28.4929, Review: Portuguese; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Martins, Carrilho (2016)

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Subject: 28.4929, Review: Portuguese; General Linguistics; Historical Linguistics; Language Acquisition; Sociolinguistics: Martins, Carrilho (2016)

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Date: Sat, 25 Nov 2017 13:15:20
From: Jason Doroga [dorogajustin at gmail.com]
Subject: Manual de linguística portuguesa

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/27/27-5163.html

EDITOR: Ana Maria  Martins
EDITOR: Ernestina  Carrilho
TITLE: Manual de linguística portuguesa
SERIES TITLE: Manuals of Romance Linguistics
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2016

REVIEWER: Jason Doroga,  

REVIEWS EDITOR: Helen Aristar-Dry

INTRODUCTION

The “Manual de linguística portuguesa” edited by Ana Maria Martins and
Ernestina Carrilho is Volume 16 of the series Manuals of Romance Linguistics
published by de Gruyter. The series editors seek to expand the contents of the
“Lexikon der Romanistishen Linguistik” and “Romanische Sprachgeschichte” by
integrating diachronic dimensions of European Portuguese (EP) with new
developments in clinical linguistics, psycholinguistics, and digital
humanities in order to give us a more complete view of Portuguese linguistics
that extends beyond the more standard areas of phonology, morphology and
syntax. This volume contains twenty-five Chapters that give a comprehensive
and up-to-date description of research in EP linguistics. The mission with
this volume, the editors write, is to combine ''abordagens panorâmicas con
análises em profundidade de tópicos selecionados'' (p. 1). The volume as a
whole shows a commitment to balancing theoretical approaches and provides both
empirical and descriptive data from a variety of sources.   

SUMMARY 

The introductory essay provides an overview of the historical development of
EP with a special emphasis on implications on modern dialectology. Following a
standard division of Old Portuguese (up to end of 14th century), Middle
Portuguese (15th-16th), Classic Period (17th-middle of 18th) and Modern
Portuguese, the author provides a timeline for the principal changes in
phonology, morphology, syntax and lexico-semantics. This chapter is an ideal
introduction to the volume and provides a context for many of the subsequent
chapters, which use comparative and diachronic perspectives to shed light on
the modern language (e.g., Chapter 15 ''A colocação dos pronomes clíticos em
sincronia e diacronia'').

 Portuguese in contact with the languages of Africa and Asia is featured
prominently at the beginning of the volume. Tjerk Hagemeijer (Chapter 2 ''O
português em contacto em África'') treats the Portuguese presence in Africa,
and Hugo C. Cardoso (Chapter 3 ''O português em contacto na Ásia e no
Pacífico) discusses the Portuguese presence in Asia. Both authors treat not
only the linguistic factors but also the social conditions of the contact
situation. 

The general topics of phonetics and sociolinguistic variation are taken up in
the next two chapters. Celeste Rodrigues (Chapter 4 ''Variação
sociolinguística'') discusses phonetic variation (e.g., realization of tonic
vowels, atonic vowels and consonants in the onset position) in the context of
sociolinguistic variation. The author affirms that the reduction of atonic
vowels is one of the most salient features of dialectal variation in EP. The
author rightfully claims that phonetic variation is best studied in the
context of prosody and intonation, which is the focus of the next chapter.
Here, Ana Isabel Mata and Helena Motiz (Chapter 5 ''Prosódia, variação e
processamento automático'') present a panoramic view of studies in prosody in
EP and focuses on the effects of individual and stylistic differences on
prosodic patterns.   Maria Antónia Mota (Chapter 6 ''Morfologia nas
interfaces'') discusses morphology's interface with phonetics (e.g.,
vocalization of /l/ in plural nouns), syntax (e.g., agreement patterns in
compound nouns), and semantics (e.g., verbal aspect and durativity). The
author demonstrates that no component of the morphological system of EP is
structured independently of phonetics, syntax and semantics. Rather,
morphology is at the interface, encoding information from each of these
dominions in the morphologic features of the language. Similar themes are
picked up in Telmo Móia's contribution (Chapter 12 ''Semântica e
pragmática''). Here, the author discusses the syntax-semantics interface (the
author rightfully mentions that the semantic/pragmatic distinction is
difficult to tease apart in many studies). Speakers and listeners rely on the
syntax to construct meaning. For example, quantifiers such as ambos clear up
the inherent ambiguity in the interpretation of the reciprocal phrase ‘um com
o outro’. Likewise, the author demonstrates that the aspectual nature of a
verb ultimately depends on the syntax and semantics of the entire phrase, not
on the semantic meaning of the verb itself. Lastly, Ana Maria Martins'
contribution (Chapter 22 ''O sistema responsivo: padrões de resposta a
interrogativas polares e a asserções'') provides a proposal concerning the
system of response to assertions and polar questions in EP that integrates
elements of syntax, morphology and pragmatics. The author includes strategies
in EP that are not used in Brazilian Portuguese such as reduplication of the
verb (e.g., -O João ainda não saiu, pois não? -Saiu, saiu).

