- Email: [email protected]
Adjectives and nominalizations
REVIEWS
- COXPTES-RENDlJS
on the strategic (or what she calls ‘semantic’) and quasi-poetic aspects of the subject. There is in this work much intriguing information that cannot be summarise2~ in a review: so much might be expected from the nature of the subjecl-matter. VGA of Mrs praninskas handling of the material? It is true that the sequence of chapter headings (‘Graphemics’, ‘Morphemics’, ‘Syntactics’, ‘Semantics’, ‘Aesthetics’) is more orderly than informative; that Lees’s compound analyss is perhaps rather slavishly followed; also (to descend to the trivial) that the initial o of O-CELLO (‘sponge made of cellubse’)is perversely related to the Celtic 0 of O’Leary (p. 43) rather than to the abbreviated of of o’clock; and that F&z-is wrongly explained a5 a ‘Gaelic prefix or@&ly indicating Izatural ws oy (p. 87). However, on the whole the mater2 is competently analysed and presented. And if the ‘participant-observer’ is to be encouraged in Linguistics as in anthropology and sociology, one can only feel grateful that the first thorough exploratior. of this field has been made by someont supremely entitled to do so - an American housewife. English Defiartmetit, Universityof Lancaster, Ba%igg, Lancaster, England.
G.N. LEECH
Papers on Formal Linguistics, No. 5. Mouton, The Hague, 1968. 134 pp. Price: f IS.-. The‘and’ of the title is to be understood disjunctively: adjectives and nominalizations are dealt with in separate sections, and ‘ihere is no specific treatment of that subclass of adjectives, e.g. twc,kind, st@id etc., wXch permits of nominahzation. However, Vendler does make an ingenious attempt to link the two fields. The f&t section, ‘Nominalizations’ (1 l-32), is divided into five chapters: T, ‘Conjunctions and relative clauses’ (1 l-X+ of Uious relevance to the main argument; II, ‘l’roper nominalizations’ (26-31), which defines the scope and terminology of the next three chapters; III and IV, ‘Complete nominals’ (32-53 and ‘Incomplete nominals’ (54-7 1), di& divide those nor&& which cannot be ZENO VENDLER, Adjsctives a& m?t&t&zatims.
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derived directly from relative clauses (unlike e.g. bidwatcher, ‘(someone) who wa ches birds’) into eleven subclasses: and V. ‘Containers’ (72~89, which lists the types of sentence into which these subclasses will fit, plus some of the lexical classes which, in such sentences, restrict the choice of subclass. The second section, ‘Adjectives’ @S-134), is divided into three chapters: VI, ‘Classif:cation of adjectives’, (85-108), which distinguisbes those adjectives which can be derived from straightforward relative transformations from those which cannot, and divides the latter into eight subclasses with the aid of the typology of nominalizations and co-rtamers from III-V; VII, ‘Predicate adjectives’ (lo?-120), which divides the former class of adjectives into thirteen subclasses; and VIII, ‘Order of adjectives’ (121-134), which seeks to demonstrate the validity of the foregoing analysis by showing tZ !! prenominal adjectives occur in a statable and almost invariable order determined by membership of the subclasses listed in VI and VII. This schema suggests a procedural rigour which is unfortunately not realised in the text. The treatment is transformational (school of Harris) rather than generative (school of Chomsky) ; no derivational trees are provided for any of the sentences cited, and there is no coherent system of rules for generating sentences. This orientation explains, if it hardly excuses, a startling deficiency. There is no bibliography, and only four references to othei works in the entire text - one to a fellow-disciple of Harris, two to (unspecified) works by Harris himself, and one to E. Patridge (sic), TIM concise zcsage ad abzlsage. Lees’ Grammar of En$sh ncmk&atiorcs is mentioned in the acknowledgements, but there are no specific citations, nor is the influence very apparent. Anyone who ignores rhe considerable literature in this field must labour under severe handicaps. For instanrn, the treatment of whnominals (37-8) is carried on withottt refen nce to the discussion of proforms by Katz and Postal;l) in consequence, we are told (39) that r&r4 he Zestis a watch is a transform of it is a watch that he lost (we are not t’old what the ambiguous ‘latter is supposed to be a transfoml of) whereas it is surely derived from he-#ast-lose-#oNP -f) J. J. Katz and P. Tnstal. 1964. An in&w&d Cambridge,Mass.,M.I.T. Press.
