33.1512, Review: Indo-European; Syntax; Typology: Keydana, Hock, Widmer (2021)

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Subject: 33.1512, Review: Indo-European; Syntax; Typology: Keydana, Hock, Widmer (2021)

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Date: Thu, 28 Apr 2022 19:55:58
From: Jean-François Mondon [jfmondon at gmail.com]
Subject: Comparison and Gradation in Indo-European

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36779117

Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2573.html

EDITOR: Götz  Keydana
EDITOR: Wolfgang  Hock
EDITOR: Paul  Widmer
TITLE: Comparison and Gradation in Indo-European
SERIES TITLE: The Mouton Handbooks of Indo-European Typology
PUBLISHER: De Gruyter Mouton
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Jean-François R. Mondon, Minot State University

SUMMARY

This book is the initial volume of the Mouton Handbooks of Indo-European
Typology series. The intent of the series is for each volume to focus on one
well-defined linguistic concept with chapters penned by noted scholars of the
various subbranches. The present book covers all aspects of adjectival and
adverbial gradation across the Indo-European family. 

The book begins with an extensive introductory chapter, “Comparison and
Gradation in Indo-European: Introduction and Overview” by the volume’s three
editors Götz Keydana, Wolfgang Hock, and Paul Widmer (pgs. 1-33). It documents
the various types of gradation and is effectively divided into three parts.
The first third of the chapter discusses each of the six types of gradation
furnishing English examples for each. The types are similative (John is tall
like a mountain), equative (John is as tall as George), comparative (John is
taller than George), superlative (John is the tallest of everyone), elative
(John is very tall), and excessive (John is too tall). The second third of the
chapter offers an overview of the prototypical types of each grade that are
attested in Indo-European languages. Each of the six types exhibits ample room
for variation. For instance, the morphological element expressing the
comparative can be a bound or an unbound morpheme. As another example, the
noun or pronoun which the comparee is compared to can be expressed by an
oblique case alone, be introduced by a preposition/postposition which assigns
a specific case, be preceded by a non-case assigning word (e.g. Latin quam),
or simply be left unexpressed. This second section bleeds into the third and
final part of the chapter, in which the unique classificatory system used in
the subsequent articles of the book is laid out. This notational system is not
wholly self-evident, and every reader would benefit from familiarizing
themselves with it before proceeding, or at least turning back to it as
needed.  

This book is overwhelmingly descriptive in nature with each chapter following
roughly the same blueprint. Each begins with an introduction placing the
language or branch under discussion in its proper time and place and outlining
its primary written remains. The chapters then proceed through the various
levels of gradation in the same order: similative, equative, comparative,
superlative, elative and excessive. Each such section is replete with ample
examples illustrating the different pattern types for each grade. If a type of
gradation is absent in a branch or family, a section on that topic is
nevertheless included with a single sentence stating that the relevant
formation is unattested. Each descriptive section is usually concluded by a
discussion regarding the historical genesis of the formation or formations
which express the grade just presented. Cognate formations are mentioned if
they exist and reconstructions posited. In those cases in which a formation
appears to be an innovation novel to a particular branch, some musings as to
the genesis of the pattern are occasionally propounded.  A brief summary and a
list of references conclude each chapter. 

Chapter 2, “Anatolian” by Maria Molina (pgs. 35-48), is a natural starting
chapter since Anatolian represents the first branch of the Indo-European
family to have broken away from the parent language. Molina predominantly uses
Hittite data, which is understandable since this is the best attested language
of the branch, though she does cite Luwian when relevant, as for instance its
suffix -zza, which might be a superlative (Yakubovich 2013).

Classical Armenian is the topic of chapter 3 (pgs. 49-79). In it Daniel
Kölligan makes some fascinating observations, including that despite not
having an obligatory comparative morpheme, Classical Armenian might very well
have a lexicalized reflex of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) comparative *yes ~
*is in ‘bari’ and ‘law’ respectively, both of which are adjectives meaning
‘good.’ Later in the chapter Kölligan suggests that ‘ew’ (and) might have been
a preposition in early Armenian ⎯ as is its Greek cognate ‘epi.’ An earlier
prepositional stage would account for the use of the accusative following
‘ibrew’ in its meaning ‘like/as.’ ‘Ibrew’ stems from a uiverbation of ‘ibr’
and ‘ew,’ the former element coming either from the instrumental of ‘(z)i’
(‘that/which’ as per (Meillet 1896)) or from the PIE root *bher. Regardless of
its origin, the accusative after ‘ibrew’ spread to the other word indicating
‘as’: khan.

