33.547, Review: Germanic; Romance; Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Syntax: Wolfe, Meklenborg (2021)

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Subject: 33.547, Review: Germanic; Romance; Historical Linguistics; Morphology; Syntax: Wolfe, Meklenborg (2021)

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Date: Fri, 11 Feb 2022 22:59:16
From: Pierre-Yves Modicom [pymodicom.ling at yahoo.fr]
Subject: Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance

 
Discuss this message:
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/32/32-2684.html

EDITOR: Sam  Wolfe
EDITOR: Christine  Meklenborg
TITLE: Continuity and Variation in Germanic and Romance
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2021

REVIEWER: Pierre-Yves Modicom, Université Michel de Montaigne Bordeaux 3

SUMMARY

The volume is made up of 19 chapters: an introduction presenting the collected
contributions, and 18 studies, grouped into three parts. 
                       
Part 1, “The subject and the inflectional layer” (p.13-191) is made up of six
contributions. The first study, by Liliane Haegeman and Elisabeth Stark, is
entitled “Register-specific subject omission in English and French and the
syntax of coordination” (Chapter 2, p. 15-43). The authors compare clauses
displaying an inflected verb but no overt subject in French and English, two
languages that normally demand such an overt subject (“non-pro-drop
languages”). They are concerned with specific phenomena attested in diaries
and to some extent in SMS chats. Their main claim is that for all apparent
similarities with second conjunct subject omission, register-specific omission
needs to be accounted for by syntactic mechanisms of its own. 

In Chapter 3, “The position of subjects in Germanic and Romance questions” (p.
44-69), Anna Cardinaletti investigates the restrictions in the position of
full NP subjects in wh-questions in standard Italian, standard French and
Northern Italian dialects, as opposed to Germanic. Using the cartographic
framework, she claims that the syntactic position of the verb in the
hierarchical structure of the clause accounts for the differences she
investigates. She also shows that whether or not the language is a pro-drop
one isn’t a relevant criterion in this matter. 

Chapter 4, “Expressing perception in parallel ways: Sentential Small Clauses
in German and Romance” by Jan Casalicchio (p. 70-96), is a comparison of two
complementation patterns of perception verbs, both of which single out the
subject outside of the complement clause : Italian pseudo-relative
constructions on the one hand, and High German constructions where the subject
is followed by a conjunctional phrase in wie (‘how’) on the other hand. The
syntactic patterns observed in Italian help cast new light on the
subject-predicate structure of the German construction.                       
                                               

Chapter 5 turns back to the syntax of subjects in interrogative contexts
(“Pro-drop in interrogatives across older Germanic and Romance languages”, by
Federica Cognola and George Walkden, p. 97-136). The authors offer a
fine-grained view on how factors such as the syntactic type of questions and
the person of the verb correlate with null subjects in ancient Germanic and
Romance varieties. The chapter is also a convincing refutation of the claim
that the overtness of verbal morphology must determine the possibility of null
subjects.

In Chapter 6, “Reflexive constructions in German, Spanish, and French as a
product of cyclic interaction” (p. 137-164), Matthew L. Maddox and Jonathan E.
MacDonald deal with the emergence of the various values of reflexive
constructions in French and Spanish, making use of two grammaticalization
cycles (the subject agreement cycle and the reflexive object cycle). They also
argue that their predictions as to the correlation between these cycles and
the evolution of reflexive voice hold for other languages in Germanic and
Romance, especially German. 

The last chapter of this part, “Locative inversion in Germanic and Romance: A
conspiracy theory” by Benjamin L. Sluckin, Silvio Cruschina, and Fabienne
Martin (ch. 7, p. 165-191), draws a bridge to the second part of the volume.
The authors sketch a typology of the pattern [adverbial of place - inflected
verb - subject] in Germanic and Romance. Their claim is that each
language-specific configuration is licensed by a series of formal ingredients.
While these patterns do share common features, they also differ notably.

This type of decomposition is well-represented in the nine papers grouped in
Part 2, “Inversion, discourse pragmatics, and the left periphery” (p.
193-421). The first seven chapters of this part are devoted to phenomena
pertaining at the verb-second (V2) rule and at the occupation of the first
position of the clause. This consistent whole is introduced by a theoretical
and empirical overview by Roland Hinterhölzl (Chapter 8,  “V2 and
topicalization in Germanic and Romance”, p. 195-222). The author discusses the
complex history of Germanic V2, highlighting the transition from relatively
flexible systems allowing a plurality of verb-third (V3) construction to the
more restricted systems attested in many present-day varieties. He also
examines residual V2 phenomena in Romance and provides a fine-grained typology
of V2 and topicalization, also addressing clitic left dislocation and the
syntax of framesetters. Overall, his paper is a plea against unifying,
homogeneous theories of V2. 

