linguists.
The two chapters of Part IV ("Syntactic Description: SurfaceSyntactic Models and Notions") deal with two languages, Alutor
(Chapter 7), and Russian (Chapter 8), with reference to several significant features which they possess. The former chapter is of value
because so little material is available on the Alutor language, which is
related to the better known Chuckchee. In this chapter we see several
of the surface-syntactic rules posited for Alutor. Some of these rules
describe unusual kinds of agreement present in this language; a matrix
verb can agree with the subject or direct object of its subordinate
clause, or with the clause as a whole. The next chapter discusses a less
exotic phenomenon, the phonetically null elements which may be posited in Russian sentences such as those below (of course similar sentences exist in other languages):
(la)
(lb)
Kolya v sosednej komnate

Ulicu zasypali peskom
'Kolya is in the next room.'

'The street was strewn with
sand (by somebody).'
One must be able to argue that these sentences do in fact have

"syntactic zeroes", and Mel'cuk does this for the type of sentence
exemplified by (lb), although I do not know whether I am convinced.
227
REVIEWS
There are two types of syntactic zeroes, the zero lex (as in la) and the
zero lexeme (as in lb). Mel'cuk stresses the distinction between these
zeroes, which "EXIST in language and as such are stored in the minds
of speakers" (linguistic 1 zeroes) and "descriptive devices introduced
by the researcher in order to make this description look more homogeneous, more compact or more elegant" (linguistic 2 zeroes). I am not
sure what he has in mind for the latter class; some examples would
clarify this. I suspect that the PRO, pro, and traces of GovernmentBinding theory may be among Mel'cuk's linguistic 2 zeroes; however,
most researchers working in that framework would deny that these
categories have been posited merely to make their descriptions neater.
The last part of Dependency Syntax ("Syntactic Methodology:
Some Thorny Questions of Russian Syntax") consists of three chapters
which attack the problems involved in making a choice among several
descriptions of some construction. Chapter 9 takes up the problem of
how to describe an intriguing class of construction, those where a
"verb of emotion" (i.e. not a "normal verb of speech") introduces a
direct quote, as illustrated in (2):
(2)
"Ostav'te menja!"-ispugalsja bufetCik

'"Leave me alone!"-became frightened the bartender.'
The questions raised by Mel'cuk are what the (syntactic) relation is

between the matrix emotion verb and the quote clause and which
constituent of such sentences conveys the idea "utter the given utterance''. He chooses a ''syntactic'', rather than a ''lexical'' solution, and
so claims that the syntactic relation between verbs of emotions and the
quotations they introduce is not the same as that between verbs such as
say and the quotes which they introduce. The idea of uttering is conveyed by the ''the syntactic structure itself'' in sentences with the verbs
of emotion.
In Chapter 10 Me!' cuk argues for the addition of animacy to the
list of inflectional categories relevant for cardinal numerals in Russian,
to account for following type of differences in adjectival endings:
(3a)
(3b)
(4a)
(4b)
Ja
Ja
Ja
Ja
vizu
vizu
vizu
vizu
cetyre sosny
cetyrex devusek
krasivyj dom
krasivogo junosu
'I
'I
'I
'I
see
see
see
see
four pine trees.'

four girls'
a beautiful house'
a handsome youth'
It is surprising that this problem is mentioned as little as Mel'cuk

claims; he cites (372) two ''basic reference works on Russian'' in
228
WORD,
which "this problem is not brought up". In any case, his solution
appears reasonable, and he provides a list of seven arguments for
choosing it over the alternative solution of positing another case (the
animate-accusative case).
The final chapter is also concerned with numerals, specifically
with the question of what case is borne by certain numerical constructions (containing animate nouns) occurring after the Russian prepositions: v 'in', na 'on', az 'behind', cerez 'through, behind', po
'each' when these prepositions are used in a quantitative sense, as in
siloj rovno v tri medvedja 'with the power of exactly three bears'. It
has been said that such expressions bear accusative case, but this
answer is not satisfactory because such numerical constructions have a
different form when they occur in "standard accusative contexts", i.e.
direct object position (e.g. the form required is trex medvedej rather
than tri medvedja). Mel'cuk sets up the choice between the solutions
of claiming that these constructions are actually in the nominative case
(what one might see as the obvious solution), and maintaining that they
are accusative, but do not take the expected form because of "animacy
non-agreement" between the numeral and the animate noun. Mel'cuk
chooses the second solution. giving four arguments for it. One of his
arguments is that Russian prepositions do not govern the nominative in
any other situations, and thus it would violate the "spirit" of the
language to claim that these five prepositions can govern a nominative
noun when used in a quantitative way. It must be pointed out that it is
not completely unheard of for a preposition to govern a nominative in
other languages, and Mel'cuk himself concedes that Russian nominative NPs are not as syntactically independent as has been thought.
Although the earlier chapters of the book may be the most interesting for many readers, those who are interested in ergative constructions or certain aspects of Russian syntax will also find the later chapters useful. While I do not find that Dependency Syntax is as neutral a
book as Mark Aronoff seems to indicate in the preface, it is a nonpolemical introduction to a theory (or set of theories) which will benefit those wishing to learn about alternative conceptions of syntax.
Department of Linguistics
McGi/1 University
Montreal, Quebec H3A JG5
Canada
REFERENCES
Mel'cuk I. A. and N. V. Pertsov. 1987. Surface Syntax of English. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
REVIEWS
229
DANIELLE CORBIN. Morphologie Derivationelle et structuration du lexique. 2 vols. Linguistische Arbeiten Series, Nos. 193-94. Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1987. vxii + 937 Pp.
Reviewed by JosEPH CLANCY CLEMENTS
It is unique in the current stage of development of the study of

derivational morphology (DM) to encounter a theory based on insights
from both lexicology and lexicography as well as from current theory
in DM. The present two-volume work is a thorough treatment of
French DM precisely from such a perspective. One of the author's
principle objectives in this endeavor was to help remedy the lack of
detailed empirical analyses in the current literature on DM, which, she
notes, is one reason for the proliferation of alternative theories in
recent years.
The firstvolume is divided into three parts. In the first, Corbin (C)
argues against the commonly accepted methodological practices for
data collection predominant in DM today. Part 11 is devoted to the
examination of several current frameworks and how they deal with
regularities, subregularities and irregularities in DM. Here, she also
develops what she calls a stratified, associative model and argues for
its superiority over the existing frameworks for the treatment of different
kinds and degrees of sub- and irregularities. In part Ill, C presents and
discusses the structure of the lexical component developed in part 11.
Volume two contains the footnotes, 16 appendices consisting of data
collections and studies that substantiate arguments put forth in the first
volume along with very helpful subject, author and word indices.
In part I, C presents solid arguments against the methological
practices generally employed by morphologists today. With data collected on the adverb-forming suffix -ment '-ly' from 15 French monolingual dictionaries (found in appendices of volume two), she argues
that the dictionaries consulted are inconsistent in the ordering of base
and derived words (DWs) with respect to one another (macrostructural
ordering) as well as in the ordering of the different meanings of a given
DW from the most regular to the most idiosyncratic (microstructural
ordering). Although C's study is most thorough, the same should be
carried out for various other affixes of different degrees of frequency
and productivity to ascertain whether her findings hold there as well.
Moreover, even though the same situation were to obtain for dictionaries in other languages, it seems dangerous to overgeneralize that the
situation of French lexica reflects that of dictionaries in any language,
which seems to be what C implies.
230
WORD,
VOLUME 41. NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)
In dealing with dictionaries, C draws a useful distinction between

