Historical Syntax Research Articles

Model składni semantycznej w badaniach historycznojęzykowych. Możliwości i perspektywy

In the article the author puts the question, is it possible to apply the semantic model of syntax to diachronic research. In the current works on historical syntax two research directions have dominated : traditional syntax and structuralism. These methodologies only, to some extent, made it possible to describe phenomena occurring in the development of the Polish syntactic constructions. The model presented in “Gramatyka wspolczesnego jezyka polskiego. Skladnia” was collated with the conception of the medieval Polish syntax proposed by Krązynska, Mika and Sloboda. The aim of the article is to indicate those syntactic phenomena which can be employed and those elements of the semantic model which are in need of modification to become a useful tool for diachronic interpretation of linguistic facts. The text constitutes one of many comments in the discussion about the relation between diachrony and synchrony in linguistics.

Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan by Uta Reinöhl

Reviewed by: Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan by Uta Reinöhl Geoffrey Haig Grammaticalization and the rise of configurationality in Indo-Aryan. By Uta Reinöhl. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016. Pp. 234. ISBN 9780198736660. $105 (Hb). Although relatively short, this book tackles central issues in historical syntax and grammaticalization theory, with implications far beyond the Indo-Aryan case study that forms the empirical core of the study. It can be read on two levels: on the one hand, as a historical micro-analysis of two postpositions and their source lexemes across three millennia of Indo-Aryan (I-A), and on the other, as a set of theoretical claims regarding the mechanisms by which the claimed ‘strong non-configurationality’ of Vedic ultimately spawned the ‘low-level configurationality’ of the modern I-A languages. Uta Reinöhl draws on a text corpus spanning several chronological stages of I-A: Vedic Sanskrit, early Middle I-A Old Awadhi, late Middle I-A Apabramsha, early New I-A Awadhi, and contemporary Hindi (9–17). The two postpositions have the forms mẽ ‘in’ and par ‘on’ in Hindi, but R refers to their various I-A cognates as madhye and upari respectively, a convention I also adopt in this review. The corpus includes a total of 1,060 tokens, 844 of madhye and 216 of upari, which are detailed in the Appendix. This review concentrates on the book’s broader implications for diachronic syntax, while an assessment of the philological details is referred to the specialists of historical I-A. The book’s main hypothesis is that phrasal structure co-evolves with the grammaticalization of lexical elements into purely functional items. The functional items here are the postpositions of contemporary I-A, which constitute a new form class that was entirely absent in ancient I-A. R proposes that with the emergence of postpositions, a previously unattested phrase type (the adpositional phrase) was introduced into I-A syntax, and this in turn contributed to the fixation of phrasal structure in NPs (or DPs). In this sense, then, the development of adpositional phrases spearheaded the development of phrasal structure in I-A. R’s proposals are profoundly influenced by Himmelmann’s (1997) thinking on grammaticalization: grammaticalization is not merely the evolution of individual lexical items down a cline of increasing grammaticalization, but it also creates novel constructional syntax. On this view, grammaticalization works in parallel, in that individual items shift in terms of, for example, obligatoriness or paradigmaticity, and at the same time syntactic structures specifically geared to these functional elements crystallize. In this sense, syntax is ‘emergent’. With regard to the grammaticalization of adpositions, R rejects the widespread view that the adpositions of I-A languages developed from the Indo-European ‘adverbial particles’. These particles constituted a set of syntactically very heterogeneous items in ancient Indo-European, regularly [End Page 484] cited as a main source of adpositions in contemporary Indo-European. According to R, I-A underwent a distinct development, setting it apart from ‘other Indo-European branches’ (87). In Ch. 4, the ‘traditional scenario’ (Section 4.1), widely assumed to hold for Indo-European, is outlined. On this view, the birth of adpositional phrases involved the grammaticalization of what R refers to as ‘symmetrical groups’, groups of nonhierarchically associated syntactic items that included the adverbial particles and case-marked nouns. Through frequent collocation, such groups apparently ultimately crystallized to grammatical phrases (87). In Ch. 4, R assembles three lines of evidence that militate against the ‘traditional scenario’ for I-A. First is the lack of evidence for an etymological connection between the adpositional particles and the later postpositions (the latter being of extremely varied provenience (83)). Second, in a meta-analysis of the corpus studies of Rigvedic syntax undertaken by Hettrich and associates (e.g. Hettrich et al. 2010), she shows that among the attested noun-plus-particle sequences, the ordering particle-noun is actually more frequent than the inverse order, a finding that runs counter to the expectations that the particles became postpositions. Finally, R refers to a distinct pattern of cliticization in I-A, which may have inhibited the reanalysis of the particles as...

