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Publication metadata Title: Review of Payne, Thomas. Describing morphosyntax. A guide for

field linguists Author(s): Peter Bakker Journal: Linguistic Typology DOI/Link: https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1999.3.2.271 Document version:

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https://doi.org/10.1515/lity.1999.3.2.271

Book Reviews

Thomas E. Payne, Describing Morphosyntax: A Guide for Field Linguists.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997, 413 pages, ISBN 0-521-58805-7 (paperback), US$ 24.95; 0-521-58224-5 (hardback), US$ 64.95.

The book under review is intended äs a research guide for linguistic fieldwork-ers. It should enable them to recognize morphosyntactic phenomena in thelanguages of the world during their fieldwork and to name and describe them.As such, it can also be seen äs a rather practical introduction to typology forlinguists working on undescribed languages or planning to do so.

With the growing impact of typological studies in the last decades, there is ashift noticeable in the nature of grammatical descriptions. In the past, they wereoften written with the goal of advancing the reconstruction of a proto-language.They were based on inventories of forms and paradigms, with little attentionfor semantics, language use, or even syntax. Many of those grammars aredifficult to use for typologists, äs it is often hard to find relevant Information onparticular grammatical phenomena, especially concerning their functional side.Furthermore, in many research traditions terminology used to be employed thatwas specific to the study of the language families concerned. In contrast, inmore recent years, functionally oriented grammars have appeared, in whichfunctions rather than forms are taken äs points of departure. Rather than listingparadigms, they would have sections discussing, e.g., "possession" or "tense-mood-aspect".

Most of the literature on linguistic fieldwork has been produced in the struc-tural and historical-comparative tradition. Payne's book is the first which ex-plicitly takes a functionalist-typological point of view for the field-based de-scription of languages. Instead of structural features and discovery proceduresfor paradigmatic Information, Payne presents functional groupings of gram-matical phenomena. This can be illustrated most succinctly by listing the chap-

Linguistic Typology 3 (1999), 271-278 1430-0532/1999/003-0271©Walter de Gruytcr

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272 Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2

ter headings: morphological typology, grammatical categories, constituent or-der typology, noun and noun-phrase operations, predicate nominals and relatedconstructions, grammatical relations, voice and valence adjusting operations,other verb and verb-phrase operations, pragmatically marked structures, clausecombinations, and language in use. All these chapters contain inventories ofwhat a fieldworker may encounter in working on an undescribed language.Phonology, however, is not covered.

Payne shows a broad knowledge of morphosyntactic typology, and he pre-sents lucid clarifications of many of the complex phenomena in the languagesof the world. His book can therefore also be used äs a form of introduction totypology (without, of course, discussions of methodology and the like). It isless detailed than the three collective volumes edited by Shopen (1985), withwhich it can be compared, but it is certainly more practical for the fieldworker.It is modular enough that the chapters can be studied independently, and italso remains readable if read from cover to cover. Terminology and analy-ses are largely independent of specific theories, which is in my opinion äs itshould be: theories change or die out, but a grammatical description is writtenfor eternity. Despite the occasional criticism of the Government-and-Bindingapproach, certain theoretical concepts are in fact borrowed from it in Payne'sdiscussion of the "movement" of question words. In general, the terminol-ogy used is explained, although some background knowledge of linguistics ispresupposed.

The final chapter deals with discourse and text genres and is misleadingly?

included under the heading "Conclusions". Consideration of this area wouldcertainly enrich descriptive grammars, and it also is suggestive for further re-•search in typological studies. For example, one of the text genres mentionedare "proverbs". This genre, however, is completely lacking in all languagesof the Americas, and further studies may reveal more such areal or geneticgeneralizations.

Payne has a rieh experience in fieldwork with a variety of languages, ofwhich Panare (Amazonian), Yup'ik (Eskimo), Yagua (Peru), and Philippinelanguages are most prominently present in the book. The examples are chosenfrom a broad geographical and typological ränge of other languages, but un-fortunately Payne often does not provide sources. Sometimes he credits fellowresearchers, sometimes (it seems) Speakers, sometimes he refers to a descrip-tive or typological study, but often the reader has to use guesswork. It alsotends to be unclear whether the examples were elicited or spontaneous—eventhough Payne emphasizes the necessity to keep the two distinct. Many exam-ples can only be from elicitation sessions," like pragmatically odd sentencessuch äs "the child has a father" (p. 126). For certain languages no genetic affil-iation or geographical area is given (e.g., Lamani on p. 298, an Indic languageof Indian nomads).