the lexicon of the linguist as opposed to that of the lexicographer.
While the lexicon of the latter is present in all dictionaries and is the
less restricted of the two in the sense that it contains extra-linguistic
as well as linguistic information, the linguist's lexicon is less restricted
in another sense: It must remain unconstrained by anything that is
not strictly linguistic. C also discards the ambiguous notion of productivity and suggests availability (my translation of Fr. disponibilite)
to denote the capacity of an affix to be used in coining unattested
DWs, andfrequency (Fr. rentabilite) to denote the number of attested
DWs a given affix is involved in forming. Her distinction is reminiscent of Aronoff's (1983) differentiation between productivity andfrequency.
C also scrutinizes the notion of native speaker intuition, noting
that such an intuition is actually based on three types of metalinguistic
competence: a) sense of newness of a DW, b) metalinguistic awareness
and c) acceptability judgments. It is not exactly clear why C differentiates between the first and second types since she herself (58) confesses that they are one and the same. Types a) and b) presuppose, she
states, theoretical impossibilities: If there is an intuition of what is or
is not a neologism, it implies that all speakers have the same lexical
pool from which to draw, which is at odds with the accepted fact that
no one knows the same set of words. Type c), she says, suffers from
a triple ambiguity in that an asterisk marking a DW as ill-formed
can be interpreted either that i) it is not attested, ii) it is ill-formed
according to acceptability judgments or iii) according to the word
formation rules (WFRs). The first two of these are cases of accidental
gaps in the lexicon. E.g. the fact thatferroviaire 'relative to railroads'
is normally used instead of ferrovial might say something about the
availability of the suffix -al to derive new forms, but there are no
linguistic constraints systematically blocking its existence. iii) represents a case of a systematic gap. For instance, DWs such as *demaison
'dehouse (N)' are impossible because part of the corresponding WFR,
i.e. the category change (N -> V), is violated. Systematic vs. accidental gaps in the body of attested DWs reflect what C refers to as
derivational vs. conventional lexical knowledge. While both are part of
our lexical competence, i.e. the sum of knowledge regarding the lexicon, the former tells us what is linguistically well/ill-formed while the
latter allows us to judge what is otherwise acceptable or unacceptable.
She concludes, then, that metalinguistic intuition is necessary but not
sufficient as a source of data for the morphologist. She warns that great
REVIEWS
231
care must be taken to systematically collect a representative inventory

of data from as many sources as possible, a practice, she claims, that
has not been strictly followed in the discipline.
C categorizes her model as stratified and associative. In part 11,
she carefully examines the stratified and non-stratified models in lexicalist morphology. Her main claim is that non-stratified models, such
as those of Jackendoff (197 5), Aronoff (197 6), Booij (1977), Lieber
( 1981) and Selkirk ( 1982), have a lexical component consisting of
essentially only two sub-components: one list of entries where irregularities are listed and one list of rules and/or principles' that account
for the regularities. In her stratified model, subregularities, i.e. ones
that cannot be derived by derivational competence alone, are not located on the same level as regularities, but are subordinate to these.
Moreover, her model deals with the possible as well as the attested
lexicon and can neatly account for this difference in terms of systematic vs. accidental gaps in the lexicon. Unlike the disassociative frameworks which, she claims, separate the treatment of semantic and morphological regularities, in C's associative model these treatments are
inseparably linked-an approach which I find to be similar to Zwicky's
( 1987) rule-to-rule relation between morphology and semantic rules.
However, In C's theory, the relation between WFRs, affixal lexical
entries and their respective semantic rules of interpretation exhibits a
number of innovative aspects. To understand these, a brief sketch of
her model is necessary.
The Base component contains underived words and affixes. Affixes, marked as [Affix] with their own lexical entries that do not
include lexical category specification, are independent of word formation rules (WFRs) but linked to these through certain morphological
operations. One key novelty here is that the general notion of subcategorization (SUBCAT) frames has been done away with. On this view,
a WFR, such as A-> V with the corresponding semantic interpretation
'make A', may be used for the prefix en-, as in riche 'rich' -> enrichir
'enrich (make rich)', as well as for the suffix -iser as in industrial
'industrial' -> industrialiser 'industrialize (make industrial') (with
proper allomorphy). Idiosyncratic properties of the affixes are also
posited in the lexical entry. For instance, the suffix -ite '-ity', associated with the WFR A -> N with the interpretation 'quality/characteristic of A', is very restricted as to the bases with which it may combine:
it attaches only to bases containing the suffixes -able, -aire, -al. -el,
-ique. In the Base component, C also distinguishes between complex
underived and complex derived words. The former are words with a
232
WORD,
recognizable internal structure, of which there are two types: those

whose base is recognizable, as in royaume 'kingdom' from roi 'king',
and those whose affix is recognizable, as in carpette 'small rug', where
the base *carpe 'rug' does not exist. Complex DWs, as in chanteur
'singer', are not listed in the lexicon and could not be listed since they
are, according to C, theoretically infinite in number. A contradiction
emerges here in the interaction of the different components. C states
that the WFRs and all possible DWs are found in the Derivational
Component, the only component with generative capacity. However,
as just noted, the possible DWs are not and, furthermore, cannot be
listed at all. Not listing at least the attested DWs also poses the technical difficulty concerning how they can be used as inputs for the
WFRs to derive further DWs.
In C's model, the weight of the semantic operation falls on the
WFRs and not on the affixes. The structure of a WFR is expressed in
the equation WFR = nWSCR + SSCR + MP + CSC + LSI. The
WFR for fertilisation 'fertilization' would be as follows: the Word
Structure Construction Rule (WSCR) is V -> N. It corresponds to only
one Semantic Structure Construction Rule (SSCR), which here is 'action or result of the action of V', and to only one Morphological Paradigm (MP), which is a list of all possible affixes/conversions corresponding to the WSCR and SSCR in question. These are: conversion
[ + masc] [-A]; conversion [+fern] [+A]; -ade; -age; -erie; -ment;
-tion; -ure, etc. (A = available for forming new DWs). A set of
Categorial Semantic Constraints (CSCs) that restrict the general type of
base to which the affixes in the MP may attach also form part of the
WFR. For example, the WFR at issue only applies to nonstative Vs.
Other restrictions, such as the constraints on the phonological form of
the base to which a certain affix may attach, form part of the lexical
entries for affixes. The Lexical Selection and Insertion (LSI) mechanism, which handles proper insertion, is made sensitive to these constraints.
Leaving aside the allomorphic specifications, the whole derivational operation for fertilisation would take place, then, in the following manner. The lexical itemfertiliser 'fertilize' would be inserted into
the structure N -> [[X]v (Y)ar1N whereby it would be checked whether
the categorial and semantic constraints associated with the WFR are
met. This operation creates the structure [[[fertile]A (is)]y (Y)ar1N
From among the affixes in the MP of the WFR only -tion may be
selected because the form of the base only allows the insertion of this
particular affix. This operation yields [[[fertile]A (is)]v (tion)ar1N The
REVIEWS
233
DW is then associated with the meaning 'action and result of the action
of fertiliser' and finally the necessary diacritic features, such as the
feature [+fern], are projected onto the DW.
This approach has numerous interesting though potentially disturbing implications. First, as noted above, the typical concept of
SUBCAT frames for affixes is done away with, the category change
being taken care of by the WFR with which a given affix is linked.
This is an unusual move since this notion is central in virtually all
models of grammar and all-pervasive in frameworks such as HPSG.
Second, by labeling affixes as [Affix] without lexical category marking
and associating them to a specific WFR as it is conceived of by C, the
notion of head in the DW becomes superfluous. At this stage of linguistic theory, where the concept of head is becoming one of the main
links between certain components of grammar, the idea of discarding
it seems highly undesirable.
Also of note in C's model is that if an affix has several different
meanings, as many corresponding affixes with the same phonological
representation are posited. C thus prefers a homonymous system where
different affixes may have the same form but only one meaning rather
than a polysemic approach in which one affix may have several different meanings and only one form. The former approach, she claims,
aids in making the model more constrained. Finally, C's model lends
a new twist to the problem of bracketing paradoxes. In the associative
model she presents, it is implied that any and every bracketing combination for a given DW is theoretically possible as long as it is
permitted by the corresponding the WFRs. Unfortunately, she does not
address this issue at all.
Although the theory C proposes is generally very coherent, there
appear to be several minor inconsistencies in her model. The manner
in which she handles the commonly accepted distinction between transparent and non-transparent affixes is confusing. She states that only one
semantic operation (SO) corresponds to a given WFR. In her view, any
given SO involves three elements: I. a parasynthetic operation,
whereby a thematic role is added upon category change, 2. a lexical
category change operation and 3. a lexical operation. First, the operation in l. is considered obligatory and as such must apply both to
derivations like chanteur 'singer' <-chanter 'sing' as well as to those
of the type confirmation 'confirmation' <- confirmer 'confirm'. In the
first instance, the Agent thematic role is added but it is not clear what
role would have to be added in the second example. Operations 2. and
3. are deemed optional. The lexical operation in 3. refers to the fact that
234
WORD,
some affixes stand for words as in -erie 'place', -ette 'small'. Operation
3. is claimed to be an addition to certain SOs, resulting in a more precise
characterization of them. While C (263-66) states that these three
operations may appear together, in hierarchical order, associated with
one WFR, it seems that operations 2. and 3. should be mutually
exclusive. It is also unclear exactly how these operations correspond to
DWs. Their application needs to be more constrained. Moreover, the
examples which are used to illustrate the point could be more diverse.
For idiosyncratic information of all kinds, C creates in her model
the interesting concept of a pragmatic component, called the Conventional Component (CC), in which are found allomorphy rules, an
"Idiosyncracy Applier" (lA) (Fr. Applicateur d' ldiosyncracies), deletion rules, minor semantic rules, a "Selector" (Fr. Selectionneur)
and the conventional (i.e. attested) lexicon; in short, all the material
that a speaker would store in memory and not be able to derive. The
role of the lA is to assign (a) feature(s) to certain DWs in order to
sensitize them to certain minor semantic rules. C is not explicit concerning just how the lA knows which DWs to mark. It seems that this
information could simply be included in the lexical entry of the affixes.
Nor is it entirely transparent how the Selector operates. From the body
of all possible DWs, which are not listed, the function of the Selector
is to mark with the feature [+Attested] that subgroup of the possible
lexicon which is attested. This is to show the actual state of the lexicon
of a language at a given moment. The difficulty here appears to be that
the possible DWs are not listed and the Selector has again no way of
knowing which to mark or not to mark. Moreover, the attested lexicon
is already listed in the CC. It seems, then, that the content and function
of the semantic operation as well as the functions of the lA and the
Selector need to be reelaborated. With respect to these last two items,
they may well be expendable.
These reservations notwithstanding, this carefully edited and well
written volume is a stimulating and impressive piece of work with a
solid empirical foundation and a healthy, eclectic perspective. It is not
only of import for many issues currently being debated in DM but it
offers challanging and penetrating ideas for their development and
eventual solution. It is worth the time it takes to read it.
Dept. of Spanish & Portugese
Indiana University
Ballantine Hall
8/oomington, lnd. 47405
235
REVIEWS
REFERENCES
Aronoff. M. 1983. Potential words, actual words, productivity, and frequency. Proceedings of
the Thirteenth International Congress of Linguists, 163-71.
---1976; Word formation in generative grammar. Cambridge:MIT Press.
Booij, G.E. 1977. Dutch morphology. A study of word formation in generative grammar.
Lisse:Peter de Ridder Press.
Jackendoff, R. 1975. "Regularites morphologiques et semantiques dans le lexique", French
translation." Ronat. M. ed., 1977. Langue. Theorie genenerative erendue. Paris:Hermann.
pp
Lieber. R. 1981. On the organization of the lexicon. MIT doctoral dissertation 1980; reproduced
by the Indiana University Linguistics Club.
Selkirk 1982. The syntax of words. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Zwicky, A. 1987. "Transformational grammarians and their ilk". MIT Working Papers in
Linguistics 25:265-79.
PAOLO RAMAT. Linguistic Typology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987.