 The next two chapters address recent innovations in the study of Portuguese
lexicology. Raquel Amaro and Sara Mendes (Chapter 7 ''Lexicologia e
linguística computacional'') claim that contextualizing the Generative Lexicon
tradition (Pustejovksy 1995) within a computational linguistics framework
allows for a more precise understanding of how lexical items are selected. The
authors demonstrate how encoding of events and argument structures are
depicted in programs such as WordNet.pt. Next, João Palo Silvestre (Chapter 8
''Lexicografia'') provides a panorama of monolingual and bilingual
dictionaries of EP. Specifically, the author considers various dictionaries
published in Portugal and Brazil, and evaluates them based on the amount of
linguistic information included such as etymology, argument structure and
semantic change. 

The next three chapters reflect areas of linguistics that have seen recent
growth in the last decades. Amália Mendes (Chapter 9 ''Linguística de corpus e
outros usos dos corpora em linguística'') addresses the latest innovations in
corpus research in Portuguese - there is a long tradition of corpus linguistic
for Portuguese, starting with the Português Fundamental corpus compiled by
Cintra in the 1970s, long before corpus linguistics was a developed
discipline. One of the main points the author makes is that corpus based
studies are not tied to any one linguistic approach. The author suggests that
many different theoretical approaches should rely on corpus based research.
The chapter concludes with an overview of the different types of information
most often included in a corpus (e.g., oral vs, written language, standard vs.
non-standard forms). 

Rita Marquilhas and Iris Hendrickx (Chapter 10 ''Avanços nas humanidades
digitais'') consider the advances and challenges of conducting linguistic
research from digitized texts. The first half of the article traces the
history of Portugal's innovation in digitizing humanistic texts. The benefits
of using digitized texts are indisputable, but explicit and consistent
codification of relevant linguistic information remains a challenge. The
second half of the chapter discusses innovation in tagging and representing
for text sources encoded using the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative
(TEI). To conclude this section of the volume, João Costa, Maria João Freitas
and Anabela Gonçalves (Chapter 11 ''Linguística clínica: alguns dados sobre o
português'' discuss methods for assessing linguistic disorders and the types
of intervention that best address them. The authors discuss the various ways
in which clinical linguistics provides a window into the faculty of human
language.
 
Armanda Costa (Chapter 13 ''Psicolinguística e ciência cognitiva'') places key
facets of psycholinguistics such as cognitive processes of language processing
within the context of EP. Specifically, the chapter focuses on aspects of
Portuguese grammar that influence language processing, including the
null-subject parameter and variable resolutions of ambiguous anaphoric
relationships. Additionally, the author evaluates various hypotheses of
language processing such as Grosz, Joshi and Weinstein's Centering Theory
(1997) and tests the applicability of these theories in explaining language
processing in EP. 