sc$tions.
theory
of tin&tic
de-
REVIEA’S
- COMPTES-RENDUS
and pros-p/e>'4,.n-v&l. Aeain, some very inconclusive sueerrlations on vrh&her him in 1 ordered hia! k ~o’should br r~+rrbd 1s ~_abject or object are rendered superfluous by Chomsky’sa) lucid de?;’ in? snrfaLi &ructure in analysis of the relations t&vccn sentences of this type. The choice of terminology too is idiosymratic and even confusing; a sentence to be embedded via nominalization is called a ‘matrix’, and what a generative grammarian would term may be em‘matrix’ - a sentence into which a nominalization bedded - is called a ‘container’. But ‘container’ is also used to describe the lexical classes that such :,entences can incorporate, arA even individual lexemes; the justification for this (74) is jusl not good enough. The whole work suffers, ir&& LULL -*-cnlrnrl U...l_____ theoretical founda?ions. The concept of transformation is use is never adequately defined, nor are any restrictions placed on the pr&ess, so that its status remains wholly obscure; yet a device called ‘paraphrastic transformation’ is introduced (45) with no clear indicat;cn as to how it variety (it looks uncommonly like simple Clearly, however, Vendler regards transformations as being applied to actual sentences rather than strings of symb&,s) for he dcrl~es (57) that ‘while Yt,& or V+ corresponds to ibe iii&CkVE in the matnx, to V+ is the result of a subjunctive or sub+nctive-equivaleni L, 4s matrix’ (this supposition is several times repeated). Some concepts are defined, trot just vaguely, but self-contradictorily; thus, the norninabzations to be discussed (proper nominalizations’j are &fined as Ihase which ‘do not share nouns with their host sentences, at least not at the ponrt of inseriicr’ (ZEQ; ht the class of what Vendler (613) calls ‘5-non&n&’ must do exactly this, since he would derive e.g. I advised Peter to take the job from I advised Peter, Peter should take tl’e job. Other concepts seem superfluous; the division pi nominals into ‘complete’ and ‘incomplete’ is quite arbitraxy, and justified orly by occasional asides about the degree to which no&nalization processes ‘distort the matrix’ (e.g.
2) N. Chomsky, 1965. Aspect- of titp thswy of syutux, Cambridge. Mws., M.I.T. Press., pp. 22-3. 3) Cf. D. Bickerton, 1969. ‘The linguistic validity of verb-nom&&sing transformations’, Lingwz 22, pp. 51-2 and referents therein.
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35). But there is neither a clear distinction between the classes, nor any criteria for assessing the degree of ‘di.+crtion’. These theoretical weaknesses inevitably entail inaccuracies on the analytic level. For example, the ‘paraphrastic transformation’ d -+ a (except in env. P-) - i.e. N’s v&g is replaceable by that N P except after prepositions - frequently does not work, especially where further embedding is involved; thus that hr! wolz the Yace (one of Vendler’s own examples) will replace his zerilzniwgthe race in e.g. iA Gz.nf~~g Ik race came as a saybise, but not in the following: (la) (lb) (2a) (2b)
I regarded his winning the race as a good omen. *I regarded that he won the race as a good omen. If his winning the race was a fluke, why did you back him? *If that he won the race was a fluke, why did you back him?
Nor will it work after certain verbs, e.g. discuss. (La) We discussed his winning the race. (3b) *We discussed that he won the race. Where it does work, the ‘paraphrastic’ a paraphrase:
result is by no lneans aiways
(4a) r explained his winning the race. (4b) I explained that he (had) won the race. Here only what Vendler would call a c-nominal - I ex$Ea&ed how he (had) won the race - accurately paraphrases 4a. Yet, despite these and other counter-examples, his sole criterion for distinguishing d and e-nominals when, as sometines happens, they are morphologically indistinguishable (50-l) is the possibility of substituting a-nominals for the former but not the latter. This leads him to ~.~.srt tnar ‘john’s sin&g is a d in I men&ned John’s s&g&g but an e in I im2at9. Johti’s sin&g’. Yet both structures admit adjectives - I PnentioltJ Johtis ttineless singing and I imitated John’s !u*eless s&ging, - and Vendler has already admitted that only e-nominals can do &is. Tkc fxt that at least one e can be replaced by an a (that John saflg) casts doubt, not merely on this particular process, but on the whole ‘paraphrastic’ machinery. For it is not the subclasses of the nominals, but the subclasses of the ‘container’ verbs (medicm and imitate) which determine the occurrence or non-occurrence of a-nominals.
