30.1061, Review: Spanish; Applied Linguistics; Syntax: Camacho (2018)

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LINGUIST List: Vol-30-1061. Fri Mar 08 2019. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 30.1061, Review: Spanish; Applied Linguistics; Syntax: Camacho (2018)

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Date: Fri, 08 Mar 2019 10:45:32
From: John Ryan [john.ryan at unco.edu]
Subject: Introducción a la Sintaxis del Español

 
Discuss this message:
http://linguistlist.org/pubs/reviews/get-review.cfm?subid=36461537


Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/29/29-1239.html

AUTHOR: José  Camacho
TITLE: Introducción a la Sintaxis del Español
PUBLISHER: Cambridge University Press
YEAR: 2018

REVIEWER: John M. Ryan, University of Northern Colorado

SUMMARY

Introducción a la sintaxis del español is a textbook on the topic of
introductory syntax, written in Spanish. It consists of 10 chapters and is
divided into two general parts, the first of which, consists of 5 chapters and
provides both an introduction and general overview of generative syntax. The
second part of the book consists of 5 chapters and penetrates with greater
depth the more important topics specific to the syntax of Spanish.

The initial chapter of the book begins with a short discussion of our language
faculty, and the question of whether this is an autonomous system or an
integral part of our more general cognitive capacity. This is immediately
followed by a longer section that introduces the student reader to some of the
more basic notions of syntactic analysis, such as grammaticality, competence
versus performance, and individual grammars. Chapter 2 continues the book’s
overview by introducing the classification of concepts into grammatical
categories and begins with a discussion of lexical categories and both
encyclopedic and grammatical information that is stored in lexical entries.
Such information includes argument structure and thematic roles. The chapter
then concludes with the distinction between lexical and grammatical
categories. Chapter 3 shifts the topic from grammatical categories to that of
complex structure based on evidence for the existence of constituents,
including substitution, movement, characteristics of how they merge, and other
properties such as recursion, binary branching, and directionality. 

Chapter 4 introduces the topic of functional categories, specifically, the DP
(determiner phrase), TP (tense phrase), and CP (complementizer phrase) and the
pivotal roles that each plays in syntax, namely, as nuclei that determine the
distribution of nominals at the level of DP, that of independent clauses in
the case of TP, and that of subordinate clauses at the level of CP. The first
section of the book ends with Chapter 5, whose title begins with el baile de
las palabras or ‘the dance of words’ and discusses how the order of words in a
sentence can be affected by movement operations. Camacho goes on to discuss
two different types of movement, namely, A-movement with the example of the
passive operation, and non-A movement with the example of interrogatives.  He
then explains how certain contexts such as syntactic islands can prevent
movement. The chapter concludes with a discussion of agreement and case
assignment.

Having presented in Part One concepts that the author considers to be more
fundamental to the study of syntax, Part 2 of the book takes a closer look at
some of its more specific aspects, some of which are particular to Spanish.
Along these lines, Chapter 6 examines the topic of objects, both direct and
indirect, and how verb structure can explain the different behaviors between
unergative and unaccusative verbs, differential object marking for animate
objects, and distinguishing dative indirect objects from prepositional direct
objects. The chapter closes with a comprehensive discussion of the properties
of clitics. Chapter 7 continues the discussion of verbs, but from the
perspective of the extended projections of Aspect and Tense phrases. Here
Comacho presents as subtopics lexical aspect, passivization, and how aspect
also explains the bifarious nature of the copulas. The last part of the
chapter addresses the structural representation of Tense and Aspect Phrases,
and how this can explain movement of the verb, or not, with adverbs and
negation.

Leaving the topic of verbs, Chapter 8 explores the topic of null subjects with
both inflected verbs and infinitives. Camacho goes on to show how null
subjects (little pro) with inflected verbs have a different interpretation
from those that are expressed, citing reasons of emphasis or dialectal
variation. The chapter then goes on to discuss the notion of null subjects
(big PRO) with infinitives and how this is a matter of control. Chapter 9
considers the topic of the left periphery and the numerous ways this affects
the order of words in the sentence or clause. Among the issues discussed are
Force, Topic, and Focus Phrases, left dislocation, wh-questions and dialectal
variation, and the movement of quantifiers. Finishing Part Two is Chapter 10
which provides greater detail on the properties of nominal groupings. Here,
Camacho penetrates such topics as determiners, possessives, nouns appearing
without determiners and vice versa. He also examines the structure of
adjectives, and the syntactic representation of number and gender. Camacho
concludes the chapter with the syntactic analysis of relative clauses.

EVALUATION

There are several reasons why Camacho’s Introducción a la sintaxis del español
is a timely addition to the existing canon of introductory textbooks on the
syntax of Spanish. First, given the great extent to which the field has
continued to grow, its recent arrival on the market ensures its incorporation
of the latest developments in the field. Secondly, it is comprehensive in that
each chapter includes abundant exercises that are clearly marked with options
for both novice and advanced students. The third, and perhaps most important
feature of Camacho’s book for faculty teaching the subject as an upper
division course within a Spanish language curriculum is the fact that the book
is written in Spanish. Camacho’s book is unique among other available
textbooks on the market because it embodies all three advantages. For example,
other texts such as Zagona (2001), or more recently Frías Conde (2015) have
been in English, and others, although written in Spanish, such as Gili Gaya
(1994) or Eguren & Fernández Soriano (2004), are now dated and lack the
workbook component. Before now, Spanish syntax faculty who wanted applicable
student exercises had to rely on more general textbooks such as Carnie (2012)
or Radford (2016), whose primary focus in both cases is English. 