This strain of thought is further illustrated in the following chapters,
especially Chapters 9 and 10 (“Topics in French and Norwegian”, by Christine
Meklenborg, Hans Peter Helland and Terje Lohndal, p. 223-247, and “Issues in
the left periphery of Old French and Old English: Topic types and the V2
constraint”, by  Ans van Kemenade and Christine Meklenborg, p. 248-274). Both
papers take a comparative stance on the syntax of hanging topics and
left-dislocation. Meklenborg, Helland and Lohndal point at the similarities
between French and Norwegian and underline that the syntactic difference
between both sorts of topics should not be overstated. Still, the authors
argue that these two constructions correspond to two distinct syntactic
positions in the left periphery. The main finding in the paper by van Kemenade
and Meklenborg is that hanging topics and left-dislocated topics have to be
examined as the result of syntactic movement in Old English, whereas Old
French displays a mixed system with base-generated hanging topics. Their study
is also concerned with the behavior of topics in interrogative clauses. The
result of the comparison between both languages corroborates the
differentiated view on V2 proposed, among others, by Wolfe (2018). 
                            
In Chapter 11, “Evaluating the contact hypothesis for Old French word order”
(p. 275-296), Sam Wolfe examines the arguments for and against the frequent
claim that the rise of V2 in Old French is due to the situation of contact
between the speakers of Northern Gallo-Romance varieties and Germanic
populations speaking a V2 languages. He argues that this claim is hard to
maintain in the face of inconclusive (and sometimes contradictory) evidence in
multiple domains. Thus, language-internal scenarios leaning on
cross-linguistic data could prove more fruitful. 

The following chapter, by Ian Roberts, is concerned with the theoretical
tenets for such language-internal scenarios drawing on cross-linguistic
research (ch. 12, “Second positions: A synchronic analysis and some diachronic
consequences”, p. 297-328). The author starts from a threefold partition of
the left periphery between the syntactic head positions Force, Foc and Fin.
Linguistic variation is accounted for in terms of which head can attract the
verb, and which one displays Chomsky’s (2008) “Edge Features”, regulating
discourse-related meanings. This leads to fairly robust, testable
cross-linguistic predictions about V2 effects.
                                                                              
                                 
Chapter 13, by Kristin Hagemann and Signe Laake, aims at “deconstructing
stylistic fronting in Old Norwegian and Old Spanish” (p. 329-349). Stylistic
Fronting is the positioning of non-finite verbal forms (and other constituents
that many would call rhematic) immediately to the left of the finite verb. The
parameters at stake are reminiscent of some V2 phenomena, but the authors
argue against the assimilation of stylistic fronting to formal movement aimed
at satisfying the V2 rule. 

In Chapter 14, Verner Egerland is concerned with two comparable clause-initial
markers in the history of French, Italian and Swedish: si (< Latin sic,
‘thus’) and så (“The grammaticalisation of SIC: On narrative particles in
Romance and Scandinavian”, pp. 350-369). These forms display two
grammaticalized usages arguably associated with functional features of the
left periphery, either with topicality (in which case så can license V3) or
with narrative sequencing.
                                                                              
           
The remaining two contributions in this part are tightly linked thematically,
since they both investigate the relationship between complementizers and
relative pronouns in Germanic and Romance and discuss previous assumptions by
Richard Kayne claiming that complementizers are ultimately relative pronouns
or similar, determiner-like elements. Cecilia Poletto and Emanuela Sanfelici
bring complementizers and demonstratives into connection with relative
pronouns (Chapter 15, “Against complementizers”, p. 370-403). They draw on the
premise that the syntax of the relative pronouns involves two head positions
(one internal and one external to the relative clause), and claim that the
various paths of grammaticalization experienced by relative pronouns can be
accounted for on the basis of whether the item considered synchronically
expresses the external or the internal head position. Richard S. Kayne’s
contribution (Chapter 16, “On complementizers and relative pronouns in
Germanic vs. Romance”, p. 404-421) combines a general overview of his
contribution to the field and a fine-grained, challenging analysis of the
syntax of ‘that’ in English, which the author claims to always be a relative
pronoun. 

Part 3, “Continuity and variation beyond be clause” (pp. 423-531), brings
together more diverse contributions. Chapter 17, “Adjectival concord in
Romance and Germanic” by Giuliana Giusti (p. 425-449), explores the
implication of a strict syntactic distinction between agreement and concord,
first for possessive adjectives, which are claimed to undergo both processes,
then for predicate and adnominal adjectives in Germanic and Romance.