Dative sickness: A phylogenetic analysis of argument structure evolution in Germanic

A major argument against the feasibility of reconstructing syntax for proto-stages is the widely discussed lack of directionality of syntactic change. In a recent typology of changes in argument structure constructions based on Germanic (Barðdal 2015), several different, yet opposing, changes are reported. These include, among others, processes sometimes called dative sickness, nominative sickness, and accusative sickness. In order to tease apart the roles of the different processes, we have carried out a phylogenetic trait analysis on a predefined data set of twelve predicates found across the Germanic phyla using the MULTISTATE method. This is, as far as we are aware, the first application of the MULTISTATE method (Pagel et al. 2004) in historical syntax. The results clearly favor one of the models, the dative sickness model, over any other model, as this model is the only one that can accurately account for both the observed diversity of case frames and the independently proposed philological reconstructions. Methods of evolutionary trait analysis can be used to model evolutionary paths of argument structure constructions, and they provide the perfect testing ground for hypotheses arrived at through philological reconstruction, based on classical historical-comparative methods.

New insights into the syntax and semantics of complementation: Introduction to the special issue

This special issue of the Historical Syntax section of Language, entitled New insights into the syntax and semantics of complementation, focuses in particular on the diachronic syntax and semantics of dependent clauses and shows to what extent complement, adverbial, and relative/correlative clauses may be related to each other.

PaCQL: A new type of treebank search for the digital humanities

This article describes PaCQL (Parsed Corpus Query Language), a novel query language for carrying out research on parsed historical corpora, an important task for the digital humanities. PaCQL implements and enhances many of the most important features of earlier software that is designed for computational research in historical syntax and combines such functionality with a search engine which employs a fast in-memory index that cuts down waiting time in many realistic research scenarios. A web interface is provided with an automatically created summary of the main quantitative findings. The primary goal of this project is to contribute to the development of software tools which are designed from the ground up specifically with the needs of the digital humanities in mind.

Substitute infinitives and Oberfeld placement of auxiliaries in German subordinate clauses: A synchronic and diachronic corpus study using the CLARIN research infrastructure

The historical development and the linguistic triggering environments for Oberfeld formation in German subordinate clauses represent long-standing research questions in Germanic Linguistics, dating at least as far back as Jacob Grimm's famous Deutsche Grammatik. The present corpus study traces this historical development back to the 17th century. The study is based on three text corpora. For contemporary German, two syntactically annotated newspaper corpora were consulted: the TüBa-D/Z and TüPP-D/Z treebanks,11TüBa-D/Z: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1778-0000-0005-896C-F; TüPP-D/Z: http://hdl.handle.net/11858/00-1778-0000-0007-5E99-D which provide linguistic annotations for articles published in the daily newspaper die tageszeitung (taz). For diachronic data, the corpus collection Deutsches Textarchiv (DTA)22http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/ was utilized. The DTA contains texts ranging from 1610 to 1900. All three corpus collections are part of the Common Language Resources and Technology Infrastructure (CLARIN) initiative33http://www.clarin.eu/ and will be developed further as part of the CLARIN research infrastructure. The study demonstrates the added value that annotated corpora can provide for in-depth studies in historical syntax. At the same time it showcases the added value of interoperable language resources for linguistic investigations that require access to and analysis of multiple linguistic resources.

Refining the Reconstruction of Col. 2 of the Temple Scroll (11QTa): The Turn to Digital Mapping and Historical Syntax

Digital technology significantly expands the resources available to scholars seeking to reconstruct ancient manuscripts and, in combination with conventional philology, contributes to a more accurate reconstruction of both the text and the line breaks of col. 2 of the Temple Scroll. The column’s fragmentary condition led Yadin and Qimron to diverge in their reconstructions of the manuscript’s line-breaks and its lacunae. The problem is most acute at 2:8–9, where the scroll’s composer expanded the base text of Exod 34 with Deut 7:25–26. By employing techniques of digital mapping in conjunction with historical syntax, this article helps reconstruct the column’s line-breaks, helps restore the lacunae, and offers a refined reconstruction of the column.

