The typology of semantic alignment (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The typology of semantic alignment Åshild Næss The typology of semantic alignment. Ed. by Mark Donohue and Søren Wichmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008. Pp. xvi, 465. ISBN 9780199238385. $130 (Hb). The topic of this volume has been discussed in linguistic literature under many names: active-stative languages, agent-patient marking, split-S, split intransitivity. The book undertakes the commendable double effort of straightening out the terminology and attempting to provide clear definitions of what should count as semantic alignment, on the one hand, and significantly expanding the amount and range of available data on languages with semantic alignment, on the other. But this is more than a compendium of languages with semantic alignment (SA); it is, in fact, an argument for a holistic view of alignment in general. The major achievement of this book is that it succeeds in showing SA not as a rare and exotic phenomenon but as conditioned by the same types of properties that shape other areas of grammar. A striking example is GARY HOLTON's paper on the North Halmaheran languages of Eastern Indonesia, which examines ten closely related languages with very similar person-marking systems, and shows how minor and strictly formal differences between these systems nudge the languages back and forth, as it were, across the semantic-syntactic divide. The emphasis in several papers on the diachronic development of [End Page 713] SA patterns from other types of structures, or vice versa, further strengthens the presentation of SA as being closely related to other structural phenomena. Not only is alignment a continuum, as Johanna Nichols concludes; but the properties that are relevant to SA systems are also no different from those posited in linguistic literature as relevant to other aspects of clausal morpho-syntax, such as transitivity, experiencer subjects, and impersonal constructions. The first two papers, by the volume's editors, explain the choice of the term 'semantic alignment' as a broad overarching term in opposition to 'syntactic alignment', which would cover any system based on grammatical relations rather than semantic roles (SØREN WICHMANN), and set out to clarify just what should be included in the definition of semantic alignment, and what should fall outside it (MARK DONOHUE). The decision to introduce yet another term into the existing proliferation is well argued and well motivated, but would have appeared more like a genuine improvement if all contributors to the volume had consistently used it; since not all of them do, one is left with the question of what chance the new term has of catching on. Donohue's paper is a detailed and thorough exposition of the various marking phenomena that may be semantically conditioned, and which of these should be counted as SA. The next two chapters situate SA, synchronically and diachronically, within a larger grammatical context. ANDREJ MALCHUKOV makes a case for a diachronic connection between SA, experiencer subjects, and transitive impersonal ('transimpersonal') constructions, arguing that the functional pressure to 'upgrade' the highly prominent experiencer argument to subject position favors the development of SA from transimpersonals, and that certain structural factors make some languages more susceptible to such reanalysis than others, namely object-agreement marking on the verb and the absence of overt marking of third-singular subjects. PETER ARKADIEV compares the parameters governing SA in Loma, Georgian, Bats, Tabassaran, and Central Pomo. He shows that, contrary to claims by, for example, Primus (1999), the choice of S encoding is not determined by the total number of proto-agent or proto-patient properties exhibited by an argument; instead, each language selects a single property or group of properties that determines S marking. Both papers do a good job of demonstrating that the properties governing SA fit neatly into analyses proposed for the domain of transitive morphosyntax in general; Arkadiev's paper in particular is precise and to the point, though a broader study would be needed to confirm the general validity of his analyses. The remainder of the book examines SA systems in languages from different geographical regions. Part 2, with four papers, covers Eurasia. In a lexical-typological study exploring argument-encoding patterns crosslinguistically, J...