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Situation to sentence: An evolutionary method for descriptive linguistics
Lingua 61 (1983) 77-101. North-Holland
77
REVIEWS
Anoop
Chandola, Situation to sentence: An evolutionary method for descriptive linguistics. AMS Press, New York, 1979. xii, 126 pp. Anna Wierzbicka, Lingua mentalis: The semantics of natural languages. Academic Press, Sidney/New York, 1980. xi, 367 pp. Reviewed by: M. H. Klaiman, 3233 W. Wildwood Dr., Tucson, AZ 85741, USA.
Anoop Chandola, of the University of Arizona, and Anna Wierzbicka, of Australian National University, have much in common. Both write in and on English, a language native to neither. Both pursue careers at a distance from their homelands (India and Poland, respectively). More to the immediate purpose, both scholars are vehement in their opposition to approaches and assumptions of current linguistics, notwithstanding that each holds a linguistics doctorate from a well-known American university (Wierzbicka’s is from MIT, Chandola’s from the University of Chicago). In a time when the field is shrinking on all fronts - fiscal, intellectual, moral - it is everyone’s requisite to attend to the views of linguists such as the pair under review, lest the voice of independent reason be lost in the establishment din. Chandola (hereafter: C.) has previously authored a syntactic sketch of Garhwali (1966), a study of Himalayan musicology (1977) and a practical guide to the translation of written Hindi (1970). Wierzbicka (hereafter: W.) has published prolificly. Her books include an analysis of the Russian instrumental case (1980) and her earlier study of semantic primitives (1972; unavailable to this reviewer) - a topic to which she returns in the new book under review. One of W.‘s articles is an incisive (and, in the main, accurate) investigation of the mysterious Japanese so-called passive (1979b). Another article argues persuasively against autonomous and in favor of semantically-based syntax (1978). The article for which W. is probably best noted is about “ethno-syntax”, or how “the syntactic constructions of a language embody and codify certain language-specific meanings and ways of thinking” (1979a : 313). The article specifically concentrates on coalescence in patterns for expressing views of body image, using data, from seven or eight languages. The latest major research statements of C. and W. constitute separate but complementary approaches to the functioning of homo verbalis. Whereas C’s Situation to sentence (hereafter: SS) concerns the grammar of concrete utterances, W.‘s Lingua mentalis (hereafter: LM) deals with the machinery of the unspoken. C.‘s point of
77
REVIEWS
Anoop
Chandola, Situation to sentence: An evolutionary method for descriptive linguistics. AMS Press, New York, 1979. xii, 126 pp. Anna Wierzbicka, Lingua mentalis: The semantics of natural languages. Academic Press, Sidney/New York, 1980. xi, 367 pp. Reviewed by: M. H. Klaiman, 3233 W. Wildwood Dr., Tucson, AZ 85741, USA.
Anoop Chandola, of the University of Arizona, and Anna Wierzbicka, of Australian National University, have much in common. Both write in and on English, a language native to neither. Both pursue careers at a distance from their homelands (India and Poland, respectively). More to the immediate purpose, both scholars are vehement in their opposition to approaches and assumptions of current linguistics, notwithstanding that each holds a linguistics doctorate from a well-known American university (Wierzbicka’s is from MIT, Chandola’s from the University of Chicago). In a time when the field is shrinking on all fronts - fiscal, intellectual, moral - it is everyone’s requisite to attend to the views of linguists such as the pair under review, lest the voice of independent reason be lost in the establishment din. Chandola (hereafter: C.) has previously authored a syntactic sketch of Garhwali (1966), a study of Himalayan musicology (1977) and a practical guide to the translation of written Hindi (1970). Wierzbicka (hereafter: W.) has published prolificly. Her books include an analysis of the Russian instrumental case (1980) and her earlier study of semantic primitives (1972; unavailable to this reviewer) - a topic to which she returns in the new book under review. One of W.‘s articles is an incisive (and, in the main, accurate) investigation of the mysterious Japanese so-called passive (1979b). Another article argues persuasively against autonomous and in favor of semantically-based syntax (1978). The article for which W. is probably best noted is about “ethno-syntax”, or how “the syntactic constructions of a language embody and codify certain language-specific meanings and ways of thinking” (1979a : 313). The article specifically concentrates on coalescence in patterns for expressing views of body image, using data, from seven or eight languages. The latest major research statements of C. and W. constitute separate but complementary approaches to the functioning of homo verbalis. Whereas C’s Situation to sentence (hereafter: SS) concerns the grammar of concrete utterances, W.‘s Lingua mentalis (hereafter: LM) deals with the machinery of the unspoken. C.‘s point of