>From an organizational perspective, each of the chapters in both sections of
the book follows a well-designed and clear approach to presenting the
information contained therein. In each case, the author clearly states
objectives, addresses these in the body of the chapter, and ends with a short
summary of important points. Camacho then includes a section of exercises,
which are clearly marked in terms of chapter subtopic as well as student level
for whom they are designed (beginner or more advanced). Camacho concludes each
chapter with a section of sources for students interested in additional
reading on the topic, and in the case of some chapters, these are even further
separated by subtopic (e.g., agreement, movement, passives, etc.). A
suggestion regarding the overall division of the book into two major sections
is to mark their separate purposes more clearly both in the Table of Contents
and on the title pages to each section occurring within the text. Although the
purpose of each section is clearly mentioned in the book’s introduction, it
might be helpful for students if the differences between both sections were
more clearly marked within the text itself. 

In terms of its use of examples to explain content, the book takes an
interesting multilinguistic approach, and provides numerous examples from
standard Spanish, but also includes examples of variation from its many
dialects. These include the topics of clitic variation in the porteño dialect
of Argentina, the phenomena of leísmo and laísmo in the castellano dialect of
northern Spain, nonstandard word order in the case of wh-interrogatives as
well as the use of explicit subjects in the Caribbean, and the tendency for
some Peruvian as well as heritage speakers of Spanish in contact with English
to replace the definite article with the possessive pronoun in cases of
inalienable possession. Camacho also frequently draws on examples from
languages other than Spanish (or its varieties) in order to strengthen by way
of comparison his analysis of Spanish. For example, in Chapter 4, he presents
the case of conjugated infinitives in Portuguese and how this relates to his
analysis of the Tense Phrase. In other parts of the book he draws on examples
from Italian, Basque, Danish, and German as well.

Considering the fact that the text is intended for beginning students of
Spanish syntax, one criticism in terms of the book’s visual presentation of
syntactic structure pertains to the author’s combined use of two very
different conventions within the same trees throughout the book. In Chapter 3,
Camacho introduces two alternative representations to represent syntactic
structure by means of trees, namely, those of using either: 1) the head word
itself as a way of identifying the type of phrase (e.g., dep or ‘de phrase’ to
label a prepositional phrase headed by de ‘of’) or 2) the more abstract label
(e.g., FP, or the equivalent of English PP ‘prepositional phrase’).  Despite
stating that he will employ the first option throughout the book, Camacho
includes the second option as well in each tree anyway, albeit in parentheses.
It is the opinion of this reviewer that this combined use of both methods
makes the trees in the book appear cluttered, and induces unnecessary
confusion, particularly for a beginner student. Moreover, use of the head word
method to label the phrase creates the illusion of repetition in the tree when
in actuality there is none, and causes a distraction from identifying the
actual location of the word in the tree. 

A clearer representation might in fact be to avoid the use of the head word
method altogether, and resort to using ONLY the abstract label. This would
avoid repetition of words in the tree. This becomes especially important later
in the second part of the book where more complex structure involving movement
operations requires the copy and delete function, in which all instances of
the moved word or phrase, other than the landing site, are crossed out to
indicate that an item has moved.  One other note regarding Camacho’s
presentation of phrase structure, shortly after indicating the two
aforementioned tree possibilities, in the same Chapter 3, he resorts to the
use of brackets, as in example (49) (a-e) on page 112 to demonstrate the
concept of recursion. This is once again a problem for an introductory
textbook in that Camacho never explains that brackets are yet another
potential representation of phrase structure. Since this is the only instance
in the book that relies on the use of brackets, one way that the author could
address this in future editions might be to include a footnote that explains
the use of brackets as an alternate method, and perhaps to mention those
circumstances in which this method would be useful, for example, in cases
where limited space prevents the use of tree diagrams, or for less complex
structure, as is the case of Example (49).

Overall, Introducción a la sintaxis del español achieves its binary goal of
presenting the more general mechanisms of syntax and more specific cases of
Spanish to students who have had little or no previous exposure to generative
syntax. Moreover, the inclusion of advanced exercises and additional readings
make the text suitable for use as a springboard text for a graduate course on
the topic.

REFERENCES

Carnie, Andrew. 2012. “Syntax: A Generative Introduction.” 3rd Edition. Wiley
Blackwell.

Eguren, Luis & Olga Fernández Soriano. 2004. “Introducción a una sintaxis
minimista.” Gredos Editorial, S.A.

Frías Conde, Xavier. 2015. “An Introduction to Spanish Syntax (According to
Functional Categorial Grammar).” Ianua Editora.

Gili Gaya, Samuel. 1994. “Curso superior de sintaxis española.” 15th Edition.
Biblograf Sa.

Radford, Andrew. 2016. Analyzing English Sentences.” 2nd Edition. Cambridge
Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge University Press.

Zagona, Karen. 2001. “The Syntax of Spanish.” Cambridge Syntax Guides.
Cambridge University Press.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

John M. Ryan is Associate Professor of Spanish Linguistics at the University
of Northern Colorado. His work on first and second language acquisition
includes articles published in JCLAD, Hispania, JLTR and TPLS. Also, recent
work in historical linguistics and discourse analysis has appeared in several
edited volumes. He is currently working on a book manuscript on the early
transitional structures of Proto Ibero Romance.





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