No title

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006):275–319

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law in Gothic Marc Pierce University of Michigan While there is general agreement about many aspects of Gothic syllable structure, a number of important issues remain controversial. This paper offers an Optimality Theory analysis, with a focus on the syllabification of intervocalic consonants and consonant clusters. It is argued that Gothic syllabification generally results from the interaction of constraints requiring that syllables have onsets, that syllables may not have complex codas, or codas in general, and regulating the relationship between the input and the output. A family of constraints banning various types of complex onsets is also proposed. With this analysis of Gothic syllabification in hand, a new analysis of Sievers’ Law, one of the classic problems of Gothic phonology, is developed. From this perspective, Sievers’ Law is contingent on syllable structure and falls out from the interaction of the proposed constraints on syllable structure. It is also argued that the correct underlying representation of the segment affected by Sievers’ Law is an archiphoneme, as this enables a better account of the Sievers’ Law alternations, their morphological sensitivity, and the exceptions to Sievers’ Law. Although alternative analyses are possible, the analysis presented here sidesteps some of the problems they face and is more philologically rigorous.*

*

This paper is a substantially revised version of a portion of my doctoral dissertation (Pierce 2002). For their assistance in the preparation of this revised version, I thank James Cathey, San Duanmu, Benjamin Fortson, Robert Kyes, Tomas Riad, Martti Sloan, and Bruce Spencer. I am especially grateful to the two anonymous JGL referees, who provided a number of helpful comments that caused me to rethink much of the analysis, and to Robert Murray for his assistance in his role as editor. © Society for Germanic Linguistics

276 Pierce 1. Introduction. The importance of the syllable in phonological theory can hardly be exaggerated. In his groundbreaking work on Indo-European syllable structure, Eduard Hermann (1923:1) observed that “[es] bedarf keiner großen Gelehrsamkeit, um zu sehen, daß die Silbenbildung in eine ganz ungewöhnlich große Zahl von Fragen der Lautlehre tief eingreift.”1 One such “Frage der Lautlehre” [“question of phonology”] and one of the classic problems of Gothic phonology (as well as of Germanic and IndoEuropean phonology more generally) is Sievers’ Law. This law was proposed in 1878 by Eduard Sievers to account for certain vowel/glide alternations found in a number of Indo-European language families (certainly in Germanic, Indic, and Iranian, possibly also in Greek, Latin, Baltic, Slavic, Celtic, and Tocharian), namely those found in forms such as Gothic nasjis [nasjis] ‘(thou) savest’ versus sôkeis [so
ki
s] ‘(thou) seekest’, where nasjis contains a glide, but sôkeis has a long vowel and no glide. While both syllable structure and Sievers’ Law in Gothic have been treated extensively in the relevant scholarly literature, a number of issues remain controversial. Such issues include: the syllabification of consonant + glide and MUTA CUM LIQUIDA clusters (sequences of stop or
followed by a liquid); the domain of the Sievers’ Law alternation (that is, was it foot- or syllable-based?); and how the morphological sensitivity of Sievers’ Law should be accounted for. The present work therefore analyzes syllable structure and Sievers’ Law in Gothic, with a focus on the treatment of intervocalic singleton consonants and consonant clusters. The theoretical framework employed is Optimality Theory (OT), since that particular framework has proved to be more successful in analyzing prosodic phenomena (as syllable structure and Sievers’ Law certainly are) than other current formal theories of phonology (as conceded by even some opponents of OT as in, for example, McMahon 2000). The analysis presented here synthesizes insights drawn from traditional Germanic philology with those of current formal approaches to phonology, without sacrificing either; it maintains a straightforward and philologically rigorous approach to the Gothic

1

“Great erudition is not required to see that syllable structure plays a prominent role in an unusually large number of questions of phonology” (all translations are my own).

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

277

orthographic data and the interpretation of the Gothic alphabet, while remaining theoretically current. The paper begins with a presentation of the evidence for Gothic syllable structure, followed by a few methodological remarks. An abbreviated survey of previous research is given in order to highlight some trends exhibited by these earlier approaches. After developing an OT analysis of the Gothic data, I then turn to Sievers’ Law—first laying out the Gothic evidence, and then briefly commenting on some earlier analyses of it before developing a new OT analysis of the problem. The final section of the paper summarizes the arguments. 2. Syllable Structure in Gothic. 2.1. The Evidence for Gothic Syllabification. The major source of evidence used in analyses of Gothic syllabification has been word breaks in the Gothic manuscripts, and there are a number of studies of the orthographic evidence for Gothic syllabification, most prominently Hechtenberg Collitz 1906, Schulze 1908, Vennemann 1987, and Frey 1989.2 This section therefore describes the rules for word breaks in the Gothic manuscripts.3 Evidence from the Codex Argenteus and the Codices Ambrosiani is drawn from Hechtenberg Collitz 1906 and Schulze 1908, while evidence from the Skeireins and the NL is culled from Frey 1989. The data were also spot-checked against editions of the relevant manuscripts: Uppström 1854 for the Codex Argenteus, de Vries 1936 for the Codices Ambrosiani, Bennett 1960 for the Skeireins, and Szemerényi 1972 for the NL.

2

There were four major versions of the Gothic Bible: the Codex Argenteus (currently in the Uppsala University Library), the Codex Gissensis (formerly in the Universitätsbibliothek zu Giessen, but now lost), the Codex Carolinus (in Wolfenbüttel), and the Codices Ambrosiani (in the Ambrosian Library in Milan). Other Gothic texts include the Skeireins (‘Explanation’), a fragment of a commentary on the Gospel according to John; the “New Leaf” (hereafter NL), a page from the Codex Argenteus containing Mark 16:12–18, discovered in Speyer in 1971; and a handful of other fragmentary texts, runic inscriptions, and so on. See Scardigli 1994 for details. 3

Note that this section is concerned with word breaks and not with syllable boundaries per se.

278 Pierce The relevant data can be divided into the following main groups: (i) vowel-vowel sequences, (ii) intervocalic singleton consonants or consonant clusters (which can be divided into subgroups depending on how many and what kind of consonants make up the relevant clusters), (iii) compounds, and (iv) forms containing the clitic -uh ‘and’.4 The generalizations below can be made. Vowel-vowel sequences are divided if both vowels are monophthongs, while diphthongs are not divided, as in 1. (1) Vowel-vowel sequences Heli-as gai-ainnan stau-a

‘Elias’ (Mark 6: 15) ‘hell’ (Mark 9: 45) ‘judgment’ (Sk.V.b.18/19)

Intervocalic singleton consonants are always placed on the following line (that is, CVCV sequences are divided CV-CV), as in 2. (2) Intervocalic singleton consonants twa-lif ‘twelve’ (John 11: 9, Luke 9: 12, 17) galau-bidedun ‘believe’ (NL Mark 16: 13) Hero-des ‘Herod’ (Sk. III.a.12/13) If there are two or more intervocalic consonants, the final consonant of the cluster is placed on the following line, while the remaining consonants are kept on the preceding line. Thus, VCCV sequences are divided VC-CV, VCCCV sequences as VCC-CV, and so on. The forms in 3 illustrate these patterns.5

4

Gothic words are cited in Roman transcription; broad phonetic transcriptions are given when necessary (in the tableaux, for instance). A word break is represented by a dash, a syllable break by a period, and vowel length by a macron. Also, only basic glosses are given throughout the paper. 5

For convenience, I have largely retained here the subdivisions according to the number of consonants in the intervocalic cluster employed in Hechtenberg Collitz 1906 and Frey 1989.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

279

(3) Intervocalic consonant clusters (except muta cum liquida) a. Clusters of two consonants bal-gins liban-dans sun-jus gudis-kai

‘wine-skin’ (Matthew 9:17) ‘to live’ (John 7:38) ‘son’ (Sk. III.c.23/24) ‘divine, godly’ (Sk.I.c.6/7)

b. Clusters of three consonants fraquist-nand bairh-tai gatarh-jan

‘perish, be destroyed’ (Mark 2:22) ‘light, obvious’ (Sk.V.c.22/23) ‘to characterize’(Sk.IV.d.17/18)

c. Clusters of four or more consonants waurst-wa
rafst-jands gabaírht-jan

‘work’ (John 9:3, Sk.VI.b.1/2) ‘encourage, comfort’ (Luke 3:18) ‘to reveal’ (John 14:22)

Muta cum liquida clusters (clusters of a stop or
followed by a liquid) are exceptions to the pattern just described, since such sequences are often not divided. Vennemann (1987:170) observes that in the Codex Argenteus and the Codex Ambrosianus A only one cluster per manuscript is divided—against at least 40 that are not divided in the Codex Argenteus and 12 that are not in the Codex Ambrosianus A. As for the Skeireins and the Codex Ambrosianus B, there are six cases of intervocalic muta cum liquida clusters in the Skeireins, of which four are divided and two are not (Vennemann 1987). In the Codex Ambrosianus B, both Hechtenberg Collitz (1906:88) and Schulze (1908:490) suggest that most muta cum liquida clusters were divided in this particular manuscript, and Vennemann (1987:172) cites 17 cases of muta cum liquida clusters, of which seven are divided, and ten are not.6

6

This last statistic is perhaps somewhat skewed, since five of the ten relevant examples are occurrences of the same word, aikklesjo ‘church’.

280 Pierce (4) Muta cum liquida clusters wi-
ra para-kletus An-draias

‘against’ (Mark 4:1) ‘comforter’ (John 14:6) ‘Andrew’ (Sk.VII.a.6/7)

Compounds are divided at the boundaries of their components, such that they are divided between elements, as in the following forms: 7 (5) Compounds suns-ei ufar-stigun mi
-litidedun weina-gardis
at-ainei

‘as soon as’ (John 11:32) ‘climb up beyond, go up’ (Mark 4:7) ‘feign together with’ (Galatians 2:13) ‘vineyard’ (Luke 20:13) ‘only’(Sk.VIII.b.23/24)

The final group of syllable breaks treated here consists of five forms from the Skeireins involving the clitic -uh ‘and’. This clitic is sometimes treated as a separate word and sometimes as part of a word, and is apparently unique in Gothic in that respect (Braune/Ebbinghaus 1981:15). In the five examples cited by Frey (1989:282), -uh is treated as part of a word five times, and as a separate word once. Thus, in the first two examples cited below, the CVCV cluster is divided CV-CV, while the VCV cluster in the final example is divided VC-V. (6) Forms containing the clitic -uh ‘and’ an
ara-nuh
an nauh
a-nuh suman-uh
an

7

‘and another’ (Sk.VI.a.7/8) ‘yet’(Sk.III.a.4/5) ‘partly’ (Sk.VI.c.18/19)

The term “compound” is used here not only for true compounds, but also for forms with certain prefixes and for reduplicated forms.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

281

2.2. Methodological Considerations. While an extensive methodological discussion is beyond the scope of the present work, some such remarks are in order.8 Determining the syllable structure of a dead language remains controversial, as there is significant disagreement over the possible sources of evidence, ranging from what types of evidence may be used to the relative value of the different sources of evidence.9 For instance, Riad (2004:174) suggests that orthographic evidence, evidence drawn from language universals and typology, Gothic-internal phonological phenomena, and comparative evidence can be considered in the analysis of Gothic syllabification. However, most studies of Gothic syllabification have relied largely or totally on the orthographic evidence. In my view, the orthographic evidence is the most reliable evidence for Gothic syllabification. The use of universal/typological considerations in historical linguistics remains controversial, and the use of Gothic-internal linguistic evidence can lead to circular reasoning: one may fall into the trap of assuming that certain phonological developments occurred because of syllable structure, and analyzing them as such, but then using that very analysis as evidence for syllable structure. Comparative evidence can be important, but is not necessarily crucial, especially as languages sometimes do not behave like the languages they are related to. Relying on the orthographic evidence sidesteps these controversies, although this decision is not without its own problems. As indicated in the previous section, the major source of evidence used in analyses of Gothic syllabification has been word breaks in the Gothic manuscripts. It has traditionally been held that these word breaks were phonologically motivated and corresponded to syllable breaks. That is, it has largely been assumed, since the groundbreaking analyses of Hechtenberg Collitz (1906) and Schulze (1908), that when the Gothic scribes reached the end of a line, and did not have room to fit the entire

8

See Riad 2004 for a substantially more elaborated methodological discussion, which reaches a different conclusion from the one defended here. 9

See Devine and Stephens 1994 for a more general discussion of how to determine syllable structure in a dead language.

282 Pierce next word on the line, they divided the word at a syllable boundary.10 This claim has been commonly, but not unanimously, accepted (Hermann (1923), for instance, partially rejected it), and it has been challenged by several scholars in recent years, for example, Barrack (1998), Kiparsky (1998), Kim (2001), and Riad (2004). The main arguments typically presented for and against the traditional view can be summarized as follows. First, in support of the traditional view, as Frey (1989:288) notes, a syllabification for Gothic based on the traditional assumption that word breaks correspond to syllable divisions generally coincides with syllable structure in the early North and West Germanic languages and with the Syllable Preference Laws developed by Theo Vennemann (most fully in Vennemann 1988). This generalization is partially weakened if we give up the traditional view. Secondly, those scholars who reject the traditional assumption have been unable to explain why certain types of consonant clusters should be treated differently. There is no readily apparent reason why consonant + glide clusters or muta cum liquida sequences (the two favorite candidates for special treatment) should be handled differently from all other clusters, and all theories to the contrary have severe weaknesses, as discussed below. Third, word breaks in at least one of the other early Germanic languages (Old English) also generally correspond to syllable breaks, and it would therefore be unsurprising if Gothic were to fit this pattern as well.11 At the same time, the traditional assumption has its own weaknesses. First, if this approach is correct, then Gothic is a typologically odd language, in that muta cum liquida clusters are generally tautosyllabified while consonant + glide clusters are heterosyllabified. Languages that tautosyllabify muta cum liquida clusters tend to tautosyllabify consonant + glide clusters as well (Vennemann 1987). Secondly, this type of analysis largely brushes sonority, and especially sonority sequencing, aside, despite the general importance of sonority for syllabification (see Riad 2004:193–197 on this point). Third, any analysis of Gothic 10

Hechtenberg Collitz (1906) does not seem to have considered possible alternatives, given that her article, which really deals with word breaks in the Gothic manuscripts, is titled “Syllabication in Gothic.” 11

See Lutz (1986:193), who argues explicitly that “word division at the ends of lines in Old English is based on the syllabification of that language.”