Book Reviews Linguislic Typology 3-2 273

A book with such scope is bound to err in details. Thus, some of the refer-ences are missing from the bibliography (e.g., Tomlin 1995 on p. 345). Thereare occasional mistakes in examples, especially with diacritics (e.g., in theTurkish examples on p. 178, taken over wrongly from Comrie 1989: 176),but sometimes also affecting the meaning (e.g., in the Turkish sentence on p.124 the Turkish word for "coffee" is translated äs "book"). Certain pertinentgrammatical phenomena might easily have been included, such äs allocutivemarkers äs in Basque or honorifics other than the tu/vous distinction. Some-times basic literature on a subject has been neglected, such äs Hengeveld'swork on the copula, or work on negation after Hörn (1978), including OstenDahl's, whose work on tense-aspect is also omitted. As to morphological ty-pology, Payne's notion of "synthesis" (pp. 27-28) is at odds with that in hissource, Comrie (1989: 46), and his definition of "polysynthetic" strikes me äsmistaken (cf. Mithun 1988).

No book can be perfect and complete, however, and even with shortcomingslike those mentioned the result is a very readable and useful handbook forfieldworkers, who will get a rough inventory of what they can expect whentrying to tackle a new language.

There is an appendix with a very useful discussion of the two broad types ofdata obtained in fieldwork: elicited data and texts. Both types are necessary andcomplement one another, but they are not equally fit for each subfield. Eliciteddata are unreliable for word order, Intonation, clause combining, sentence-levelparticles, among others, whereas elicitation is most useful for phonology, mor-phophonemics, and inventories of inflection, pronouns, and the lexicon. Thissix page appendix, however, is all the practical Information the reader is gettingon field work techniques. Not much help is offered äs to discovery procedures.For instance, although the various forms of aspectual distinctions are discussed(pp. 238-244), there is no advice on how to identify them with a few simpletests (like those in Dik 1997: 106-117,221-225). Further potentially very use-ful fieldwork advice might have included the recommendation to study gram-mars of related and unrelated neighbouring languages, since these always havetraits in common. The existence of areal features, however, is nowhere men-tioned in the book. There is, however, a chapter on the demographic, ethno-graphic, and sociolinguistic Information to be included in a reference grammar,and a chapter on terminology.

Payne provides practical tips mostly in recommending subjects which shouldfigure in any reference grammar—for which separate text blocks with usefulquestions are given regularly. Overall, then, his book is more a guidebookfor writing a reference grammar on functional principles than a guide for fieldresearch.

Compared to anthropology, where fieldwork is the subject of instruction anddiscussion in a large body of literature, surprisingly little has in fact been writ-



274 Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2

ten on the methodology, ethics, or practice of linguistic fieldwork. Also, mostof the linguistic field manuals have been out of print for a long time; but luckilya few new ones will be out soon. For interested readers I list some relevant titlesto complement the book under review, which lacks any discussion or even men-tion of such fieldwork literature—perhaps on the assumption that the readerwill already be familiär with it: Bouquiaux & Thomas (1992), Burling (1984),Grinevald Craig (1979), Kibrik (1977), Manessy & Thomas (eds.)(1974), New-man (1992), Samarin (1967), Vaux & Cooper (1998), Weiers (1980), Wurm(1969).

A second appendix gives a list of some 60 reference grammars from allcontinents that have been judged "successful" by colleagues and students, onthe grounds that Information can be found easy and fast. Conceivably, this listwill be found useful by typologists working with samples. It is very diverse,though, and ranges from functionalist grammars to structural and historical-comparative grammars, of the kind often judged useless by typologists.

There are indices of subjects (with some omissions) and of languages andfamilies, the latter also mentioning the phenomenon discussed. Together withthe highly analytic table of contents, this enables the reader to find things easily.

The modest price of the book makes it affordable for any linguist. If I wouldbe sent off to an uninhabited island, I would not take Payne's book with me—ifonly because there would be no one to try it out on. I would of course regretthis omission when some Friday were cast ashore. If I knew that fieldworkcan be done where I was going, and there were room for only one book in myluggage, I would probably take Describing Morphosyntax along.

Aarhus Universitet PETER BAKKER

Correspondence address: Institut for Lingvistik, Aarhus Universitet, Jens Chr. Sk-ousvej 7, DK-8000 Ärhus C, Denmark; e-mail: [email protected]

ReferencesBouquiaux, Luc & Jacqueline M.C. Thomas (1992). Studying and Describing Unwritten Lan-

guages. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Burling, Robbins (1984). Learning a Field Language. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Comrie, Bernard (1989). Language Universals and Linguistic Typology. Chicago: University of

Chicago Press.Dik, Simon C. (1997). The Theory ofFunctional Grammar, Part 1: The Slructure ofthe Clause.

Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.Grinevald Craig, Colette (1979 [1987]). Jacaltec: Field methods in Guatemala. InTimothy Shopen

(ed.), Languages and their Speakers, 3-57. Cambridge, Mass.: Winthrop. Reprint Philadel-phia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Kibrik, Aleksandr E. (1977). The Methodology of Field Investigations in Linguistics: Setting upthe Problem. The Hague: Mouton.



Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2 275

Manessy, Gabriele & Jacqueline M. C. Thomas (eds.)(1974). Les langues sans tradition Icriie:M&hodes d'enquete et de description. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Mithun, Marianne (1988). System-defining slructural properties in polysynthetic languages. Zeit-schrift für Phonetik, Sprachwissenschaft und Kommunikationsforschung 41: 442-451.

Newman, Paul (1992). Fieldwork and field methods in linguistics. California Linguistic Notes23-2: 1-8.

Samarin, William (1967). Field Linguistics: A Guide to Linguistic Field Work. New York: Holt,Rinehart & Winston.

Shopen, Timothy (ed.) (1985). Language Typology and Syntactic Description. 3 volumes. Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press.

Vaux, Bert & Justin Cooper (1998). Introduction to Linguistic Field Methods. München: LincomEuropa.

Weiers, Michael (1980). Linguistische Feldforschung: Ein Leitfaden. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.Wurm, S. A. (1969). Linguistic Fieldwork Methods in Auslralia. (AIAS Manual No. 3.) Canberra:

Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies.

Tim van Baar, Phasal Polarity. (Studies in Language and Language Use, 30.)Amsterdam: IFOTT, 1997, xii +397 pages, ISBN 90-74698-30-1, NLG 40.00.

The book by Tim van Baar, bis Ph.D. dissertation, is an extensive crosslinguis-tic study of phasal expressions. At least for some Indo-European languages,expressions such äs English already, no longer, not yel, still, especially theirsemantics, have been well studied. Van Baar's work differs considerably fromthis tradition. It offers systematic analyses for an impressive set of at least 40genetically distant languages, examining grammar, semantics, functions, andcontexts of use. An important merit of the book is the author's attention to therelationship between formal and semantic properties of such items and betweentheir distributions and functions.

The core theoretical notion of the book is that of PHASAL POLARITY. Asthe term suggests, it is assumed that phasal polarity expressions form a distincttype of polarity items. The necessity for such a new notion originates froma critique of Löbner's Duality Hypothesis, where phasal polarity expressionsare viewed äs each other's negatives (see, e.g., Löbner 1986). For example,English not yet is claimed to be logically equivalent to the external negation ofalready, i.e., "not (already p)", and to the internal negation of still, i.e., "still(not p)". However, van Baar lists a number of cases which the Duality Hypoth-esis fails to account for. First, there are items that are difficult to deal with inthe Duality framework, because they cannot be properly related to ALREADY orto STILL·, English no longer and not yet are examplcs. (Following the author'snotation, we use smallcap italics for names of lexical categories with a ccrtainmeaning; ALREADY Stands for "category of expressions meaning 'already' in a



276 Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2 f

given language".) Second, only those forms which have a more or less "regu-lär" meaning can be accounted for; this excludes all items that have additionalsemantic components, such äs English finally, already, and still not. Basedon Löbner's data (1986), äs well äs those of van der Auwera (1998) and Van-deweghe (1992), the author argues for the primary role of polarity oppositions.His only criterion for distinguishing phasal polarity expressions from othertypes of polarity expressions is that due to their semantics they form a distinctgroup. They are defined thus: "Expressions of Phasal Polarity are structuredmeans of expressing polarity in a sequential perspective". By using a phasalpolarity expression, the Speaker relates the Situation or its absence to the op-posite Situation at an earlier or later stage, or to an opposite Situation existingsimultaneously. This opposite Situation is presupposed, and it functions in thediscourse äs an alternative to the given Situation. Their use is furthermore re-stricted to contexts in which the polarity oppositions are viewed äs sequential:the use of NOT YET, for example, presupposes a subsequent polarity Opposi-tion, whereas NO LONGER presupposes a preceding one. In this respect, theauthor regards the use of phasal polarity expressions äs a Variation of ordinary,e.g., non-sequential polarity. If the Speaker uses negation, this is normally donein order to refer to the absence of its opposite, without any further sequentialpresuppositions. The author suggests that polarity sensitivity manifests itselfin differences in formal coding and in the relationship between the form andthe fünction of phasal polarity items. Moreover, the relevant expressions mayshow Symptoms of paradigmaticity, with phasal polarity items tending to forma close-knit paradigm.