Reviewed by
MARTHA
S.
RATLIFF
Linguistic Typology is a very welcome English translation and

expansion of a collection of ten articles by the Italian linguist Paolo
Ramat. Chapter 9 is new to this volume. The other nine chapters are
revisions of articles previously published in the 70s and 80s, many of
which are in a language (Italian, German, French) or in a source out of
reach of potential readers. The essays have been revised with the
coherence of the whole in mind: the result is a clear delineation of R' s
theoretical position and practice with regard to typological research.
The book is divided into three parts: theoretical, problematic (Romance and Germanic), and historiographical (Humboldt's typology).
Although the layout is logical, readers may find it most profitable to
read the essays of the second section on Romance and Germanic type
and type change first, to become acquainted with R' s research interests, before reading sections one and three. The translation by A. P.
Baldry is to be commended: the simplicity and clarity of R 's style is
well preserved and the English seems homegrown.
In the theoretical section, and indeed throughout the book, the
same major themes recur:
I) typological research is inductive and probabilistic, and, like
research into language change, can only suggest what is likely rather
than assert what must be so (for example, 35, 159-61);
236
WORD,
2) nevertheless, typological research rests on theoretical assumptions that shape the inquiry. There is a necessary dialectic between
inductive and deductive methodologies. The concept of type itself ...
"is not a directly perceivable reality in any language, but an abstract
model for the description and explanation of language phenomena''
(24);
3) At its best, typological research exposes networks of interrelated strategies for communication that a given set of languages employs-a functional orientation (for example 11-19).
In the first chapter, "The problems of linguistic typology", R
presents a useful review of the definitions of typology by modern
European scholars, and follows with an elaboration of the points presented in simplified form above. He then discusses the relationship
between the study of language type and language universals, the relationship between typology and language change, the explanation of the
existence of types, and the classification and quantification of typological data in turn. In section 1.5.1 R briefly presents certain "proposals for language types'' that are consistent with the approach he
suggests (see point three above): Klimov's "contentive typology",
Greenberg's word order typology, and the proposals of the Cologne
research project on universals and typology (25-6). This section deserves expansion into an essay of its own: besides being on the ''right
track", how well do the authors of these typologies balance inductive
and deductive methodologies? How insightful and far-reaching are the
networks they reveal? Are they clear in illustrating the limitations of
their classifications? In general, what kind of evaluation measure are
we to use in judging typological statements about ''the organizational
principles of linguistic data''?
In "Universals and typology", R describes the different ways the
term ''universal'' has been used: ''essential universals'' (after Coseriu)
proceed from a definition of language (such as the property of linearity)
and are arrived at deductively, "objective universals" are discovered
by empirical research and are based on physiological or psychological/
communicative constraints shared by all (such as the markedness of
OVS order), and "subjective universals" are those R considers linguists' analyses raised to the status of reality (such asS-> NP VP, where
a particular linear order is given preference at the "universal level").
As to the relationship: "The purpose of typology is ... to create a
universally valid means of describing languages which will necessarily
be based on the essential, constituting (=universal) properties. For the
creation of an effective model of typological research, such concepts as
REVIEWS
237
'sentence' (and 'operation' . . . ) 'grammar', and even 'structure',