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Similarly, Vendler’s belief that there is ‘a subjunctive or subjunctive-equivalent in the matrix’ gets him into difficulties when he has to explain why i-nominal sentences such as I wanted him to go have no ‘subjunctive-equivalent’ *I wanted (him) thut he shod go. He merely lists some (by LO mnans all) of the exceptions, and accepts some higiriy un-Enghsh sentences such zs *he fiermitted (me) that I go home.4) Moreover, the:-e is no attempt to explain why many ‘subjunctive-equivalents’ have no corresponding i-forms (e.g. I cvzvkrsd him that he should go, *I colzvificed him to go). Even if WC accepted Vendler’s mU,_ J* of derivation, not all i-nominals would derive from subjunctives; these structures cover a much wider semantic range, as can be shown with the help of adversative tags : (5) I wanted him to go, but he didn’t. (6) ?I persuaded him to go, but he didn’t. (7) *I compelled him to go, but he didn’t. The latter, by Vendler’s own analysis, would have to be deriled from an indcative baoe, he wed. Vendler IS wrong, too, in thinking tlrat ‘if the verb. . . is necessarily transitive‘, all Ns in N’s V, and Vn of N nominals rnu.4 represent object-nouns in the base (M-9). We need only note heretics were threatetied with the tortzlres of the Znqzcisit~onor Mary’s cmsolation zezs wasted or, him. With ‘necexzrily transitive’ verbs that rcouire NP-infinitive comolementation. the reverse is oftener the case, e.g. the geNeraEordered the ~YOO#JSto a&z&, bpct his order was Lsobeyed. Yet, for all its faults, it would be wrong to dismiss Venclier’c work out of hand. its centrai thesis - that types of nominal are trunsformationally linked with the adjectival subclajses that can occur in their respective ‘containers’, and that there is a corresponding regularity of ordering among these subclasses when their members occur in prenominal strings - is, T think, interesting and original, and deserves to be worke3 on with a better conceptual machine than Vendler’s, with considerably more rigour, and with due attention to the relevant literature. 1
_
41 Throughout, far too many dubious or even quite un%z.ceptabIcsentences are cited in support of the analysis - some flagrant exampiea occur on p. 68
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The second section is, indeed, much less open to objection than the first. Z ~2:~ cdstinguishes between those adjectives that can be applied both to a noun and its hyponym, and those which cannot; thus an angry #ythm is alz aspy snake, but a short pytko:: is not a skort snake. J3: regards the first category as applying directly to the noun, and thus transferable from predicative to prenominal position via the simple reIative transformation; and the second as relating to the noun via some intermediary ncun which represents a characteristic semantic auality or function of the former - in most cases, these intermediaries would derive from nominalizations. Thus, an easy @eElem would derive, not from a firoblem is easy, but R fvoblem whose solulion is easy. He fails to make clear how the latter should be derived - from X s&JeZ L1@oblem easdy, or from X- solved a problem, Pros is easy? - but does show considerab!e evidence for supposing that the derivations of several subclasses of pranominal adjectives must include the nominalization process at so ne stage on their paths. However, he relies heavily on a, d and e-norainals in this st;ige of the analysis, and, as these themselves are r.evar properly differentiated, his results must still be treated with caution. Unfortunately the subclasses he distinguishes in this way are relatively few, mostly very small, and cm seldom co-occrlr in pren~minal strings. Between some (e.g. As - eager, wiUilzg, ready, am&us - and Ar - $ossible. im+ossible) there may be absolute restrictions on co-occurrence, and indeed his exemplary strings (!28--9,) contain co-occurrences of only two of these subclasses (As. &). Most of the s*&%sses which can co-occur, and for which he gives orderin~ruks, have on his own shov& nothing to do v.?th r~otinak at all. Thus he has no real grounds for claiming, as he does on p. i26, tbd the production of valid order rules far prenominal strings automatica3ly vaii&kes the s~ubzksrification of ad,ecrives and nominds in the preceding chapters; it ic simply impossible to validate the latter in tb$s way. Yet, once or twice in the text, Vendlei seems on tire point of grasp.kg .I linguistic consistency even more far-reaching than that he is seeking to prove (e.g. 76, 78). This is, that the entire cooccurrence patterns of adjective and noun subclasses (and therefore those of nominahsed verbs, which are after all only types of noun) may be governed by certain broad semantic c,.tegories, for vzhich
