28.97, Review: Morphology; Semantics; Syntax; Typology: Hetterle (2015)
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LINGUIST List: Vol-28-97. Thu Jan 05 2017. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.
Subject: 28.97, Review: Morphology; Semantics; Syntax; Typology: Hetterle (2015)
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Date: Thu, 05 Jan 2017 14:37:09
From: Nabat Erdogan [erdogann at umkc.edu]
Subject: Adverbial Clauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-101.html
AUTHOR: Katja Hetterle
TITLE: Adverbial Clauses in Cross-Linguistic Perspective
SERIES TITLE: Trends in Linguistics. Studies and Monographs [TiLSM]
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2015
REVIEWER: Nabat Erdogan, University of Missouri–Kansas City
Reviews Editor: Helen Aristar-Dry
SUMMARY
A slightly revised version of her PhD thesis, the book “Adverbial Clauses in
Cross-Linguistic Perspective” by Katja Hetterle investigates twelve adverbial
relations from a cross-linguistic perspective across 45 languages with a total
of 756 adverbial clause constructions. The investigation is carried out taking
into consideration the morphosyntactic characteristics and basic semantic
issues concerning adverbial clauses. The study argues that the diversity that
is observed in the cross-linguistic coding of adverbial relations is not
haphazard, but highly systematic. The purpose of the study is to provide a
better understanding of the unity and diversity in the cross-linguistic coding
of adverbial relations.
The book consists of six chapters, the first of which serves as an
introduction and the last as a conclusion wrapping up the entire book.
In the introduction, the author provides an overview and an outline of the
study. The twelve semantic types of adverbial clause that are the focus of the
study are listed in this chapter. The author groups these twelve semantic
types of adverbial relations under three semantic classes – temporal
relations, logical relations, and modal relations. Semantic types denoting
simultaneity overlap (‘when’), simultaneity duration (‘while’), anteriority
(‘after’), posteriority (‘before’), and terminus ad quem (‘until) are
categorized under temporal adverbial relations. Semantic types such as
condition, concession, cause, purpose, and result are grouped under logical
relations. The ones indicating manner/instrument and similarity/comparison
fall into the semantic class of modal relations. In the introductory part of
the book, the author also lists numerous studies that informed this
investigation. However, it is claimed that none of the previous studies
attempted to address a number of structural and semantic aspects of a variety
of clause types across a broad range of languages. The author asserts that
this study fills the gap in research by providing a holistic picture of the
system of adverbial clauses.
The second chapter, entitled ‘Theoretical and Methodological Preliminaries’,
informs readers about the theoretical background and the methodology that was
applied in the study, as the title also suggests. In this chapter, Hetterle
provides a rationale for adopting the functional-typological approach to
analyze linguistically diverse languages in the study. The
functional-typological approach fits the purpose of the study well since this
approach involves a cross-linguistic comparison of genetically unrelated
languages and has an explanatory goal (Croft, 1999). The study also adopts the
variationist approach to linguistic diversity, which is applied to discover
the patterns of usage in diverse languages and focuses on examining linguistic
variables comprising a set of variants used by speakers to express a given
meaning or function (Guo, & Chow, 2014). The use of the functional-typological
method not only serves to describe and analyze cross-linguistic patterns, but
also allows explaining them. Hetterle refers to the explanations for
linguistic patterns as “usage-based explanations” or “motivations,” which
comprise a broader range of explanations including cognitive, language
processing, and diachronic aspects of language usage. More specifically, the
author introduces the motivations that are frequently associated with
structural and semantic aspects of adverbial clauses, such as iconicity (the
pressure to shape language in a way that it complies to the structure of the
conceptual situation as a result of which the form of language is a direct
reflection of meaning) and economy (the pressure to express more commonly used
concepts in shorter forms in order to be as efficient and formally minimal as
possible), the discourse-functional potential of a clause, language
processing, and aspects of language change. In the second chapter, the author
also defines the notion of adverbial clause and subordination, and provides a
rationale for using genetically and areally controlled convenience sampling in
the study to analyze adverbial clauses in 45 languages comprising 30 different
families and four language isolates. The scope of the analysis with respect to
the characteristics of individual adverbial constructions is also defined in
this chapter. The author does not separate constructions for every single
adverbial linker, but rather considers different types of constructions for
adverbial relations.
Chapter 3, entitled ‘The Structure of Adverbial Clauses in Cross-Linguistic
Perspective’, explores the morphosyntactic characteristics of adverbial
clauses across a variety of languages and provides a detailed description of
the morphosyntactic structures across 12 adverbial relations. The author also
provides some explanations for the structural choices in different languages
in regard to separation of dependent adverbial clauses from independent main
clauses. Hetterle defines adverbial clause linkers in much broader terms than
the literature suggests. According to the author, adverbial clause linkers can
be “items of any formal type and position that specify one or more adverbial
relations between an adverbial clause and an associated main clause” (p.106).