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

283

syllabification is necessarily more complex and less elegant. Finally, the rules for word breaks in many modern languages reflect a mixture of phonological, morphological, and orthographic factors (as evidenced by the rules for word breaks in English prescribed by the Chicago Manual of Style, for instance), and perhaps the rules for word breaks in Gothic were similar. Modifying the traditional approach solves these problems, as Gothic is now no longer typologically odd (as both consonant + glide clusters and muta cum liquida clusters can be considered tautosyllabified, as argued in Barrack 1998, among others, or heterosyllabified, as suggested in Hermann 1923 and Kiparsky 1998, among others), and sonority can play a more important role in Gothic syllabification. In addition, the resulting analyses of Gothic syllabification are simpler and more elegant, and Gothic is now more like many modern languages in terms of the rules for word breaks. Determining which of these perspectives is correct is obviously difficult, as one is inevitably in danger of over- or under-interpreting the data. This problem is compounded by the limited Gothic corpus: one can never be entirely sure if something was impossible in Gothic simply because it does not happen to occur in the preserved Gothic corpus. The result, as Riad (2004:174) phrases it, is that “a methodological vacuum of sorts is created between desired simplicity and the finite supply of data.” In light of this methodological vacuum and finite supply of data, disagreement is inevitable. When considering the comparative evidence, for instance, as proponents of the traditional view can point to the rules for word breaks in Old English in support of their claims, while opponents of the traditional view can point to the rules for word breaks in modern languages to support their own ideas. To some extent, then, the issue has become a philosophical one. One finds either the arguments in favor of the traditional interpretation of the Gothic orthographic data or the arguments against it more convincing, and therefore faces a difficult choice: either (a) the traditional interpretation is correct, and word breaks indeed correspond to syllable breaks, meaning that Gothic is a typologically odd language that ignores sonority sequencing to some extent and requires a more complicated analysis, or (b) the traditional interpretation is substantially—but not entirely—correct, in that word breaks do not always correspond to syllable breaks, and the analysis of Gothic syllabification must therefore differ from analyses of the syllable structure of the early North and West

284 Pierce Germanic languages, and the Gothic scribes singled out one type of consonant cluster for special treatment. The analysis developed here is based on the first of these options, as I am willing to sacrifice typology, sonority, elegance, and evidence from modern languages in favor of an analysis that fits better with analyses of the other early Germanic languages and is more philologically rigorous. In what follows, I therefore extrapolate from word breaks to syllable boundaries with a fair amount of confidence, and assume that CVCV sequences were syllabified CV.CV, that CVCCV sequences were syllabified CVC.CV (except in the case of some muta cum liquida clusters), and so on. To this point I have only referred to word breaks, but below I refer almost exclusively to syllable boundaries.12 2.3. Previous Analyses of Gothic Syllable Structure. Although an exhaustive survey of the literature on Gothic syllabification is not possible in this work, some such discussion is necessary.13 The goal of this section is not to rebut entirely these earlier analyses, but instead to give a snapshot of the relevant research, with an eye to highlighting some of the issues that confront analyses of Gothic syllabification and how some earlier scholars have dealt with these issues. I begin with the classic analyses in Schulze 1908 and Hermann 1923, before turning to some more recent proposals. In Schulze 1908—the first evaluation of the Gothic evidence to link word breaks and syllable structure explicitly—it is argued that two rules account for all cases of Gothic syllable structure: (a) intervocalic singleton consonants always form the onset of the following syllable, and (b) only the last segment in intervocalic consonant clusters is placed in the onset of the following syllable. As to muta cum liquida clusters, he viewed them as “Belege einer neuen Regel” [“evidence for a new rule”] arguing that in Gothic these clusters “fordern […] jene Ausnahme-

12

I also note, however, that a slight modification to the analysis presented here also makes it compatible with the view that consonant + glide clusters were tautosyllabified, as discussed in section 2.4 below. 13

Such a discussion remains a desideratum. See Palviainen 2001, Pierce 2002, and Riad 2004 for some relevant historiographical discussion.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

285

stellung, die zu erkennen und anzuerkennen wir von der griechischen und lateinischen Prosodie her früh gewöhnt sind” (Schulze 1908:488).14 Hermann (1923:288) reached the same general conclusion as Schulze (1908), stating that all consonant clusters were heterosyllabified. Unlike Schulze, Hermann suggested that muta cum liquida clusters were only apparent exceptions to the general patterns of Gothic syllabification. In Hermann’s view, these clusters were actually heterosyllabified, but the Gothic scribes tautosyllabified them in imitation of Greek scribal practices, such that the apparent tautosyllabification of muta cum liquida clusters in the Gothic manuscripts is “bloß eine Nachahmung des griechischen Musters” [“merely an imitation of the Greek pattern”] (Hermann 1923:292). More recent work on Gothic syllable structure generally does not invoke influence from the classical languages in this area, but instead looks to Gothic-internal factors.15 For example, Frey (1989) provides a sonority-based analysis, suggesting that the syllabification of intervocalic consonant clusters can generally be traced to the SYLLABLE CONTACT LAW (SCL), which takes the form in 7 (there are various possible versions of the SCL; I give a typical one here).16

14

“demand […] the same status as exceptions that we have been accustomed to recognize from Greek and Latin prosody” 15

Murray and Vennemann 1983:516 is the exception to this generalization; the treatment of muta cum liquida clusters is attributed there to Greek influence and to morphological factors: “it would be inappropriate […] to conclude that the failure to divide sequences of a stop or
plus a liquid in the manuscripts reflects the phonological syllable structure of Gothic itself.” However, Vennemann has abandoned these ideas in later work, for example, in Vennemann 1987. 16

I assume the following relatively typical version of the sonority scale: stops >> fricatives >> nasals >> liquids >> glides >> vowels. This scale can be refined such that voiceless consonants are less sonorous than voiced consonants, and so on. These refinements are unnecessary for the analysis presented here, with one exception discussed below. Note also that some analyses refer to consonantal strength and others to sonority. In fact, the scale represents both— the greater the sonority, the lower the consonantal strength. On this scale, sound classes are listed in order of increasing sonority (that is, decreasing consonantal strength).

286 Pierce (7) Syllable Contact Law (SCL) A syllable contact A.B is the more preferred, the less the Consonantal Strength of the offset A and the greater the Consonantal Strength of the onset B; more precisely, the greater the characteristic difference CS(B) – CS(A) between the Consonantal Strength of B and that of A (Vennemann 1988:40). According to the SCL, preferred syllable contacts involve a weak coda (for example, liquids and nasals) and a strong onset (for example, stops and fricatives), while less preferred syllable contacts conversely involve a strong coda and a weak onset. Heterosyllabifying muta cum liquida clusters would therefore result in a less preferred syllable contact (as stops and fricatives are the strongest consonants and liquids the second weakest), while tautosyllabifying them eliminates such dispreferred syllable contacts. All other aspects of Gothic syllabification can then be accounted for within the other Syllable Preference Laws codified in Vennemann 1988. The final analysis considered here is proposed by Barrack (1998), who partially rejects the traditional view of the relationship between word breaks and syllable structure. Following on an observation made by Voyles (1992:89), Barrack (1998:39) suggests that “the word division C/j may simply be a reflection of morphological rather than syllabic structure […] a similar explanation may be given for the division C/w […].”17 This type of approach acknowledges that such sequences normally contain a morpheme boundary, for example, matjan ‘to eat’, gasatjan ‘to set’, gudja ‘man of God, priest’, and waurstwa ‘work’, where a morpheme boundary occurs before the <j> or <w> in all cases. In Barrack’s view, consonant + glide clusters were really tautosyllabified, not heterosyllabified as had traditionally been assumed. Once these clusters have been accounted for, then, as was the case with the analysis presented in Frey 1989, the remaining aspects of Gothic syllable structure can be accounted for by means of the Syllable Preference Laws codified in Vennemann 1988.

17

Riad (1992:86–87) makes the same suggestion, although Barrack only cites Voyles. This theory has also recently been endorsed by Kim (2001).

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

287

However, none of these proposals is completely unproblematic. Dismissing muta cum liquida clusters as exceptions to the general pattern of Gothic syllabification, in line with Schulze 1908, lacks explanatory value. Analyses appealing to influence from the classical languages, as proposed by Hermann (1923), must explain why this influence was limited to muta cum liquida clusters (as Frey (1989:290) also observes). As to sonority-based analyses, they must explain why less preferred syllable contacts, specifically consonant + glide sequences, are tolerated, while muta cum liquida contacts are eliminated. One of the more persuasive suggestions along these lines is the hypothesis of “glide strengthening” (Murray and Vennemann 1983, Vennemann 1985, Frey 1989), according to which <j> and <w> did not represent glides in Gothic, but rather fricatives. Since stop + fricative contacts are much more preferred than stop + glide contacts, their heterosyllabification in the manuscripts is no longer problematic, but instead exactly what the SCL predicts. A full treatment of glide strengthening in Germanic in general, and in Gothic in particular, is beyond the scope of this work, and the following brief remarks will therefore have to suffice. A number of arguments can be mustered in favor of glide strengthening, including the seemingly aberrant treatment of consonant + glide contacts, the spelling of certain loan words, and the occurrence of glide strengthening in the history of Faroese, Gothic, Old Norse (Holtzmann’s Law), and possibly in the early West Germanic languages as well. At the same time, a number of arguments can be mustered against the hypothesis of glide strengthening, including a sporadic process of <j> epenthesis, the alternation of <j> with in some Greek loan words, the lack of an orthographic indication of glide strengthening (contrary to the case of Holtzmann’s Law), Sievers’ Law itself, and the absence of any truly convincing synchronic evidence for glide strengthening in Gothic, barring an assumption about the role of the SCL in Gothic syllabification. In sum, I find the arguments against glide strengthening more compelling than those in favor of it, and therefore accept the traditional view that <j> and <w> represent glides, and not fricatives, in Gothic here.18

18

See Barrack 1997, Page 1999, and Pierce 2002 for more extensive discussion of these matters.

288 Pierce Finally, consider the possibility of a morphologically-based syllabification of consonant + glide clusters. This claim requires a somewhat more extensive discussion, as it has found the most resonance in the current literature (for example, Kim 2001 and Riad 2004). A syllabification of Gothic based on this idea fits better with typological considerations. This proposal is also perhaps bolstered by the observation that word breaks occurred between the elements of compounds. Kim (2001) has recently invoked this very observation to challenge the traditional view, arguing that since compounds were divided according to morphological criteria, it would not be too much of a stretch to assume that morphological considerations could have played a role in the division of simplex words as well. Although such arguments are persuasive, they are not entirely convincing. First, in line with the point made above about possible influence from Greek scribal practices, there is no readily apparent reason why only consonant + glide clusters should have been divided at morpheme boundaries. Second, not all consonant + glide sequences contain a morpheme boundary. Consider forms affected by Holtzmann’s Law, such as twaddjê ‘of two’ (where the word break/syllable boundary occurs before the j but the morpheme boundary before the ê) and the handful of verbs whose stems end in w, such as singwan ‘to sing’ (where the word break/syllable boundary occurs before the w but the morpheme boundary before the a).19 Moreover, consonant + glide clusters are almost invariably heterosyllabified in the Gothic manuscripts; Hermann (1923:288) notes that there are 340 cases of consonant + glide clusters at line ends in the Gothic corpus, of which 339 are divided across lines. Had they really been tautosyllabified, one might plausibly expect the Gothic scribes to have tautosyllabified them at least occasionally, especially since there are 19

An anonymous JGL referee suggested that neither of these types of exceptions is particularly problematic for Barrack’s proposal, as forms affected by Holtzmann’s Law are morphologically opaque and there are very few verbs whose stems end in w. Gothic scribes may therefore have divided such clusters (rare though they may be) according to the same principles as those consonant + glide clusters containing a morpheme boundary. These observations are true, but the larger point remains: not all consonant + glide clusters contained a morpheme boundary, and such cases do indeed weaken the thesis that such clusters were divided according to morphological, and not phonological, principles.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

289

a handful of demonstrable cases of scribal error in terms of word breaks (see Frey 1989:283). As to the treatment of compounds, they are morphologically different from simplex words, and it is therefore unsurprising that they are divided at morpheme boundaries. Moreover, as argued below, it seems that even compounds were treated in phonological terms, in that word breaks correspond to both morpheme and syllable boundaries. Finally, there are no instances of consonant + j onsets word-initially. This suggests that such onsets were not permitted word-internally either, as languages typically permit a wider range of complex onsets word-initially than they do word-internally.20 None of these reasons is completely probative on its own (for instance, the lack of consonant + j onsets word-initially may be an accidental gap in the Gothic corpus, especially since consonant + w onsets do occur wordinitially, as in twalif ‘twelve’). However, taken together, I find them convincing, and therefore reject the idea that consonant + glide clusters were divided according to morphological principles in favor of the traditional view that they were divided according to phonological principles. 2.4. An OT Analysis of Gothic Syllable Structure: Simplex Words. Having presented the data and reviewed the major methodological assumptions of this analysis, as well as some earlier discussions of Gothic syllable structure, I now develop an OT analysis of Gothic syllabification. This analysis focuses on simplex words, but one slight refinement is necessary to account for the syllabification of compounds, as shown in section 2.5 below.21 The first group of constraints employed 20

For instance, in English, [pw] and [bw] onsets only occur word-initially, and then only in loan words like pueblo and bwana (see, for example, Hammond 1999:11). 21

Gothic stress placement should be kept in mind here. The major condition governing main stress in Gothic was the same generally reconstructed for ProtoGermanic, namely that main stress was located on the initial syllable of the root. This observation can be formalized using an ALIGNMENT constraint (McCarthy and Prince 1993), one of a family of constraints dealing with the relationship between the prosodic word and the lexical word. Since main stress invariably falls on the initial syllable of the root, the topic is not discussed further and the constraint is omitted from the tableaux below. See Bennett 1970, 1972 for extensive discussion of the stress patterns of Gothic.