Chapters 18 and 19 are both devoted to the grammaticalization of prepositions.
First, Jacopo Garzonio and Silvia Rossi address the issue of “Functional and
lexical prepositions across Germanic and Romance” (ch. 18, p. 450-471), under
special consideration of “axial parts”, expressed by the likes of ‘behind’,
‘inside’, ‘in front of’ etc. They also investigate the special case of Italian
‘a’, which they claim to be an example of syncretism between directional and
locative meanings. In Chapter 19, “New prepositions in the house” (p.
472-494), Kersti Börjars, Nigel Vincent, and Sam Wolfe mostly compare the
emergence of French ‘chez’ (< Vulg. Lat. casa, ‘house’) and Swedish ‘hoss’,
often alleged to originate from the noun ‘hus’ ‘house’. Drawing on diachronic
data and taking the Icelandic preposition ‘hjá’ as point of comparison, the
authors show that an alternative analysis going back to a word meaning ‘place,
dwelling’ is empirically more credible.

The 20th and last chapter is a panorama on “Have in English and Romance” (John
Charles Smith, p. 495-531). The author distinguishes between perfect use,
dynamic use (including the use as a light verb) and stative use (including the
possessive use), and examines British, American and Australian English as well
as French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.                            

EVALUATION                                                       
                                  
The volume combines two kinds of comparative research: on the one hand, nearly
all chapters contain contrastive analyses of a phenomenon in two or more
languages representing the Germanic and the Romance branches of European
languages (e.g. Norwegian vs Spanish, Swedish vs. French…). On the other hand,
many contributions are also concerned with synchronic or diachronic variation
within one and the same family, and combine this variational concern with the
contrastive stance. Some chapters oppose a plurality of varieties in Romance
to one Germanic language, but most of them compare a wide range of languages
from both families and identify regularities in variation that are orthogonal
to the genetic belongings. This association of the family-internal kind of
comparison with a contrastive stance is very fruitful. This combination is
still too rare in the field, especially regarding the Germanic languages. One
can only be grateful to the editors and contributors to provide a whole volume
illustrating the virtues of such a path. 

Almost all contributions are written from the perspective of Generative
Grammar, and more specifically of the “cartographic” tradition within the
generativist family. This is greatly favorable for the consistence and the
homogeneity of the volume. As a consequence, this collection demands some
degree of background knowledge about the cartographic approach. But as a
non-generativist myself, I can confirm that anyone familiar with literature
from that domain will be able to follow the arguments presented in the
contributions, and to appreciate many hypotheses and generalizations
formulated by the authors. As a whole, it is coherent without being sectarian.
This should be acknowledged, and the editors and authors deserve praise for
this achievement.

Many chapters are theoretically relevant for any linguist interested in
Germanic and Romance languages, even besides the descriptive value of the data
presented in the various contributions. The pair of chapters by Poletto &
Sanfelici and Kayne (Chapters 15 and 16) are representative of how a debate
that is entirely framed in theory-internal terms can achieve general
relevance: the diachronic relationship between demonstrative pronouns,
relativizers and complementizers has attracted much attention, be it from the
point of view of general linguistics or in one language or one family of
languages. Poletto & Sanfelici and Kayne want to assess the possibility of a
synchronic account of the categorial vicinity of relativizers and
complementizers. More specifically, they intend to demonstrate to the
possibility of a syntactic analysis that would acknowledge their diverging
behavior while preserving the claim that as grammatical items, relativizers
and complementizers may ultimately be one and the same. Thus, the observable
differences are constructional features that can be accounted for in syntactic
terms. All linguists working on the categorial status of complementizers
and/or relativizers can take advantage of these attempts, and may want to have
a look at the implications for their own model. Overall, this is a very useful
and thought-provoking collection of state-of-the-art contributions from the
field of comparative syntax. Several contributions recapitulate previous work
by the same authors which are also mentioned in other chapters, fostering the
consistency of the collection. 

Five languages play a pivotal role in the analyses throughout the volume:
English, French, German, Italian and Norwegian. Most other Germanic and
Romance languages are dealt with, too. Still, one may regret the very minor
place of Romanian, which is both the only Romance language having preserved
declension and the only one to have developed enclitic definite articles
directly comparable to Scandinavian ones. In this respect, Romanian would be
an interesting candidate for studies crossing the comparison within a
linguistic family with a broad macro-contrastive analysis involving Germanic
and Romance. But my greatest reservation has to do with the fact that so
little attention is paid to Icelandic aside from Chapter 19. This is a missed
opportunity, considering that language’s idiosyncratic subject syntax, which
is tightly linked to a peculiar subtype of the V2 rule. These questions play
such a prominent role in Chapters 7 to 12 that not addressing Icelandic data
can only limit the impact of the bold comparative enterprise underlying the
volume.                                                                       
             

This brings me to the guiding thread of the first 13 papers: the
subject-verb-cluster, its absence (V2) or its optionality (with the
possibility of inversion, or the existence of null subjects). As such, this
book can be compared with the collected papers in Woods and Wolfe (2020),
which shared some contributors with the present volume. As illustrated by the
general contributions of Hinterhölzl and Roberts, this thematic consistence is
even more blatant when it is formulated in the cartographic framework followed
by the authors, or at least influencing them: all these chapters deal with the
structure of the left periphery, as defined by the hierarchical position of
the verb in a layered system involving topic positions and, at least in some
language, a constraint over subject placement. Thus, these contributions form
a thematic whole, centered on Chapters 7-12, which are devoted to subject
inversion, topicalization and the typology of V2 languages. These six chapters
demonstrate how the syntax of subjects and the placement of the verb can
hardly be investigated separately, be it in Germanic or in Romance.

