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The null subject parameter
Reviews
265
Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth J. Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. xi + 320 pp. Dfl. 170.00; US $89.00; &54.00 (hardb.) Reviewed by Rita Manzini, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WClE 6BT, U.K. This volume collects ten contributions on the null subject parameter, including an introduction by the editors, 0. Jaeggli and K. Safir. The other contributions are alphabetically ordered, but a thematic order emerges from the introduction, and it is to this order that I will more or less adhere in this review. Taken as a whole, these contributions cover a wide spectrum of data and theoretical positions within the principles and parameters model of transformational grammar. Taken individually, they vary in novelty and scope, but are all well argued, and some of them are clearly of major importance. Thus the volume strongly recommends itself to all scholars in the field. ‘Two Italian dialects and the null subject parameter’, by L. Brandi and P. Cordin, presents confirmation for Rizzi’s findings on the null subject parameter. The Trento and Florence dialects of Italian are analyzed as having an overt pronominal clitic in I; this licences either a lexical or a pro subject. Subject inversion is also possible. in which case an expletive clitic appears in I, overtly in Fiorentino. The presence of the (overt) expletive in subject extraction confirms the hypothesis that this takes place from the inverted position. M. Kenstowicz’s ‘The null subject parameter in Modern Arabic dialects’ is very much in the same mould. Levantine Arabic does not allow for null subjects, subject inversion, or that-t filter violations in that-clauses; Bani-Hassan Arabic allows for all three, providing evidence that a single parameter is involved. Similarly Bani-Hassan Arabic does not allow for that-t violations at LF; this supports the view that the violations at S-structure are only apparent, and correspond to extraction from the postverbal position. Finally, inflection for person is necessary in Bani-Hassan Arabic for a clause to exhibit the null subject phenomenology. However, E. Raposo’s ‘Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese’ concludes that inflection for person and number is not sufficient to guarantee the null subject option. Two types of constructions in European Portuguese are taken into consideration, in which the presence of an inflected infinitival licences only a control structure. These are of the form ,.. NP a Vinrinit .,. and correspond either to standard object control structures or to what Raposo calls prepositional infinitival structures. In the latter case the PP headed by a is predicated of the NP. To the extent that these articles do not put forward any new formulation of the null subject parameter, there is very little to be said about them here. I will however comment briefly on the identificational aspect of the formulations they assume, which is also the subject of original discussion in Jaeggli and Safir’s ‘The null subject parameter and parametric theory’. They propose that null subjects are permitted in all and only the languages with morphologically uniform inflectional paradigms. A
paradigm is morphologically uniform if ail its forms are morphologically complex (as in Spanish) or if none of them are (as in Japanese), but not if the two types mix (as in English). In agreement languages, AGR can identify an empty category as a pro; in languages without agreement, identification can be achieved by the inheritance of agreement features from a higher 1. Now, let us grant the general claim that there is a (partial) correlation betweeen morphological uniformity and null subjects. It still does not follow that the correlation is morphology driven, so that null subjects depend on morphological uniformity, rather than syntax driven, so that morphological uniformity depends on null subjects. Consider how the second view could be implemented. Suppose that the licencing of null subjects is not dependent on morphology. If a language licences null subjects, it is advantageous for it to have uniformly inflected paradigms. so that the null subjects can be used as a pronominal system; or equally perhaps it is advantageous for the language to have uniformly uninflected paradigms, so that the null subjects can be controlled. No type of morphology is especially advantageous if null subjects are not licenced, though uniformly inflected morphology is redundant. Thus the morphology driven model of morphology-syntax interaction is a formal one; the syntax driven one is functional. It is not clear to me that the latter does not model the syntax-morphology correspondence more closely. An important development of the standard model is introduced in R. Kayne’s ‘Null subjects and clitic climbing’. The objective of the article is to derive the generalization that clitic climbing is possible only in those Romance languages that allow for null subjects. Romance clitics are assumed to be able to attach either to V or to I. The idea is that in a language like Italian that licences null subjects, I is strong enough to Lmark VP. Consequently a clitic will be able to move to 1. From there it will be able to move to a superordinate I, passing through C. Movement of the clitic to I (and hence to any higher head) will be impossible in a language like French, where I is not strong enough to L-mark VP. Movement is however blocked in Italian by the complementizers the and se or an abstract tense element in C. Furthermore, I to I movement of the clitic has the effect of coindexing the matrix and embedded I. Hence it is predicted to be consistent with subject control and raising, but not for instance with object control. The theoretical qualities of the article should bc evident. A modular solution to clitic climbing is substituted for the restructuring rule and the correlation between null subjects and clitic climbing is captured. On the other hand it strikes me that the theoretical core of the proposal is only partially developed. In particular, WC may ask what defines a sufficiently strong I. Is it lexicality, in which case its L-marking properties automatically follow? If this is the intended definition. it is dilhcult to see why Kayne does not say so. If on the other hand sufficiently strong is not the same as lexical, then it could have the unappealing property of being an essentially ad hoc feature, at least in the sense that it applies only to non-lexical categories. J. Huang’s ‘Pro-drop in Chinese: A generalized Control Theory’ seeks a unification of pro-drop and control. A Generalized Control Theory is proposed under which a pro is excluded where it has a control domain but it is not bound in that domain.