Phasal polarity expressions are considered subcomponents of a larger sys-tem of Phasal Polarity. By comparing the phasal polarity Systems of specificlanguages the author makes an attempt to set up semantic, functional, distribu-tional, and formal typologies of such Systems, in order to arrive at their properrepresentation.

Besides the synchronic analyses of the sample languages, an overview isgiven of the etymologies of phasal polarity expressions (or their parts). Theclaim is that there is a close relationship between the semantics of each phasalpolarity type and the type of source from which expressions are recruited via aprocess of semantic specialization.

After in-depth descriptive analyses, questions of expressibility, synchronicVariation; and diachronic change are examined in more detail. The notion of"coverage" is introduced for areas within the phasal polarity System that arecovered by one and the same expression. Several coverage patterns are iden-tified in the sample languages. A great deal of coverage Variation is found,which may point to ongoing change in coverage by one or more specific phasalpolarity expressions. Gases of languages with mixed coverage types are alsodescribed. It is argued that coverage Variation is a gradual phenomenon, always



Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2 277

involving single distinctive features rather than sets. Moreover, there are con-straints on coverage Variation: some types are never or seldom mixed. Predic-tions are made about various types ofchange that can be expected in individuallanguages. Here are two examples of implicational universals posited:

If a language has a phasal polarity expression covering the areas of STILL and NOLONGER, this language has no distinct additional NO LONGER expression.If a language has a phasal polarity expression covering the areas of ALREADYand NO LONGER, this language has at least one other phasal polarity expressioncovering the areas of STILL and NOT YET.

Great attention is paid to diachronic developments. The author makes ageneral claim: the larger a certain coverage area, the more developments thecovering expression has undergone. Individual diachronic processes can beregarded äs distinct Steps within a larger chain of changes.

In the chapter dealing with formal aspects, different grammatical parts ofspeech are discussed. Special attention is focused on one specific grammaticalcategory, namely particles, which appears to be highly relevant for phasal po-larity. As the author puts it, particles act äs the bridge between the referentialcore and a wider communicative setting. Van Baar's two cardinal questionsabout particles are, first, whether they exist äs a separate word class, and sec-ond, if such a class exists, how it should be defined. To answer them, particlesare compared with auxiliaries and affixes, using a set of formal criteria, andthe following definition is arrived at: "Particles (a) are highly grammatical-ized words and/or clitics; (b) have lost the essential categorial features of theirsource categories". The definition is then backed up by extensive examplesfrom various languages.

Another interesting observation of van Baar's is the correlation betweengrammaticalization and the occurrence of phasal polarity items. In many lan-guages of the sample, 'phasal polarity expressions are specialized constructswhich have undergone desemantization. If a language has phasal polarity ex-pressions involved in such a process, they may cover the füll ränge of pos-

•sibilities on a grammaticalization scale, ranging from lexical to fully gram-maticalized. The two extreme poles are characterized äs follows: (a) LEXI-CAL—expressions which have undergone a semantic change, but hardly anygrammaticalization, and which may in principle belong to any of the majorword classes, or may even consist of clusters of words; (b) GRAMMATICAL—expressions which in addition to semantic change have undergone a certaindegree of grammaticalization. Grammaticalization may be of a syntactic ora morphological nature, and the general tendency is for isolating languagesto adopt the syntactic strategy, and for polysynthetic languages and all othcrlanguages with complex morphology to prefer the morphological strategy.



U

27 8 Book Reviews Linguistic Typology 3-2

This study of a well-circumscribed phenomenon makes a valuable contribu-tion to different linguistic areas, and may therefore be of interest for a broadaudience of researchers in semantics, typology, and grammaticalization.

Rossijskaja Akademija nauk SVETLANA GRIGORIEVA

Correspondence address: Computational Linguistics Laboratory, Institute for Infor-mation Transmission Problems, Rossijskaja Akademija nauk, Bolsoj Karetnyj per.19, 101447 Moskva, Russia; e-mail: [email protected]

ReferencesLöbner, Sebastian (1986). Schon, erst, noch: Temporale Gradpartikeln als Phasenquantoren.

Groninger Arbeiten zur Germanistischen Linguistik 27: 75-99.Vandeweghe, Willy (1992). Perspektivische evaluatie in het Nederlands: De partikels van de

al/nog/pas-groep. Gent: Koninklijke Academie van Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde.Van der Auwera, Johan (1998). Phasal adverbials in the languages of Europe. In Johan van der

Auwera with Donall P. 0 Baoill (eds.), Adverbial Constructions in the Languages of Europe,25-145. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.



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Coversheet - AU Purepure.au.dk/portal/files/124880145/Review_of_Payne_Thomas... · 2018-03-19 · 58805-7 (paperback), US$ 24.95; 0-521-58224-5 (hardback), US$ 64.95. The book under