The Historical syntax on the modern stage of development of Linguistics

The Historical syntax on the modern stage of development of Linguistics

Annotierte Korpora für die Historische Syntaxforschung: Anwendungsbeispiele anhand des Referenzkorpus Mittelhochdeutsch

Abstract This article addresses the use of annotated corpora for research in historical German syntax, introducing the Reference Corpus of Middle High German (REM) as a showcase. The article shows how to search the corpus with the corpus tool ANNIS. It takes up a range of popular research questions from historical syntax, in particular inflection of predicative adjectives, pre- and postnominal genitive constructions, relative order of pronouns and of verbs and auxiliaries. It is shown in detail how REM can be exploited to retrieve corpus evidence of these phenomena. The article also discusses challenges and opportunities of using annotated corpora. It argues that use of annotated corpora opens up new ways for research in historical syntax.

Historische Syntax des Deutschen aus generativer Perspektive

Abstract This paper summarizes recent advances in research on the diachronic syntax of German from a generative perspective on the basis of three case studies. The first case study focuses on the sentence grammar of early German and argues that generalized V(erb)-to-C(omp)-movement, the core property of the verb-second phenomenon, goes back to Old High German times. In contrast to English, German has thus not been subject to a resetting of the verb-second parameter. Two further case studies deal with null subjects in Old High German and the diachrony of sentence negation, thereby addressing the issues of change in surface manifestations in relation to the underlying syntactic representation and the relation between historical syntax and dialect syntax.

Die Historische Syntax des Deutschen braucht die Sprachtypologie – und umgekehrt

Abstract In this paper I try to demonstrate the benefits of interaction between the fields of historical syntax of German on the one hand and linguistic typology on the other hand. Using four examples for each direction, I argue that both fields need each other’s input: German historical syntax can learn to avoid various forms of parochialism, and at the same time it can feed its vast amount of detailed knowledge into discussions of general linguistics.

Na’ama Pat-El,Studies in the Historical Syntax of Aramaic

Na’ama Pat-El,<i>Studies in the Historical Syntax of Aramaic</i>

Studies in the Historical Syntax of Aramaic. By Na’ama Pat-El. Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages 1. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 243. $180 (cloth).

<i>Studies in the Historical Syntax of Aramaic</i>. By Na’ama Pat-El. Perspectives on Linguistics and Ancient Languages 1. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2012. Pp. xv + 243. $180 (cloth).

Phrasal verbs: The English verb-particle construction and its history by Stefan Thim (review)

