34.3516, Review: Encyclopaedia of German diatheses: Cysouw (2023)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-3516. Tue Nov 21 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.3516, Review: Encyclopaedia of German diatheses: Cysouw (2023)

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Date: 21-Nov-2023
From: David Karaj [davidmkaraj at gmail.com]
Subject: Morphology, Syntax: Cysouw (2023)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/34.981

AUTHOR: Michael Cysouw
TITLE: Encyclopaedia of German diatheses
PUBLISHER: Language Science Press
YEAR: 2023

REVIEWER: David Karaj

SUMMARY
“Encyclopaedia of German diatheses” by Michael Cysouw is a bulky
volume that, as the title suggests, aims at a comprehensive
(encyclopaedia-like) overview of diatheses (and their counterpart –
epitheses) in the German language. The book has been published in Open
Access, therefore it can be downloaded for free from the publisher’s
(Language Science Press) website, as well as from Google Play store as
an ebook. It is also available on the author’s GitHub
www.github.com/cysouw/diathesis (personally my preferred way to read
from the screen).
The book is divided into 13 chapters plus References and Index. The
first chapter, ‘Setting the scene’ (pp.1-19) is dedicated to the
definitions of the described phenomena and some further details
pertaining to those definitions (1.1-1.3.), methodology used (1.4.),
state of the art (1.5.) and the presentation of the book’s structure
(1.6.). Chapter 2, “The structure of a diathesis” expands on the
presented definitions and discusses further the major theoretical
considerations regarding such categories as diathesis, voice, valency,
etc., and the ways in which they are classified and analyzed here.
Chapters 3 and 4 are summaries of diatheses (around 80 structures) and
epitheses (around 40 structures), respectively. In the author’s own
words (p. 19), these two chapters (3 and 4) ‘are the closest to what
this book has to offer in the way of a conclusion’. Both these
chapters summarize the major linguistic structures to serve as a handy
cross-reference to the core of the work (Chapters 5-13).
Finally, the main part of this book – the actual ‘encyclopaedia’ is
contained in Chapters 5-13. Each of these chapters constitutes a long
list of possible schemata (far too long to be discussed in detail
here). The alternations are divided into ‘case-marking alternations’
(Chapter 5), ‘prepositional alternations’ (Chapter 6), ‘reflexive
pronoun alternations’ (Chapter 7), ‘preverb alternations’ (Chapter 8),
‘adverbial alternations’ (Chapter 9), ‘light verb alternations with
Partizip’ (Chapter 10), ‘light verb alternations with Infinitiv’
(Chapter 11), ‘light verb alternations with zu-Infinitiv’(Chapter 12),
and ‘light-verb alternations with Präpositionsinfinitiv’ (Chapter 13).
All of these are further subdivided into smaller sections, covering in
more detail other alternations within a given major group. Each of
these subsections contain a brief description of a given diathesis (or
epithesis) and illustrates it with a couple of examples. The volume
closes with a list of cited references and an index of names.
The author has undertaken an ambitious task of compiling an
encyclopaedia-like survey of various alternations in the German
language that fall under the label ‘diathesis’. As the size of the
volume and its extensive table of contents suggest, the German system
of diatheses is extremely rich. Moreover, some of these structures
apparently have not been described in likely manner elsewhere, as
alongside well-established grammatical terms (in German), the author
proposes his own terminology for the constructions that are lacking an
appropriate label. However, as the author warns us from the very
beginning (p. 1), the “Encyclopaedia” is to be treated as a work in
progress, as the author is planning on successively expanding it. The
readers will be able to see, and even directly suggest further changes
and additions online, on the website I mentioned in the first
paragraph of this review.

EVALUATION
First of all, I believe that the book reviewed here will be of
interest for anyone interested in diathesis and related linguistic
phenomena. However, in terms of the intended audience, the author
assumes that his readers should have a working knowledge of German or
at least ‘an approximate understanding’ thereof (p.1). Indeed, none of
the examples used throughout the book are translated nor glossed,
therefore it might not be suitable for those without some knowledge of
German. Similarly, the author uses many German grammatical terms in
labelling the diatheses, therefore the readers should be familiar with
these too, in order to be able to understand the nature of the
discussed phenomena as well as be able to understand the new
terminological labels coined by the author.
Secondly, I would like to briefly focus on some of the definitions the
author uses in his work. The term diathesis has been used in a variety
of ways over the decades and, therefore, remains problematic for many,
particularly when it is sometimes equated with the category of
grammatical voice. Cysouw defines diathesis as ‘valency alternation’
(p.7) – a definition which, in my opinion, is the simplest way of
describing this category but, at the same time, does not make the
definition any less precise. An ‘alternation’ is, in turn, equated
with ‘verbal marking’. The author further contrasts diatheses with
epithesis – an alternation without any change in role marking (ibid.).
The reader is not, however, left only to such simplified definitions,
as these are further discussed and broken down into more fine-grained
details. I consider it to be an excellent approach, as it does not
unneccessarily make the definitions overly complicated (as it is often
the case, unfortunately). Thanks to that, the theoretical basis of
this work is more accessible to people from different schools of
linguistics. In terms of the distribution of the discussed structures,
Cysouw underlines that while many alternations ‘mostly behave
sensibly’ (p. 15), there are numerous unexpected exceptions (due to
various factors) and the domain of application of these alternations
is not regular. In general, I believe that the first chapters of the
“Encyclopaedia” present the operational definitions in a very clear
and concise manner and these chapters could be successfully used in
class, when teaching courses in general linguistics.
Compiling an encyclopaedia-like survey of the diatheses of a given
language is, in most cases, a monumental task. I consider this kind
work (i.e. a survey of given structures of a given language) much
needed in linguistics – something that is, unfortunately, often
overlooked. Works of the kind very clearly demonstrate that even in
case of popular, widely spoken and well-described languages, such as
German, there is still a lot to investigate and that not everything
has been said on the topic (yet another widespread notion among
linguists). The author has not only presented well-known structures,
already described elsewhere but has also attempted describing
constructions that lack terminological labels in German – time will
tell whether these labels catch on in the linguistic community. Since
I consider works of this kind of great relevance in linguistics, I do
not have any critical remarks about the “Encyclopaedia of German
diatheses.” I would like, however, to share some points which would
help make this work more accessible. Anyone, who is interested in
German grammar and the category of diathesis in German will find this
book useful; however, the fact that no glosses or translations are
provided for the language examples excludes a great number of people
from appreciating this work fully. I believe that glossed examples are
not only of help to those who do not understand German but they could
meaningfully facilitate the analysis of the presented structures. I
understand that glossing and translations would further increase the
book’s page count but I would like to suggest that adding them at
least to the online version of the Encyclopaedia could be helpful to
those with limited or no knowledge of German. Similarly, to make this
work more accessible, translations of German terms would be useful, or
a terminological glossary could make some definitions clearer. To sum
up, the “Encyclopaedia of German diatheses”, despite these few
shortcomings, is a valuable contribution not only to the field of
German linguistics but also to our understanding of the category of
diathesis and it is hoped that it will prompt similar works regarding
other languages.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

NA



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