Hetterle also explores the position of clausal linkers and adverbial clauses
and addresses the issue of negation in adverbial clauses in this chapter.
The fourth chapter, entitled ‘The Downgrading Hierarchy of Adverbial Clauses’,
studies the individual types of adverbial clause and tries to determine the
degree to which the individual adverbial clause types are downgraded. In this
chapter, Hetterle provides the method that was used to analyze and compare the
relative degree of downgrading of the adverbial relations in the study. The
author defines downgrading as “a morphosyntactically observable process by
which a clause is reduced compared to independent clauses”, which results in
losing some clausal properties (p.147). Downgrading mean indices for each
adverbial relation are calculated based on the sum of information from nine
individual descriptive parameters such as tense and aspect, mood, the
categorical status of the verb, the coding of the arguments, negation, and so
forth. Hetterle presents the results of the analysis, which demonstrate the
downgrading hierarchy of 12 adverbial relations. The findings of the analysis
are also discussed in this chapter.
Chapter 5, entitled ‘The Intra-Categorical Conceptual Space of Adverbial
Clauses: The Multifunctionality of Adverbial Relations’, focuses on semantic
issues. More precisely, this chapter is concerned with the meaning of
individual clausal linkers and highlights patterns of semantic
multifunctionality of clausal linkers that involve the individual adverbial
relations. In this chapter, the author tries to demonstrate the degree to
which the individual semantic types of adverbial linkers can express more than
one inter-clausal relation. Hetterle introduces research findings that show
that adverbial relations demonstrate various degrees of multifunctionality and
explicitness. However, it is also concluded that relation-specific patterns of
multifunctionality into which the individual adverbial relations enter is
largely systematic cross-linguistically.
EVALUATION
The book can serve as a valuable resource for linguists, linguistics
professors and students, and language learners. Analyzing a variety of
adverbial relations in 45 languages comprising 30 different families and 4
language isolates, certainly adds to the significance of the study. The study
has the potential to address a wide range of readers from diverse language
backgrounds.
The author has added several useful appendices at the end of the book that
include a list of language-specific reference material alphabetically sorted
by language names, excerpts from the dataset demonstrating the morphosyntactic
structure of adverbial clauses and multifunctionality of adverbial relations,
and other useful information for possible different interpretation and
understanding of the study findings.
The book is clearly written. However, occasionally, the reading becomes more
difficult due to linguistics terminology that is widely used in the book. The
reason for this is the fact that the book is a slightly revised version of the
author’s PhD dissertation, as Hetterle herself states. The intended audience
of this study is experts in the field of linguistics, which might make it
harder for readers who do not have linguistics background to follow the ideas
in the book. The book would be easily understandable and more accessible to
larger audiences if the author provided a glossary of linguistic terms,
preferably, at the beginning of the book, to prepare its readers for the
scientific language used in the book.
The book provides a lot of evidence to support the author’s claim that the
present study fills the gap in the literature in that no other studies have
attempted to investigate a number of structural and semantic aspects in a
variety of adverbial clause types across many languages. However, in order to
present a better understanding of the behavior of the individual adverbial
clause types in individual languages and a more holistic view of adverbial
relations in each language, more examples could be provided for each language
studied. For example, the author provides only two examples for the adverbial
relations (more specifically the adverbial linkers) in Mandarin Chinese, one
example in Chalcatongo Mixtec and Fehan Tetun, and no sentence examples for
languages such as Mosetén, Purépecha, Rama, and Slave. The study can be
improved by adding some/more sentence examples of adverbial clauses in each of
45 languages investigated.
The study suggests future research questions that could further develop our
current understanding of adverbial relations, such as whether the individual
adverbial clause types can take independent negation marking. The study also
proposes further investigation of adverbial clauses of result and modal
relations. Moreover, it encourages researchers to pursue compositional
encoding of interclausal relations.
Based on the aforementioned, it can be concluded that this book is useful not
only for linguistics students and professors, but also for anybody who is
interested in cross-linguistic studies and furthering research in this field.
REFERENCES
Croft, W. (1999). Modern syntactic typology. In M. Shibatani, & Bynon, T
(Eds.), Approaches to language typology (pp. 85-144). Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Guo, H., & Chow, D. (2014). A corpus-based variationist approach to bei
passives in Mandarin Chinese. Corpus Linguistics & Linguistic Theory, 10(1),
139-173.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Nabat Erdogan earned her first doctorate degree in Linguistics in 2008 from
Azerbaijan University of Languages in Baku, Azerbaijan. She is currently
pursuing her second Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction (with an emphasis on
Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) and English at the University
of Missouri – Kansas City. She also serves as an adjunct instructor of TESOL
at the aforementioned university. Her research interest areas include General
Linguistics, Syntax, Second Language Acquisition, Second Language Reading and
Writing, and TESOL. Her long-term goal is to contribute to research in the
areas of Linguistics and Second Language Teaching and Learning.
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