290 Pierce here, all of which are familiar from the relevant literature (for example, Prince and Smolensky 1993 and Kager 1999) is provided in 8. (8) a. ONSET Syllables must have onsets. b. NOCODA Syllables may not have codas. c. NOCOMP CODA At most one segment may occur in a syllable coda. Some commentary on these three constraints is appropriate. With regard to ONSET, Blevins (1995:217–219) points out that some languages require every syllable to have an onset. In certain Northern dialects of German, for instance, glottal stops are inserted at the beginning of (underlyingly) onsetless syllables, especially when the syllable is wordinitial or stressed, for example, [alt] alt ‘old’ and [ka'ot
] chaotisch ‘chaotic’ (Vennemann 1988:14).22 As to NOCODA, some languages, such as Fijian, absolutely ban syllable codas (Blevins 1995:219). Vennemann (1988:21) accounted for this by means of “the Coda Law,” of which only the first clause is cited here: “A syllable coda is the more preferred: (a) the smaller the number of speech sounds in the coda […].” Taken to its logical conclusion, as it was, for example, also by Prince and Smolensky (1993:34), an empty syllable coda is the best possible coda of all. Moreover, some languages that allow simplex codas do not allow complex codas; for example, Mokilese permits CVC and VC syllables, but not CVCC, VCC, or CVCCC syllables (Blevins 1995:217). There must also be a way to rule out complex onsets, as they are relatively rare in Gothic. There are a number of possible formulations of this type of constraint, including the following. Calabrese (1994) and Kiparsky (1998) both propose a Gothic-specific constraint banning consonant + j onsets, while Kager (1999) proposes a monolithic *COMPLEX ONSETS constraint, along the lines of the NOCOMPCODA constraint given above. Green (2003:239) argues in favor of a “universally and intrin22

The actual phonetics of this phenomenon are more complicated than indicated here. See Kohler 1994 for details.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

291

sically ranked set of ONSET-WELL-FORMEDNESS (OWF) constraints” on syllable onsets, according to which syllable onsets with steep-rising sonority (for example, stop + glide onsets) are preferred to syllable onsets with shallow-rising sonority (for example, stop + fricative onsets), which are in turn preferred to syllable onsets with falling sonority (for example, fricative + stop onsets). Hall (2005:234–235) conflates several distinct constraints into a constraint called OWF, which states that “certain O[bstruent] S[onorant] sequences are ungrammatical in the onset (for example, [tl], [dl], and [gm]). None of these proposals seems entirely satisfactory, for a variety of reasons; for example, the OWF constraints proposed by Green (2003) do not account for the absence of some syllable onsets with steep-rising sonority, such as stop + glide onsets, when other such onsets are permitted, such as voiceless stop + liquid onsets. I therefore propose a family of constraints banning various types of complex onsets, as in 9.23 (9)

*NOCOMP ONSET a. *
[CONSONANT-GLIDE b. *
[CONSONANT-LIQUID c. *
[CONSONANT-NASAL d. *
[CONSONANT-FRICATIVE e. *
[CONSONANT-STOP

23

An anonymous JGL referee queried the possible role of sonority here, as certain onsets (for example, [ns]) may be banned because they violate the Sonority Sequencing Generalization. According to this principle, which goes back to proposals originally made by Otto Jespersen and others, “complex onsets rise in sonority, and complex codas fall in sonority” (Kager 1999:267). Although the role of sonority sequencing in syllabification is well-established, its status in Gothic is somewhat unclear. For example, the Gothic manuscripts indicate a clear preference to heterosyllabify consonant + glide clusters, even when this results in complex codas with rising sonority, as in forms like waldufn.ja ‘power, authority’. Tautosyllabifying the relevant cluster would have eliminated such a coda, while producing an onset that conformed to sonority sequencing. Thus, while many of the NOCOMPONSET constraints are presumably rooted in sonority, the Sonority Sequencing Generalization is not referred to here. In addition, the term “consonant” in the following constraints is shorthand for “consonant or glide.”

292 Pierce The various members of this constraint family can be subdivided, and, for the purposes of this paper, one of them must be as in 10. (10) *
[CONSONANT -LIQUID a. b. c. d. e. f.

*
[GLIDE-LIQUID *
[LIQUID-LIQUID *
[NASAL-LIQUID *
[FRICATIVE-LIQUID *
[
-LIQUID *
[STOP-LIQUID

At first glance, the status of
may seem problematic in this respect, as it patterns with the stops, despite being a fricative. At the same time, this type of syllabification pattern is reasonably common crosslinguistically (it seems to be present in Old Norse, for instance), and it is therefore not completely surprising that it occurs here. To account for this type of pattern, Steriade (1982:95) argues that
is the least sonorous of the fricatives, which indicates that in some languages (including Gothic) the relevant division on the sonority scale is not stop versus fricative, but instead stop and
versus the other fricatives, or perhaps, as the set of constraints just proposed suggests, stop versus
versus the other fricatives.24 In what follows, the constraint given as *
[FRICATIVELIQUID is shorthand for *
[ALL FRICATIVES EXCEPT FOR
-LIQUID, and the constraints *STOP]
[LIQUID and *
]
[LIQUID are lumped together as *
[MUTA-LIQUID.25 The remaining constraints employed here are FAITHFULNESS constraints, that is, constraints that regulate the relationship between the input and the output. McCarthy (1995:3–4) proposes several FAITHFUL-

24

This is the one refinement to the sonority scale mentioned in note 16. This step is not a modification of the sonority scale per se, but rather a finer-grained version of the scale. That is, I am not proposing something along the lines of “liquids are more sonorous than glides in Gothic” here. 25

It is currently unclear whether there is a universal ranking for this constraint family, and I therefore leave this issue aside here, although I intend to pursue this line of inquiry in future work.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

293

constraints. Those necessary for the analysis presented here can be informally stated as in 11.26

NESS

(11) a. MAX Elements may not be deleted. b. DEP Elements may not be inserted. c. IDENT [FEATURE] Values for [features] may not be changed. d. LINEARITY Elements may not be reordered (essentially, metathesis is not permitted). These constraints are lumped together in what follows as FAITHFULNESS. The correct ranking of these constraints must now be established. For expository purposes, I treat the constraints in small groups. In what follows, NOCOMP ONSET is shorthand for “all of the NOCOMP ONSET constraints except for *
[MUTA-LIQUID.” I propose the ranking in 12. (12) FAITHFULNESS >> NOCOMP ONSET >> NOCOMP CODA, ONSET >> NOCODA >> *
[MUTA-LIQUID I begin with the ranking of FAITHFULNESS and NOCOMPONSET. The majority of the NOCOMP ONSET constraints must be extremely high ranking in Gothic, as only muta cum liquida onsets are permitted word-internally in simplex words. Word-initially, however, a wider range of complex onsets is permitted. This is unsurprising, as languages typically permit a richer set of complex onsets word-initially than they do word-internally (this is true for English, for instance, as indicated in note 20 above). In Gothic, a similar situation prevails, as onsets like [wl] and [wr] are permitted word-initially, as in forms like wlits ‘face, appearance’ and wrakja ‘persecution’, although they are not allowed

26

The wording of the constraints used here generally reflects Kager 1999.

294 Pierce word-internally.27 This discrepancy can be accounted for by ranking FAITHFULNESS over the various NOCOMP ONSET constraints, thus ruling out deleting or inserting a segment, changing its value for various features, or reordering segments to satisfy the NOCOMP ONSET constraints. Since NOCOMP ONSET is the highest-ranking of the other constraints (as will be demonstrated below), this means that FAITHFULNESS is the highest-ranking of the constraints. This ranking also accounts for the greater range of complex onsets found word-initially—there is one way to eliminate complex onsets word-internally that is not possible wordinitially, namely by moving a segment from the onset to the coda of the proceeding syllable. As this is impossible word-initially, and the FAITHFULNESS constraints rule out other possible ways of eliminating word-initial complex onsets, certain complex onsets occur word-initially but not word-internally.28 The tableau in 13 illustrates this point for twalif ‘twelve’.29 (13) twalif ‘twelve’ [twalif]

FAITHFULNESS

[twa.lif] [wa.lif] [te.wa.lif] [wta.lif] [tua.lif]

*NOCOMPONSET

* *! *! *! *!

*

27

See Joos 1942:34 and Calabrese 1994:164 for tables of possible word-initial consonant clusters in Gothic, and Suzuki 1987 for a sonority-based analysis of these word-initial clusters. 28

This raises the question of the source of such complex onsets. I see them as a remnant of an earlier stage in the (pre-)history of Gothic, in the spirit of recent work on Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins 2004). 29

Both here and in what follows, constraints not essential to the argument at hand have been omitted; for example, the FAITHFULNESS constraints are omitted in 14, although they rule out some possible alternative candidates.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

295

Next, NOCOMP ONSET must outrank NOCOMPCODA, as the latter may be violated to ensure that illicit syllable onsets do not occur. Consider, for instance, forms like
iudangardjos ‘kingdom’, syllabified [iu.dan.gard.jos]. As 14 shows, NOCOMPCODA could have been satisfied by having [dj] form a complex onset. The failure of this to occur indicates that NOCOMP ONSET outranks NOCOMP CODA. (14)
iudangardjos ‘kingdom’ [
iudangardjos] [
iu.dan.gard.jos] [
iu.dan.gar.djos]

NOCOMPONSET

NOCOMPCODA

* *!

There does not seem to be any way to determine the relative ranking of NOCOMPCODA and ONSET, as satisfying ONSET often also leads to the satisfaction of NOCOMPCODA. For instance, in forms like bal.gins ‘wine skin’, syllabified [bal.gins], placing the [g] in the onset of the second syllable, rather than in the coda of the first syllable, allows the satisfaction of both ONSET and NOCOMP CODA. I therefore assume that these constraints are both outranked by NOCOMP ONSET, but are not crucially ranked with regard to each other.30 As for NOCOMPCODA and NOCODA, in line with the generalization that languages that permit simplex syllable codas may not permit complex codas, it is to be expected that NOCOMPCODA outranks NOCODA. Moreover, this proposed ranking is supported by the treatment of certain forms containing muta cum liquida clusters, for example, Andraias [an.drai.as] ‘Andrew’. In such forms, the only type of complex onset permitted word-internally in simplex words in Gothic is created, which avoids violation of NOCOMP CODA while violating NOCODA, suggesting that violation of NOCOMPCODA is sufficient to eliminate a candidate, 30

An anonymous JGL referee pointed out that [j] can sometimes be inserted to provide syllables with onsets, as in forms such as fijands ‘enemy’, thus suggesting that the relative ranking of ONSET and FAITHFULNESS may not be as straightforward as I have claimed. However, this development does not necessarily contradict the proposed ranking, since this process of epenthesis is sporadic (for example, fiands, a form without the glide, is also attested, and is, in my view, the regular form).

296 Pierce while violation of NOCODA is not. Thus, NOCOMPCODA outranks NOCODA, as illustrated in 15.31 (15) Andraias [an.drai.as] ‘Andrew’ [andraias] [an.drai.as] [and.rai.as]

NOCOMPCODA

NOCODA

*!

** ***

The final ranking to be justified at this point is the relative ranking of NOCODA and NOCOMP ONSET. The treatment of muta cum liquida clusters provides the best evidence for the proposed ranking. Before this justification can be presented, however, the treatment of muta cum liquida clusters in the various manuscripts requires more extensive discussion. Therefore, I now turn to these clusters, beginning with the manuscripts where the muta cum liquida clusters tended to be tautosyllabified, the Codex Argenteus and the Codex Ambrosianus A. According to Vennemann 1987, the vast majority of muta cum liquida clusters are tautosyllabified in these manuscripts; there is one instance of heterosyllabified muta cum liquida cluster per manuscript, out of at least 41 cases in the Codex Argenteus and 13 in the Codex Ambrosianus A. The ranking given in 12 successfully accounts for the tautosyllabification of these clusters in these manuscripts, since NOCOMP CODA and NOCODA both outrank *
[MUTA-LIQUID. It is better therefore to have muta cum liquida clusters form a syllable onset than to place them in the coda of the previous syllable, as illustrated in 16 for aftra ‘again, backwards’ (syllabified [af.tra]) and in 17 for fadreina ‘race, parents’ (syllabified [fa.dri
.na]). (16) aftra ‘again, backwards’ [aftra]

NOCOMPCODA

NOCODA

*
[MUTA-LIQUID.

*

*!

* **

[af.tra] [aft.ra]

31

Other possible ways of avoiding a NO CODA violation, for example, deleting one of the offending segments, are ruled out by FAITHFULNESS.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

297

In 16, *
[MUTA-LIQUID could have been satisfied by heterosyllabifying the [tr] cluster. However, this would have violated NOCOMPCODA, and the relevant constraint ranking prevents this. Thus, the relevant cluster is tautosyllabified. A similar situation prevails in the case of fadreina, although here NOCODA plays the deciding role (see 17). Again, if the relevant consonant cluster were heterosyllabified, then *
[MUTA-LIQUID would be satisfied, but at the expense of violating NOCODA. The constraint ranking prohibits this, and the relevant cluster is therefore tautosyllabified. (17) fadreina ‘race, parents’ [fadri
na] [fa.dri
.na] [fad.ri
.na]

NOCOMPCODA

NOCODA

*
[MUTA-LIQUID.

* *!