Reviebvs
267
Concretely, this excludes pro in the object position of a sentence or in the subject position of a finite sentence in English. Under the same theory, pro is allowed where it has a control domain and it is controlled in it, in which case its reference is determined by its controller, or where it has no control domain, in which case its reference is free. The former possibility is notably instantiated with pro under control verbs, as well as with the pro subjects of finite clauses in Italian, where Agr controls it. Thus the standard pro-drop divide between Italian and English, and the standard control facts of English, which are generally dealt with by two separate components of grammar, are captured by the same theory under Huang’s proposal. The theory furthermore captures the distribution of null subjects in Chinese. The only readjustment of standard theories that this requires is that PRO and pro are conflated into a single type of empty category, but this can also be considered a positive result, since it allows us to get rid of pronominal anaphors altogether. I reserve my comments for the other article in this collection that is concerned with the relationship between pro and PRO, namely H. Borer’s ‘Anaphoric AGR’, which is the more complex of the two. Borer’s theory is summed up by the four features she introduces for I, namely + /-degenerate, the standard + / - identifier and + / - nominative, and most strikingly + /-anaphoric. Degenerate I has the property that it does not enter the Extended Projection Principle; thus it characterizes the believe/seem class of complements. I in tensed clauses in English is of course -identifier; I in tensed clauses in classical prodrop languages is instead + identifier. Both are + nominative and - anaphoric, the latter feature corresponding to the absence of control. There is also I which is both + nominative and + anaphoric. Infinitival I in Korean is of this type; its subject can be empty or lexical, but in all cases must be controlled, hence if lexical it can be an anaphor or a bound pronoun, but not an R-expression or a free pronoun. Finally the I in infinitives in English is + anaphoric and -nominative accounting for the impossibility of empty subjects and again for control. As in Huang, pro and PRO are reduced to a single type of lexical category. Anaphoric I furthermore is assumed to be subject to Binding Theory, so that control is unified with binding. The main advantages of the theory are to be sought in its conceptualization of control; because this no longer depends on the presence of an empty category (of a certain type), the facts of Korean are easily captured. On the other hand, of the variety of data considered, not all are equally well-judged. In particular infinitival clefts in Italian are claimed to display nominative Case-marking of a post-verbal subject by an infinitival I. In reality, in clefts the post-copular element is clearly transmitted Case from the embedded sentence. Thus Sono io the ho visto Piero (Am I that saw Peter) vs. E’ me the Piero ha visto (It is me that Peter saw); this process is in itself unclear, and it is also unclear how nominative triggers agreement in examples of the first type. But precisely for this reason it appears fair to conclude that Borer’s argument from Italian infinitival clefts is either void, or at least depends on clearing up the structure of finite clefts in the first place. More interestingly, Borer’s theory allows us to consider how the + /-identifier feature corresponding to the standard view of null subjects interacts with other
features of I. Given three features, eight combinations are expected to arise. but as many as three of them are not attested. In fact. in our simplified presentation WC have not introduced the + I- identifier distinction for + anaphoric I: this immediately eliminates one unwanted combination, though it is not clear that all of the data accounted for by Borer can be accommodated. On the other hand if the null subject parameter for -anaphoric I’s is not imputed to the feature + I))- identifier, it appears that the only remaining unwanted combination is - anaphoric, ~ nominative. But this can in fact correspond to the believe/seem cases. where a lexical NP Case-marked from outside or a Caseless trace occupies the subject position. Rcmcmber that thcrc are theories of empty categories, such as Brody’s. where anaphors are not (necessarily) anaphoric (and can be assumed to be - anaphoric redundantly). Thus I am suggesting that if the +/-identifier feature is abandoned, the + Al) - defective I feature, which appears to be entirely ad hoc, can also be eliminated. Other contributions to the volume are increasingly removed from its central concern. J.