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the initial cut would be between fact/idea and process/event. This possibility might better be approached via non-derived nouns and adjectives, rather than the more slippery nominals. But the fact that Vendler has even suggested it goes some way to excuse the book’s shortcomings - among which is a passage (107-S) designed ‘for easier comprehension’, which T found the most baffling and self-contradictory in the whole text. Defiartmcntof English Ulziversityof Guyana Box 841, Georgetown Gztyana
DEREK
BICXERTON
M. A. K. HALLIDAY, Idolzation alzd grammar in British Eltglish. Janus Linguarum, Series Practica 48. 62 pp., 2 tables. Mouton & Co., The Plague-Paris 1967. Price: f !a.-. Consisting as it does of slightly adapted versions of two papers which have already appeared in drch+uztmLinguisticvm (1963) and Transactiolcs of the Philological Society (1963), this book offers nothing new, apart i~om a marked text, some additional tables, and a short but useful bibliography, to specialists who keep abreast of the periodical literature on the subject. Tc others, who do not, it must stand as a landmark in the history oi studies of intonation in general, and as a notable contribution also to linguistics. Halliday’s analysis of ‘informal educated spoken Southern British’ is based on examination of his own usage and on study of recorded texts. We are not told how the recordings, evidently of conversations between academics fairly well acquainted with one apother, were obtained, nor how large (apart from the fact that the main sample contains about 2000 tone groups) is the body of text. Halliday sets up three ‘systemic variables’: tonality, tonicity, and tone. Tonality refers to a speaker’s organisation of his utterance into tone groups; tonicity tc his placing, within each tone group, of the pretonic and tonic sections; and tone to his choice of primar;~ and secondary tone. Each tone-group, according to this analysis, consists of at least one foot. In English, a stress-timed language, the foot, consisting of
- COXPTES-RENDlJS
on the strategic (or what she calls ‘semantic’) and quasi-poetic aspects of the subject. There is in this work much intriguing information that cannot be summarise2~ in a review: so much might be expected from the nature of the subjecl-matter. VGA of Mrs praninskas handling of the material? It is true that the sequence of chapter headings (‘Graphemics’, ‘Morphemics’, ‘Syntactics’, ‘Semantics’, ‘Aesthetics’) is more orderly than informative; that Lees’s compound analyss is perhaps rather slavishly followed; also (to descend to the trivial) that the initial o of O-CELLO (‘sponge made of cellubse’)is perversely related to the Celtic 0 of O’Leary (p. 43) rather than to the abbreviated of of o’clock; and that F&z-is wrongly explained a5 a ‘Gaelic prefix or@&ly indicating Izatural ws oy (p. 87). However, on the whole the mater2 is competently analysed and presented. And if the ‘participant-observer’ is to be encouraged in Linguistics as in anthropology and sociology, one can only feel grateful that the first thorough exploratior. of this field has been made by someont supremely entitled to do so - an American housewife. English Defiartmetit, Universityof Lancaster, Ba%igg, Lancaster, England.
G.N. LEECH
Papers on Formal Linguistics, No. 5. Mouton, The Hague, 1968. 134 pp. Price: f IS.-. The‘and’ of the title is to be understood disjunctively: adjectives and nominalizations are dealt with in separate sections, and ‘ihere is no specific treatment of that subclass of adjectives, e.g. twc,kind, st@id etc., wXch permits of nominahzation. However, Vendler does make an ingenious attempt to link the two fields. The f&t section, ‘Nominalizations’ (1 l-32), is divided into five chapters: T, ‘Conjunctions and relative clauses’ (1 l-X+ of Uious relevance to the main argument; II, ‘l’roper nominalizations’ (26-31), which defines the scope and terminology of the next three chapters; III and IV, ‘Complete nominals’ (32-53 and ‘Incomplete nominals’ (54-7 1), di& divide those nor&& which cannot be ZENO VENDLER, Adjsctives a& m?t&t&zatims.