Monica Genesin and Joachim Matzinger penned Chapter 4, “Old Albanian” (pgs.
81-93). Working from the three major works of the Gheg-based Old Albanian
literature, the authors emphasize that a comprehensive grammar of this stage
of the Albanian language is lacking, and that “one can assume that the
presented examples are just a limited selection of the available possibilities
of expressing comparison and gradation in Old Albanian” (p. 92). They
reasonably maintain that the nature of the documentation hides other possible
constructions, which might have been acceptable in the spoken language. This
dilemma is certainly true of other languages whose earliest writings are
largely translations.

Joachim Matzinger is the sole author of Chapter 5, “Ancient Languages of the
Balkans”(pgs. 95-97). The sparse Thracian and Messapic remnants offer next to
no certain examples of gradation. It is possible that a reflex of a
superlative survives in the feminine personal name ‘Venixamae’ from Ig in
Slovenia. Original superlatives might also be behind the deity name
‘pleisto:ros’ and the masculine surname ‘andamaeides,’ this latter coming from
*andama- ‘lowest’ and cognate with both Vedic ‘adhama-‘ (lowest) and Latin
‘i:nfimus’. 

The volume turns to Balto-Slavic in the next two chapters. Chapter 6, “Baltic”
by Daniel Petit (pgs. 99-147), extensively works through gradation in the
three Baltic languages, pulling data from all three as needed. He very clearly
catalogues the attested patterns, highlights where they differ, and suggests
whether Slavic influence or even German influence is possible in particular
cases. As an example, the element being compared to the comparee can be
introduced by a preposition in Baltic, though the specific preposition differs
between Lithuanian (už) and Latvian (par). This might ultimately be due to
German influence since Latvian ‘par’, for instance, can be used as a marker of
apposition (e.g. ‘as’ in “to work as a teacher”) just as German ‘als’, which
likewise introduces the standard of comparison. This construction has no
Slavic counterpart and the different prepositions used for Lithuanian and
Latvian both suggest that this must be a late phenomenon. 

“Old Church Slavonic” (pgs. 149-199) by Katsiaryna Ackermann centers on the
earliest attested Slavic material. As most of these texts are translations of
Greek ones, it is not always clear what is a native construction and what is a
slavish translation of the Greek. Ackermann makes the wise choice to have the
Greek text ⎯ or where relevant, the Latin text ⎯ accompany all those passages
which are translations, allowing readers to observe the similarities for
themselves.  

Silva Nurmio and Paul Russell’s chapter “Brittonic” (201-224) predominantly
relies upon Middle Welsh data. They base this decision on the fact that Middle
Welsh texts are older than Middle Breton and Cornish ones, and on the
limitation that only Middle Welsh has easily searchable corpora online.
Nonetheless, they fully include the pair of Southwest Brittonic languages in
the historical discussions. For instance, in evaluating the Middle Welsh
equative suffix –(h)et, they point out that this suffix has a reflex in Middle
Breton and Modern Breton, which functions as an exclamative; e.g. ‘caezret
den’ (what a fine man!). They follow Hemon (1975) and Schrijver (2011) in
assuming this function is secondary to an original equative use. Cornish, for
its part, has no reflex of this suffix. On the same topic, Nurmio and Russell
point out that the morpheme cy(n)-, which accompanies equative adjectives
marked with –(h)et, might not actually be a prefix. While it is indeed written
together with the following adjective, they correctly warn that this not a
reliable indication as word divisions in medieval Welsh manuscripts are not
consistent. Additionally, its Modern Welsh descendant is pronounced with a
non-schwa vowel, which would have been expected if it were in fact a prefix.
Curiously, however, there are relics in Middle Welsh ⎯ as well as the other
two Brittonic languages ⎯ in which cy(n)- appears as a prefix on nouns, such
as ‘cyhyd’ (as long) from the noun ‘hyd’ (length). Nurmio and Russell assume
both the stressed (i.e. non-schwa) and unstressed (i.e. schwa) cy(n)- must
come from the same *kom-, though how precisely the bifurcation arose is left
an open question. They reference ‘rhi’ (too) and ‘ry’ (perfective particle),
which show a similar bifurcation of a single form into a stressed, ‘rhy,’ and
unstressed variant, ‘ry.’ 