-M. Authier’s ‘Arbitrary null objects and unselective binding’ interestingly argues that null subjects and null objects in a language like French are not of the same type. Rather, null objects are base-generated as free variables which are bound by an adverb of quantification at the syntactic level of LF. S. Chung’s ‘On the notion null anaphor in Chamorro’ uses two restrictions that pick up anaphors in Chamorro to argue that non-anaphoric empty categories include not only pro subjects of tinitc clauses but also PRO’s and (NP-)traces. This means of course that the theory of empty categories must be reconstructed to a large extent. Interestingly again, Chung proposes that an empty NP must bear an independent theta-role in order to be positively specified for the features anaphor or pronominal. This forces (NP-)tracc to be reclassified as neither a pronominal nor an anaphor. All PRO subjects of infinitives must furthermore be instances of pro, since they are non-anaphors. Null retlcxive complements that have also been observed in natural languages can finally correspond to the anaphoric counterpart to pro. What I object to is the larger theoretical implications that Chung sees in her findings. Abandoning the claim that (NP-)traces are anaphors is not equivalent to abandoning any claim of parallelism between bound anaphora and movement. One obvious solution to the apparent dilemma which is created by the coexistence of the two claims is that anaphors and traces behave alike not because traces arc anaphoric, but because anaphors move at LF. The last contribution to be examined here, N. Hyams’s ‘The null subject parameter in language acquisition’, brings us back to the central concern of the volume. but with a difference, the difference being its interest in the acquisition process. Under Hyams’s version of the null subject parameter, languages may vary as to whether AC is or is not PRO. AC/PRO licences null subjects; but it must also be ungoverned, which accounts for the impossibility of generating (or raising) auxiliaries into it and ultimately inverting them in a language like Italian. By contrast impossibility of null subjects and auxiliary inversion coexist in a language like English. This sketchy account already makes it clear that Hyams’s theory is obsolete in some respects; thus
Reviews
269
Pollock has established that auxiliaries systematically move to I in Italian. However, the importance of the article lies elsewhere. Hyams proposes that an early grammar of a language can differ from the adult grammar with respect to the value chosen for a particular parameter. Thus subjectless sentences in the early stages of the acquisition of English can be given a null subject analysis. The AGjPRO theory of null subjects also correctly predicts the impossibility of auxiliaries in I (or C) during the period of subjectless sentences. The initial setting of the parameter can be universal; its resetting in English can be triggered by expletive pronouns or stressless nominative pronouns, which are absent from null subject languages. Hyams’s idea that acquisition is the acquisition of the correct value of parameters is one of a few important ideas to have emerged in the field of acquisition theory. That the acquisition of the correct properties for the subject position is related to the acquisition of the correct properties for the auxiliary system is furthermore a very interesting result and constitutes an important challenge for alternative formulations of the parameter.
Richard Wiese, Silbische und lexikalische Phonologie. Linguistische Arbeiten 2 11. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988. x + 230 pp. DM 90.00. Reviewed by Soren Egerod, Gamle Carlsberg Vej 15, DK-2500 Valby, Denmark. Wiese’s purpose with the book under review is to test the usefulness of the theory called lexical phonology and to further develop this method, which is one of the many offshoots of Chomsky and Halle’s seminal work The Sound Patterns of English (1968) especially as developed by Kiparsky (1985, 1986). The theory could, according to Wiese, just as well be named lexical morphology. Morphology and phonology are not kept separate as in structuralism. Grammar is modular with interacting subsystems. To this end Wiese investigates phenomena in two unrelated languages, German and Chinese. Phonological information is conceived of as non-linear. The phonological phrase is thus the domain of the allocation of accent in German and tonal manifestation in Chinese. The Chinese phonemes are defined by means of the features consonantic, sonorant, tense, continuous, labial, high, coronal, and back. The affricates are a special problem. On one level [ts] is equal to one C position, on another level the two sets of features [t] and [s] can work separately, as in assimilation. The ‘apical vowel’ (Karlgren’s n] is the minimum V factor in a syllable beginning with [ts]. Wiese sees this at the allocation of a C position to [s] as in the following chart (o = syllable):
i\i t
S
[s] automatically
becomes
[ + son], i.e. [tsq]
265
Osvaldo Jaeggli and Kenneth J. Safir (eds.), The Null Subject Parameter. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989. xi + 320 pp. Dfl. 170.00; US $89.00; &54.00 (hardb.) Reviewed by Rita Manzini, Department of Phonetics and Linguistics, University College London, Gower Street, London WClE 6BT, U.K. This volume collects ten contributions on the null subject parameter, including an introduction by the editors, 0. Jaeggli and K. Safir. The other contributions are alphabetically ordered, but a thematic order emerges from the introduction, and it is to this order that I will more or less adhere in this review. Taken as a whole, these contributions cover a wide spectrum of data and theoretical positions within the principles and parameters model of transformational grammar. Taken individually, they vary in novelty and scope, but are all well argued, and some of them are clearly of major importance. Thus the volume strongly recommends itself to all scholars in the field. ‘Two Italian dialects and the null subject parameter’, by L. Brandi and P. Cordin, presents confirmation for Rizzi’s findings on the null subject parameter. The Trento and Florence dialects of Italian are analyzed as having an overt pronominal clitic in I; this licences either