REVIEWS
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57
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derived directly from relative clauses (unlike e.g. bidwatcher, ‘(someone) who wa ches birds’) into eleven subclasses: and V. ‘Containers’ (72~89, which lists the types of sentence into which these subclasses will fit, plus some of the lexical classes which, in such sentences, restrict the choice of subclass. The second section, ‘Adjectives’ @S-134), is divided into three chapters: VI, ‘Classif:cation of adjectives’, (85-108), which distinguisbes those adjectives which can be derived from straightforward relative transformations from those which cannot, and divides the latter into eight subclasses with the aid of the typology of nominalizations and co-rtamers from III-V; VII, ‘Predicate adjectives’ (lo?-120), which divides the former class of adjectives into thirteen subclasses; and VIII, ‘Order of adjectives’ (121-134), which seeks to demonstrate the validity of the foregoing analysis by showing tZ !! prenominal adjectives occur in a statable and almost invariable order determined by membership of the subclasses listed in VI and VII. This schema suggests a procedural rigour which is unfortunately not realised in the text. The treatment is transformational (school of Harris) rather than generative (school of Chomsky) ; no derivational trees are provided for any of the sentences cited, and there is no coherent system of rules for generating sentences. This orientation explains, if it hardly excuses, a startling deficiency. There is no bibliography, and only four references to othei works in the entire text - one to a fellow-disciple of Harris, two to (unspecified) works by Harris himself, and one to E. Patridge (sic), TIM concise zcsage ad abzlsage. Lees’ Grammar of En$sh ncmk&atiorcs is mentioned in the acknowledgements, but there are no specific citations, nor is the influence very apparent. Anyone who ignores rhe considerable literature in this field must labour under severe handicaps. For instanrn, the treatment of whnominals (37-8) is carried on withottt refen nce to the discussion of proforms by Katz and Postal;l) in consequence, we are told (39) that r&r4 he Zestis a watch is a transform of it is a watch that he lost (we are not t’old what the ambiguous ‘latter is supposed to be a transfoml of) whereas it is surely derived from he-#ast-lose-#oNP -f) J. J. Katz and P. Tnstal. 1964. An in&w&d Cambridge,Mass.,M.I.T. Press.
sc$tions.
theory
of tin&tic
de-
REVIEA’S
- COMPTES-RENDUS
and pros-p/e>'4,.n-v&l. Aeain, some very inconclusive sueerrlations on vrh&her him in 1 ordered hia! k ~o’should br r~+rrbd 1s ~_abject or object are rendered superfluous by Chomsky’sa) lucid de?;’ in? snrfaLi &ructure in analysis of the relations t&vccn sentences of this type. The choice of terminology too is idiosymratic and even confusing; a sentence to be embedded via nominalization is called a ‘matrix’, and what a generative grammarian would term may be em‘matrix’ - a sentence into which a nominalization bedded - is called a ‘container’. But ‘container’ is also used to describe the lexical classes that such :,entences can incorporate, arA even individual lexemes; the justification for this (74) is jusl not good enough. The whole work suffers, ir&& LULL -*-cnlrnrl U...l_____ theoretical founda?ions. The concept of transformation is use is never adequately defined, nor are any restrictions placed on the pr&ess, so that its status remains wholly obscure; yet a device called ‘paraphrastic transformation’ is introduced (45) with no clear indicat;cn as to how it variety (it looks uncommonly like simple Clearly, however, Vendler regards transformations as being applied to actual sentences rather than strings of symb&,s) for he dcrl~es (57) that ‘while Yt,& or V+ corresponds to ibe iii&CkVE in the matnx, to V+ is the result of a subjunctive or sub+nctive-equivaleni L, 4s matrix’ (this supposition is several times repeated). Some concepts are defined, trot just vaguely, but self-contradictorily; thus, the norninabzations to be discussed (proper nominalizations’j are &fined as Ihase which ‘do not share nouns with their host sentences, at least not at the ponrt of inseriicr’ (ZEQ; ht the class of what Vendler (613) calls ‘5-non&n&’ must do exactly this, since he would derive e.g. I advised Peter to take the job from I advised Peter, Peter should take tl’e job. Other concepts seem superfluous; the division pi nominals into ‘complete’ and ‘incomplete’ is quite arbitraxy, and justified orly by occasional asides about the degree to which no&nalization processes ‘distort the matrix’ (e.g.
