Napoli, Donna Jo

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Swarthmore College Works Linguistics Faculty Works Linguistics 12-1-1987 Review Of "X-Bar Grammar: Attribution And Predication In Dutch" By F. C. Van Gestel 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. (1987). "Review Of "X-Bar Grammar: Attribution And Predication In Dutch" By F. C. Van Gestel". Language. Volume 63, Issue 4. 916-917. DOI: 10.2307/415729 https://works.swarthmore.edu/fac-linguistics/146   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. 63, No. 4 (Dec., 1987), pp. 916-917Published by:  Linguistic Society of AmericaStable URL:  http://www.jstor.org/stable/415729Accessed: 21-07-2015 13:33 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 13:33:30 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsBOOK NOTICES Grammaire t theorie du langage au 18e siecle: 'Mot', 'temps' et 'mode' dans 1'Encyclopedie methodique. By PIERRE SWIGGERS. Lille: Presses Universitaires, 1986. Pp. 112. F 90.00. This book's cover is so handsome that one scarcely notices what is missing: the name of Nicolas Beauzee (1717-89), author of the three articles reproduced here with introductions by S. They are entries which B wrote originally for Diderot & d'Alembert's monumental Encyclo- pedie (Paris, 1751-80), then revised for his own Encyclopedie methodique: Grammaire et litte- rature (Paris, 1782-86). The present book com- plements S. Auroux's edition of two other articles by B (L'Encyclopedie: 'Grammaire' et 'langue' au XVIIIe siecle, Paris, 1973). B's current renaissance (see also my BN on M. Wilmet, La determination nominale, Lg. 63.434-5, 1987) is credited to his 'modernity'; this means, in effect, that a number of wheels re-invented in the 20th century were already rolling in his work. He gives form priority over meaning, pursues a fairly rigorous binarism in his analyses, cites ungrammatical sentences as linguistic evidence, and posits universals based on data from all the languages known to him. Yet he clearly lacks an adequate concept of his- torical relationships among languages. This was to be developed by the next generation of lin- guists, as they lost sight of B and the long tra- dition that preceded him. The article 'Mot' should interest anyone working with basic grammatical categories and relations. B classified declinable words as de- terminate (nouns, pronouns) or indeterminate (adjectives, verbs), and indeclinables as supple- tive (prepositions, adverbs) or discursive (con- junctions). The surprising combination of ad- jectives (including determiners and quantifiers) with verbs is based on the view that both must receive determinate inflection from a noun or pronoun; this is not far from the current treat- ment of inflection as an affixed nominal ele- ment. 'Temps' is the most complex and controver- sial article, proposing a wholesale revision of the traditional tense system. For B, the PRESENT tenses were those which express simultaneous 916 existence with a given epoch-i.e., all and only the simple tenses (the traditionally-termed present, imperfect, simple past & future, pres. conditional, pres. & impf. subjunctive, pres. in- finitive & participle). B's PRETERIT and FUTURE tenses express existence prior or subsequent to a given epoch; the former comprise the com- pound and supercompound tenses, the latter the periphrastic futures with devoir and aller. Well aware of how radical the proposal was, B devoted many pages to defending it. He sup- ported putting je parle, je parlai, je parlerai in a unified category of 'present' by citing contexts where they are interchangeable. But then he cloaked the partial interchangeability ofjeparlai, j'aiparle orje parlerai, je vaisparler in different terms, to sustain their separate classification; whether a tense expresses simultaneity with the past or future, or existence prior or subsequent to the present, he claimed, the result is virtually identical. It seems, ultimately, that B's edifice of semantic/metaphysical explanations is pos- terior, and that strictly formal criteria dictated the system. This does not, however, efface its originality, or its suitability for continued in- vestigation by Romance morphologists. In the introduction to 'Mode', S shows how B departed from the usual 18th c. treatment of mood as a semantic feature with affinities to derivational morphology-returning to the po- sition of medieval modistic grammar, which re- stricted mood to verbal inflection. S, who has earned an outstanding reputation in linguistic historiography, is at his best when positioning B in the perspective of his predecessors. If, when summarizing the content of B's articles, S's comments are sometimes redundant, it is just that we do not need a contemporary voice to interpret B for us. His clarity of thought and expression pierces through two centuries of ob- livion, and his proposals have far more than merely historical interest. S deserves great credit for restoring this work to print. [JOHN EARL JOSEPH, University of Maryland.] X-bar Grammar: Attribution and predication in Dutch. By FRANK C. VAN GESTEL. Dordrecht: Foris, 1986. Pp. v, 191.f38.00. In this dissertation, G argues that the subject/ predicate relation which is expressed explicitly This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:33:30 