a lexical or a pro subject. Subject inversion is also possible. in which case an expletive clitic appears in I, overtly in Fiorentino. The presence of the (overt) expletive in subject extraction confirms the hypothesis that this takes place from the inverted position. M. Kenstowicz’s ‘The null subject parameter in Modern Arabic dialects’ is very much in the same mould. Levantine Arabic does not allow for null subjects, subject inversion, or that-t filter violations in that-clauses; Bani-Hassan Arabic allows for all three, providing evidence that a single parameter is involved. Similarly Bani-Hassan Arabic does not allow for that-t violations at LF; this supports the view that the violations at S-structure are only apparent, and correspond to extraction from the postverbal position. Finally, inflection for person is necessary in Bani-Hassan Arabic for a clause to exhibit the null subject phenomenology. However, E. Raposo’s ‘Prepositional infinitival constructions in European Portuguese’ concludes that inflection for person and number is not sufficient to guarantee the null subject option. Two types of constructions in European Portuguese are taken into consideration, in which the presence of an inflected infinitival licences only a control structure. These are of the form ,.. NP a Vinrinit .,. and correspond either to standard object control structures or to what Raposo calls prepositional infinitival structures. In the latter case the PP headed by a is predicated of the NP. To the extent that these articles do not put forward any new formulation of the null subject parameter, there is very little to be said about them here. I will however comment briefly on the identificational aspect of the formulations they assume, which is also the subject of original discussion in Jaeggli and Safir’s ‘The null subject parameter and parametric theory’. They propose that null subjects are permitted in all and only the languages with morphologically uniform inflectional paradigms. A
paradigm is morphologically uniform if ail its forms are morphologically complex (as in Spanish) or if none of them are (as in Japanese), but not if the two types mix (as in English). In agreement languages, AGR can identify an empty category as a pro; in languages without agreement, identification can be achieved by the inheritance of agreement features from a higher 1. Now, let us grant the general claim that there is a (partial) correlation betweeen morphological uniformity and null subjects. It still does not follow that the correlation is morphology driven, so that null subjects depend on morphological uniformity, rather than syntax driven, so that morphological uniformity depends on null subjects. Consider how the second view could be implemented. Suppose that the licencing of null subjects is not dependent on morphology. If a language licences null subjects, it is advantageous for it to have uniformly inflected paradigms. so that the null subjects can be used as a pronominal system; or equally perhaps it is advantageous for the language to have uniformly uninflected paradigms, so that the null subjects can be controlled. No type of morphology is especially advantageous if null subjects are not licenced, though uniformly inflected morphology is redundant. Thus the morphology driven model of morphology-syntax interaction is a formal one; the syntax driven one is functional. It is not clear to me that the latter does not model the syntax-morphology correspondence more closely. An important development of the standard model is introduced in R. Kayne’s ‘Null subjects and clitic climbing’. The objective of the article is to derive the generalization that clitic climbing is possible only in those Romance languages that allow for null subjects. Romance clitics are assumed to be able to attach either to V or to I. The idea is that in a language like Italian that licences null subjects, I is strong enough to Lmark VP. Consequently a clitic will be able to move to 1. From there it will be able to move to a superordinate I, passing through C. Movement of the clitic to I (and hence to any higher head) will be impossible in a language like French, where I is not strong enough to L-mark VP. Movement is however blocked in Italian by the complementizers the and se or an abstract tense element in C. Furthermore, I to I movement of the clitic has the effect of coindexing the matrix and embedded I. Hence it is predicted to be consistent with subject control and raising, but not for instance with object control. The theoretical qualities of the article should bc evident. A modular solution to clitic climbing is substituted for the restructuring rule and the correlation between null subjects and clitic climbing is captured. On the other hand it strikes me that the theoretical core of the proposal is only partially developed. In particular, WC may ask what defines a sufficiently strong I. Is it lexicality, in which case its L-marking properties automatically follow? If this is the intended definition. it is dilhcult to see why Kayne does not say so. If on the other hand sufficiently strong is not the same as lexical, then it could have the unappealing property of being an essentially ad hoc feature, at least in the sense that it applies only to non-lexical categories. J. Huang’s ‘Pro-drop in Chinese: A generalized Control Theory’ seeks a unification of pro-drop and control. A Generalized Control Theory is proposed under which a pro is excluded where it has a control domain but it is not bound in that domain.