Reviewed by: Phrasal verbs: The English verb-particle construction and its history by Stefan Thim Laurel J. Brinton Phrasal verbs: The English verb-particle construction and its history. By Stefan Thim. (Topics in English linguistics 78.) Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton, 2012. Pp. xiv, 302. ISBN 9783110257021. $140 (Hb). Is the phrasal verb a distinctly English feature that arose at a certain stage in the history of the language and belongs to the colloquial register? In this insightful work, Stefan Thim debunks these ‘myths’. The book is a critical examination of the literature, both synchronic and diachronic, on the topic of the phrasal verb (PV) in English (e.g. carry out, use up, get by). It is not an empirical study of the phenomenon (though T summarizes several short studies of PVs that he has undertaken). The book’s major contribution to an understanding of the history of the PV is T’s contention that a Germanic system of preverbs led to both prefixed verbs and verb-particle combinations [End Page 664] (phrasal or particle verbs) and that it was large-scale changes in word order, not movement of the particle, that led ‘towards almost exceptionless postposition of the particles’ (5). After a brief introductory chapter, Ch. 2 (10–73) sets the groundwork for the diachronic study that follows. It discusses the PV in present-day English and other Germanic languages. T begins by proposing an elegant—although perhaps ultimately somewhat simplified—three-way semantic distinction (or cline) between ‘compositional’ PVs, where the particle may be either directional or aspectual in meaning, and ‘noncompositional’ PVs. T argues that although aspectual particles do not express spatial meaning, the resulting PVs are semantically transparent. He insists on the importance of including compositional forms in any discussion of PVs because they provide ‘the diachronic input to the development of aspectual and idiomatic meanings’ (21) and are the only forms that exhibit all of the syntactic behaviors characteristic of PVs. In a comparative section, T argues that PVs of the three semantic types occur in the present-day Germanic languages, though differing positions of the particles are connected to the basic word order of each language; the ‘striking’ similarities ‘point to their shared historical origins’ (46). T places PVs within the realm of word formation, not phraseology, considering them cases of ‘periphrastic word formation’ belonging to the class of complex predicates. That is, PVs are not free syntactic combinations of verbs and particles but are compounds (of verb plus spatial particle) or derivations (of verb plus aspectual particle); noncompositional PVs are ‘lexicalized complex construction[s]’ (65). Further justification for the concept of ‘periphrastic word formation’ and greater consideration of the literature on collocations might have been useful here. Ch. 3 (74–116) provides the core diachronic argument of the book. T begins with arguments for the existence of preverbs in non-Indo-European and Indo-European languages. Preverbs result from the decategorialization of adverbs in preverb position. In an object-verb language such as Germanic, univerbation of some preverb plus verb syntagms yields prefixed verbs, resulting in a synchronic layering of older prefixed verbs and newer preverb-verb combinations. (In other cases, adverbs may be decategorialized as adpositions, a topic not pursued here.) A densely argued discussion of the complexities of Old English word order—one of the ‘most hotly contested area[s] of English historical syntax’ (90)—ensues; it makes for a rather difficult reading for the uninitiated. T argues that preverbs become postpositions because of the general change from OV to VO order, consisting of movement of the verb in the following sequence (see figure 3-2). 1. original order: O prt V v (prt = particle, v = finite verb, V = nonfinite verb) clause brace: v O prt V exbraciation: v V O prt / extraposition of object: v V prt O The patterns of particle verb placement identified by Risto Hiltunen (1983) in his groundbreaking work thus find explanation. In conclusion, ‘what appears to be a positional change of the particle (from “pre” to “postposition”, etc.) on closer inspection turns out to be a set of positional changes of the elements of the verb phrase and of the postpositional trends observable in objects’ (103...

The Editor’s Report

The Editor’s Report Gregory N. Carlson [The following is a slightly modified and updated version of the report made verbally to the LSA membership at the annual meeting in Austin, Texas, on January 6, 2017, by Editor Greg Carlson.] Changes In early 2016, associate editors Karlos Arregi, Claire Bowern, William Davies, and Karen Emmorey concluded their outstanding service to the journal. Further, Megan Crowhurst took on the role of senior associate editor for the journal, departing from the ranks of the ‘regular’ associate editors. Ian Roberts departed from the online-only section Historical Syntax. We were joined by new associate editors John Beavers, Kathryn Campbell-Kibler, Matthew Gordon (formerly associate editor for the online-only Phonological Analysis), Russell Gray, Diane Lillo-Martin, and Linda Wheeldon. In the latter part of 2016 two major events occurred. First, a new editor for the journal, Andries Coetzee of the University of Michigan, was nominated and then elected in the fall to begin his term in January 2017. Second, we initiated the first ‘Continuous publishing’ article (‘publication in advance of print’) in December, a major step toward pure electronic publication that has been in the works for several years with Project MUSE and Sheridan Press. Working with the OJS submission and review system has smoothed out some with practice, thanks much to the associate editors and especially to Megan Crowhurst, who has put enormous effort and leadership into seeing the system’s systematic use. LSA Executive Director Alyson Reed is to be heartily thanked, along with James MacDonald, for their support above and beyond the usual in facilitating the development of OJS. There are nevertheless some shortcomings in the system’s reporting capabilities that limit its ability to allow complete extraction of relevant information. Language by the numbers Volume 92 of Language consisted of 1,025 print pages also accessible electronically, plus 325 pages of online-only content. The print edition features 25 research articles, 33 book reviews, 1 review article, and 1 short report. Online-only content consists of 9 research articles (2 Historical Syntax, 4 Phonological Analysis, 1 Language and Public Policy, 2 Teaching Linguistics), 2 research reports, 1 discussion, and 1 textbook review. The journal is by all appearances very healthy. We receive a great many high-quality submissions, and have little difficulty locating distinguished associate editors who serve with great distinction. At present we have a significant backlog of research articles, something under a year’s worth, and consequently have declined a number of borderline but very promising papers on which we might otherwise have requested revisions. Papers submitted and acted on in 2016 The following numbers summarize editorial activity in 2016, as recorded by OJS. • New submissions: 183 • Papers rejected: 71 • Papers resubmitted for review: 20 • Papers in revision (‘minor revisions’): 9 [End Page 492] • Papers accepted: 28 • Average decision time between first submission and final acceptance or rejection: 145 days (This includes a good number of papers, nearly all that are accepted and some that are rejected, that are revised and resubmitted, on occasion more than once.) Special thanks And once again I wish to especially recognize Hope Dawson’s continuing, essential contributions in keeping the journal on time and of absolutely top-quality form. Thanks as well to journal assistant Erica Dayton for her support and efforts, to Alyson Reed, David Robinson, and Rita Lewis in the ‘front office’, and to James MacDonald for all the on-demand technical support. The editors wish to thank the following 261 individuals who generously agreed to contribute their time and effort to the essential task of refereeing submissions (* indicates that the individual was responsible for more than one report). Víctor Acedo-Matellán Peter Ackema Alexander Adelaar David Adger Judith Aissen John Alderete Edith Aldridge Artemis Alexiadou* Lieselotte Anderwald Athulya Aravind John Ole Askedal Sergio Baauw Eric Bakovic* Chris Barker Andy Barss Tom Bartlett* Misha Becker Patrice Beddor Andrea Beltrama Ryan Bennett Wm. G. Bennett Rajesh Bhatt Lee Bickmore* Steven Bird Walter Bisang Andy Black Robert Blust Jonathan Bobaljik M. Ryan Bochnak Remco Bouckaert Kasper Boye Diane Brentari Marc Brysbaert Daniel Büring Heather Burnett Carly Butler Miriam Butt Esteban Buz Richard Cameron Eric Campbell...