The second half of the volume comprises articles dealing with syntax,
semantics and phonology. Ana Maria Martins and João Costa (Chapter 14 ''Ordem
dos constituintes frásicos: sujeitos invertidos; objetos antepostos'') address
aspects of theticity, topicalization and focalization to explain word order
variation in declarative sentences. The authors present an inventory of the
unique syntactic, semantic and pragmatic properties of contrastive focus and
topicalization in EP. They claim that the two processes are often confused in
the literature, and present syntactic properties, such as placement of clitic
pronouns and relative clauses, that may be used to distinguish the two
processes. 

There are four chapters that feature research on L1 acquisition of grammatical
forms. João Costa, Alexandra Fiéis and Maria Lobo (Chapter 16 ''A acquisição
dos pronomes clíticos no português L1'') summarize a series of studies that
focus on the placement (proclisis and enclisis) and omission of clitic
pronouns in L1 learners of Portuguese (e.g., Está a molhá-lo / Está a
molhar-ø) (p. 434). The authors conclude that Portuguese children acquire
native proficiency of clitic pronouns later than L1 learners of other Romance
varieties such as French and Italian. Specifically, they overgeneralize the
null-object parameter and omit the clitic in obligatory contexts such as
adverbial and relative clauses. They also overgeneralize the contexts of
enclisis in grammatical contexts that require proclisis such as negation
(e.g., Penteou-se vs. *Não penteou-se). A crucial point this article makes is
that a child is not only sensitive to the type of syntactic constructions that
trigger proclisis, but must also rely on lexical knowledge to be able to
determine if proclisis is required or optional.  

Inês Duarte, Ana Lucía Santos and Anabela Gonçalves (Chapter 17 ''O infinitivo
flexionado na gramática do adulto e na acquisição de L1'') study L1
acquisition of the personal infinitive (e.g., eu comer, tu comeres). They
conclude that children are particularly sensitive to this construction and
acquire it early, especially the personal infinitive in subordinate clauses
introduced by the preposition ‘para’. The fact that the children produce
personal infinitives ''precocemente'' (p. 475) belies the important fact that
young children still do not always interpret the subject of the personal
infinitive correctly before the age of 9-10 (Pires, Rothman and Santos 2011).
For example, in the sentence ‘O Mickey ficou satisfeito por lavarem o carro’
(p. 476) children will often misinterpret the subject of the personal
infinitive as Mickey.   Maria Lobo (Chapter 21 ''Sujeitos nulos: gramática do
adulto, aquisição de L1 e variação dialetal'') looks at the acquisition of the
null subject parameter. The discussion synthesizes data  from a number of
studies that analyze acquisition and processing of null subjects and
pronominal subjects. The author claims that though the traditional features of
pro-drop are acquired early in L1 learners of Portuguese, the interpretation
of null subjects and pronominal subjects is a late acquisition feature.
Specifically, the processing of ambiguous antecedents (e.g., ‘O bombeiro disse
ao polícia que ø/ele saltou’) produces the greatest difference between
children and adult grammars. The chapter concludes with a discussion of
dialects of EP that prefer overt subjects and appear to contradict Chomsky's
'Principle of Economy' (1981). 
 