The other half of the Insular Celtic languages, Goidelic, is the focus of
Aaron Griffith’s chapter “Goidelic” (pgs. 233-253). Old Irish also has an
equative morpheme (-idir), the first half of which Griffith finds to be a
cognate with Middle Welsh –(h)et. For the second half of -idir, he follows
Jasanoff (1988-90) and Bergin (1946) in tracing it back to a root element of
three irregular equatives (móir, lir, reimir), which subsequently spread to
every equative. Syntactically the equative is also curious in Old Irish as
Griffith points out. Specifically, the entity to which someone or something is
being equated appears in either the genitive case or as the object of the
preposition ‘fri.’ Surprisingly, however, when the equated entity is a
pronoun, it never occurs as the object of the preposition ‘fri.’ Rather, it
only ever appears as a possessive adjective modifying the equative (e.g. ni
boi…a chom-fíal ‘there was not one…as generous as he’ with the 3rd person
masculine singular possessive adjective ‘a’). Griffith concludes, however,
that it must remain unanswerable for the time being, why a conjugated
preposition never became an alternative to a possessive adjective in the
equative construction.

Sandwiched between the two Insular Celtic chapters is a short chapter,
“Continental Celtic” (pgs. 225-232), by Dagmar Wodtko. Like Chapter 5 on
Thracian and Messapic, this chapter is understandably short as potential
material for gradation is sparse. In fact, there is no trace of similatives,
equatives, excessives, elatives or comparatives. What looks like a reflex of
the Proto-Celtic superlative suffix *-isamo- does occur, though many of the
examples are onomastics and/or attached to unclear roots. This chapter’s
greatest benefit is its clear outline and dating of the written evidence of
the languages constituting this branch.

Chapter 11, “Old Nordic” by Hans-Olav Enger, Steffen Höder, and Urd Vindenes
(pgs. 255-280), and Chapter 12, “West Germanic” by Agnes Jäger and George
Walkden (pgs. 281-348), cover two of the three branches of Germanic. The
third, East Germanic represented by Gothic, is left out of the volume. The Old
Nordic chapter balances the discussion and examples evenly between Old West
Nordic (comprising Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian and the language of the Faroe
Islands) and Old East Nordic (comprising Old Danish, Old Swedish, and Old
Gutnish). The West Germanic chapter likewise offers a consistent balance of
the languages of that family, with effectively mini-chapters on each of Old
High German, Old Low German, Old English, and Old Frisian.

Chapter 13, “Ancient Greek” by Nina de Kreij (pgs. 349-348), has a “strong
bias towards the Attic and Ionic dialects, with snippets of Aeolic coming
through in epic poetry, and with a literary version of Doric found in Pindar
and the choral lyric passages of tragedy” (p. 349). Due to the list-type
nature of the texts, Mycenean Greek sadly does not offer anything of use for
discussion of gradation in Greek. Greek does offer a rich range of slight
variations, though, on the different gradation types. For instance, the
elative can be marked by superlative morphology, by certain prefixes ranging
from augmentative functions (e.g. ari- in arize:los ‘very conspicuous’) to a
prefix indicating totality (e.g. pan- in pano:lethros ‘utterly ruined’), and
by adverbs.

Indo-Iranian is divided into the following two chapters. Chapter 14, “Old
Indo-Aryan” by Leonid Kulikov (pgs. 385-415), begins with a clear summary of
the stages of the Indo-Aryan languages. The data in the chapter come
predominantly from Vedic Sanskrit, with its various stages delineated into
Early, Middle, and Post. Occasionally Classical Sanskrit excerpts are cited
when a certain pattern is only first attested in that stage. One instance of
such a situation is the standard of comparison in a comparative of inferiority
being indicated as the first part of a compound: the ‘tad-‘ in ‘tad-u:na:na:m’
(that less). Chapter 15, “Old Iranian by Paolo Miliza (417-475),
understandably contains data mainly from Avestan as the Old Persian text of
approximately 6700 word tokens (p. 418) is largely repetitive in nature. This
chapter is by the far the richest of the volume in terms of footnotes, mainly
due to the detailed discussion of various textual emendations highlighted.