Survey of Chinese Historical Syntax Part I: Pre‐Archaic and Archaic Chinese

AbstractThis is the first of two articles presenting a brief overview of Chinese historical syntax from the Pre‐Archaic period to Middle Chinese. The phenomena under examination in the two papers are primarily aspects of pre‐medieval grammar which differ markedly from modern Chinese varieties, specifically fronting of object NPs to preverbal position, the asymmetry between subject and object relative clause formation, and the encoding of argument structure alternations like active and passive. I relate each of these characteristics to morphological distinctions on nouns, verbs, or pronouns, which are either overtly represented in the logographic writing system in Archaic Chinese or have been reconstructed for (Pre‐)Archaic Chinese. In the second part of this series, I discuss the changes in the Archaic Chinese grammatical features and correlate these innovations with the loss of the (Pre‐)Archaic Chinese morphology. The main goal of these articles is to highlight a common denominator, i.e. the morphology, which enables a systemic view of pre‐medieval Chinese and the changes which have resulted in the striking differences observed in Middle Chinese and beyond.

Survey of Chinese Historical Syntax Part II: Middle Chinese

AbstractThis is the second article in a two‐part introduction to Chinese historical syntax. The previous article introduces aspects of pre‐medieval grammar which differ markedly from modern Chinese varieties, specifically fronting of object NPs to preverbal position, the asymmetry between subject and object relative clause formation, and the encoding of argument structure alternations like active and passive. Each of these characteristics is related to morphological distinctions on nouns, verbs, or pronouns which are either overtly represented in the logographic writing system in Archaic Chinese or have been reconstructed for (Pre‐)Archaic Chinese. In this second article, I discuss changes which took place in Middle Chinese and correlate these innovations with the loss of the (Pre‐)Archaic Chinese morphology. The main goal of these articles is to highlight a common denominator, i.e. the morphology, which enables a systemic view of pre‐medieval Chinese and the changes which have resulted in the striking differences observed in Middle Chinese and beyond.

Alice C. Harris and Lyle Campbell Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective

Alice C. Harris and Lyle Campbell Historical Syntax in Cross-linguistic Perspective

Foreword

With the present issue of ALA, we are starting the second year in its new incarnation. As the paper is striving to cover the Asian languages in their multiplicity and in the multiplicity of approaches, I am glad to say that this issue offers both, in line with Roman Jakobson’s famous paraphrase “Linguista sum, linguistici nihil a me alienum puto.”Among the six papers in this issue, two papers deal with Japanese, two with Iranian langages, and one each with the language of Ṛgveda and with Arabic. Also, approaches vary from historical phonetics/phonology (paper by John KUPCHIK on the role of rendaku in Eastern Old Japanese poetry) and historical syntax (Tamara DITRICH’s discussion of coordinative particles in Ṛgveda), to typological considerations spannig diachroinc and synchronic views (Yadgar KARIMI’s analysis of the evolution of ergative in Iranian languages). Syncronic approaches comprise pragmatics (Biook BEHNAM and Salam KHALILIAQDAM’s treatment of hedging devices in Kurdish and Robert Michael BIANCHI’s account of the new hybrid language of 3arabizi), and interdisciplinary interpretation of lexis in the light of crosscultural psychology (Márton SZEMEREY’s paper comparing Japanese and Hungarian linguistic resources for expression of emotions).