'opposition', and so on are relevant-and these concepts do belong to
the domain of universals." (42).
The next chapter, "The typological level: predicates and arguments" follows smoothly from the preceding one (and from the introduction of this concept of deep structure given in 1.2.2). At the deepest
level common to all languages certain communicative functions lie
(universals-of the "objective" type). The typological level is intermediate between this level and the level of the manifestation of these
functions in any particular language. For example, all languages are
able to express the deictic function, but only a particular type will have
a cateogry of deictics (64). R criticizes modern treatments of the passive, in which the passive is derived from the active, in this light: at the
level of predicate and argument they are the same, and empirical study
demonstrates that one is not necessarily more basic than the other.
In "Crisis in formalism? Theory of grammar and empirical data",
R sets forth a description of the ''two paradigms'' of linguistic research
that have separated linguists counterproductively into opposing camps:
''One formal paradigm considers a language (=a grammar) as an
abstract object, so that grammar is consequently seen as a set of formal
rules of syntax to be applied regardless of the possible meanings and
the possible uses of the syntactic structures described. A second takes
language primarily as an instrument of social interaction which establishes a communicative relationship within a society.'' (71) There is a
concomitant methodological difference: "The formal paradigm is
(mainly) deductive, the functional paradigm is (mainly) inductive."
(72). Among many others, the former is exemplified by Hjelmslev and
Chomsky (in terms of metholodology), the latter by Bloomfield and
Dik. The challenge is to find a convergence of these two paradigms to
yield a more integrated theory of language (96). R sees hope in the
recent broadening of the generative model to account for more languages than English and in the introduction of the notion of "parameter" which "in practice [accounts] for the existence of phenomena
that lead to the divergences that typological studies feed on." (96)
Nonetheless, the bulk of the chapter is critical of various generative
analyses which do not hold up to confirmation by empirical data from
a wide range of languages: two areas of discussion that are given
consideration at length are the representation of word order in grammar
which grows, R claims, from the inclusion of categorical notions in the
deep structure, implying universal validity for them (76-79) and gapping phenomena in different languages, the causes for which include
238
WORD,
psycholinguistic as well as syntactic strategies in a complex and often

contradictory mix of principles (80-88). Again, in place of these
analyses, R advocates an approach which studies the strategies different groups of languages employ to accomplish the same communicative task (Chapter 3).
The second section contains the following five articles: "Toward
a typology of Common Germanic", "The birth of new morphological
categories: the case of the article and relative pronoun in Germanic
languages'', ''Towards a typology of Pompeian Latin'', ''An example
of reanalysis: periphrastic forms in the Romance languages' verb
system", and "Sentence Negation in Germanic and Romance languages''.
I found two chapters of special interest in this section. R' s reworking of his oft-cited "1st das Germanische eine SOV-Sprache?",
here "Toward a typology of Common Germanic", effectively refutes
Vennemann's analysis of the cause for the change from SOY to SVO,
which involves topicalization of 0 and the subsequent movement of V
to second position to disambiguate the two NPs. R proposes instead
that the V2 position, already a tendency in Indo-European ("Wackernagel's Law"), was generalized (albeit inconsistently) in Germanic.
"Sentence Negation in Germanic and Romance languages", a
joint project with linguists Molinelli and Bernini, examines type (especially word order type) as one factor in the curiously parallel development of the position of the negative from preverbal to discontinuous
to postverbal (the latter two less common positions for the negative in
the world's languages) in both Romance and Germanic. A wealth of
data is presented to indicate that type may have influenced the historical development of the negative in these languages, but that a possible
common origin for these two branches, language contact, and the
complex histories of individual languages in the two families have
played roles as well (the language contact situation is revealed in an
interesting map on 187 comparing both the structure of negative-verb
constructions and the lexical items involved).
The final essay of the collection, "The language typology of
Wilhelm von Humboldt'', originally a contribution to an issue of Lingua
e Stile dedicated to H, seeks to correct the impression created by
Chomsky's Cartesian Linguistics, among other writings, that H was
primarily a Rationalist: " . . . there is no doubt that the idea of a
Universal Form or Grammar, underlying the diversity of various language forms and the consideration of language as creativity (energia)
'which makes an infinite use of finite means' are concepts which
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239
characterize H's linguistics . . . But as we have seen, behind H's

complex linguistic approach . . . lies one main goal: the study of
(historical and anthropological) causes and kinds of language differences ... H thus wrote Uber die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen
Sprachbaues not Uber die Gleichheit and repeatedly stressed that the
'spirit of the people' is the real explanatory principle and basis for the
difference between languages ... "(198-99). To demonstrate that H
was a Romantic, a product of his times, as much or more than a
Rationalist, R points out "Since H agreed with Schlegel that some
languages (namely the inflectional ones) are better than others, his
typology, like Schlegel's has a finalistic teleological outlook, a "mustbe" approach to languages, and thus becomes a critical yardstick."
( 192). H 's threefold classification of languages is based on the methods
different languages use to express unity in a sentence and are the ( l)
isolating, (2) incorporating, and (3) agglutinating-inflectional types
(206-7).
R' s mastery of the literature on typology, his knowledge of current
theoretical debates in general linguistics both in Europe and the United
States, and his facility in the fields of Germanic and Romance philology are impressive. Although R 's theoretical choices are evident and
his criticisms of generative grammar in Chapters 4 and lO are pointed,
he is not polemical, and constantly strives for synthesis and communication among those who practice different brands of linguistics.
"Both [deduction and induction; theory-oriented and data-oriented]
positions are methodologically valid and necessary . . . Both derive
from a pretheoretical choice, often made on the basis of personal
inclination and, ultimately, ideological convictions, usually unconsciously accepted and hence not expressed explicitly-but nevertheless
still operating.'' (71 ). The volume will be of interest, then, to those
who wish to set a framework broad enough to encompass and relate the
variety of kinds of linguistic research that is going on today. It will be
crucial to those involved in typological research who need to sharpen
their understanding of the methods and goals of their research.
Dept. of English, Linguistics Program
Wayne State University
Detroit, M/. 48202
240
WORD,
ALBRECHT SCHONE, ed. Kontroversen, alte und neue. Textlinguistik contra Stilistik? Wortschatz und Worterbuch. Grammatische oder pragmatische
Organisation von Rede? Eds. Waiter Weis, Herbert Ernst Wiegand and
Marga Reis. Akten des VII. Internationalen Gennanisten-Kongresses Gottingen 1985. Band 3. Tiibingen: Niemeyer, 1986. x + 403 pp. (32.50 DM.)
Reviewed by
THOMAS
A. LovtK
This is the third of an 11-volume series of papers presented during

the 7th International Congress of Germanists held in Gottingen from
Aug. 25-31, 1985. Entitled "Controversies, old and new," the participants, all Germanists trained in both literature and linguistics, addressed primarily literary topics. Nonetheless, several sessions dealt
with more linguistically oriented topics, including the 45 articles on the
three topics included in this volume: 1) Textlinguistics or Stylistics? 2)
Lexicon and Dictionary, and 3) Grammatical or pragmatic organisation
of speech? Volumes 4 and 6 address language norms and dialects, and
women's language and literature, respectively.
Publishing the papers from a conference on a specialized topic,
such as this one in Gottingen, has its advantages and disadvantages.
On the one hand, the volume includes contributions by many major
researchers in the field. On the other hand, some contributions do not
always represent new ideas or research, but instead report on research
which may have appeared elsewhere in print. For the most part, however, the quality of papers presented in this volume is very good and
the issues addressed are truly of a controversial nature. Since it is not
possible to discuss each paper in detail, some brief comments on the
general themes addressed in the presentations will have to suffice.
The session on "Textlinguistics or Stylistics?" brought together
13 specialists from the fields of textlinguistics, stylistics and literary
studies. The first seven papers by G. Michel, H-W Eroms, H. Aust, B.
Sandig, G. Lerchner, K. Weissenberger, and A. Obermayer all consider the theoretical dichotomy between textlinguistics and stylistics or
rhetorics and treat a variety of topics, e.g., I) textual and stylistic
norms, rules, and typologies; 2) stylistic variation, and 3) textual models. Their data is taken from several non-literary text types, including
marriage announcements found in newspapers and weather reports
(Sandig) and historical descriptions of cities (Eroms).
Four of the remaining six papers involve stylistic/textual analyses
of literary texts. J. Goheen looks at allegorical structure in Gottfried' s
middle high German courtly epic Tristan und Isolde; F. Simmler char-
REVIEWS
241
acterizes and clarifies the function of syntax in the literary fairy tales
of German romanticism and contrasts this with the genre of orally
transmitted fairy tales represented by the brothers Grimm; H. Rupp's
interpretation of Paul Celan's poem Heimkehr demonstrates the limitations of a textlinguistic analysis sans interpretation; and W. Weiss
demonstrates the interface of stylistics and textlinguistics in the prose
of Robert Musil. In a clear departure from the other papers, E. Schulz
and E.W.B. Hess-Liittich investigate the use of the spoken language as
a group marker by young people.
Not surprisingly, most of the papers begin with a discussion of the
relationship between sytlistics and textlinguistics. Style or stylistics,
the older discipline, is seen as a subjective evaluation of esthetics,
which considers primarily stylistic devices. A stylistic analysis seeks to
provide depth, and remains, by nature, fuzzy.
Textlinguistics, on the other hand, is descriptive, more objective,
more certain of its task, and has a distinct methodology, which is based
on taxonomic and algorithmic procedures. The strategies for text creation, e.g., narrating, describing, arguing, and directing, in short the
speaker/writer intention, are critical.
Despite the controversy reflected in the session title Textlinguistik
contra Stilistik?, there is general agreement among these presenters at
least that textlinguistics and stylistics are not mutually exclusive. In
fact, textlinguistics may even have something to offer stylistic studies!
Cf. Goheen on allegory and Weiss on Musil's use of metaphor. To this
end, Michel (6) and Sandig (passim}-in her extremely lucid stylesubsume stylistics under textlinguistics.
The major shortcoming of traditional (literary) stylistics according
to G. Michel is its failure to adequately differentiate between the key
issues of normative rule vs. stylistic regularity. Current linguistic theories and methods, e.g., speech act theory, conversational analysis and
text linguistics, in conjunction with more empirical data from text type
studies, he suggests, are better suited to determine the most likely
regularities of the elusive stylistic norms.
Eroms finds it much easier to distinguish a stylistic analysis from
a textlinguistic analysis, whereas Aust notes that a text is much easier
to grasp than style. According to Aust the basic difference between
textlinguistics and stylistics is not what the two disciplines investigate,
but rather the questions each poses. Furthermore, a stylistic analysis is
more interested in the relationshhip of individual phases within a speech
activity, while a textlinguistic analysis is interested in the genesis of
texts and the identification of constitutive elements. In his concluding
242
WORD,
commentary, W. Weiss applauds the emphasis in the presentations on