In the final acquisition study of the volume, Maria João Freitas (Chapter 25
''A sílaba na gramática do adulto e na aquisição de língua materna'') presents
the basics of Portuguese syllable structure and provides acquisition evidence
to explain the sonority hierarchy of the Portuguese syllable. Relying on the
Principle of Dissimilarity and the Sonority Principle, the author explains how
L1 learners of Portuguese resolve problematic consonant clusters (e.g., pneu).
For each problematic feature, the author provides acquisition data to test the
phonological analysis proposed.   By means of a careful survey of dialectal
variation in spoken Portuguese, Maria Lobo (Chapter 18 ''O gerúndio flexionado
no português dialetal'') traces the history of the inflected gerund (e.g.,’ eu
cantando’, ‘tu cantandos’). The inflected gerund is limited to southern rural
dialects and appears most often in finite temporal adverbial constructions. In
a departure from standard EP, the inflected gerund allows for a disjunction
between the subject of the gerund clause (which is often unexpressed) and the
subject of the main clause.   Madalena Colaço (Chapter 19 ''Especificidades
das estruturas de coordenação: padrões de concordância'') describes agreement
asymmetries in coordinated subjects and other coordinated nominal
constituents. Specifically, the author claims that EP demonstrates two
agreement patterns: full agreement (i.e., agreement in person, number and
gender of both constituents) and partial agreement (i.e., agreement in only
one constituent). The author concludes that the type of agreement pattern is
determined by the syntax. Partial agreement is licensed in post-verbal
coordinated subjects (e.g., 'Durante a cerimónia, discursou o presidente e o
representate dos alunos') and in prenominal elements within coordinated
constituents (e.g., 'Todos os livros e as revistas que comprei').  
Anabela Gonçalves, Ernestina Carrilho and Sandra Pereira (Chapter 20
''Predicados complexos numa perspetiva comparativa'') describe the semantic
and syntactic properties of complex predicates in EP. They authors argue that
the causative infinitival construction (i.e., fazer + infinitive) does not
follow the same restructuring rules for other complex predicates. Crucially,
EP allows for a wider variety of predicates that occur as a complement of the
fazer + infinitive than other varieties of Romance.    Rui Marques (Chapter 23
''O modo conjuntivo'') develops a semantic approach to explain the selection
of mood in EP. In the first half of the article, the author presents two
traditional analyses that have been used to explain the distinction between
indicative and subjunctive (i.e., realis/irrealis and assertion/non-assertion)
but provides counterexamples that illustrate the shortcomings of these
analyses. In the second half of the article, the author argues that
propositional attitudes is what conditions mood selection. The author
concludes that the subjunctive is excluded in cases where the propositional
attitude expresses knowledge or positive belief.   João Veloso (Chapter 24 ''O
sistema vocálico e a redução e neutralização das vogais átonas'') discusses
the phonetic inventory of tonic vowels vs. atonic vowels in EP. The author's
treatment of the changes in these two groups of allophones sound changes is
systematic and comprehensive and includes word stress and syllable structure
as factors that influence the realization of the vowel. The author proposes
that two frequent reduced vowels (e.g., the semi-open, central vowel and the
closed, central vowel) should have phonemic status.

EVALUATION

The central goal of this volume is to provide a panoramic overview of European
Portuguese linguistics written in Portuguese by experts in the field. Without
question, the twenty-five chapters presented in this volume achieve this goal.
The authors illuminate different aspects of EP without simplifying or
over-generalizing the state of affairs in order to tidy up conclusions. In
fact, one of the strengths of the volume consists of demonstrating how EP in
particular in indispensable to help clarify thorny conceptual aspects of
Romance linguistics.

The editors have chosen a balanced selection of topics, representing a broad
range of both traditional and modern lines of investigation, and throughout
the volume individual authors recognize the importance of integrating a
variety of approaches. It is commendable that the volume as a whole achieves a
balance between theory and empirical data.