The two heterosyllabified muta cum liquida clusters remain unaccounted for. The case found in the Codex Argenteus is probably a case of scribal error, since the one heterosyllabified form is ne
los [ne.los] ‘needle’, and there is another instance of the same word where the relevant cluster is tautosyllabified. As for the heterosyllabified form in the Codex Ambrosius A, idreigondane [id.ri
.gon.da.ne] ‘repent, regret’, this is perhaps the result of paleographic considerations, as the Gothic scribes were reluctant to divide words after a single initial vowel, and the heterosyllabification of the muta cum liquida cluster in this particular form may reflect this.32 The analysis of muta cum liquida clusters developed so far accounts only for the Codex Argenteus and the Codex Ambrosianus A; it must be modified slightly to account for the two manuscripts exhibiting more variation in their syllabification, namely the Skeireins and the Codex Ambrosianus B. In the Skeireins, there are six cases of intervocalic muta cum liquida clusters, of which four are heterosyllabified (iupa
ro [iu.pa
.ro] ‘from above’ (2x),
a
ro [
a
.ro] ‘afterwards’, and wi
rus 32

See Vennemann 1987:180, Barrack 1998:44–45, and Riad 2004:186, note 13 for discussion of this Gothic scribal practice, and also Lutz 1986:201, note 21 on a similar scribal practice in Old English.

298 Pierce [wi.rus] ‘lamb’), and two are tautosyllabified (Andraias [an.drai.as] ‘Andrew’ and aftra [af.tra] ‘back, again’) (Vennemann 1987:172). In the Codex Ambrosianus B, there are seventeen cases of muta cum liquida clusters, of which seven are heterosyllabified, and ten tautosyllabified, as seen in 18 (Vennemann 1987:172). (18) Muta cum liquida clusters in the Codex Ambrosianus B HETEROSYLLABIFIED Pait.rau ‘Peter’ ak.ran ‘fruit’ ag.laitei ‘lasciviousness’ ag.lom ‘anguish’ bro
.runs ‘brethren’ hlut.rans ‘pure’ dauht.rum ‘daughter’

TAUTOSYLLABIFIED Mam.bres ‘Mambres’ (personal name) aik.klesjo ‘church’ (5x) bai.trei ‘bitterness’ hlei.
rai ‘hut, tent’ wul.
rais ‘of worth’ hair.
ram ‘heart’

The behavior of muta cum liquida clusters in these manuscripts can be accounted for by revising the proposed constraint ranking, such that *
[MUTA-LIQUID outranks NOCODA in the Skeireins and the Codex Ambrosianus B (more precisely, in the dialects of Gothic represented in these two manuscripts). That is, in the Skeireins and in the Codex Ambrosianus B, the ranking in 19 holds. (19) FAITHFULNESS >> NOCOMP ONSET >> *NOCOMP CODA, ONSET >> *
[MUTA-LIQUID >> NOCODA This reranking is illustrated in the tableaux in 20 for
a
ro [a.ro] ‘afterwards’, a form from the Skeireins, and hlutrans [hlut.rans] ‘pure’, a form from the Codex Ambrosianus B. In the case of
a
ro, tautosyllabifying the [r] cluster would incur a violation of *
[MUTA-LIQUID. Heterosyllabifying the relevant cluster avoids this problem, despite the ensuing violation of NOCODA, and the winning form is therefore [a.ro]. The same argument applies to [hlut.rans].

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

299

(20) a.
a
ro [a.ro] ‘afterwards’ [aro]

*
[MUTA-LIQUID

[a.ro] [a.ro]

NOCODA

* *!

b. hlutrans [hlut.rans] ‘pure’ [hlutrans]

*
[MUTA-LIQUID

[hlut.rans] [hlu.trans]

NOCODA

* *!

This ranking leaves us with five exceptions, one each from the Codex Argenteus and the Codex Ambrosianus A, as well as three from the Codex Ambrosianus B. It was suggested above that the exception from the Codex Argenteus is probably a case of scribal error, and that the exception from the Codex Ambrosianus A may be the result of paleographic considerations, leaving the three exceptions from the Codex Ambrosianus B: bai.trei ‘bitterness’, hlei.
rai ‘hut, tent’, and dauht.rum ‘daughter’. The analysis predicts that the muta cum liquida clusters in bai.trei and hlei.
rai should be heterosyllabified to avoid violations of *
[MUTA-LIQUID and that the relevant cluster in dauht.rum should be tautosyllabified to avoid a violation of NOCOMPCODA, and it seems that these three forms must remain exceptions. However, even with these exceptions, the vast majority of muta cum liquida clusters have been accounted for.33 At this point, I return briefly to the claim made above that the analysis developed here can easily be made compatible with the view that consonant + glide clusters were tautosyllabified. This can be accomplished by reranking the *
[CONSONANT-GLIDE constraint proposed above with regard to NOCODA, such that NOCODA now outranks 33

It is possible to account for bai.trei and hlei.
rai by invoking the Stress-toWeight-Principle (SWP), according to which stressed syllables must be heavy (both of these forms are stressed on the initial syllable), in line with the analysis presented in Pierce 2002. As the status of SWP in Gothic is extremely controversial, and dauht.rum does not yield to such an analysis, this idea is not pursued here.

300 Pierce *
[CONSONANT -GLIDE . Thus, in forms like nasjis ‘(thou) savest’— which I have argued was syllabified nas.jis, but according to this alternative view is syllabified na.sjis—the tautosyllabification of the [sj] cluster is motivated by the need to avoid a violation of NOCODA. Again, at this point I am unwilling to accept the idea that consonant + glide clusters were tautosyllabified, but I take it as a positive indication that my analysis can account for the data under both views with such a slight modification. 2.5. The Syllabification of Gothic Compounds. I conclude this portion of the analysis with some brief remarks about the treatment of compounds.34 Compounds enjoy a special status in Gothic, as they were treated differently from simplex words in the manuscripts, being divided at morpheme boundaries. Thus, in terms of syllabification, syllable breaks occur between the various elements of the compound, but otherwise compounds syllabify exactly like simplex words. The syllabification of compounds is particularly interesting because of two major factors: (a) they may contain complex onsets word-internally that are not permitted in such a position in simplex words, for example, ufar+stigun ‘climb up beyond, go up’, where the [st] cluster forms a complex onset);35 and (b) they may contain onsetless syllables word-internally, even if a consonant is available to fill the onset position, as in forms such as suns+ei ‘as soon as’ (John 11:32), where the [ns] cluster is tautosyllabified, even though heterosyllabifying it would have eliminated a violation of ONSET.36 This can be accounted for by means of the ALIGNMENT constraint in 21.

34

Recall that the term “compound” refers not only to true compounds, but also to forms with certain prefixes and to reduplicated forms. 35 36

Here ‘+’ indicates a morpheme boundary.

Muta cum liquida clusters may also be heterosyllabified in compounds. However, as such examples seem to be vanishingly rare (Hechtenberg Collitz 1906 and Frey 1989 each cite only one such case, for instance) and to be confined to the Skeireins and Codex Ambrosianus B, where the heterosyllabification of muta cum liquida clusters is relatively common, this is not as interesting as it might appear at first glance.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

301

(21) ALIGN-WORD-LEFT The left edge of a word must coincide with the left edge of a syllable. This constraint is undominated in Gothic, and requires word boundaries to be aligned with syllable boundaries such that the beginning of a word must be the beginning of a syllable as well. Therefore, as long as compounds are perceived as such, then each element of the compound will be aligned with a syllable boundary, and the high-ranking of ALIGN-WORDLEFT will allow violations of NOCOMP ONS and ONSET . This constraint also accounts for the variable syllabification found in forms containing -uh discussed in Frey 1989. As long as -uh was perceived as a separate word, then forms that contained it were syllabified as compounds. If -uh was not perceived as a separate word, then forms containing it were syllabified as simplex words. Consider nauh
anuh [nauhanuh] ‘yet’ and sumanuh
an [sumanuhan] ‘partly’, which are syllabified [nauh.a.nuh] and [su.man.uh.an], respectively. It seems that nauh
anuh was perceived as a simplex word, since otherwise ALIGN-WORD-LEFT would require a syllabification *[nauh.an.uh], while sumanuh
an was still perceived as a compound, and ALIGNWORD-LEFT therefore compelled the alignment of phonological and morphological boundaries. As for the other clitics in Gothic, they were no longer perceived as separate words, and were therefore not affected by ALIGN-WORD-LEFT. This point is illustrated in the tableaux in 22, where the relevant constraints are ALIGN-WORD-LEFT and ONSET. (22) a. sumanuh
an [sumanuhan] ‘partly’ [sumanuhan] [su.man.uh.an] [su.ma.nuh.an]

ALIGN-WORD-LEFT

ONSET

* *!

302 Pierce b. nauh
anuh [nauhanuh] ‘yet’ [nauhanuh]

ALIGN-WORD-LEFT

ONSET

[nauh.a.nuh] [nauh.an.uh]

*!

3. Sievers’ Law in Gothic. 3.1. Introduction. With an OT analysis of Gothic syllable structure on hand, one of the most famous problems of Gothic phonology, Sievers’ Law, can now be considered.37 As indicated in section 1, Eduard Sievers proposed his eponymous law in 1878 in order to account for certain vowel/glide alternations found in a number of Indo-European language families; for example, between forms like Gothic nasjis [nasjis] ‘(thou) savest’ and sôkeis [so
ki
s] ‘(thou) seekest’, where nasjis contains a glide but sôkeis a vowel.38 Sievers’ (1878:129) own deceptively simple formulation of his law is as follows: “Unbetontes […] i oder u ist consonant nach kurzer, vokal nach langer silbe ohne rücksicht auf die sonstige accentlage des wortes”.39 As was the case with Gothic syllable structure, a number of 37

Because different scholars use the term “Sievers’ Law” to refer to various types of alternations, there is a certain amount of terminological confusion in the literature. Sievers himself spoke of an i/j and a u/w alternation, as indicated in his original formulation. However, some scholars use the term to refer to an ij/j alternation (and possibly a uw/w alternation), for example Sihler (1995:175), while still other scholars use the term to refer to an alternation between a glide (or a vowel) and nothing, as in the discussion of Sievers’ Law in Old Norse presented in Barrack 1998:115. Here I follow Sievers and use the term “Sievers’ Law” to refer to the i/j and u/w alternations found in Gothic. 38

Sievers was not the first scholar to investigate these vowel/glide alternations. See Seebold 1972:24–28 for details of early investigations of the problem, Horowitz 1974 for a summary of research up to 1970 or so, and Collinge 1985 for a more abbreviated discussion up to the early 1980s. A comprehensive survey of the history of Sievers’ Law as a scientific concept remains a desideratum. 39

“Unstressed […] i or u is a consonant following a short syllable, a vowel following a long syllable, regardless of the remaining accentual situation of the word.”

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

303

issues remain contentious, including the domain of the alternation (is it a foot- or syllable-based alternation?), the correct underlying representation of the relevant segment (is it a vowel, a glide, or a segment unspecified for the feature [consonantal]?), and the best way to account for the morphologically restricted application of the alternation. Given the implications of Sievers’ Law for both the prosodic structure and the phonemic inventory of Gothic, a new analysis dealing with these questions (and others) is both necessary and desirable. 3.2. Gothic Evidence for Sievers’ Law. In Gothic, both aspects of Sievers’ Law are restricted to certain morphological contexts. The i/j alternation appears in the second and third person singular and second person plural forms of Class 1 weak verbs, and the nominative and genitive singular of masculine ja stem nouns, and ja stem adjectives, where the alternation is actually between -ji and -ei ([ji] and [i
], respectively).40 The u/w alternation is even more restricted, occurring in only a handful of forms. This has unfortunately led to the relative neglect of the u/w alternation in the literature; many treatments of Sievers’ Law, including such recent discussions as Dresher and Lahiri 1991, Barrack 1998, and Kim 2001, restrict their attention to the i/j alternation. However, the u/w alternation can be accounted for with the same constraints as the i/j alternation, and it is therefore also treated here. The relevant alternation can be seen in the paradigms in 23; forms that exhibit Sievers’ Law are in bold. In all these forms, main stress falls on the initial syllable; note also that Gothic <ei> represents [i
].41

40

There are other i/j alternations in Gothic that are not the result of Sievers’ Law. Barrack (1998:87) cites the example of the nominative singular ending of the jô-stem nouns, which is -i in heavy stems (for example, bandi ‘band, bond’), but -ja in light stems (for example, sunja ‘truth’). These other alternations are not discussed here (but note that the analysis developed here can also account for such alternations).

41

The following paradigms have been extracted from Braune/Ebbinghaus 1981. Use of the terms “heavy” and “light” here follows traditional practice, in that “heavy” stems are stems containing a long vowel or a diphthong, or a short vowel followed by two or more consonants, while “light” stems are stems containing a short vowel followed by a single consonant.

304 Pierce

(23) a. Sievers’ Law in Gothic I: i/j in Class 1 weak verbs

Sg.

Du. Pl.

1 2 3 1 2 1 2 3

LIGHT STEMS

HEAVY STEMS

POLYSYLLABIC STEMS

‘save’

‘seek’

‘praise’

nasja nasjis nasji
nasjôs nasjats nasjam nasji
nasjand

sôkja sôkeis sôkei
sôkjôs sôkjats sôkjam sôkei
sôkjand

mikilja mikileis mikilei
mikiljôs mikiljats mikiljam mikilei
mikiljand

b. Sievers’ Law in Gothic I: i/j in masculine ja stem nouns

Sg.

Pl.

nom. gen. dat. acc. voc. nom. gen. dat. acc.

LIGHT STEMS

HEAVY STEMS

POLYSYLLABIC STEMS

‘army’

‘herdsman’

‘disciple’

harjis harjis harja (hari) (hari) harjôs harjê harjam harjans

hairdeis hairdeis hairdja hairdi hairdi hairdjôs hairdjê hairdjam hairdjans

sipôneis sipôneis sipônja sipôni sipôni sipônjôs sipônjê sipônjam sipônjans

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

305

c. Sievers’ Law in Gothic I: i/j in masc./neut. strong ja adjectives

Sg.

Pl.

LIGHT STEMS

HEAVY STEMS

‘middle’

‘wild’

masc.

neut.

masc.

neut.

nom.

midjis

wil
eis

gen. dat. acc.

midjis midjamma midjana

nom. gen. dat. acc.

midjai (midjaizê) midjaim midjans

midi, midjata midjis midjamma midi, midjata midja (midjaizê) midjaim midja

wil
i, wil
jata -----wil
jamma wil
i, wil
jata wil
ja (wil
jaizê) wil
jaim wil
ja

wil
eis wil
jamma wil
jana wil
jai (wil
jaizê) wil
jaim wil
jans

d. Sievers’ Law in Gothic II: u/w alternation

Sg.