Dealing with V2 languages, these chapters advocate a differentiated view on
verb movement. This theoretical stance is backed by fine-grained empirical
analyses of the various types of V2, which can be identified via the behavior
of the subject, the kinds of V3 patterns attested (as already pointed out by
Walkden 2015, 2017), and the syntactic properties of topicalized items
triggering XVS order (or “inversion” in languages where SV is the default
template). Several chapters address the issue of V3, which has received new
impetus in the last several years, due to works on V3 patterns in Germanic
urban vernaculars (Freywald et al. 2015), but also in West Flemish (Haegeman &
Greco 2018) or Standard High German (Breindl 2011), albeit these are always
different kinds of V3 patterns. The latter type, involving an adverb placed
between a new framesetting topic carrying contrastive stress and the finite
verb, is not mentioned in the volume. This type of V3 has been showed to be
linked to framesetting topics, which play a prominent role in the chapters of
the volume dealing with topicalization. Just like Icelandic data (see above),
this phenomenon probably needs to be addressed more straightforwardly in
further discussions on the fine-grained typology of V2. 
 
Here, too, the questioning is highly dependent on the theoretical apparatus.
Due to its openness to silent operators and movement, cartography is probably
one of the best suited frameworks to address these issues, together with HPSG,
while many Construction Grammarians have been less willing to engage with word
order phenomena in V2 languages. Yet, these are fundamental issues for any
syntax of Germanic languages, any diachronic research on English and French
and any contrastive treatment of the clause in Germanic and Romance. Beside
that, these studies also help rethink subject ellipsis and inversion,
especially in Romance, providing fruitful parallels while always staying very
cautious before any generalization. One must hope that more scholars from a
diversity of theoretical backgrounds will follow the example of this volume
and undertake comparable analyses of continuity, variation and contrast at the
level of two or three families: these studies prove, if needed, that combining
variational and contrastive stances is a highly productive way to deconstruct
crucial syntactic phenomena that are too often taken for granted.
 
REFERENCES

Breindl, Eva. 2011. Nach Rom freilich führen viele Wege. Zur Interaktion von
Informationsstruktur, Diskursstruktur und Prosodie bei der Besetzung der
Nacherstposition. In:  Ferraresi, Gisella (ed.), Konnektoren im Deutschen und
im Sprachvergleich. Beschreibung und grammatische Analyse (Studien zur
deutschen Sprache 53). Tübingen: Narr. 17-56.

Chomsky, Noam. 2008. On phases. In Freidin, Robert, Carlos Otero & Maria Luisa
Zubizarreta (eds.), Foundational issues in linguistic theory: Essays in honor
of Jean-Roger Vergnaud. Cambridge (Ma.): MIT Press. 133–166.                  
                 
     
Freywald, Ulrike, Leonie Cornips, Natalia Ganuza, Ingvild Nistov & Toril
Opsahl. 2015. Beyond verb second – a matter of novel information-structural
effects? Evidence from Norwegian, Swedish, German and Dutch. In: Nortier,
Jacomine & Bente Svendsen (eds.), Language, youth and identity in the 21st
century: Linguistic practices across urban spaces. Cambridge : Cambridge
University Press. 73-92. 

Haegeman, Liliane & Ciro Greco. 2018. West Flemish V3 and the interaction of
syntax and discourse. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 21. 1-56.

Walkden, George. 2015. Verb-third in early West Germanic: A comparative
perspective. In : Biberauer, Theresa & George Walkden (eds.), Syntax over
time: Lexical, morphological, and information-structural interactions (Oxford
Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 15). Oxford : Oxford
University Press. 236-248.

Walkden, George. 2017. Language contact and V3 in Germanic varieties new and
old. Journal of Comparative Germanic Linguistics 20. 49-81.

Wolfe, Sam. 2020. Verb second in Medieval Romance (Oxford Studies in
Diachronic and Historical Linguistics 34). Oxford : Oxford University Press.

Woods, Rebecca & Sam Wolfe (eds.). 2020. Rethinking verb second. Oxford :
Oxford University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Pierre-Yves Modicom works as a senior lecturer in Germanic linguistics in
Bordeaux, France. His research is dedicated to information structure and the
interface of syntax and illocutionary semantics throughout Germanic languages.



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