2) N. Chomsky, 1965. Aspect- of titp thswy of syutux, Cambridge. Mws., M.I.T. Press., pp. 22-3. 3) Cf. D. Bickerton, 1969. ‘The linguistic validity of verb-nom&&sing transformations’, Lingwz 22, pp. 51-2 and referents therein.
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35). But there is neither a clear distinction between the classes, nor any criteria for assessing the degree of ‘di.+crtion’. These theoretical weaknesses inevitably entail inaccuracies on the analytic level. For example, the ‘paraphrastic transformation’ d -+ a (except in env. P-) - i.e. N’s v&g is replaceable by that N P except after prepositions - frequently does not work, especially where further embedding is involved; thus that hr! wolz the Yace (one of Vendler’s own examples) will replace his zerilzniwgthe race in e.g. iA Gz.nf~~g Ik race came as a saybise, but not in the following: (la) (lb) (2a) (2b)
I regarded his winning the race as a good omen. *I regarded that he won the race as a good omen. If his winning the race was a fluke, why did you back him? *If that he won the race was a fluke, why did you back him?
Nor will it work after certain verbs, e.g. discuss. (La) We discussed his winning the race. (3b) *We discussed that he won the race. Where it does work, the ‘paraphrastic’ a paraphrase:
result is by no lneans aiways
(4a) r explained his winning the race. (4b) I explained that he (had) won the race. Here only what Vendler would call a c-nominal - I ex$Ea&ed how he (had) won the race - accurately paraphrases 4a. Yet, despite these and other counter-examples, his sole criterion for distinguishing d and e-nominals when, as sometines happens, they are morphologically indistinguishable (50-l) is the possibility of substituting a-nominals for the former but not the latter. This leads him to ~.~.srt tnar ‘john’s sin&g is a d in I men&ned John’s s&g&g but an e in I im2at9. Johti’s sin&g’. Yet both structures admit adjectives - I PnentioltJ Johtis ttineless singing and I imitated John’s !u*eless s&ging, - and Vendler has already admitted that only e-nominals can do &is. Tkc fxt that at least one e can be replaced by an a (that John saflg) casts doubt, not merely on this particular process, but on the whole ‘paraphrastic’ machinery. For it is not the subclasses of the nominals, but the subclasses of the ‘container’ verbs (medicm and imitate) which determine the occurrence or non-occurrence of a-nominals.
REVIEWS
- COMPTES-RENDUS
Similarly, Vendler’s belief that there is ‘a subjunctive or subjunctive-equivalent in the matrix’ gets him into difficulties when he has to explain why i-nominal sentences such as I wanted him to go have no ‘subjunctive-equivalent’ *I wanted (him) thut he shod go. He merely lists some (by LO mnans all) of the exceptions, and accepts some higiriy un-Enghsh sentences such zs *he fiermitted (me) that I go home.4) Moreover, the:-e is no attempt to explain why many ‘subjunctive-equivalents’ have no corresponding i-forms (e.g. I cvzvkrsd him that he should go, *I colzvificed him to go). Even if WC accepted Vendler’s mU,_ J* of derivation, not all i-nominals would derive from subjunctives; these structures cover a much wider semantic range, as can be shown with the help of adversative tags : (5) I wanted him to go, but he didn’t. (6) ?I persuaded him to go, but he didn’t. (7) *I compelled him to go, but he didn’t. The latter, by Vendler’s own analysis, would have to be deriled from an indcative baoe, he wed. Vendler IS wrong, too, in thinking tlrat ‘if the verb. . . is necessarily transitive‘, all Ns in N’s V, and Vn of N nominals rnu.4 represent object-nouns in the base (M-9). We need only note heretics were threatetied with the tortzlres of the Znqzcisit~onor Mary’s cmsolation zezs wasted or, him. With ‘necexzrily transitive’ verbs that rcouire NP-infinitive comolementation. the reverse is oftener the case, e.g. the geNeraEordered the ~YOO#JSto a&z&, bpct his order was Lsobeyed. Yet, for all its faults, it would be wrong to dismiss Venclier’c work out of hand. its centrai thesis - that types of nominal are trunsformationally linked with the adjectival subclajses that can occur in their respective ‘containers’, and that there is a corresponding regularity of ordering among these subclasses when their members occur in prenominal strings - is, T think, interesting and original, and deserves to be worke3 on with a better conceptual machine than Vendler’s, with considerably more rigour, and with due attention to the relevant literature. 1
_
41 Throughout, far too many dubious or even quite un%z.ceptabIcsentences are cited in support of the analysis - some flagrant exampiea occur on p. 68