Pl.

nom. gen. dat. acc. nom. gen. dat. acc.

‘tree’

‘maiden’

‘grave’

triu triwis triwa triu triwa triwê triwam triwa

mawi máujôs máujai mauja maujôs maujê maujom maujos

hlaiw hlaiwis hlaiwa hlaiw hlaiwa hlaiwê hlaiwam hlaiwa

306 Pierce 3.3. Sievers’ Law in Gothic: Previous Analyses. As was the case with Gothic syllabification, the analysis of Sievers’ Law in Gothic remains controversial. I do not present an exhaustive, or even an extensive, review of the relevant (and vast) literature here. Instead, I briefly discuss three recent analyses with varying assumptions and theoretical views, by way of contextualizing my own proposals, beginning with Barrack 1998.42 According to Barrack 1998, Sievers’ Law began in Proto-IndoEuropean as a process of “denuclearization,” by which unaccented high vowels were lost after light syllables and following a CV sequence, and then became a nuclearization process due to the change in accent systems from Proto-Indo-European to Proto-Germanic. Barrack also links Sievers’ Law to processes of glide deletion and vowel syncope, which, in his view, have combined to obscure the effects of Sievers’ Law in most morphosyntactic classes. Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of Barrack’s analysis is his reliance on what he calls the “Dahl/Erdmann hypothesis” to account for polysyllabic stems. This hypothesis, originally developed by Dahl (1938) to account for gemination in Old English, and extended by Erdmann (1972) to cover Sievers’ Law, holds that “front-loaded” stems (stems consisting of a heavy stressed syllable followed by a light syllable) are equivalent to light monosyllabic stems, and that “balanced” stems (stems consisting of a light stressed syllable followed by another light syllable) are equivalent to heavy stems. In line with this hypothesis, Barrack’s analysis predicts that front-loaded polysyllabic stems should pattern like the light stems and exhibit a glide, while balanced polysyllabic stems should pattern like the heavy stems and exhibit a vowel. The crucial forms for this hypothesis are polysyllabic stems consisting of a heavy syllable followed by a light syllable. Erdmann (1972) suggests (and Barrack (1998) agrees) that the second and third singular forms of these verbs should end in -jis and -ji
, respectively, and the second plural present indicative should end in -ji
. Relevant Gothic examples include the following: audagjan ‘beautify’, glitmunjan ‘shine’, kaupatjan ‘slap one’s face’, lauhatjan ‘flash’, and swogatjan ‘sigh’. Unfortunately, none of the necessary forms are preserved in the Gothic 42

A number of other recent analyses of Sievers’ Law are not discussed here. See Kim 2001, Palviainen 2001, and Pierce 2002 for more substantial overviews of the recent literature.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

307

corpus (although various analyses of Sievers’ Law cite the ghost form *glitmuneis ‘shines’), making it impossible to confirm Barrack’s claim. Kiparsky (1998) offers an OT analysis of Sievers’ Law in Gothic. In Kiparsky’s view, Sievers’ Law is dependent on foot structure; the preferred foot in Gothic was the moraic trochee (a bimoraic, left-headed foot), and Sievers’ Law represents an attempt to achieve maximal optimal footing. This is accounted for with four major constraints (some of which have already been cited), mandating that segments not be inserted or deleted, that consonant + j syllable onsets are not allowed, that syllables must have onsets, and that words are to be parsed into moraic trochees, ranked in the order just listed. Kiparsky also assumes that final consonants can be extrametrical and that main stress invariably falls on the initial syllable of the word. Consider Kiparsky’s treatment of harjis [har.jis] ‘army’ (gen.sg.). He argues that this is the only possible surface form of this word, since *hareis [ha.ri
s], the main competitor to harjis, cannot be parsed into moraic trochees: if it is parsed into two separate feet (that is, as [ha][ri
s]), the first foot is too short; if it parsed into one foot (as [ha.ri
s]), the foot is too long. Other possible candidates violate one or another of the constraints (for example, [ha.rjis] violates the ban on consonant + j onsets), and are therefore eliminated. The attested form harjis, by contrast, can be parsed into two separate moraic trochees without violating any of the other high-ranking constraints (that is, it can be parsed [har][jis]), and is thus the preferred form. Like Kiparsky (1998), Kim (2001), in an analysis couched in the Lexical Phonology framework, views Sievers’ Law as an attempt to yield maximal optimal footing. He also argues that the moraic trochee was the preferred foot in Gothic, and further assumes that the underlying representation of the relevant segment is /j/, that final consonants are extrametrical, and that consonant + j clusters are tautosyllabified, in accordance with the Maximal Onset Principle. He accounts for the morphological sensitivity of Sievers’ Law by formulating it as a lexical rule, a type of phonological rule that can be sensitive to morpholexical information. Consider the following examples: nasjis, sôkeis, and mikileis. According to Kim 2001:121, in nasjis (syllabified na.sjis, in his view), there are two light syllables, which form a bimoraic foot. In addition, both syllables in the word are footed; hence the structure is optimal, no repairs

308 Pierce are needed, and the underlying /j/ therefore surfaces as [j]. In the case of sôkeis, however, without vocalization, the foot structure would be less optimal. In a form *sôkjis, the first syllable could form a bimoraic foot on its own, but, since final consonants are extrametrical, the second syllable could not. The syllables cannot be footed together, because the resulting foot structure would be less preferred. By vocalizing the /j/, however, the second syllable becomes bimoraic (even with final consonant extrametricality), and can thus be footed on its own, resulting in a more preferred foot structure. A similar argument accounts for mikileis; without vocalization of the underlying glide, a less preferred foot structure would result. As was the case with earlier analyses of Gothic syllable structure, none of these proposals is entirely satisfactory, again for a variety of reasons. For instance, Kiparsky (1998) assumes that the treatment of muta cum liquida clusters generally reflects influence from Greek scribal practice, while there is no completely convincing Gothic evidence for the Dahl-Erdmann hypothesis that Barrack (1998) relies upon, and none of the truly crucial forms for Barrack’s analysis are preserved in the Gothic corpus. This suggests that a new analysis is appropriate. 3.4. Sievers’ Law in Gothic: A New OT Analysis. The first step in the analysis is to determine the correct underlying representation of the relevant segment. There are three possibilities to be considered. First, Sievers’ Law could be the vocalization of an underlying glide, as claimed by Dresher and Lahiri (1991) and Kim (2001), among others. Secondly, Sievers’ Law could be the gliding of an underlying vowel, as apparently believed by Sievers (1878) himself. Third, the relevant underlying segment could be an archiphoneme, as suggested by Riad (1992) and Calabrese (1994)—in this case a segment unspecified for the feature [consonantal], although these analyses use different terminology to refer to this segment. Employing an archiphoneme in the underlying representation has several advantages. As Riad (1992:48) argues, assuming underlying archiphonemes is “the least redundant way of deriving the sounds represented by and in Gothic orthography,” since the realization of such sounds is generally predictable, depending on syllabic position. Moreover, assuming archiphonemes yields a better account of forms where the relevant segments are adjacent, for example, mawi ~

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

309

máujôs ‘maiden’ [mawi] ~ [mau.jo
s] (nom.sg. ~ gen.sg.). Using archiphonemes also fits better with the history of Gothic. Marchand (1973:70–71) points out that there are a handful of near-minimal pairs in Gothic that appear to require the presence of underlying /i/ or /j/, for example, juka ‘yoke’ (nom./acc. pl.) and iupa ‘above’. The best account of this seems to be, as Marchand argues, that all cases of [i]/[j] and [u]/[w] were allophones of the same phoneme, that is, they were derived from archiphonemes in Pre-Gothic. By the time of Biblical Gothic, some of these instances of archiphonemes had been lost, resulting in the presence of six phonemes (/i/, /j/, the archiphoneme /
/, /u/, /w/, and the archiphoneme /U/), where only two (the archiphonemes /
/ and /U/) existed in Pre-Gothic. This hypothesis also accounts for the morphologically restricted application of Sievers’ Law, and for the more limited occurrence of the u/w portion of Sievers’ Law. The assumption is that the archiphonemes were lost earlier in certain morphological contexts and that the u/w archiphoneme was lost more rapidly than the i/j archiphoneme. The following analysis therefore employs two archiphonemes, /I/ and /U/. Forms showing an alternation between i and j or u and w somewhere in the paradigm (for example, mikiljan ‘praise’ and sôkjan ‘seek’) contain the relevant archiphoneme, while forms that do not show this alternation (for example, nasjan ‘save’) contain an underlying glide. In addition, I rely on a more specific version of IDENT [FEATURE], IDENT [CONS], which forbids changing the underlying value for the feature [consonantal]. Since the underlying archiphonemes do not have a specific underlying value for this feature, they may occur on the surface as either vowels or glides, depending on their position in the syllable. Forms containing an underlying glide, on the other hand, may not be vocalized, as this would incur a violation of IDENT [CONS].43 43

An anonymous JGL referee reminds me that underlying representations are not as important as surface forms in OT, especially since Richness of the Base mandates that there can be no constraints on underlying forms. An OT analysis should ideally work with a variety of inputs. While conceding that the analysis developed here does conflict with the strongest version of Richness of the Base, as it requires a specific underlying representation to work, this does not nullify my proposals. The status of the strongest version of Richness of the Base is somewhat controversial (see van Oostendorp 2000 for some relevant discussion), and, to my mind, the empirical advantages of relying on specific

310 Pierce Sievers’ Law falls out from the interaction of the various constraints proposed above to account for Gothic syllabification. Recall that I posited the following ranking (adapted from 12 above):44 (24) FAITHFULNESS >> NOCOMP ONSET >> *NOCOMP CODA, ONSET >> NOCODA The tableaux in 25–27 illustrate this claim. Since the same constraints and ranking account for all the alternations, only the Class 1 weak verbs are discussed here, starting with the light stem nasjis ‘thou savest’. (25) nasjis ‘(thou) savest’ /nasjIs/

IDENT [CONS]

NOCOMP ONSET

NOCOMP CODA

ONSET

[nas.jis] [na.sjis] [nasj.is] [nas.i
s] [na.si
s]

*! *! *! *!

*! *

NO CODA

** * *** ** *

Here the winning candidate [nas.jis] violates only the relatively lowranked constraint NOCODA, while the various other candidates violate one or another of the higher-ranked constraints. For instance, *[nas.i
s] is eliminated because of an ONSET violation, *[na.sjis] violates one of the high-ranking NOCOMP ONSET constraints, and *[na.si
s] vocalizes the underlying glide, thus violating IDENT[CONS].

underlying representations outweigh the philosophical disadvantage of violating the strongest version of Richness of the Base here. 44

*
[MUTA-LIQUID is not essential for the analysis of Sievers’ Law, as the following analysis yields the correct results regardless of its relative ranking to NOCODA , and it has therefore been omitted from the following discussion. FAITHFULNESS constraints other than IDENT [CONS] are also omitted.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

311

I now consider a heavy stem, sôkeis ‘thou seekest’. (26) sôkeis ‘(thou) seekest’ /so
kIIs/

IDENT [CONS]

NOCOMP ONSET

NOCOMP CODA

ONSET

[so
.ki
s] [so
k.i
s] [so
.kjis] [so
k.jis]

*! **!

NO CODA

* * * **!

The attested form [so
.ki
s] is preferred over the alternate candidates, because it only incurs one violation of the relatively low-ranking constraint NOCODA.45 (As the underlying representation of the relevant segment is not specified for the feature [consonantal], IDENT [CONS] is irrelevant here.) Meanwhile, the alternate candidate *[so
k.i
s] is eliminated due to a violation of ONS, and *[so
.kjis] loses because it violates one of the high-ranking NOCOMP ONSET constraints. Finally, *[so
k.jis] is eliminated because it violates NOCODA twice, which the attested form violates only once. The final form considered here is a polysyllabic stem, mikileis ‘(thou) praisest’. (27) mikileis ‘(thou) praisest’ /mIkIlIIs/

IDENT [CONS]

NOCOMP ONSET

NOCOMP CODA

ONSET

[mi.ki.li
s] [mi.ki.ljis] [mik.il.i
s] [mi.kil.jis]

45

*! *!

NO CODA

* * * **!

In this form, as well as in all of the following forms, IDENT [CONS] is irrelevant, as the relevant segment is an archiphoneme that does not have an underlying value for [consonantal].

312 Pierce Here [mi.ki.li
s] is preferred over the other possible candidates because it obeys the various high-ranking constraints while only violating the lower-ranked constraint NOCODA. The candidate *[mi.kil.i
s] is eliminated because of its violation of ONSET , while *[mi.ki.ljis] is eliminated because it violates a high-ranking NOCOMP ONS constraint. The remaining candidate, *[mi.kil.jis], obeys the various high-ranking constraints, leaving NOCODA to play the deciding role. In this case, [mi.ki.li
s] only violates NOCODA once, while *[mi.kil.jis] violates NOCODA twice, and is thus eliminated. I now examine the u/w alternation. Consider the form triu ‘tree’. (28) triu ‘tree’ /trIU/

IDENT [CONS]

NOCOMP ONSET

NOCOMP CODA

ONSET

NO CODA

[triu] [triw]

*!

As evident in 28, NOCODA plays the deciding role, as both candidates obey the higher-ranking constraints. The attested form [triu] does not violate NOCODA, while *[triw] does, and is therefore eliminated. Now consider the dative singular form of this word, triwis. (29) triwis ‘tree’ (dat.sg.) /triUIs/

IDENT [CONS]

NOCOMP ONSET

NOCOMP CODA

ONSET

[tri.wis] [triu.is] [triw.is] [triwjs] [triujs]

*! *! *! *!