Chapter 16, “Latin” by Máté Ittzés (pgs. 477-561), is the longest piece of the
volume. Its length can be attributed to the absolutely detailed investigation
into every possible variation of gradation, no matter how slight, found in
every possible dark corner of the Latin corpus. The chapter is followed by a
brief chapter on the other half of the Italic branch, “Sabellian” by Emmanuel
Dupraz (pgs. 563-575). Both Oscan and Umbrian contribute to the data pool of
gradation types, and Dupraz does an admirable job at fully extracting what
those two languages can offer.

The final chapter, by Melanie Malzahn and Hannes Fellner (pgs. 577-589),
focusses on the two Indo-European languages of the northern route of the Silk
Road, Tocharian A and B. Despite being understudied, the two languages do
offer means of expressing the various types of gradation, each of which is
clearly exemplified, though synthetic comparatives and superlatives are
lacking. The comparative, for instance, is expressed in Tocharian A via an
adverb ‘lyuta:r’ (more) or via ‘oly(a)po’ (more) in Tocharian B. The lack of
cognates in both Anatolian and Tocharian ⎯ the two languages to have broken
away from the Proto-Indo-European first (Ringe et al. 2002) ⎯ of the
comparative and superlative suffixes so richly attested elsewhere in the
family is striking, suggesting they developed after these two branches had
split away. 

The volume concludes with four pages describing the contributors followed by a
short three-page index.

REVIEW

This volume is a pleasant addition to any Indo-Europeanist’s shelf. The
uniform layout for each chapter renders it quite facile to compare the
morphological and syntactic patterns of gradation across the Indo-European
family. The errors, which mainly consist of a word being geminated
occasionally, are minimal and easily corrected by the reader. The binding is
solid, as one expects with De Gruyter, and the spacing and font are both quite
pleasant to the eye.

I only have a pair of critiques that I can level at this volume, both of which
are rather minor. The first concerns the inconsistencies in the length of
chapters. The amount of detail in the longer chapters, particularly the Old
Iranian and Latin ones, is quite extensive, to the point that it seemed
perhaps too much minutiae dealing with textual emendations or the slightest
variation of a general pattern were included. These various additions, while
interesting, might have been better saved for a comprehensive grammar of the
respective languages, and not this volume, since it gives the impression of
unequal depth of coverage. 

The other critique, I admit, is absolutely subjective and simply represents my
own preferences. The Greek alphabet is transliterated into the Roman alphabet
throughout. While I understand why this might be done for those instances
where Greek appears in the non-Greek chapter (e.g. in the Old Slavonic chapter
primarily), I do doubt that the overwhelming majority of scholars who will
reference the Greek chapter will not already have a familiarity with the Greek
alphabet. Perhaps the transliteration could have accompanied and not replaced
the Greek.  

In sum, this volume is a solid start to the ambitious series that De Gruyter
is laying out. It has set the bar high; hopefully the subsequent pieces of the
series will follow suit. I am sure they will.

REFERENCES

Bergin, Osborne. 1946. “Some Irish equatives,” Eriu 14: 140-143.

Hemon, Roparz. 1975. A Historical Morphology and Syntax of Breton. Dublin:
Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. 

Jasanoff, Jay. 1988-90.”The origin of the Celtic comparative type OIr tressa,
MW trech “stronger”,” Die Sprache 34: 171-189.

Meillet, Antoine. 1896. “Etymologies slaves,” in Mémoires de la Société de
Linguistique 9: 49-55.

Ringe, Don et al. 2002. “Indo-European and computational cladistics,”
Transactions of the Philological Society 100: 59-129.

Schrijver, Peter. 2011. “Old British,” in Brythonic Celtic-Brittanisches
Keltisch: From Medieval British to Modern Breton (ed. Elmar Ternes). Bremen:
Hempen Verlag, 1-84.

Yakubovich, Ilya. 2013. “The degree of comparison in Luwian,” Indogermanische
Forschungen 118: 155-168.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Jean-François Mondon is a Full Professor in the World Languages Department at
Minot State University. He has written textbooks for Classical Armenian,
Latin, and Middle Welsh on the one hand, and Distributed Morphology articles
using Breton data on the other.



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