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The second section is, indeed, much less open to objection than the first. Z ~2:~ cdstinguishes between those adjectives that can be applied both to a noun and its hyponym, and those which cannot; thus an angry #ythm is alz aspy snake, but a short pytko:: is not a skort snake. J3: regards the first category as applying directly to the noun, and thus transferable from predicative to prenominal position via the simple reIative transformation; and the second as relating to the noun via some intermediary ncun which represents a characteristic semantic auality or function of the former - in most cases, these intermediaries would derive from nominalizations. Thus, an easy @eElem would derive, not from a firoblem is easy, but R fvoblem whose solulion is easy. He fails to make clear how the latter should be derived - from X s&JeZ L1@oblem easdy, or from X- solved a problem, Pros is easy? - but does show considerab!e evidence for supposing that the derivations of several subclasses of pranominal adjectives must include the nominalization process at so ne stage on their paths. However, he relies heavily on a, d and e-norainals in this st;ige of the analysis, and, as these themselves are r.evar properly differentiated, his results must still be treated with caution. Unfortunately the subclasses he distinguishes in this way are relatively few, mostly very small, and cm seldom co-occrlr in pren~minal strings. Between some (e.g. As - eager, wiUilzg, ready, am&us - and Ar - $ossible. im+ossible) there may be absolute restrictions on co-occurrence, and indeed his exemplary strings (!28--9,) contain co-occurrences of only two of these subclasses (As. &). Most of the s*&%sses which can co-occur, and for which he gives orderin~ruks, have on his own shov& nothing to do v.?th r~otinak at all. Thus he has no real grounds for claiming, as he does on p. i26, tbd the production of valid order rules far prenominal strings automatica3ly vaii&kes the s~ubzksrification of ad,ecrives and nominds in the preceding chapters; it ic simply impossible to validate the latter in tb$s way. Yet, once or twice in the text, Vendlei seems on tire point of grasp.kg .I linguistic consistency even more far-reaching than that he is seeking to prove (e.g. 76, 78). This is, that the entire cooccurrence patterns of adjective and noun subclasses (and therefore those of nominahsed verbs, which are after all only types of noun) may be governed by certain broad semantic c,.tegories, for vzhich
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the initial cut would be between fact/idea and process/event. This possibility might better be approached via non-derived nouns and adjectives, rather than the more slippery nominals. But the fact that Vendler has even suggested it goes some way to excuse the book’s shortcomings - among which is a passage (107-S) designed ‘for easier comprehension’, which T found the most baffling and self-contradictory in the whole text. Defiartmcntof English Ulziversityof Guyana Box 841, Georgetown Gztyana
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BICXERTON
M. A. K. HALLIDAY, Idolzation alzd grammar in British Eltglish. Janus Linguarum, Series Practica 48. 62 pp., 2 tables. Mouton & Co., The Plague-Paris 1967. Price: f !a.-. Consisting as it does of slightly adapted versions of two papers which have already appeared in drch+uztmLinguisticvm (1963) and Transactiolcs of the Philological Society (1963), this book offers nothing new, apart i~om a marked text, some additional tables, and a short but useful bibliography, to specialists who keep abreast of the periodical literature on the subject. Tc others, who do not, it must stand as a landmark in the history oi studies of intonation in general, and as a notable contribution also to linguistics. Halliday’s analysis of ‘informal educated spoken Southern British’ is based on examination of his own usage and on study of recorded texts. We are not told how the recordings, evidently of conversations between academics fairly well acquainted with one apother, were obtained, nor how large (apart from the fact that the main sample contains about 2000 tone groups) is the body of text. Halliday sets up three ‘systemic variables’: tonality, tonicity, and tone. Tonality refers to a speaker’s organisation of his utterance into tone groups; tonicity tc his placing, within each tone group, of the pretonic and tonic sections; and tone to his choice of primar;~ and secondary tone. Each tone-group, according to this analysis, consists of at least one foot. In English, a stress-timed language, the foot, consisting of