NO CODA

* * ** ***

In this case, violations of ONSET eliminate both *[triu.is] and *[triw.is], while *[triwjs] and *[triwjs] both violate NOCOMPCODA. The attested form [tri.wis] does violate NOCODA, but this violation of a relatively low-ranking constraint is not sufficient to eliminate it from consideration.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

313

There are a handful of forms which this analysis does not account for, the so-called “exceptions to Sievers’ Law.” While the analysis outlined here predicts that the semivocalic variant will appear in the light stems, with the vocalic variant appearing in the heavy and the polysyllabic stems, a few forms run counter to this prediction, including the following (data from Murray and Vennemann 1983:525): andbahteis ‘office’ (1x), but also andbahtjis (4x); gawaír
eis ‘peace’ (7x), but also gawaír
jis (8x); and only arbjis ‘inheritance’ (2x) and reikjis ‘kingdom’ (1x). These forms have traditionally been attributed to analogy. For example, Murray and Vennemann (1983:525) refer to these forms as the “analogical violations of Sievers’ Law,” and state that they developed when “gen.sg. -jis is restored after long stems, on the analogy of the short stems and the paradigmatically related forms with -ja(m) and -jê.” This position is also endorsed in some handbooks, as in Braune/Ebbinghaus 1981:44 for instance. While analogy may indeed play a role in some such cases, the bulk of these exceptions can instead be attributed to the elimination of the underlying archiphonemes, such that those forms that preserve Sievers’ Law contain an underlying archiphoneme (for example, sôkeis), while those forms that have eliminated Sievers’ Law contain an underlying glide (for example, arbjis), and those forms that show variation (for example, andbahteis ~ andbahtjis) are in the process of changing from an underlying archiphoneme to an underlying glide.46 4. Summary and Conclusions. This paper reexamined the thorny problem of Gothic syllabification. While many aspects of Gothic syllabification are relatively straightforward (for example, the syllabification of intervocalic singleton consonants), others are more problematic (for example, the treatment of muta cum liquida clusters), and this controversy is reflected in the relevant literature. The paper, therefore, began by laying out the orthographic evidence for Gothic syllabification, and then offered a brief methodological discussion in which the traditional assumption that word breaks in the Gothic manuscripts correspond to syllable divisions was defended. Some earlier analyses were also discussed, and it was suggested that these earlier proposals were lacking in some way, normally in 46

See Vennemann 1985, Kiparsky 2000, and Pierce 2005 for more extensive discussion of these exceptions.

314 Pierce their interpretation of the orthographic evidence. It was then argued that Gothic syllabification results largely from the interaction of constraints that a) mandate that syllables have onsets (ONSET), b) ban complex codas (NOCOMPCODA) and syllable codas in general (NOCODA), c) regulate the relationship between the input and the output (FAITHFULNESS), and d) ban various types of complex onsets (the family of NOCOMP ONSET constraints). Given the “methodological vacuum” discussed by Riad (2004:174) and the limited supply of available Gothic data, alternative analyses are inevitably possible. It is possible, for instance, to treat Gothic syllabification in terms of syllable weight, or in terms of syllable contact. Such analyses remain controversial. For example, any analysis based on syllable contact must explain why certain types of more preferred syllable contacts, namely muta cum liquida contacts, are eliminated, while other, less preferred types of syllable contacts, namely consonant + glide contacts, are retained. This is normally accomplished by reinterpreting the orthographic data or by invoking sound change. Thus, as noted above, Frey (1989:291) rejects the traditional view that <j> and <w> represented glides, arguing instead that they were fricatives, “da ihre Bestimmung als reine ‘Halbvokale’ nicht mehr aufrechterhalten werden kann, wenn Trennungen wie bruk-jands etc. mit dem Silbenkontaktgesetz übereinstimmen sollen,” which nullifies the apparent problem of their heterosyllabification in the Gothic manuscripts.47 A reinterpretation of the orthographic evidence, either to the extent that muta cum liquida clusters were heterosyllabified or that consonant + glide clusters were tautosyllabified, yields similar results. The main advantage of the analysis presented here is that it successfully accounts for the Gothic data without requiring either of these somewhat questionable proposals. Any account of Gothic syllabification assuming that consonant + glide clusters were tautosyllabified must offer a principled account of their apparent heterosyllabification in the manuscripts. Although a number of proposals have been advanced to account for this problem, none of them is completely successful. For instance, the claim that such clusters were divided according to morphological, not phonological, principles fails to account for cases where those clusters do 47

“since their definition as pure ‘glides’ cannot be sustained if breaks like brukjands, etc. are to conform to the Syllable Contact Law”

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

315

not contain a morpheme boundary. Furthermore, such proposals do not answer the question of why just those clusters were treated differently. Additionally, as pointed out above, the arguments in favor of glide strengthening seem less convincing than those against it. Both the reinterpretation of the orthographic evidence for Gothic syllabification and the assumption of glide strengthening are unnecessary in the analysis developed here. Moreover, it was also noted that this analysis requires only a minor modification (the reranking of two constraints) to work with the major alternative interpretation of the Gothic data Sievers’ Law in Gothic was also discussed, and it was argued that this Law is best viewed as a consequence of Gothic syllabification. When the underlying archiphoneme must be an onset to satisfy ONSET, it will be a glide. When another consonant is available to satisfy ONSET, it will be a vowel. The more limited application of the u/w alternation was attributed to the more rapid loss of that archiphoneme. While it would be presumptuous to claim that this analysis has “solved” the problem of Sievers’ Law, it does represent a step forward in our understanding of the topic, and does not suffer from some of the weaknesses present in other formalist accounts of the problem. Finally, with an analysis of Gothic syllable structure in hand, it is possible to analyze a number of other phonological phenomena attested in Gothic, for example, reduplication, as well as other developments that took place in the (pre-)history of Gothic, along with developments from the other branches of the Germanic language family. REFERENCES Barrack, Charles. 1997. Putative strengthening of glides in Gothic. Insights in Germanic linguistics II: Classic and contemporary, ed. by Irmengard Rauch and Gerald F. Carr, 1–8. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs 94.) Berlin: de Gruyter. Barrack, Charles. 1998. Sievers’ Law in Germanic. (Berkeley insights in linguistics and semiotics 22.) New York: Peter Lang. Bennett, William H. 1960. The Gothic commentary on the Gospel of John. (MLA monograph series 21.) New York: Modern Language Association. Bennett, William H. 1970. The stress patterns of Gothic. Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 85.463–472.

316 Pierce Bennett, William H. 1972. Prosodic features in Proto-Germanic. Toward a grammar of Proto-Germanic, ed. by Frans van Coetsem and Herbert L. Kufner, 99–116. Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Blevins, Juliette. 1995. The syllable in phonological theory. The handbook of phonological theory, ed. by John Goldsmith, 206–244. (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics.) Oxford: Blackwell. Blevins, Juliette. 2004. Evolutionary phonology. The emergence of sound patterns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Braune, Wilhelm. 1981. Gotische Grammatik. 19th ed. by Ernst A. Ebbinghaus. (Sammlung kurzer Grammatiken germanischer Dialekte, A.1.) Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag. Calabrese, Andrea. 1994. Sievers’ Law in Gothic: A synchronic analysis with some notes on its diachronic development. The Linguistic Review 11.49–94. Collinge, Neville E. 1985. The laws of Indo-European. (Current issues in linguistic theory 35.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dahl, Ivar. 1938. Substantival inflection in early Old English vocalic stems. (Lund studies in English 8.) Lund: Gleerup. Devine, Andrew M., and Laurence D. Stephens. 1994. The prosody of Greek speech. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dresher, B. Elan, and Aditi Lahiri. 1991. The Germanic foot: Metrical coherence in Old English. Linguistic Inquiry 22.251–286. Erdmann, Peter. 1972. Suffixal j in Germanic. Language 48.407–415. Fix, Hans, and Thomas Birkmann. 1998. Die Worttrennung am Zeilenende in Handschriften der Snorra Edda. Snorri Sturluson. Beiträge zu Werk und Rezeption, ed. by Hans Fix, 23–33. (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 18.) Berlin: de Gruyter. Frey, Evelyn. 1989. Worttrennung und Silbenstruktur des Gotischen mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der Skeireins. Indogermanische Forschungen 94.272–293. Green, Antony Dubach. 2003. Extrasyllabic consonants and onset wellformedness. The syllable in Optimality Theory, ed. by Caroline Féry and Ruben van de Vijver, 238–253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hall, Tracy Alan. 2005. Paradigm uniformity effects in German phonology. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 17.225–264. Hammond, Michael. 1999. The phonology of English. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hechtenberg Collitz, Klara. 1906. Syllabication in Gothic. Journal of English and Germanic Philology 6.72–91. Hermann, Eduard. 1923. Silbenbildung im Griechischen und in den anderen indogermanischen Sprachen. (Ergänzungsheft zur Zeitschrift für vergleichende Sprachforschung auf dem Gebiete der indogermanischen Sprachen 2.) Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

317

Horowitz, Franklin Eugene. 1974. Sievers’ Law and the evidence of the Rigveda. (Janua linguarum, series practica 216.) The Hague: Mouton. Joos, Martin. 1942. Statistical patterns in Gothic phonology. Language 18.33– 38. Kager, René. 1999. Optimality theory. (Cambridge textbooks in linguistics.) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kim, Yookang. 2001. Prosody and i/j alternation in Gothic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 13.97–130. Kiparsky, Paul. 1998. Sievers’ Law as prosodic optimization. Mír curad: Studies in honor of Calvert Watkins, ed. by Jay Jasanoff , H. Craig Melchert, and Lisi Olivier, 345–360. (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Sprachwissenschaft 92.) Innsbruck: Institut für Sprachwissenschaft der Universität Innsbruck. Kiparsky, Paul. 2000. Analogy as optimization: “Exceptions” to Sievers’ Law in Gothic. Analogy, levelling, markedness, ed. by Aditi Lahiri, 15–46. (Trends in linguistics. Studies and monographs 127.) Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Kohler, Klaus J. 1994. Glottal stops and glottalization in German. Phonetica 51.38–51. Lutz, Angelika. 1986. The syllabic basis of word division in Old English manuscripts. English Studies 3.193–210. McCarthy, John. 1995. Extensions of Faithfulness: Rotuman revisited. Ms., University of Massachusetts, Amherst. McCarthy, John, and Alan Prince. 1993. Generalized alignment. Yearbook of Morphology 1993, ed. by Geert Booij and Jaap van Marle, 79–153. Dordrecht: Kluwer. McMahon, April. 2000. Change, chance, and optimality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Marchand, James W. 1973. The sounds and phonemes of Wulfila’s Gothic. (Janua linguarum, series practica 25.) The Hague: Mouton. Murray, Robert W., and Theo Vennemann. 1983. Sound change and syllable structure in Germanic phonology. Language 59.514–528. Oostendorp, Marc van. 2000. Back to the base. On the Richness of the Base hypothesis. Ms., Meertens Institute. Page, B. Richard. 1999. The Germanic Verschärfung and prosodic change. Diachronica 16.297–334. Palviainen, Santeri. 2001. Sievers’ Law in Gothic: A synchronic and diachronic analysis. Licentiate thesis, University of Helsinki. Pierce, Marc. 2002. Syllable structure and Sievers’ Law in Gothic and Old Norse. Doctoral dissertation, University of Michigan. Pierce, Marc. 2005. On the exceptions to Sievers’ Law in Gothic. Paper presented at the seventeenth International Conference of Historical Linguistics, Madison, Wisconsin.

318 Pierce Prince, Alan, and Paul Smolensky. 1993. Optimality theory: Constraint interaction in generative grammar. Technical report 2, Rutgers University Center for Cognitive Science. Riad, Tomas. 1992. Structures in Germanic prosody. Doctoral dissertation, Stockholm University. Riad, Tomas. 2004. Syllabification and word division in Gothic. Journal of Germanic Linguistics 16.173–202. Scardigli, Piergiuseppe. 1994. Zur Typologie der gotischen Handschriftenüberlieferung. Studien zum Altgermanischen. Festschrift für Heinrich Beck, ed. by Heiko Uecker, 527–538. (Ergänzungsbände zum Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde 11.) Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Schulze, Wilhelm. 1908. Wortbrechung in den gotischen Handschriften. Sitzungsberichte der preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse 31.610–624. [Page references refer to reprint in Schulze 1966.] Schulze, Wilhelm. 1966. Kleine Schriften. 2nd ed. Edited by Wilhelm Wissmann. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. Seebold, Elmar. 1972. Das System der indogermanischen Halbvokale. Untersuchungen zum sogenannten ‘Sieversschen Gesetz’ und zu den halbvokalhaltigen Suffixen in den indogermanischen Sprachen, besonders im Vedischen. (Indogermanische Bibliothek 3. Reihe: Untersuchungen.) Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universitätsverlag. Sievers, Eduard. 1878. Zur accent- und lautlehre der germanischen Sprachen. Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 5.63–163. Sihler, Andrew L. 1995. New comparative grammar of Greek and Latin. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Steriade, Donca. 1982. Greek prosodies and the nature of syllabification. Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Suzuki, Seiichi. 1987. Consonant clusters, sonority scales, and syllabification in Gothic. Linguistics and Philology 7.23–51. Szemerényi, Oswald. 1972. A new leaf of the Gothic Bible. Language 48.1–10. Uppström, Andreas (ed.). 1854. Codex Argenteus sive sacrorum evangeliorum versionis Gothicae. Uppsala: C.A. Leffler. Vennemann, Theo. 1985. Phonologically conditioned morphological change. Exceptions to Sievers’ Law in Gothic. Phono-morphology. Studies in the interaction of phonology and morphology, ed. by Edmund Gussmann, 192– 229. Lublin: Redakcja Wydawnictw Katolickiego Universytyety Lubelskiego. Vennemann, Theo. 1987. Muta cum liquida. Worttrennung und Syllabierung im Gotischen. Mit einem Anhang zur Worttrennung in der Pariser Handschrift der althochdeutschen Isidor-Übersetzung. Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 116.165–204. Vennemann, Theo. 1988. Preference laws for syllable structure. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.

Syllable Structure and Sievers’ Law

319

Voyles, Joseph B. 1992. Early Germanic grammar. San Diego: Academic Press. Vries, Jan de (ed.). 1936. Ulfilae codices Ambrosiani rescripti. Turin: Augustae Taurinorum.

