Napoli, Donna Jo

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Swarthmore College Works Linguistics Faculty Works Linguistics 12-1-1990 Review Of "Noun + Verb Compounding In Western Romance" By K. Klingebiel Donna Jo Napoli Swarthmore College, dnapoli1@swarthmore.edu This work is brought to you for free and open access by . It has been accepted for inclusion in Linguistics Faculty Works by an authorized administrator of Works. For more information, please contact myworks@swarthmore.edu. Follow this and additional works at: https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics  Part of the Linguistics Commons Let us know how access to these works benefits you  Recommended Citation Donna Jo Napoli. (1990). "Review Of "Noun + Verb Compounding In Western Romance" By K. Klingebiel". Language. Volume 66, Issue 4. 873-874. DOI: 10.2307/414758 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics/141   Linguistic Society of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Language.http://www.jstor.orgLinguistic Society of AmericaReview Author(s): Donna Jo Napoli Review by: Donna Jo Napoli Source:   Language, Vol. 66, No. 4 (Dec., 1990), pp. 873-874Published by:  Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/414758Accessed: 21-07-2015 13:51 UTCYour use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jspJSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:51:07 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsBOOK NOTICES Ch. 5 (141-51) discusses the 'broadly-defined cataphor', in which an expression is co-refer- ential with the subsequent context, even if the subsequent context is not strictly necessary for its interpretation, as in Marie a apporte UNE NOUVELLE TROUBLANTE: Sophie a disparu. 'Marie brought a disturbing piece of news: So- phie had disappeared'. A brief conclusion (153-55) points out that some of the most interesting aspects of the cat- aphor, such as how it contributes to informa- tion flow in a text, still remain to be explored. K emphasizes the preliminary nature of his work, which is intended to lay out the ground for further research on the relationship between different types of text-cohesion devices. As such, it is of interest to text grammarians, es- pecially those comparing cohesion phenomena across languages. [CLYDE THOGMARTIN, Iowa State University of Science and Technology.] Noun + verb compounding in Western Romance. By KATHRYN KLING- EBIEL. (University of California publications in linguistics, 113.) Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. Pp. xvi, 269. Paper $29.00. This book gives a comprehensive overview of the history of compounds consisting of a N(oun) followed by a V(erb) in four Western Romance Languages: French, Occitan, Cata- lan, and Spanish. Approximately one half of the book is devoted to listing the corpus, which is arranged into appendices by language, where the first list in every appendix gives examples of these compounds at various stages in the de- velopment of the languages and where the date of the attested examples is given along with a translation. Klingebiel is careful to note that written attestation cannot be taken as definitive evidence about dating. Within each appendix is a section of other compound structures which are not clearly N+V, but either have a first element other than a N or a second element which is derivationally related to a V (such as a N formed from the present participle). After a separate list of words which are of dubious analysis, the appendices then continue with me- dieval and renaissance data (where Old French and Old Provencal are taken to have ended around 1350; Old Catalan and Old Spanish, in 1479 with the accession of Ferdinand and Isa- bella), followed by modern data, with lists of nominal N+V compounds and verbal N+V compounds. A fifth appendix gives data from Medieval Latin. If it had no other virtues, this book would be valuable for its thorough and compendious presentation of the corpus. But there are other reasons to value the book. The first half of the manuscript contains dis- cussion of the corpus. Many scholars have claimed that N+V compounds are no longer extant in Western Romance; few have done more than merely mention them (and K care- fully summarizes the relevant linguistic litera- ture). However, these compounds are in fact abundantly attested in Catalan and Occitan, and scattered examples can be found even in Span- ish and Northern French. K points out that there are at least six sources of such compounds: di- rect inheritance from spoken Latin (where some compounds may have been formed so early that, by the time of Classical Latin, they were no longer even transparently compounds); loan translations from Latin or Greek (where bor- rowing from Latin went on throughout the me- dieval period, and typically centered around the lexical domains of religion, administration, and, marginally, medicine); back-formation; remod- eling of existing compounds; independent cre- ation of compounds (often by analogy with other compound patterns-p. 77); and a small number of conversions from infinitival formations. She relates the production of the N+ V compound to a phrasal syntax in which objects precede verbs, as in Latin. By the 16th century this syn- tactic order had virtually disappeared from Ro- mance, and the N + V compound became a rarity, with new examples being formed only sporadically thereafter. K traces the type back to Indo-European by adducing examples from Latin, Greek, and Vedic Sanskrit. In all of these languages nouns were inflected, and she points out that com- pounds are attested with the root of the noun alone as well as with inflectional endings on the noun. Furthermore, in Latin a linking vowel (typically -i-) was often