the centrality of the text versus that of the origin, reception or context
of a text, thereby exposing his own methodological bias.
It should come as a surprise to no one that the field of lexicography, which enjoys a distinguished tradition in German linguistic scholarship, and lexicology should include 17 papers, an introduction
(Wiegand), a podium discussion and a conference summary (Fleischer), addressing controversial theoretical and practical issues of lexicography, e.g., word class inclusion/exclusion, monolingual vs. bilingual definitions, and audience needs.
In the lead article G. Harras, who speaks from years of lexicographical experience at the Institut fiir deutsche Sprache in Mannheim,
agrees with Wiegand (1985) that dictionary definitions need to be
written for the layman. Drawing on the work of H. Putnam (197 5,
1978), Harras recommends word definitions 1) that utilize stereotypic ally marked semantic features as reflected in the Sprachgemeinschaft, and 2) that avoid pseudo-scientific terminology. Kucera, on the
other hand, supports the notion that some degree of technical information that is comprehensible to the nonspecialist must be included in
definitions. Piischel, who reviews the merits of Johann August Eberhard's contribution to the history of German thesaurus writing, reiterates the old notion, that it is unclear who uses a thesaurus, despite the
necessity that any thesaurus be written with the user clearly in mind.
Some of the most stimulating papers propose inclusion in dictionaries of traditionally omitted word classes, e.g., modal particles
(Wolski), hedges (Kolde), formulaic expressions (Kiihn) and idioms
(Fleischer).
Three papers describe ongoing or planned dictionary projects.
Kirkness proposes abandoning the familiar German term Fremdwort
'foreign word' and adopting the English technical term 'hard word,' as
has been done at the IdS/Mannheim in the project Schwerworterbuch
for German. E. Firchow & H. Fix report on a successful computerized
lexicon for the Old Islandic Elucidarius, and Triib attempts to reconcile
difficulties presented by semasiological and onomasiological dictionaries for Swiss German. L. Zgusta broaches the delicate topic of
reputed plagiarism in M. Monier-Williams 1872 edition "A SanskritEnglish Dictionary" (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1989 & 1951.)
Acknowledging that dictionary writers today regularly borrow from the
work of others, he predicts an increase in this trend with the increased
computerization of dictionary projects.
Wiegand's paper on author lexica and his subsequent chairing of
REVIEWS
243
the podium discussion with West German authors Giinter Grass and
Helmut Hei~enbiittel (Wolski, 228-236) proved to be a highly controversial topic. Giinter Grass, who has strived for and developed a
"pluralistisches SprachversHindnis" in post-war West Germany, criticized Germanists in general and particularly Wiegand for utilizing a
Germanistensprache ... Lehrersprache, Funktioniirssprache (229),
which is difficult (for the layman not to mention G. Grass himself) to
comprehend.
Several papers address the language used in definitions. Reiterating an idea that has been around for several years, H.-P. Kromann
pleads for two different types of bilingual dictionaries for Germanistik-a "passive" reading reception dictionary that fosters Heriibersetzen, i.e. from L2 to L 1 , and an "active" production dictionary that
enables Hiniibersetzen, i.e., from L 1 to L2 K. Sunaga discusses the
necessity for eliminating culturally-bound interference problems in
German-Japanese dictionaries. Similarly, H. Nikula criticizes the deficiencies of using authentic language examples. J. Korhonen outlines
the problems of semantic and syntactic verb descriptions in a historical
dictionary of German, and F. J. Hausmann criticizes the major German
thesaurus, the Schiilerduden (Muller) for failing to provide a) adequate
context in its examples, b) pragmatic information of use to non-native
speakers and c) foreign words as an aid in meaning.
Forum 4 of the congress, entitled "Grammatical or pragmatic
organization of speech?'' consisted of 13 papers, including two official
responses to two of the papers presented (Lenerz to Braunmiiller, and
Hohle to Zemb). As M. Reis indicated in her introductory remarks, the
presentations represented very different opinions on the (in)dependence of the linguistic system and pragmatics.
W. Abraham performs a major task by sketching out the domain
of the term pragmatics in the introductory articles. Citing data from
right-brain/left-brain research (Bayer) he concludes that a definitional
separation of pragmatics from semantics is supported by the biological
separation.
Given the unique characteristics of German word order, it is understandable why most of the papers discuss the relationship of pragmatics and syntax and make frequent use of valence grammar. Within
this framework P. Mrazovic examines the extremely problematic classification of noun/verb compounds, e.g., in Abrede stellen, as a verb
plus adjunct or as full verb. K. Braunmiiller discusses principles of
German word order as typological patterns that have crystalized out of
contextually bound strategies. In his response to Braunmiiller Lenerz
244
WORD, VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)
rejects B's notion, that grammar is merely frozen pragmatics, because