University of Michigan Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures 3110 Modern Languages Building Ann Arbor, MI 48109–1275 USA [[email protected]]

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006):321–343

REVIEWS

Deriving Coordinate Symmetries: A Phase-Based Approach Integrating Select, Merge, Copy, and Match. By John R. te Velde. (Linguistics Today, 89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. x, 385. Hardcover.
135. Reviewed by TIMOTHY OSBORNE , Pennsylvania State University 1. Derivation by Phase. John te Velde’s monograph presents a comprehensive and detailed theory of coordination cast within the Minimalist framework. The data are drawn mainly from English and German, although some Dutch data are included as well. The novelty of te Velde’s approach resides mainly in the understanding of the derivation; it builds on Chomsky’s (1998, 1999) concept of phase. The derivation proceeds phase-by-phase, rather than sentence-by-sentence. Derivation by phase has each conjunct of a (certain type of) coordinate structure being derived before the derivation of the next conjunct begins. In this manner, a derivational procedure such as Move can apply to a constituent in the one conjunct without having to apply to the parallel constituents in the other conjunct(s). The parallelism that does usually obtain across conjuncts is established by the interaction of the processes Copy and Match with active memory (AM). Once the initial conjunct is derived, its syntactic and semantic features are placed in AM, so that they can be copied to the non-initial conjunct(s) as soon as it/they are derived. The relevant features of a preceding conjunct are always pasted to those of the following conjunct(s). This approach contrasts with Across-the-Board (ATB) accounts, which assume that parallelism across conjuncts is established by the simultaneous application of a derivational procedure to all the conjuncts in a uniform manner. The utility of derivation by phase is perhaps best illustrated by instances of asymmetric coordination such as in 1 (adapted from p. 82).

322 Reviews (1) [CP Wenn [TP du das beste Bier bestellen kannst] when you the best beer order can und [TP ich mussi das billigste bestellen ti]] ... and

I

must the cheapest order

‘If you can order the best beer and I must order the cheapest, …’ The two conjoined clauses in 1 are asymmetric in the following sense. The second conjunct involves verb raising, whereas the first conjunct does not. An ATB account would have difficulties with such cases, since it assumes that movement in each conjunct within a coordinated structure proceeds in a like manner. Any account that focuses on conjunct symmetry is therefore challenged by such cases. In contrast, the derivation by phase approach allows the derivations of the two conjuncts to be distinct. What counts is that core aspects of parallelism obtain; it can suffice if the conjuncts are parallel with respect to certain features. In the case of 1, the conjuncts are parallel insofar as they are both TPs. 2. Central Components. While derivation by phase is perhaps the most unique and distinguishing characteristic of te Velde’s approach, there are a number of central components to the theory. These components are briefly enumerated here. The approach strives to account for the structure and behavior of coordination via the principles and procedures that are already acknowledged for non-coordinate structures. It maintains that coordination can be accounted for by using the standard derivational processes of the Minimalist Program that already exist for non-coordinate structures, that is, Select, Copy, Merge, and Match. No extra mechanisms or concepts are necessary. This view assumes that the structure of coordination is actually quite similar to the structure of subordination. The traditional stance, in contrast, assumes the two types of structure are quite distinct.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

(2) a.

XP Conj.

and

b.

323

XP

Conj.

Conj.

X(P) and

Conj.

The structure in 2a has the conjuncts in equi-level positions, it represents traditional assumptions about the nature of coordination. In contrast to 2a, something like the structure in 2b has become widely accepted in the generative paradigm. There one sees that the conjuncts are no longer in equi-level positions, but rather the second conjunct is on a level below the level of the first conjunct and is hence subordinate to the first conjunct. Te Velde’s approach pursues a variant of 2b. The variant of 2b that te Velde assumes differs substantially from other proposals in the area. Compare the following structures involving coordinated DPs adapted from pages 26 and 30: (3) a.

&P DP

b. &P'

and

DP1 D

DP

N' N

DP2 and

DP

The structure in 3a is that of Munn (1987), Kayne (1994), Johannessen (1996, 1998), and Wilder (1994, 1996. 1997), etc. It sees the coordinator as the head of the entire coordinate structure, projecting up to the root node. Te Velde’s structure in 3b, in contrast, grants the coordinator a unique status. DP2 merges (it does not adjoin) to the tail end of DP1 in such a manner that the coordinator does not receive the status of a head. The coordinator in 3b does not project at all; it is therefore a defective lexical item. Te Velde produces numerous arguments demonstrating that 3b should be preferred over 3a. Concerning the large versus small conjunct debate, te Velde takes the middle ground. On the one hand, he assumes small conjuncts whenever possible, for example, DP+DP, NP+NP, AP+AP, and PP+PP. The nature of the structure in 3b even allows for certain small conjuncts that do not

324 Reviews actually qualify as constituents, given traditional assumptions; for example, John gave [Mary a record] and [Bill a book] (p. 202). On the other hand, te Velde assumes large conjuncts when necessary, namely when the unique structure illustrated in 3b no longer allows for strictly small conjuncts. There are three kinds of structures in which ellipsis is necessary: left-edge ellipsis (LEE), right-edge ellipsis (RNR), and conjunct-internal ellipsis (Gapping), as exemplified in 4. (4) a. LEE Billi got a book and ei will soon start reading it.

(p. 203)

b. RNR Bill loves ei and Peter tolerates [temperamental Italians]i. (p. 207) c. GAPPING Bill likesi spaghetti and Barb ei lasagna.

(p. 216)

The ellipses must be licensed by a c-commanding element. In the case of LEE, the licensor is the coordinator itself. In the cases of RNR and Gapping, the licensor is a prosodic element. Derivation by phase requires that the ellipses in these cases have all the properties of lexical items except their phonetic features (p. 9, 10, 181, 225, 290, 292). The full lexical items are generated in the course of the derivation, but they experience non-spell-out. In other words, the lexical items are deleted (p. 180f.). Despite his claims to the contrary (pp. 179), this heavy reliance on deletions actually positions te Velde’s theory between the large conjunct and small conjunct approaches. I return to this point in section 5. Te Velde emphasizes that the structure in 3b and derivation by phase with feature matching can together best address the characteristics of coordinate structures. On the one hand, the strong tendency for the conjuncts of coordinate structures to be parallel is accounted for by feature matching. Syntactic parallelism is assured when the features of the initial conjunct are pasted to each of the following conjuncts. Semantic parallelism is then assured by matching in LF. On the other hand, the numerous asymmetries that can obtain between the conjuncts of coordinate structures can be accounted for by the asymmetric structure shown in 3b, partial feature matching, and derivation by phase, whereby the derivation of one phase ( conjunct) need not always be exactly parallel to the derivation of the following phase(s).

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

325

3. Organization and Presentation. The book contains five chapters. Chapter 1 is brief; it provides an overview of the theory and of the presentation in the following chapters. Chapter 2 examines non-elliptical instances of asymmetric coordination. Asymmetric structures, such as those in 5a–c, are explored. (5) a. DP+AP George is [DP a geek] and [AP glad to be one].

(p. 19)

b. DP+CP You can depend [DP on my assistant] and [CP that he will be on time]. (p. 45) c. VF CLAUSE + V2 CLAUSE Wenn das Wetter schön ist, when the weather nice is und wir gehen zusammen in die Berge, dann … (p. 22) and we go together in the mountains then ‘When the weather is nice and we go to the mountains together, then …’ Despite the non-parallel categories, these structures are licit. Te Velde assumes that asymmetric conjuncts are licensed by virtue of matching of abstract features. He uses the term COORDINATE FEATURE MATCHING (CFM) (p. 13) to refer to the phenomenon. While the conjuncts (DP+AP) in 5a lack parallelism in syntactic category, they are parallel insofar as they both appear in the same position of the VP and both carry the abstract feature [+COMPL]. The situation is similar in 5b. There the conjuncts again lack parallelism in syntactic category (DP+CP), but they are parallel with respect to the abstract feature [+OBJECTIVE]. The situation in 5c is somewhat different. While the conjuncts there lack parallelism with respect to the position of the finite verb, they are parallel with respect to the abstract feature [+CLAUSE]. The varying verb positions are possible by virtue of derivation by phase. The first phase (= initial conjunct) is derived and spelled-out before the second phase (= second conjunct) is. Multiple spell-out of this sort allows the conjuncts to undergo separate derivations.

326 Reviews Chapter 3 presents the particulars of the structure te Velde assumes for coordination, that is, the structure illustrated in 3b, as well as the mechanics of derivation by phase. The discussion remains with nonelliptical structures, elliptical structures being addressed later in chapters 4 and 5. One of the main goals of the chapter is to convince the reader of the virtue of 3b over 3a. This point is convincingly argued based on data from various areas, for example, subject-verb agreement and feature checking, multiple conjuncts (not just two), and the defective nature of the coordinator. In presenting the mechanics of derivation by phase, the emphasis is placed on the nature of the derivational procedures, that is, Select, Merge, Copy, and Match. The first three procedures occur in “narrow syntax,” whereas the last occurs both in narrow syntax and then again at LF. Finally, the chapter returns to the asymmetries of coordination, examining them again in view of the particular aspects of structure and derivation that were presented earlier in the chapter. Chapter 4 explores the motivation for positing the existence of gaps, whereby a gap is assumed to have “all the features of a lexical item except its phonetic features” (p. 181); following Chomsky (1995:202– 203), “deletion” is assumed to occur “in PF” (p. 180); the phonetic features of the deleted lexical items are not spelled out. After examining the motivation for gaps, the discussion investigates the manner in which the gaps are licensed. Each gap must have a licensor. The gap of LEE is licensed by the coordinator itself, since the coordinator immediately ccommands the gap. The gap of RNR is licensed by the prosodic feature [PROS], which appears in the position that immediately c-commands the gap. And the gap of Gapping is also licensed by the prosodic feature [PROS], but this time [PROS] appears in a position that immediately ccommands C
or T
(p. 224). The structures in 6 show the basic licensing constellations for English.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

(6) a. Licensing of LEE (adapted from p. 204) TP &

TP e

T' T

vP

Vfin

(...)

b. Licensing in RNR (adapted from p. 210) VP (…)

V' V

eP e'

PROS

e

TP &

TP(…)

327

328 Reviews c. Licensing in Gapping (adapted from p. 216) TP &

TP DP

T' T'

PROS

T'

vP ø

v' e

(...)

In addition to the requirement that gaps be licensed in PF, they must also be recovered in LF. The discussion of recovery is mainly concerned with the gaps that can and cannot be recovered. The central claim about recovery is that the licensor must c-command and immediately precede the gap. A gap is not licensed if an overt element intervenes between it and its licensor. This requirement predicts ungrammaticality in cases such as 7. (7) a. *Billi doesn’t want to write the short story and truthfully e1 won’t consider a novel. (p. 206) b. *Peter caught John (PROS) e1

Mary an eel in the Charles River, and Betty e2 in the Missisquoui. (p. 218)

The sentence in 7a is an attempt at LEE; this attempt fails because the stressed adverb truthfully intervenes between the licensor of the gap, that is, the lexical item and, and the gap itself, that is, e1.1 The sentence in 7b 1

Examples where the pre-verbal adverb is not stressed constitute exceptions, as in Billi doesn’t want to write the short story and definitely ei won’t consider a novel. The non-stressed adverb definitely does not block the licensing of the gap, despite te Velde’s claim. This sort of data motivates te Velde to modify the

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

329

is an instance of Gapping; it fails because the [PROS] feature cannot license e2 through the blocking element Betty. The last section in chapter 4 presents and examines the derivational specifics of coordinate structures involving ellipsis. Emphasis is placed on identifying the correct order of the derivational processes. The final chapter, chapter 5, is comparatively brief. It discusses some remaining issues, whereby the focus is on the correct analysis of the preverbal projections. Te Velde weighs in on the CP vs. TP debate for German. He argues against the generalized V
C analysis for all V2 clauses in favor of the TP analysis; that is, he argues for a TP analysis of subject-initial V2 clauses. His analysis allows for fine-tuning of the left periphery, whereby additional functional projections are assumed to intervene between CP and TP. 4. Discussion. Te Velde’s monograph represents a comprehensive study of coordination. The data examined and the issues addressed show the challenges and difficulties the phenomenon of coordination presents for syntactic theories. One sees why coordination is one of the most studied areas of syntax and why the area continues to motivate a seemingly unending stream of descriptive and explanatory accounts. Te Velde demonstrates that an approach in terms of derivation by phase is in a position to address many of these challenges. The basic structure te Velde proposes for coordination illustrated in 3b is indeed more appropriate than the alternative structure in 3a. The alternative in 3a is suited to address the asymmetries of coordination, since it has the conjuncts appearing in inherently unequal positions, that is, in Spec-&P and Comp-&P. It has difficulty, however, accounting for the symmetries of coordination, since there is nothing inherently symmetric about it. In this regard, te Velde’s structure in 3b is less asymmetric since the one conjunct is merged onto the tail end of the other. It is hence in a better position to allow for the symmetries of coordination. There are, however, a number of significant problems with te Velde’s theory and the manner in which it is presented in the book. The

claim. He must stipulate that non-stressed adverbs do not constitute blocking categories (p. 206).

330 Reviews presentation suffers from redundancy. The book is long, over 300 pages of main text with some 370 notes. The latter appear on the 41 pages that follow the main text. Working through the book hence requires a lot of flipping back and forth. More importantly, key points are repeated more than necessary, the result being that the text is redundant at times. For instance, the arguments for rejecting the structure in 3a in favor of the one in 3b are presented first on pages 25–27. These arguments appear again in detail on pages 89–99, and then thereafter in parts on pages 108, 112, 115–117, 122–123, and 132. The discussion of Ross’ (1967) data is another example of redundancy. Ross illustrates that the coordinator forms a constituent with the following conjunct, as opposed to with the preceding conjunct. The relevant data appear first on page 105, then again on pages 129 and 145. Some of the grammaticality judgments are debatable, for example, 2b (p. 3), 11a (p. 23), 64 (p. 48), 76a', 77a' (p. 219), iia,b (p. 344, n. 54), ia (p. 344, n. 58). One area where te Velde’s data differ from the literature is with those instances of gapping where an auxiliary verb has gapped without the main verb: (8) a. [Peter has kissed] and [Paul insulted] the young bride.