employed between N roots and a following consonant-initial V. If the N occurs with a final inflectional vowel, many questions arise as to which declensional form of the N is being employed (particularly with respect to distinguishing between the functions generally attributed to genitive and ablative end- ings). These various attestations persisted into later Romance. However, K suspects that graphic variation was not a true indication of 873 This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:51:07 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsLANGUAGE, VOLUME 66, NUMBER 4 (1990) phonetic variation (59); rather, the disappear- ance of nominal declensions was probably con- nected with the fact that the first element of the compound was a root form. K notes that the most common first element of these compounds by far is man- 'hand', and she relates this fact to the importance of hand gestures in feudal rituals (49). K relates the fact that caput is the second most frequent N element to this noun's semantic underdeterminacy (where it could mean 'head', 'end', 'chapter', 'paragraph', or 'legal head of family'). Among V second ele- ments we find recurrence of a few verbs and then several isolated examples (61). K gives charts showing the relative frequency of N first elements and V second elements across the four languages (64, 67). This book does not itself present arguments pertinent to modern theories of morphology or phonology. However, the data are a useful re- source to linguists interested in morphology and phonology, and K's observations are both in- formed and sensible. [DONNA Jo NAPOLI, Swarthmore College.] Oggetti e soggetti nella formazione della morfosintassi romanza. By NUNZIO LA FAUCI. (Nuova collana di linguistica, 7.) Pisa: Giardini Edi- tori, 1988. Pp. 131. Using the combined perspective of universal- typological studies and Relational Grammar (RG), La Fauci rethinks such classic problems of Romance linguistics as the loss of case in- flection, the formation of the compound past tenses, and the diversity of past participle agree- ment systems. Objecthood is the main link among these strands of inquiry, so RG seems an appropriate framework, since it is what gave the impetus to generative studies of unaccusa- tivity. Whereas GB work in this area has inev- itably emphasized linear order over grammatical relations, RG (at least as practiced by LaF) as- sumes that either or neither may dominate the other within a given system. In LaF's view, the Old Romance two-case system does not continue the nominative/ac- cusative codifications of Latin (distinguishing all subjects from all objects), but rather distin- guishes between actives (subjects of active verbs) and inactives (subjects of middle verbs plus objects). The fact that inactives control past participle agreement (PPA) in Old Romance is interpreted here as partial compensation for the ongoing loss of cases. By treating the cas regime as inactive, hence unmarked (just as ab- solutive is unmarked relative to ergative), LaF is able to explain why it survived rather than the cas sujet. This is harder to explain when one instead equates regime with ace. and sujet with nom., since nom. is generally unmarked in a nom./acc. system. But as the two-case system collapsed, the ac- tive/inactive codification gave way to a new nom./acc. distinction based on linear order: ob- ject = postverbal = ace.; subject = preverbal = nom. It is just when objects appear in nom. position that they, like middle subjects, control PPA. Once again PPA seems to fill a need for case marking. And it is precisely those lan- guages which lack PPA, like Spanish, that have developed the exceptional case marking of di- rect objects with prepositions. The division of the auxiliary function between esse and habere does not reflect an active/in- active codification, but rather continues the middle/active distinction of the Latin verb, a condition LaF calls 'split activity' (52). If the surface subject has been a direct object at any level of structure (the case of middles and un- accusatives), esse is chosen, otherwise habere. LaF's analysis of the Romance compound past is not separable from the RG framework, and needs to be read in detail; the crux is that Latin habere can initiate a new subject at the struc- tural level in which it takes over predicatehood from the past participle (which then becomes a Chomeur), so that a portion of its original pos- sessive meaning is kept. The Romance reflexes of habere lose the ability to initiate a new sub- ject, and so are fully fledged auxiliaries. The closing contrastive study of PPA in sev- eral Romance idioms suggests that the fewer restrictions a dialect puts on PPA, the more con- servative it is. Thus the dialect of Altamura (Puglie) is extremely conservative, necessitat- ing only that the controller of PPA be a direct object at some level of structure, just as in Early Romance. Italian places an additional restric- tion and French yet another, while Spanish, Portuguese, and Sicilian are the most innovative in allowing PPA only for passives (i.e. when controller is surface subject). LaF is fully aware of the challenge this presents to the traditional areal view of PPA as itself being an innovation that spread outward from Central Romance. I have highlighted what I consider the most important of the original ideas and analyses 874 This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:51:07 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review Of  Noun + Verb Compounding In Western Romance  By K. Klingebiel

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Review Of Noun + Verb Compounding In Western Romance By K. Klingebiel

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