it fails to explain, among other things, the conditions why certain
patterns should emerge but not others. J-M. Zemb questions the notion
of syntactic fields in German, particularly the Mittelfeld, i.e., the area
between subordinating conjunction and finite verb in German, for
being too metaphorical and lacking descriptive power. This is but one
of the notions that T. Hiihle systematically refutes in his response to
Zemb. H. Glinz, who sees no conflict between grammar and pragmatics, proceeds to discuss the sentence as a pragmatic notion, reserving
the English term clause for pragmatics, since German uses Satz in both
cases. P. Valentin discusses subordinate clauses which look like subordinate clauses, i.e., they are verb-final, but do not function as normal sentence elements, e.g., Wenn du Durst hast, Bier ist im Kuhlschrank. 'If you are thirsty, beer is in the refrigerator.'
The remaining five papers all treat topics other than the relationship of pragmatics to linear syntax. I. Rosengren dispenses forthwith
of the notion of a one-to-one relationship between speech act and
syntactic type and proposes instead that the semantic as well as syntactic structure determine expressions. In a discussion of pragmatics
and sentence stress, A Fuchs rejects the notion that the most important
word in a sentence is accented and establishes instead three text-semantic, functional dimensions for placing accent. G. Ohlschlager rejects the current definition of modality, i.e., speaker attitude toward a
proposition, as too broad. At the same time attributing modality to
linguistic expressions alone is too narrow, he states. W. Koch presents
an extremely valuable description of modal verb usage in a corpus of
German business correspondence, and H. Weydt concludes the volume
with yet another fine contribution toward understanding the modal
particles in German, in this case the pair denn and eigentlich.
As the title of this volume states, the papers presented here raise
a plethora of new and naggingly familiar controversial questions of
importance, not only to Germanists but to general linguists and language practitioners in general.
Dept. of Linguistics, Germanic, Asian & African Languages
Michigan State University
Wells Hall A-615
East Lansing. M/. 48824-/027
REFERENCES
Bayer, Josef. 1985. "Neurophysiologie und modulare Sprachbeschreibung." Ms. Aachen: Technical University.
245
REVIEWS
Miiller. Wolfgang. Ed. 1977. Schulerduden. Die richtige Wortwahl. Ein vergleichendes Worterbuch sinnverwandter Ausdrucke. Mannheim: Bibliographisches lnstitut.
Putnam, Hilary. 1975. Philosophical Papers. Vol. 2: Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge:
Cambridge U.P.
- - - . 1978. Meaning and the Moral Sciences. London: Routledge & K. Paul.
Wiegand, Herbert Ernst. 1985. Eine neue Auffassung der sog, lexikographischen Definition. Karl
Hyldgaards-Jensen & Arne Zettersten Ed. Symposium on Lexicography 11. Proceedings of
the Second International Symposium on Lexicography May 16-17 1984, University of
Copenhagen. Tiibingen. =Lexicographica. Series Maior 5. Pp. 15-100.
GERHARD LEITNER, ed., The English Reference Grammar: Language and

Linguistics, Writers and Readers. (Linguistische Arbeiten 172). Tiibingen:
Max Neimeyer Ver1ag, 1986. ii + 450 pp.
Reviewed by
CHARLES
W.
KREIDLER
This is a collection of papers given at a conference on ''English

Grammar-English Grammars," held at the Freie Universitat Berlin in
July 1985. Participants in the conference were scholars and teachers
concerned with the writing of grammars (of English) and/or the use of
such grammars in secondary and university-level English courses. Leitner points out in his Introduction (l-3) that a linguistically sound and
comprehensive grammar is not necessarily, or usually, the same as one
which is specifically aimed at students' needs and which concentrates
on the most common patterns of usage. Several of the participants ir
the conference, and contributors to this volume, are authors or co
authors of such pedagogical grammars, published or in progress.
The 24 papers in the volume are divided into two parts, sixteen of
them in Part I, Contemporary and Future Reference Grammars, and the
remaining eight in the more homogeneous Part Il, Historical and National Profiles of English Grammars.
The general topic of Part I is What should a pedagogical reference
grammar be? Three papers, however, deal with more specific matters.
Charles-James N. Bailey, 'Where English cannot put a preposition
before a relative or interrogative pronoun,' goes over the intricacies of
constructions like 'the hill up which they ran' vs. 'the bill which they
ran up,'' adding a lot of good points to a topic which has been heavily
worked over. One might wish his terminology was less idiosyncratic
and his references to other scholars less limited. Robert Burchfield,
'The end of the alphabet: Last exit to grammar,' reaffirms, with ex-
246
WORD,
amples from recent writings, the fact that subject-verb concord exists
in English and that variation occurs after nouns like group. Derek Davy,
'Implications of the emergence of new standards of English for the
writing of English grammars,' discusses problems which may arise in
attempts to describe English in all its native and non-native varieties.
Elsewhere in the volume there are a few pious statements about the need
to consider the varieties of World English, but in reality most of the
contributors show greater concern for finding a pedagogical minimum,
a search for the most common ways of expressing, for example, future
intentions.
Three of the participants describe texts which they have co-authored. Sidney Greenbaum, in 'The Grammar of Contemporary English and the Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language,'
explains why the authors of Quirk et al. 1972 decided to rewrite rather
than revise that book. The rewrite, Quirk et all985, is nearly twice the
size of the 1972 work, is said to contain new findings, new theoretical
discussions, a more elaborate treatment of tense, aspect, and modality,
and improvements in terminology and indexing. Jan Svartvik, 'A Communicative Grammar of English,' makes the claim that Leech and
Svartvik 1975 is a new approach to English grammar, based on language in use. Future pedagogical grammars, he maintains, will be
based on new means of surveying actual usage, will show greater
acceptance of language variety, and will be more oriented toward
semantic and pragmatic descriptions. Quite different is the approach of
Gottfried Graustein, 'English Grammar: A scholarly handbook in
teacher-training in the GDR,' who elaborates a much more extensive
analysis of syntax, as dealt with in his work, 1984.
Part of deciding what to teach involves the knowledge of what is
most used. John McH. Sinclair, 'First throw away your evidence,'
maintains there is need for much larger corpora-l million words or
more-than have previously been used as a basis for grammar-writing
or else descriptions are not likely to reflect the real language, and he
illustrates what can be done with present-day computers. A similar
note is struck by Dieter Mindt, 'Corpus, grammar, and teaching English as a foreign language,' who says that instruction should be based
on a fresh examination of data. He exemplifies the fresh approach with
a study of what standard grammars have to say about the comparative
frequency of different ways of expressing future intention (will, shall,
be going to, simple present, et al.), how German textbooks deal with
the same points, and what actually emerges from a study of the conversations in Svartvik and Quirk (1980). Mindt concludes that peda-
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247
gogical materials need to recognize that relative frequency of alternate

expressions is not the same in different kinds of discourse. In a similar
vein Wolfgang Zydatiss, 'Grammatical categories and their text functions-Some implications for the content of reference grammars,''
examines the use, or interpretation, of the present perfect in various
kinds of texts-advertisement, financial report, sports story, et al.-to
illustrate his point that a reference grammar should give an account of
the basic meaning of a linguistic form and show the modifications or
extensions of that meaning in various kinds of texts.
Four of the papers undertake to say what a reference grammar
should be. Egon Werlich, in 'The relevance of a text (type) grammar
in foreign language teaching: With a note on text type switches,'
makes the point that a text-oriented type of grammar is superior to a
sentence grammar, but it needs to be complemented by a text typological component (i.e. something which deals with different kinds of
discourse). Rene Dirven, 'Towards a pedagogical grammar,' states
that the making of a pedagogical grammar consists in selecting the
grammatical items which are problems for the learner, and what is
selected is to be presented in two phases. First, the descriptive matter
concentrates on what is different from the student's native language;
then an "additive phase" provides more specific detail. Jochen Niemeyer, 'Teachers, grammar teaching, and grammar books: Some desiderata,' deals with the role of grammar in the classroom. He points
out that school grammars and also recent standard reference works fail
to deal with, or give conflicting opinions on, several problems, such as
concord, co-occurence of certain adverbials with the present perfect
and past tense, solved already by earlier 20th century grammarians,
who should not be ignored. One point of this article is that the usual
teacher of English in Germany depends heavily on a reference grammar and does not have a whole shelf of such books nor subscribe to
teacher journals. Friedrich Ungerer, 'Guidelines for a multi-purpose
teaching grammar,' discusses the effects of a multi-purpose approach,
that is, one which takes into account student production of texts,
comprehension, and analysis, and he proposes a reduction and standardization of grammatical terms.
Three other articles are concerned with the audience, the nature of
students for whom such grammars are intended. Dietrich Lange, 'Is it
the schools' fault if students don't use grammars?,' searches for the
reasons for difficulties in learning grammar often experienced by German university students of English. His conclusions are forthright:
grammar teaching is confined to lower levels, where it is unduly sim-
248
WORD,
plified, and at upper levels didactic efforts are concentrated too exclusively on productive skills and the teaching of literature. Wolfgang
Mackiewicz and Harald Preuss, 'The role of scholarly grammars in
course design at university level,' conclude from a study they made that
use of grammatical handbooks leads to student acquisition of terminology but not to student performance in the target language. However,
such handboods have played an important role in the design of the
courses. A. Adler, H. Hirschmiiller, G. Leitner, K. Priifer, and G.
Schnorr, 'Grammars of English versus students of English,' maintain
that though most grammars select content and terminology on the basis
of presumed needs of their readers, no study has been made of how the
intended audience actually uses such books. They offer a pilot study
conducted at Freie Universitat as an entry into such further exploration.
The papers in Part 11 differ in scope but all are worthy contributions to the history of grammars of English. Robert H. Robins, 'The
evolution of English grammar books since the Renaissance,' traces
four centuries of change in the models which grammarians have followed, from the traditional Latinate to 17th century writers who partly
discarded the Latin model, to the 19th century approach of Henry
Sweet and the German Anglisten, to 20th century structuralists and
generati vists.
John Algeo, in 'A grammatical dialectic,' sees the history of
grammar writing and teaching in the USA as a sequence of eight
developments: Latinate grammars, nativist grammars, clause-focused
grammars, historical grammars, utilitarian functionalism, structuralism, the Students' Rights movement, and the Back to Basics movement.
Though somewhat overlapping, these developments have generally
been related in a continual thesis-antithesis-synthesis course. Charlotte
Downey, 'The constants and variables which guided the development
of American grammar writing in the 18th and 19th centuries,' shows
that grammar writing in America was at first strongly imitative of British
models, with emphasis on memorization of rules and definitions and on
parsing, changing by mid-19th century to more inductive exercises and
sentence-building. 'Goold Brown-The American grammarian of
grammarians in the nineteenth century,' by Kurt Wachtler, attributed to
that pedagogue the perpetuation of the authoritarian tradition of correctness and blames his view of language behavior for the ill-founded
linguistic stereotypes and cliches which are still with us.
Flor Aarts, 'English grammars and the Dutch contribution: 18911985 ,' shows with an interesting time-line (364) how the Dutch grammarians Poutsma, Kruisinga, Zandvoort, Aarts & Aarts, and van Ek &
REVIEWS
249
Robat have influenced or been influenced by Sweet, Jespersen,