&lt;i&gt;Dialects of English: Newfoundland and Labrador English&lt;/i&gt; (review)

Reviewed by: Dialects of English: Newfoundland and Labrador English Gordon Alley-Young Sandra Clarke. 2010. Dialects of English: Newfoundland and Labrador English. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Pp. 212. $34.80 (softcover). Newfoundland and Labrador English (NLE) is the most distinct dialect of Canadian English (CE) while it more closely resembles southwest British English (BE) and southeast Irish English (IE) (Fee 2002, Boberg 2010). NLE’s uniqueness as a dialect within Canada is why it is the best-documented variety of CE. In this book Clarke blends published research with unpublished Master’s theses on NLE, which were widely unavailable until recently. The book transcribes and analyzes the source of the most salient features of NLE phonology and grammar through their introduction to the region, rise, and in some cases decline. Other chapters provide analysis of the language and the speakers of NLE within a greater cultural context. The book is one of six already published in the Dialects of English series by Edinburgh University Press (four new books are forthcoming). This review will first provide an overview of the book and then discuss each chapter in greater detail with special attention to selected elements. The first three chapters of the book orient the reader to the history of Newfoundland and Labrador’s main linguistic areas and then familiarize the reader with the phonetics/phonology and morphosyntax of NLE. The following two chapters compare and contrast NLE with CE, American English (AE), BE, and IE, first on the basis of vocabulary and discourse and then in terms of language attitudes and language change. The sixth chapter surveys the literature on NLE. Chapter 7 provides the sample texts that are referenced throughout the book in a longer format that can be used along with audio files provided by the author and publisher. Chapter 1 explores migration and settlement patterns that helped to characterize NLE in terms of Newfoundland British English (NBE) and Newfoundland Irish English (NIE). Basque, Portuguese, and French influences are also explored but NBE and NIE are the main foci of the book, as NLE retains such high homogeneity to these two language founder groups. The province is divided into four linguistically distinct areas: the Avalon Peninsula, the southern west coast, the English settled coastline, and Labrador. Discussion of Aboriginal language influence on NLE is limited as the author argues that these languages have not had the systematic investigation needed in order to discuss them effectively in this volume. However, Chapter 4 does reference the contribution of Aboriginal languages to the lexicon of NLE, particularly in Labrador. [End Page 459] Chapter 2 covers vowel and consonant systems by first introducing relevant phonetics/phonology terminology and then presenting NLE relevant IPA characters. Clarke uses Wells’ (1982) keywords list to make the phonetic differences of NLE understandable to speakers of AE and BE as six lax and four tense vowels, three diphthongs, and six pre-/r/ vowels. This section effectively relates how NLE speakers engage Canadian Raising differently through the use of backing and rounding. The discussion of consonant features include the treatment of /ð/ and /θ/, the insertion of an initial /h/, and insertion and deletion of /r/ in NLE. For instance, Clark states that /θ/ is frequently turned into /t/ in words such as thrash, thus making it sound like trash. The /ð/ sound evokes more stopping and this is used in speech to consciously reference Newfoundland identity. Web resources for Chapters 4 and 5 show NLE speakers using these linguistic features to claim their own and/or contest others’ identity performances in music videos and media texts. Such content that references linguistic elements as central to identity performance makes the volume relevant for academics in communication arts oriented disciplines (folklore, performance/cultural studies). Chapter 3 introduces NLE morphosyntax; at the outset Clarke states that research often distinguishes versions of English phonetically but argues that NLE has a rich and historically significant morphology that warrants examination. Similarly, a recently published review of a comparative analysis of CE was criticized for a less thorough analysis of grammatical structures (Brock 2011). This chapter is thorough, however, in its analysis of historical syntax and word structures. It offers an ample listing of how NLE has regularized, partially...