Though the chapters in a volume of this type may by necessity be described as
overview articles, the majority of the contributions go beyond merely
summarizing what we know about selected topics in Portuguese. The volume
consistently shows the vitality of EP studies by addressing the compelling
questions that still remain unanswered. Martins, for example, call for the
need to study the socio-historical context of contact-induced phonetic change
(Chapter 1), and Hagemeijer (Chapter 2) calls for the integration of substrate
language and L2 acquisition theory for work on the varieties of Portuguese
spoken in Africa. Other examples include new advances in speech pathology as a
result of the Crosslinguistic Child Phonology Project - European Portuguese
(Chapter 11). Lastly, it is worth noticing that studies on variation both at
the micro-level (especially Chapters 4 and 21) and the macro-level are
particularly well represented in the volume. As the editors note in the
preface, the inclusion of studies that focus on variation have tended to focus
more on Brazil than Portugal (p. 2).   Though the editors make the claim that
a comparative analysis of two closely related languages, such as EP and
Galician, is not the focus of the volume, the chapters that are the most
illuminating are the ones that include a comparative element. For example,
Martins' contributions on the diachronic perspective of Portuguese (Chapter 1)
and the placement of clitic pronouns (Chapter 15) demonstrate what we gain in
our understanding of the structure of one language when we consider how (and
why) it is similar or different from a related language. This holds true for
the articles that treat dialectal variations within Portuguese (e.g.,
Brazilian and European) such as Rui Marques' contribution on the subjunctive
mood and Ana Maria Martins' contribution on responses to assertions and polar
questions. 
 
The bibliographies that conclude each chapter list the highest quality
scholarship available on each topic. The bibliographies balance foundational
studies (e.g., Dalgado's pioneering work on Portuguese contact in Asia) with
the latest scholarship available on each topic. Additionally, in many cases
they provide foundational studies in languages other than Portuguese, making
them useful to scholars working in Ibero-Romance linguistics and comparative
Romance linguistics.  The most recent on-line corpora included in Mendes'
chapter on corpus linguistics as well as Rita Marquilhas and Iris Hendrickx'
treatment on advances in digital humanities are particularly useful. 
 
The editors have shown a sure hand in selecting the topics included in the
volume. Of course, it is not possible for the editors to include every topic
of interest to EP linguistics (a chapter on nasalization processes would have
been welcome), a fact the editors are well aware of and address appropriately
in the introduction (p. 2). Though the chapters contain a mix of traditional
areas of inquiry (e.g., inflected infinitive, clitic placement, and the
reduction of atonic vowels) with research areas that have grown in the last
few decades (e.g., corpus linguistics, psycholinguistics), I found some of the
chapters to be overdrawn. For example, though indisputably useful, some of the
technical details for coding in TEI (Chapter 10) and digitizing a text for an
on-line corpus (Chapter 9), seemed out of place in a survey volume of this
type. It would have been illuminating to have a concluding Chapter in which
the editors brought together main themes of the volume.   In sum, this volume
is a welcome addition to the excellent Manuals of Romance Linguistics series
because of its high quality articles written by leading experts, its synthesis
of material with special attention paid to compelling questions that remain
unanswered and its comparative approach to highlight distinguishing features
of EP. 

REFERENCES 

  Chomsky, Noam. 1981. Lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht, Foris.

Dalgado, Sebastião Rodolfo. 1900. Dialecto Indo-Português de Goa. Revista
Lusitana 6. 63-84.   Ernst, Gerhard, Martin-Dietrich Gleßgen, Christian
Schmitt & Wolfang 

Schweickard (eds.). 2003-2008. Romanische Sprachgeschichte. Berlin: Mouton de
Gruyter.  

Holtus, Günter, Michael Metzeltin & Christian Schmitt (eds.). 1988-2005.
Lexikon der Romanistischen Linguistik. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 
 
Grosz, Barbara, Aravind K. Joshi & Scott Weinstein. 1995. Centering: A
framework for modeling the local coherence of discourse. Computational
Linguistics 21. 203-25.   

Pires, Acrisio, Jason Rothman & Ana Lucía Santos. 2011. L1 acquisition across
Portuguese dialects: Modular and interdisciplinary interfaces as sources of
explanation. Lingua 121 (4).  605-22. 

  Pustejovsky, James. 1995. The Generative Lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 

Rizzi, Luigi. 1978. A Restructuring rule in Italian syntax. In Samuel J.
Keyser (ed.), Recent Transformational Studies in European Linguistics.
Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. 113-158.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jason Doroga is an assistant professor of Spanish at Centre College. His
research interests include historical syntax and morphology, semantics and
pragmatics, and Spanish/Portuguese contact.





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