Curme, Long, Quirk et al, and Hiddleston.
Aleksandra Jankowska, in 'Polish grammars of English,' discusses seven Polish grammars of English published in the period
1948-1980,. scholarly and pedagogical, and traces their development
from traditional, word-class-based grammars to an approach which is
meant to be "communicative."
Bertil Sundby, in 'Parallelism and sequence in early English prescriptive grammar,' claims that 18th century authoritarian views on
sequence of mood, tense, voice, etc. and on structural parallelism are
not merely opinions but reflect to some degree syntactic constraints
still in the language. These observations, he writes, serve to demonstrate the linguistic potential of a projected historical dictionary of
English normative grammar, such as the one currently being prepared
at the University of Bergen (see Sundby 1980).
Gerhard Leitner provides the retrospective summation in 'English
grammars: Past, present and future,' retracing major developments in
English grammar writing and concluding with a brief outline of the
future challenges: text/discourse, data base, native/non-native 'Englishes' and usage patterns.
The volume concludes with summaries of articles, descriptive
sketches of the contributors, a name index, and a very thorough keyword index.
Department of Linguistics
Georgetown University
Washington. DC 20057 USA
REFERENCES
Graustein, Gottfried et al. 1984. English grammar: A university handbook. 3rd ed. Leipzig:
Enzykopiidie.
Leech, Geoffrey, and Jan Svartvik. 1975. A communicative grammar of English. London: Longman.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech, and Jan Svartvik. 1972. A grammar of
contemporary English. London: Longman.
- - - . 1985. A comprehensive grammar of the English language. London: Longman.
Sundby, Bertil. 1980. A dictionary of English normative grammar 19700-1800. A preliminary
report. Linguistic Project Reports, Department of English, University of Bergen.
Svartvik, Jan, and Randolph Quirk, eds. 1980. A corpus of English conversation. Lund: Gleerup.
250
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VOLUME 41. NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)
JONATHAN FINE and ROY 0. FREEDLE (eds.). Developmental Issues in

Discourse. (Advances in Discourse Proccesses, X) Norwood, NJ: Ablex,
1983. xi-315 pp.
JONATHAN FINE (ed.). Second Language Discourse: A Textbook of Current Research. (Advances in Discourse Processes, XXV). Norwood, NJ:
Ablex, 1988. xi-214 pp.
Reviewed by
JACQUELINE ANDERSON
The Advances in Discourse Processes Series, published by Ablex

under the general editorship of Roy 0. Freedle, continues to make a
significant contribution to the field of linguistic analysis by bringing
together ideas, authors, and approaches from a number of disciplines,
all sharing a common interest in discourse. The strength of Volumes X
and XXV, like others in the series-and, ironically, their most notable
weakness-is their characteristic emphasis on empirical testing. The
multi-frame models provided by the authors included in the two books
strongly encourage teachers to construct theory-driven language development and intervention programs. But they do so by stressing the
kinds of logarithmic analyses that are frequently inaccessible to the
very classroom instructors who might most benefit from the models
being suggested.
The aim of these two volumes is to present diverse theoretical
approaches, methods, and applications of discourse analysis as they
relate to development within first and second language contexts. The
result is a far-ranging collection of articles on oral and written discourse, narrative and expository skills, reading and writing abilities,
educational and pragmatic considerations. In a double-pronged approach, the editors have carefully selected for inclusion substantive
studies which not only emphasize theory and methodology for the
specialist, but also those which provide practical applications and examples for the learner. Yet, this approach is not without its problems.
Although admitting that life and language, ultimately, are not
quantifiable, the linguistic researchers anthologized in these volumes
clearly find it necessary to justify their place in the scientific community by producing detailed quantitative studies of controlled rather than
natural discourse. While specialists know that linguistic behaviors cannot be reduced to lineal formulae, it is formulae which are emphasized
in these two books in a way that might be misleading to learners. Data
are presented as inseparable from mathematical models and, as a consequence, linguistic development is reduced to a function of theoretical
REVIEWS
251
coherence rather than seen as an outcome of multisystemic interaction.