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and ConditionsBOOK NOTICES in copular sentences is also implicit in the re- lation of noun to attributive adjective. He gives a brief but thorough history of the debate over whether attributive adjectives should be gen- erated in copular clauses and transformationally derived, or whether they should be base- generated in their surface position with no movement or deletion. G argues against a transformational analysis, and in favor of base- generation of an A3 node in prenominal posi- tion-where A3 is, essentially, a small clause with PRO in subject position and A2 in predicate position. In the process, G has to modify both the Projection Principle and the definition of government. Of course, theoreticians have be- come accustomed to considering modifications of both these concepts since at least 1981. How- ever, this in no way diminishes the ambition of G's work: he firmly holds to his data, and re- quires that the theory be empirically adequate. Unfortunately, many of G's copious data lists lack much explication of their import. This is particularly true in Ch. 3; here I would have appreciated remarks as to exactly how the data were problematic or supportive for the analysis being considered-and, especially, an expla- nation of the met 'with' absolutive. (I am puz- zled, e.g., by the failure of item 6g on p. 55.) Nevertheless, G's discussion and criticism of many issues, particularly of ? N and ? V as fea- tures, is strong. One interesting and important point is that restrictive and non-restrictive rela- tive clauses have the same structure in Dutch (Ch. 4). To be sure, some relevant facts for En- glish differ from those for Dutch; but the im- portant point is that Dutch offers evidence that semantic differences do not have to be paral- leled by syntactic differences. Elaborate ver- sions of X-bar theory, based on the strict notion that all semantic distinctions must be reflected in the syntax, could well be simplified without losing empirical adequacy. Another much ap- preciated feature of this book is its organization: every now and then (as at the start of Ch. 5), G gives a recapitulation of where we've arrived thus far. This volume is an interesting and serious con- tribution to our understanding of the syntactic and semantic aspects of attribution. The pro- posal of an A3 node might have not appeared in G's dissertation if Chomsky's Knowledge of language (New York: Praeger, 1986) had been published before G's dissertation was written- since Chomsky allows for a subject/predicate relation that does not require any clause or small clause analysis. However, much of G's work is valid even if we are to consider a base-gen- eration of attributive adjectives which posits them as A2 in prenominal position (with no small clause structure-and thus no PRO). I recom- mend his book to scholars of predication, of X- bar theory, and of Dutch. [DONNA JO NAPOLI, Swarthmore College.] Frisian reference grammar. By PIETER MEIJES TIERSMA. Dordrecht, Hol- land, & Cinnaminson, NJ: Foris, 1985. Pp. x, 157. T's book is a relatively non-technical descrip- tion of modern West Frisian, a dialect spoken by approximately 350,000 inhabitants of the province of Friesland in northeast Holland. T focuses on the literary standard, a more con- servative form of WFr. shaped by scholars and activists over the past two centuries and based primarily on the Klaaifrysk subdialects. FRG is the first major Frisian grammar targeted to an English-speaking audience; it is intended to serve both the trained linguist and the educated layperson. Ch. 1, 'Introduction', briefly summarizes the history and development of WFr., followed by the geographical disposition of its modern dia- lects and the rise of the literary standard. It con- cludes with an informative discussion of the present sociolinguistic status of WFr. Ch. 2, 'Phonology', details the rich WFr. in- ventory, including 9 short and 9 long vowels, with numerous diphthongs (and according to some, triphthongs). The major phonological processes affecting both vowel and consonant segments are presented; for the vowels, these are nasalization, truncation-and, most char- acteristic, shortening of long stem vowels and 'breaking' (alternation of rising and falling diph- thongs). For the consonants, the processes include assimilation, syllabification, final devoicing, r-deletion, and d-insertion (cf. St. Dutch). The chapter concludes with a succinct and very useful exposition of the major (pri- mary) word-stress patterns. Chap. 3, 'Spelling', is devoted to WFr. or- thography. Many of the principal spelling rules are similar to those of Standard Dutch. Chap. 4, 'Morphology', presents the major WFr. form classes, starting with the major con- stituents of the noun phrase and their inflec- tional patterns; these include determiners, 917 This content downloaded from 130.58.65.20 on Tue, 21 Jul 2015 13:33:30 UTCAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Review Of  X-Bar Grammar: Attribution And Predication In Dutch  By F. C. Van Gestel

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Review Of X-Bar Grammar: Attribution And Predication In Dutch By F. C. Van Gestel

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