Reviebvs
267
Concretely, this excludes pro in the object position of a sentence or in the subject position of a finite sentence in English. Under the same theory, pro is allowed where it has a control domain and it is controlled in it, in which case its reference is determined by its controller, or where it has no control domain, in which case its reference is free. The former possibility is notably instantiated with pro under control verbs, as well as with the pro subjects of finite clauses in Italian, where Agr controls it. Thus the standard pro-drop divide between Italian and English, and the standard control facts of English, which are generally dealt with by two separate components of grammar, are captured by the same theory under Huang’s proposal. The theory furthermore captures the distribution of null subjects in Chinese. The only readjustment of standard theories that this requires is that PRO and pro are conflated into a single type of empty category, but this can also be considered a positive result, since it allows us to get rid of pronominal anaphors altogether. I reserve my comments for the other article in this collection that is concerned with the relationship between pro and PRO, namely H. Borer’s ‘Anaphoric AGR’, which is the more complex of the two. Borer’s theory is summed up by the four features she introduces for I, namely + /-degenerate, the standard + / - identifier and + / - nominative, and most strikingly + /-anaphoric. Degenerate I has the property that it does not enter the Extended Projection Principle; thus it characterizes the believe/seem class of complements. I in tensed clauses in English is of course -identifier; I in tensed clauses in classical prodrop languages is instead + identifier. Both are + nominative and - anaphoric, the latter feature corresponding to the absence of control. There is also I which is both + nominative and + anaphoric. Infinitival I in Korean is of this type; its subject can be empty or lexical, but in all cases must be controlled, hence if lexical it can be an anaphor or a bound pronoun, but not an R-expression or a free pronoun. Finally the I in infinitives in English is + anaphoric and -nominative accounting for the impossibility of empty subjects and again for control. As in Huang, pro and PRO are reduced to a single type of lexical category. Anaphoric I furthermore is assumed to be subject to Binding Theory, so that control is unified with binding. The main advantages of the theory are to be sought in its conceptualization of control; because this no longer depends on the presence of an empty category (of a certain type), the facts of Korean are easily captured. On the other hand, of the variety of data considered, not all are equally well-judged. In particular infinitival clefts in Italian are claimed to display nominative Case-marking of a post-verbal subject by an infinitival I. In reality, in clefts the post-copular element is clearly transmitted Case from the embedded sentence. Thus Sono io the ho visto Piero (Am I that saw Peter) vs. E’ me the Piero ha visto (It is me that Peter saw); this process is in itself unclear, and it is also unclear how nominative triggers agreement in examples of the first type. But precisely for this reason it appears fair to conclude that Borer’s argument from Italian infinitival clefts is either void, or at least depends on clearing up the structure of finite clefts in the first place. More interestingly, Borer’s theory allows us to consider how the + /-identifier feature corresponding to the standard view of null subjects interacts with other
features of I. Given three features, eight combinations are expected to arise. but as many as three of them are not attested. In fact. in our simplified presentation WC have not introduced the + I- identifier distinction for + anaphoric I: this immediately eliminates one unwanted combination, though it is not clear that all of the data accounted for by Borer can be accommodated. On the other hand if the null subject parameter for -anaphoric I’s is not imputed to the feature + I))- identifier, it appears that the only remaining unwanted combination is - anaphoric, ~ nominative. But this can in fact correspond to the believe/seem cases. where a lexical NP Case-marked from outside or a Caseless trace occupies the subject position. Rcmcmber that thcrc are theories of empty categories, such as Brody’s. where anaphors are not (necessarily) anaphoric (and can be assumed to be - anaphoric redundantly). Thus I am suggesting that if the +/-identifier feature is abandoned, the + Al) - defective I feature, which appears to be entirely ad hoc, can also be eliminated. Other contributions to the volume are increasingly removed from its central concern. J.