16.3576, Review: Syntax/Germanic Lang: Faarlund (2004)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-16-3576. Fri Dec 16 2005. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 16.3576, Review: Syntax/Germanic Lang: Faarlund (2004)

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1)
Date: 12-Dec-2005
From: Michael Putnam < mtputnam at umich.edu >
Subject: The Syntax of Old Norse 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Fri, 16 Dec 2005 20:44:32
From: Michael Putnam < mtputnam at umich.edu >
Subject: The Syntax of Old Norse 
 

AUTHOR: Faarlund, Jan Terje
TITLE: The Syntax of Old Norse
SUBTITLE: With a survey of the inflectional morphology and a 
complete bibliography
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2004
Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/15/15-2418.html 

Michael T. Putnam, Department of Germanic Languages and 
Literatures, University of Michigan

DESCRIPTION

The last couple of decades have evidenced a revitalization of interest 
in the time-honored discipline of historical linguistic inquiry.   
Traditionally, historical linguistics has concerned itself primarily with 
phonological issues and has paid much less attention to aspects of 
syntax.  Since the instantiation of the Principles-and-Parameters (P & 
P) framework in generative syntax, many issues in diachronic syntax 
have been revisited and reassessed through the lens of modern 
theoretical concepts.  Surprisingly, relatively few studies have been 
devoted to the historical syntax of one particular language or 
language family applying current syntactic theory.  In his text ''The 
Syntax of Old Norse'' Jan Terle Faarlund seeks to provide an analysis 
of the syntax of Old Norse within the basic Principles-and-Parameters 
enterprise.  The last comprehensive presentation of Old Norse syntax 
existing to date is Marius Nygaard's ''Norrøn syntax'', published in 
Dano-Norwegian in 1906.  Faarlund's contribution is therefore a 
welcome edition being the first comprehensive treatment of Old Norse 
syntax in a century and being the very first edition of such a volume in 
English.  

Aside from providing substantial empirical data from Old Norse, 
Faarlund's text faces two principle challenges, challenges the author 
readily admits.  First, Faarlund hopes that his descriptive work ''will be 
of interest to students and scholars working on historical Germanic 
linguistics, diachronic syntax, or Scandinavian languages, as well as 
to philologists and others interested in Nordic languages, civilizations, 
and history'' (p.xi).  Recognizing that his target audience may not be 
well versed on the latest nuances in generative syntactic theory, 
Faarlund condenses his discussion of core theoretical concepts to 
Chapter 1 consisting of only six pages.  Although the author 
introduces other components of the theory in future chapters 
describing individual structural and phrasal units, i.e., noun phrases, 
verb phrases, etc., everything is presented on a ''need-to-know'' 
basis.  In my opinion, this presentation of theory does not get bogged 
down in more theory-internal arguments and makes this work 
readable to those unfamiliar with recent trends in modern syntactic 
thought.  Second, a fundamental concern of generative linguistic 
inquiry centers on descriptive and explanatory adequacy.  Perhaps 
the most poignant methodological stumbling block is the assumption 
that a true description of the internal grammatical competence of Old 
Norse speakers is impossible.  To combat this shortcoming, Faarlund 
posits ''any description of speakers' internalized grammar, whether 
dead or alive, is a hypothesis of this kind, since the actual object of 
study is never available to direct observation'' (p.1).  The latter 
aforementioned challenge is more of a philosophical issue, however 
the former, namely, integrating current syntactic theory into an 
analysis of Old Norse for both linguist and non-linguist alike, 
determines the success or failure of this volume.  As argued in this 
review, I feel that Faarlund's text successfully lays out the essential 
aspects of syntactic theory while subtly providing data and 
argumentation that challenge current claims in the theory.  In this 
regard, ''The Syntax of Old Norse'' is successful on this account.

The structure of this volume is as follows: Chapter 1 offers brief 
definitions and explanations on Old Norse, the sources from which 
empirical data was extracted and fundamental linguistic (syntax) 
considerations.  Faarlund introduces the role of phrase structure in 
universal grammar (X-bar theory), binding, c-command relations and 
adjunction in this initial chapter.  As stated above, Faarlund utilizes 
these fundamental tools discussed in this introductory chapter to 
development further theoretical considerations in later chapters.  
Chapters 2 and 3 discuss the phonology and inflectional morphology 
of Old Norse.  Although the central focus of this text is the syntactic 
structure of Old Norse, the existence of these chapters is intended to 
function ''as an aid to the understanding of the inflectional patterns 
which play a role in syntax'' (p.7).  At any rate they assist those 
unfamiliar with Old Norse texts with resources that can help familiarize 
them with data presented in future chapters.  The remainder of the 
chapters in the book provides an in depth breakdown of the various 
key components of Old Norse syntax: Chapter 4 introduces the noun 
phrase in Old Norse.  Chapters 4 and 5, discussing Determiner 
Phrases and Adjective Phrases respectively, build upon the 
fundamental claims established in Chapter 4.  Chapter 7 concerns 
itself with prepositional phrases, and Chapter 8 focuses on the verb 
phrase.  The remainder of the book (e.g., Chapters 9, 10 and 11) 
analyzes sentential-level phenomena, i.e. finite sentences, 
subordinate clauses and reflexive binding. 

CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Although the goal of this volume is to present a concise, simplified 
theoretical model to explain empirical data from Old Norse, 
occasionally the author fails to provide fundamental details to basic 
aspects of the theory.  Take for example the morphosyntactic 
agreement properties of determiner phrases (DPs).  Faarlund outlines 
the distinction between structural and lexical case (p. 21) but offers 
little explanation as to how structural case is licensed in the theory 
presented in his book.  Functional projections responsible for 
agreement phenomena such as this (AgrP) are not mentioned in this 
text.  The displacement of nominal elements into the ''middle field'' 
takes place by means of adjunction (cf. Section 9.7).  It is therefore left 
open how agreement features such as phi- and case-features are 
accounted for even in this basic presentation of syntactic theory.  
Another problem with the presentation of theory in this book is the 
occasional lack of references of key topics in the subject index.  For 
example, Faarlund introduces the concept of semantic roles (p.21-23) 
and elaborates further on their importance in constructing the verb 
phrase in Chapters 6, 7 and 8.  For readers unfamiliar with current 
syntactic theory, this is a central concept.  Unfortunately, the 
term ''semantic role'' is not mentioned in the subject index.  

Another shortcoming of this book is the lack of inter-textual reference 
to certain theoretical formulations within the text's presentation of 
theory.  In Chapter 4 (Noun Phrases) the author introduces an 
intermediate functional projection between the determiner phrase (DP) 
and the noun phrase (NP) that he labels the 'Reference Phrase' (p. 
56-7).  The existence of a referential phrase as an intermediary is not 
an established component of mainstream theory, but is rather a 
personal invention of the author himself (Faarlund, p.c.) (See however 
Putnam 2006 for similar arguments).  In the latter chapters that 
discuss sentential phenomena and more global aspects of syntactic 
theory, the author incorporates footnotes to give proper credit to 
previous scholars and literature.  My last slight criticism concerns the 
final chapter on reflexive binding.  Due to the relatively short length of 
the chapter and its almost pure theoretical content, perhaps it would 
have been more appropriate to integrate these data into early 
sections of the text (cf. Sections 3.7.4 and/or 8.2).  

Aside from these minor quibbles, the book is a tremendous success.  
The piecemeal presentation of the theory is clear and systematic, 
especially to the non-syntactician.  The expansion of theoretical 
knowledge is subtle and not overwhelming, and is always 
accompanied by a healthy dose of relevant data to illustrate and 
support these assumptions.  The data sets themselves are a treasure 
trove of information that challenges certain long-held theoretical 
assumptions.  For example, in his treatment of relative clauses in Old 
Norse, the author notes that relativization may cross clause 
boundaries.  Certain examples serve as potential counter-examples to 
the allegedly universal restriction that a subject cannot leave a clause 
introduced by a complementizer (p. 263).  Discontinuous XPs also 
abound in the data, in particular prepositional phrases (PPs) and verb 
phrases (VPs).  From a glance, these data also force a reinvestigation 
of constraints on local and non-local (i.e. long) head movement.  The 
wealth of data will benefit future studies aiming at linguistic 
change/parameter setting in Scandinavian syntax as well as other 
typological comparisons with both related and distinct language 
families.  

CONCLUSION

Whether or not this volume on the syntax of Old Norse is intelligible to 
scholars outside of linguistics remains to be seen.  In hindsight it may 
have perhaps been more appropriate to be a little more 'theory savvy' 
in approach.  Leaving that aside, Faarlund's ''The Syntax of Old 
Norse'' stands as a strong companion reference work to more 
philologically-based introductory works such as Gordon's ''Introduction 
to Old Norse'' (1981).  The discreet introduction of theoretical nuances 
(e.g. referential phrases) and the wealth of empirical data make this 
text of great interest not only for historical linguistics but also for those 
involved in more theoretical research.  

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

I thank Jan Terje Faarlund for engaging in personal communication 
with me about this text.

REFERENCES

Gordon, E. V. (1981) An Introduction to Old Norse 2nd Edition. 
Oxford: Clarendon Press. 

Putnam, Michael T. (2006) ''Prolific Scrambling: A Radical Approach to 
Middle Field Scrambling in West Germanic.'' Ph.D. dissertation, 
University of Kansas. 

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Mike Putnam is a Lecturer/Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the 
Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures at the University 
of Michigan.  His research focuses on theoretical syntax, Germanic 
linguistics and contact linguistics.





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