Still, both texts are valuable additions to the field of language study for
a number of reasons: they investigate linguistic development from a
multisentential perspective, they stress the importance of situational
context to an understanding of discourse production and comprehension, and they integrate recent insights in cognitive psychology-particularly schema theory-with those of functional grammar and speech
act theory.
The 1983 volume, Developmental Issues in Discourse, includes
nine articles which, taken as a whole, support the notion that discourse
development is not the product of a single variable or skill. Rather it
is an on-going interactional process between various linguistic, cognitive, and social-action systems each with many variables contributing to a single outcome-linguistic competence. The first four chapters
by Martin, Graesser et al., Dintenfass, and Nix are primarily concerned with methodology. Martin's fine study, one of the most valuable in the book, explores the ontogenesis of register in children as
they learn to use their linguistic resources to produce contextually
appropriate texts. Adapting variation theory to the study of semantics
within a systemic-functional model of language, Martin demonstrates
that the development of register can be regarded as a process in which
the learner reweights 'the inherent probabilities in his/her linguistic
potential with respect to context in a way that is considered appropriate
in his/her culture" (37).
Graesser, Robertson, and Clark also are interested in context.
They examine those contextual conditions which assist readers in the
comprehension of prose through inference, expectation, and the reinterpretation of data based on new information. Defining a process they
call lamination, the authors suggest how comprehension of materials
takes place cognitively "in layers" and describe how it might be
facilitated for learners. As with most of the research presented in the
volume, this article stresses the foundational importance of schema
theory for discourse production and reception.
Dintenfass also uses schema theory to ground her research into
children's mode of recall and comprehension of social events, while
Nix stresses the utilization of real-world knowledge of children in
LINKS, a taxonomy he developed for representing inferential connections implicit in texts to improve the comprehension of developmentally-stalled readers. While Dintenfass's scoring system appears somewhat cumbersome for classroom use, and while Nix's taxonomy seems
unnecessarily reductive, both articles provide instructors with useful
252
WORD,
educational applications for assessing and, potentially, increasing student comprehension of various discourse modes. LINKS is especially
helpful in this area. It describes a set of cognitive operations between
propositions, sets of propositions, and other links that can be used to
assist children to regard reading as a behavior in which they actively
integrate information in the text with what they already know about the
world. Both Nix and Dintenfass also offer researchers the occasion to
reconsider the results of previous studies of recall and the kinds of
inferencing tasks given to children.
The next three chapters by Freedle and Fine, Eiler, and Scinto
are concerned with discourse production. Freedle and Fine present a
well-developed review of recent research on modes of classroom writing; in it they emphasize the importance of both top-down and bottomup discourse processing strategies while making it clear that such
one-directional models do not fully represent real-life language-processing behaviors. They then suggest a way of measuring cohesion in
oral performance of text-recall by the frequency of behavioral disruptions within, between, and across clauses. Eiler's work examines cohesion in the texts of 15 academically talented ninth-graders and demonstrates how the students' processes of text production developed
over the period of one school year. Although Eiler artificially groups
her homogeneous subjects into "low", "middle", and "high" subgroups and does not always differentiate her categories sufficiently,
she provides a valuable look at the effects of register and other contextual features as they interact with growth in domain~specific discourse.
Scinto's cross-sectional study of the acquisition of text-production
strategies is perhaps the most methodologically significant paper in the
volume. The author develops mathematically sophisticated models for
quantitatively assessing key textual variables such as coherence and
compactness which offer significant potential for further research. The
article also provides a well-reasoned and thought-provoking discussion
of the significance of thematic progressions in discourse and the
achievement of compositional form as determined by the presence of
coherent relations between successive sentences in a meaning unit.
The last two chapters-Kirsh's study of directives as an indication
of status among pre-school children, and Meyer and Rice's examination of the effects of age on prose-learning-are readable but offer few
new insights. Kirsh demonstrates that social variables such as gender,
intelligence, popularity, and language mutually define and constitute
each other, while Meyer and Rice lend support to previous research
REVIEWS
253
which indicates that age deficits in prose learning impact older adults
with average and low average verbal ability.
The variety of analytical methods and perspectives offered by the
authors included in Developmental Issues deal with discourse broadly
conceived. Progress in the comprehension and production of written
texts and oral retellings and the many factors which influence them are
discussed at length, while the social elements of discourse development are treated less successfully, and naturally occurring discourse in
conversation is barely mentioned except in Kirsh's study. The second
of the two volumes considered here, Second Language Discourse,
places more emphasis on language naturally produced in conversation.
While the same key issues-cohesion and coherence, schema
theory, and comprehension of texts-are covered in the later volume,
Second Language Discourse is more interested than its predecessor in
classroom applications of discourse study, particularly as they apply to
L2 learners. The framework and tone for the volume are set by
Jonathan Fine's well-considered introductory chapter on ''The Place of
Discourse in Second Language Study." Fine's thesis that discourse,
more than syntax or phonology, is influenced by differences in culture
offers a challenge to the way foreign languages have been formerly
and, all-too-often, presently taught. After reviewing current theory and
practice in L 2 learning, he maintains that without connections to context and situation, language does not sound natural and that sounding
natural is the goal of all language learning. Fine's challenge to researchers to explore the interaction of language, situation, and psychological processes as they emerge in discourse is taken up by the
other authors represented in the text.
Wolfson, for example, investigates how certain speech acts, their
social form, and the values of the speech community interact. Maintaining that compliments and apologies, in particular, give evidence of
the speech norms of a community, she shows how these speech acts are
carefully tied to who uses them, to what degree of elaboration, and
under what circumstances. Finding that there is a qualitative difference
between the speech behavior which middle class Americans use with
intimates and strangers, status equals and unequals, Wolfson suggests
a theory of linguistic social interaction which she calls The Bulge.
That is, in terms of certain speech acts, extremes of social distance
seem "to call forth very similar behavior, while relationships which
are more toward the center show marked differences" (32). While her
research is not directed primarily to those interested in L2 instruction,
her findings indicate that in order to master a language well, foreign
254
WORD,
learners must understand how native speakers of English continually

use language to negotiate their roles and relationships with one another.
Also interested in conversational interaction, Pica and Doughty
work from second language acquisition theory to focus on the importance of discourse modification in classroom interactions. Discovering
that the presence of a teacher increases the quantity but not modification of speech in the L2 classroom while interactions which require an
exchange of information without a teacher's presence result in significantly more modifications, the authors join Wolfson and Fine in seeking functional connections between language and situation.
Articles by Fanselow and Slaughter introduce models for studying
and assessing the language produced through practical classroom interaction. Fanselow's method of coding communications according to
source and target, purpose, the mediums used to communicate, the
way the mediums are used, and the content the mediums communicate
provides a conceptualization which can help teachers and researchers
uncover relationships which might otherwise remain unnoticed.
Slaughter's model, consistent with a negotiated and functional view of
language, describes interactional proficiency measures for four contexts of communicative participation: physical situation, linguistic
context, social context, and the invisible context which incorporates
assumptions shared or unshared among participants. Outlining 11 discourse proficiencies, she provides readers not merely with general
statements about, but with concrete ways of paying attention to context.
Canale, Frenette, and Belanger are also interested in assessment.
Seeking to examine Cummins' Language Interdependence Hypothesis,
they suggest that a combination of holistic and analytic scoring measures used with narrative and expository writing in the first and second
languages of students shows a significant relationship between L 1 and
L2 writing performance. The strength of the relationship, they found,
varies according to which scoring procedures are used.
The final two chapters of Second Language Discourse, coauthored
by Waiters and Wolf, are concerned with the psycholinguistic foundations of second language acquisition. Waiters and Wolf first provide
a detailed review of various psycholinguistic models of L2 processing
before posing their own model. Maintaining that appropriate experimental design must be brought to bear on the multiple sources of
second language usage, they recommend the employment of information integration theory in the study of second language comprehension.
REVIEWS
255
Their experimental tasks, conducted on English speakers of Hebrew

under controlled laboratory conditions, indicate that multiple sources
of comprehension which are available to speakers of a second language
are mentally integrated "by simple algebraic rules" (205).
Both volumes, then, emphasize a scientific approach to language
acquisition within its many social dimensions. What makes them especially valuable is that they present studies which meld various
strands of theoretical and experimental inquiry into cohesive approaches to the analysis of language. All of the authors included have
provided clear models which, despite their formulaic nature, should
assist language teachers in designing more effective classroom programs and should benefit specialists wishing to increase their knowledge of the functional aspects of linguistic development.
Department of Communication Arts
Madonna College
Livonia, M/48/50

Review of Dependency Syntax: Theory and Practice by I. Melcuk

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Date: 14 November 2015, At: 02:44

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Syntactic theories can be divided into two general types: those

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

sarily difficult to read. Some of Mel'cuk's endnotes are very long,

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These are considerably more complex than the phrase structure

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

1mtion of ergative construction is ''a non-nominative construction

Kolya v sosednej komnate

'Kolya is in the next room.'

One must be able to argue that these sentences do in fact have

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"Ostav'te menja!"-ispugalsja bufetCik

The questions raised by Mel'cuk are what the (syntactic) relation is

four pine trees.'

It is surprising that this problem is mentioned as little as Mel'cuk

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

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Reviewed by JosEPH CLANCY CLEMENTS

It is unique in the current stage of development of the study of

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VOLUME 41. NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

In dealing with dictionaries, C draws a useful distinction between

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care must be taken to systematically collect a representative inventory

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

recognizable internal structure, of which there are two types: those

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

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PAOLO RAMAT. Linguistic Typology. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1987.

Linguistic Typology is a very welcome English translation and

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

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'sentence' (and 'operation' . . . ) 'grammar', and even 'structure',

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

psycholinguistic as well as syntactic strategies in a complex and often

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characterize H's linguistics . . . But as we have seen, behind H's

VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

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This is the third of an 11-volume series of papers presented during

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VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

commentary, W. Weiss applauds the emphasis in the presentations on

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WORD, VOLUME 41, NUMBER 2 (AUGUST 1990)

rejects B's notion, that grammar is merely frozen pragmatics, because