-M. Authier’s ‘Arbitrary null objects and unselective binding’ interestingly argues that null subjects and null objects in a language like French are not of the same type. Rather, null objects are base-generated as free variables which are bound by an adverb of quantification at the syntactic level of LF. S. Chung’s ‘On the notion null anaphor in Chamorro’ uses two restrictions that pick up anaphors in Chamorro to argue that non-anaphoric empty categories include not only pro subjects of tinitc clauses but also PRO’s and (NP-)traces. This means of course that the theory of empty categories must be reconstructed to a large extent. Interestingly again, Chung proposes that an empty NP must bear an independent theta-role in order to be positively specified for the features anaphor or pronominal. This forces (NP-)tracc to be reclassified as neither a pronominal nor an anaphor. All PRO subjects of infinitives must furthermore be instances of pro, since they are non-anaphors. Null retlcxive complements that have also been observed in natural languages can finally correspond to the anaphoric counterpart to pro. What I object to is the larger theoretical implications that Chung sees in her findings. Abandoning the claim that (NP-)traces are anaphors is not equivalent to abandoning any claim of parallelism between bound anaphora and movement. One obvious solution to the apparent dilemma which is created by the coexistence of the two claims is that anaphors and traces behave alike not because traces arc anaphoric, but because anaphors move at LF. The last contribution to be examined here, N. Hyams’s ‘The null subject parameter in language acquisition’, brings us back to the central concern of the volume. but with a difference, the difference being its interest in the acquisition process. Under Hyams’s version of the null subject parameter, languages may vary as to whether AC is or is not PRO. AC/PRO licences null subjects; but it must also be ungoverned, which accounts for the impossibility of generating (or raising) auxiliaries into it and ultimately inverting them in a language like Italian. By contrast impossibility of null subjects and auxiliary inversion coexist in a language like English. This sketchy account already makes it clear that Hyams’s theory is obsolete in some respects; thus
Reviews
269
Pollock has established that auxiliaries systematically move to I in Italian. However, the importance of the article lies elsewhere. Hyams proposes that an early grammar of a language can differ from the adult grammar with respect to the value chosen for a particular parameter. Thus subjectless sentences in the early stages of the acquisition of English can be given a null subject analysis. The AGjPRO theory of null subjects also correctly predicts the impossibility of auxiliaries in I (or C) during the period of subjectless sentences. The initial setting of the parameter can be universal; its resetting in English can be triggered by expletive pronouns or stressless nominative pronouns, which are absent from null subject languages. Hyams’s idea that acquisition is the acquisition of the correct value of parameters is one of a few important ideas to have emerged in the field of acquisition theory. That the acquisition of the correct properties for the subject position is related to the acquisition of the correct properties for the auxiliary system is furthermore a very interesting result and constitutes an important challenge for alternative formulations of the parameter.
Richard Wiese, Silbische und lexikalische Phonologie. Linguistische Arbeiten 2 11. Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1988. x + 230 pp. DM 90.00. Reviewed by Soren Egerod, Gamle Carlsberg Vej 15, DK-2500 Valby, Denmark. Wiese’s purpose with the book under review is to test the usefulness of the theory called lexical phonology and to further develop this method, which is one of the many offshoots of Chomsky and Halle’s seminal work The Sound Patterns of English (1968) especially as developed by Kiparsky (1985, 1986). The theory could, according to Wiese, just as well be named lexical morphology. Morphology and phonology are not kept separate as in structuralism. Grammar is modular with interacting subsystems. To this end Wiese investigates phenomena in two unrelated languages, German and Chinese. Phonological information is conceived of as non-linear. The phonological phrase is thus the domain of the allocation of accent in German and tonal manifestation in Chinese. The Chinese phonemes are defined by means of the features consonantic, sonorant, tense, continuous, labial, high, coronal, and back. The affricates are a special problem. On one level [ts] is equal to one C position, on another level the two sets of features [t] and [s] can work separately, as in assimilation. The ‘apical vowel’ (Karlgren’s n] is the minimum V factor in a syllable beginning with [ts]. Wiese sees this at the allocation of a C position to [s] as in the following chart (o = syllable):
i\i t
S
[s] automatically
becomes
[ + son], i.e. [tsq]