Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction II

Abstract

Reviews Syntax: A Functional-Typological Introduction II by Talmy Givon. Philadelphia: John Benjamins 1990. Reviewed by Howard Williams University of California, Los Angeles Syntax: Volume II volume morphological and the second book in Givon's two- syntactic survey of language from a functional perspective. (For a review of the first volume, see Heath, is 1986) As a functionally-oriented grammarian, Givon concerns himself not with formal syntax but with the systematic uses to which constructions are put. Syntax is for him functional in a strong sense: the form of language is claimed to be a direct reflection of users' communicative needs at all levels of analysis. While the heavily English-oriented second volume may be read independently of the first, some grounding is in order. For Givon, the levels of analysis appropriate to syntax are the discourse-pragmatic, the propositional-semantic, the lexical-semantic and the phrasal- semantic; the four have individual requirements which occasionally conflict. To understand syntax is to understand these levels and the conflicts among them. Knowledge of diachronic change is also essential to a proper understanding of structure. Chapter 12, the opening chapter, deals with the coherence of noun phrases (NPs). The order of pre- and post-nominal modifiers is held to be determined on a scale of relevance as in Bybee (1985); there is a partial parallel to the placement of complements and adjuncts in formal approaches. Elements of NPs tend to be contiguous rather than scattered through a clause for iconic reasons, to preserve functional unity. Conjunction of NPs is limited to NPs of equal thematic status with similar case roles. Separate events will tend to be encoded by separate clauses (p. 488); a fairly detailed section illustrates the pragmatic-cognitive difficulties of this phenomenon. In a section on nominalization of clauses, a scalar order of nominal-like phrases is presented, with/ clauses at the bottom and the enemy's destruction of the c/fy-type nominals at the top. Exactly what this would mean in syntactic terms (e.g., the inability of infinitives to serve well as the subjects of yes-no questions) is not addressed. Chapter 13 deals with verbal complementation, investigating the semantic nature of the relationship between main and embedded