(p. 3)

b. [Wir wissen, daß Karl ein Auto gekauft hat], we know that Karl a car bought has und [Uwe nur eines geliehen]. and Uwe only one loaned

(p. 23)

‘We know that Karl bought a car and that Uwe borrowed one.’ Ross (1970, 1976) and Sag (1976:145) take instances of gapping such as 8a in English to be marginal.2 Maling (1972:106–107) and Lechner (2001:697f.) dislike cases such as 8b in German. Te Velde, however, assumes they are fully acceptable. The actual status of such cases can 2

Sentence 8a actually allows two distinct analyses: i. Peter has kissed (the young bride) and Paul (has) insulted the young bride. ii. Peter has kissed (the young bride) and Paul insulted the young bride. On the analysis shown in i, gapping does not obtain at all. Te Velde, however, assumes the analysis in ii.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

331

have an impact on the overall theory, since it provides a clue for differentiating between gapping and non-gapping instances of coordination. The theory’s reliance on deletions opens it up to the major criticism facing all large conjunct approaches. Te Velde actually rejects the large conjunct approach in its purest form (p. 179), that is, where every conjunct qualifies as a CP below the surface. At the same time, however, his theory posits three types of ellipsis (LEE, RNR, and Gapping). Ellipsis is understood as the result of deletions, which means that the approach pursues a large conjunct account of these three cases. (9) a. LEE (adapted from page 304) [Den Hund hat einer gefüttert] und [einer hat ihn geschlagen]. the dog has one fed and one has him hit ‘Somebody fed the dog and hit it.’ b. RNR (adapted from page 259) [John sold the neighbor the same set of paintings] and [Bill gave the visitor the same set of paintings]. c. GAPPING (adapted from page 224) [John didn’t write a novel] or [Sue didn’t write a short story]. The pre-deletion reading in 9a involves two people, whereas the postdeletion reading involves just one; the pre-deletion reading in 9b is nonsensical; and the pre-deletion reading in 9c is truth-functionally distinct from the post-deletion reading. Te Velde does not appropriately address the difficulty such examples pose. Note 25 on page 304 does seem to acknowledge the problem with 9a, suggesting that a “constraint against opacity” is responsible for the contrast. In order to overcome the problem in 9b, the derivation on page 259 must first select a set of paintings as the object of each conjunct, delete these objects, and then replace them with the same set of paintings. The difficulty with 9c is addressed by positing that the prosodic feature necessary for licensing of the gap conflicts with the prosodic feature associated with the negation. These explanations are unconvincing.

332 Reviews Te Velde’s theory is not unlike many other theories in this area. Most accounts of coordination within the generative paradigm acknowledge deletions at least to some extent; for example, Kayne 1994, Wilder 1994, 1996, 1997, Johannessen 1996, 1998, and Hartmann 2000. Therefore te Velde’s theory cannot be challenged on this point from within the generative paradigm. Concerning those frameworks that are less likely to so readily embrace deletions, however, for example, HPSG, LFG, Categorial Grammar, Word Grammar, and Meaning-to-Text, the heavy reliance on deletions reduces acceptance for the overall theory. To gain greater acceptance, theories of coordination that utilize deletions need to convincingly address in a transparent manner the challenge posed by data such as 9a–c. The two main arguments te Velde produces to demonstrate the presence of LEE are also unconvincing (pp. 185–187). The first of these involves indefinite subjects: (10) A woman was head of state in England and ei will soon be secretary of state in the US. Perhaps the most natural reading of 10 involves two women, one in England and one in the US. This reading is thus consistent with the predeletion structure, a fact that supports the presence of the ellipsis. Te Velde emphasizes this point time and again. The weakness in this reasoning, though, is seen in example 9a above, where the reading involving just one person is the only reading available. Example 11 further illustrates the problem. (11) [Jemand kam um vier] und [jemand ging um fünf]. someone came at four and someone left at five (Klein 1993:773) Klein (1993) and Hartmann (2000:67ff.) take such sentences as evidence against left-edge ellipsis; that is, the most natural reading of 11 involves only one person, contrary to what the pre-deletion structure predicts.3 It

3

Klein and Hartmann do not actually argue against the possibility of ellipsis in such examples, but rather they never even consider LEE a possibility in such cases. Their discussions of 11 focus on the contrast between 11 and i:

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

333

should be noted as well that examples such as 9a and 11, where just one person is involved, are the rule, whereas examples such as 10, where two persons are involved, are more difficult to generate. Te Velde thus emphasizes the significance of the exception in the debate, and in so doing, deemphasizes the rule. The second argument te Velde produces in favor of subject gaps in LEE references the V2 principle. Without an ellipsis, the clause in the second conjunct would violate the V2 principle. This principle requires one (and only one) constituent to precede the finite verb. While this argument is valid given the structure te Velde assumes for coordination, that is, the one shown in 3b, its validity relies on that structure (or one similar to it). Since non-initial conjuncts are right-merged onto the tail end of the initial conjunct, the possibility that the two conjuncts might share the subject is not available, for these conjuncts are in hierarchically distinct positions. In this regard, one should acknowledge that the structure traditionally assumed for coordination, that is, the one shown in 2a, can assume the subject is shared, for the conjuncts there are equi-level. The traditional approach to coordination can hence assume the following analysis: Jemand [kam um vier] und [ging um fünf] ‘Someone came at four and left at five’. This analysis has conjoined finite VPs, whereby the finite verbs can share the subject by virtue of their equi-level appearance. In short, te Velde’s second argument in favor of LEE arises out of theory-internal necessity. Te Velde’s understanding of Gapping is also problematic. It sees the prosodic feature licensing the gap appearing in the position that immediately c-commands the gap. The examples illustrating this licensing all have the ellipsis appearing in C
or T
(pp. 215, 218, 223), and the claim is made that “gapping occurs clause-internally and licenses only a finite verb and one or two redundant objects immediately following it” (p. 214). In this regard, it is not clear how the theory accounts for the distribution of gaps in cases such as 12a–c.

i.

Um vier kam und um fünf ging jemand. at four came and at five left someone ‘Someone came at four and someone left at five.’ Unlike sentence 11, the preferred reading of i involves two people. Hartmann uses this contrast to argue in favor of ellipsis in RNR.

334 Reviews (12) a. weil [er sie gesehen hat] und [sie ihn]. because he her seen has and she him ‘because he saw her, and she him’ b. [Mir me

so etwas am Abend zu sagen], so something at evening to say

und [dir am Morgen], weigert er sich. and you at morning refuse he himself ‘To say such a thing to you in the evening and to me in the morning, he refuses.’ c. with [John keen on Mary] and [Mary on Bill] … (Hudson1989:86) The gaps in these cases do not appear in C
or T
, and examples 12b and 12c do not involve finite verbs. Example 12c does not even contain a verb. Another difficulty with te Velde’s understanding of gapping occurs due to the prosodic licensing of the gap. The relevant prosodic feature [PROS] is reliant on the contrastive stress placed on the initial remnant, which means [PROS] immediately follows the initial remnant. Given this assumption, no gap may ever precede the initial remnant because it would not be licensed by a c-commanding [PROS]. In this respect, many cases that are arguably instances of gapping cannot be acknowledged as such because there is an unlicensed gap preceding the initial remnant; for example, the cases in 13a,b. (13) a. Fred called you yesterday before the game, and me too. b. Arbeitest du heute, und er work you today and he

morgen? tomorrow

‘Do you work today and him tomorrow?’ Example 13a is an instance of Stripping; it is ambiguous. Many linguists assume Stripping to be a particular manifestation of Gapping, for example, Williams (1977:112, note 6), Chao (1988), and Lobeck (1995:28). On the reading where me is the logical subject, the gap follows the

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

335

remnant, as te Velde’s theory assumes. On the other reading, however, where me is the logical object, the gap must precede the remnant, which te Velde’s theory does not allow.4 Example 13b is also arguably an instance of Gapping because of the flexibility in phonological identity of the finite verb across the conjuncts is characteristic of Gapping (du arbeitest versus er arbeitet). The same problem facing te Velde’s theory is evident in the ambiguity of 14. (14) Did Bill drink coffee or tea? This question can be a polar question (Answer yes/no), in which case there is a single intonation curve with rising intonation on tea; or, it can be a constituent question (Answer coffee/tea), in which case there is rising intonation on coffee, a pause, and then falling intonation on tea. The former reading involves constituent coordination, that is, Did Bill drink [coffee] or [tea]?, and is hence non-problematic for te Velde’s theory. The latter reading, however, requires gapping, that is, [Did Bill drink coffee] or [tea]? and is a problem since the gap precedes the one remnant tea. To conclude, the most convincing aspect of te Velde’s approach is its emphasis on feature matching. Examples such as 5a–c above demonstrate that parallelism between conjuncts need not be complete, but rather it can suffice if certain core features of the conjuncts are parallel. Syntactic, morphological, as well as semantic features can all play a role. In this regard, I think it is fair to say that the approach represents a move away from the strictly configurational account of coordination to a more functional one, whereby “functional” is understood mainly in terms of feature matching. The book should interest linguists investigating coordination in the Minimalist framework.

4

Te Velde might analyze such cases in terms of “Late Merge” (p. 122), whereby the second conjunct is merged onto the structure after the derivation of the entire sentence is complete. The question to be addressed in this regard is whether Late Merge and Stripping might actually be different names for the same phenomenon.

336 Reviews REFERENCES Chao, Wynn. 1988. On ellipsis. New York: Garland Publishing Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1998. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 15. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (= Step by step, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, 2000, pp. 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) Chomsky, Noam. 1999. Derivation by phase. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (= Ken Hale. A life in language, ed. by M. Kenstowicz, 2001, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) Hartmann, Katharina. 2000. Right node, raising, and gapping: Interface conditions on prosodic deletion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hudson, Richard. 1989. Gapping and grammatical relations. Linguistics 25.57– 94. Johannessen, Janne. 1996. Partial agreement and coordination. Linguistic Inquiry 27.661–676. Johannessen, Janne. 1998. Coordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Klein, Wolfgang. 1993. Ellipse. Syntax—Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung (Syntax—An international handbook of contemporary research), ed. by Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, and Theo Vennemann, 763–799. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Lechner, Winfried. 2002. Reduced and phrasal comparatives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20.683–735. Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maling, Joan. 1972. On “gapping and the order of constituents.” Linguistic Inquiry 3.101–108. Munn, Alan. 1987. Coordinate structure and X-bar theory. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 4.121–140. Ross, John. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Ross, John. 1970. Gapping and the order of constituents. Recent developments in linguistics, ed. by Manfred Bierwisch and Karl Heidolf, 245–259. New York: Mouton.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

337

Ross, John. 1976. Clausematiness. Formal semantics of natural language, ed. by Edward Keenan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 422–475. Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deletion and logical form. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. (Reproduced by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1977). Wilder, Chris. 1994. Coordination, ATB, and ellipsis. Minimalism and Kayne’s asymmetry hypothesis (Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 37, ed. by Jan-Wouter Zwar), 291–329. Groningen: Center for Language Cognition. Wilder, Chris. 1996. V2-Effekte: Wortstellungen und Ellipsen. Deutschtypologisch, ed. by Ewald Lang and Gisela Zifonun, 142–180. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wilder, Chris. 1997. Some properties of ellipsis in coordination. Studies in universal grammar and typological variation, ed. by Artemis Elexiandou and Tracy A. Hall, 59–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Williams, Edwin. 1977. Discourse and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 8.101– 139.

Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Pennsylvania State University 311 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 USA [[email protected]]

338 Reviews Focus on Germanic Typology. Edited by Werner Abraham. (Studia Typologica, 6). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005. Pp. xxviii, 336. Paperback.
69.80. Reviewed by MICHAEL T. PUTNAM, Michigan State University

1. Introduction. Even within a family such as Germanic constituted of such closely related languages, marked linguistic differences exist among the individual languages (and groups of languages). Unfortunately, this rich ocean of typologically diverse structural and functional distinctions often goes unnoticed. Accordingly, the purpose of this volume is not to provide a typological description of an entire language family, but rather to feature specific phenomena characteristic of a particular Germanic language, and to compare and contrast these phenomena with functional or structural equivalents in one or more other Germanic languages. The present collection focuses predominantly on synchronic functional and structural microvariation, with focus on the following languages: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Yiddish, and, to a lesser extent, regiolects and dialectal phenomena. In this volume, two dominant interface issues are investigated in great detail—the morphology/syntax and syntax/semantic interfaces. Another division among the papers in the volume also deserves mention, that is, the distinction between descriptive treatments of linguistic phenomena and those which are developed in terms of generative linguistic frameworks. 2. Summary of Contents. Although papers focusing on diachronic issues in Germanic typology are in the minority, there are still three contributions addressing historical typological topics in German. In his essay, “What happened to English?,” John H. McWhorter goes to great lengths to show that inflectional morphology represents perhaps only the tip of the iceberg with regard to the historical Germanic grammatical properties that English has shed in the course of its development. The aim of his paper is to argue that the difference between English and its sister languages comprises a much larger array of features than merely loss of inflection or a “tendency toward analyticity,” and that the larger awareness that English has moved

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

339

toward a “different typology” than its relatives is “traceable to a causal factor rather than being a random ‘uninteresting’ development” (p. 56). By incorporating various examples of grammatical constructions (such as inherent reflexives, external possessor marking, grammatical gender marking on determiners, derivational morphology paradigms, etc.) from most of the Germanic languages, McWhorter attempts to draw support for his hypothesis that English, in comparison with related languages, tends to be significantly less “overspecified” semantically and less “complexified” syntactically. This paper counters the much discussed claim that the grammar of modern English was solely shaped by external linguistic forces (for instance, Scandinavian and Romance) to become some sort of creolization of these external sources and Anglo-Saxon. McWhorter’s presentation of the historical data challenges such a proposal; the morphological syncretism—as a consequence of functional changes—is already present in the source languages of Early Modern English documents. The other two essays centering on diachronic issues consist of a response and its rejoinder. Bridget Drinka’s essay, “Präteritumschwund: Evidence for areal diffusion,” makes the case that reduction and eventual elimination of the simple preterit in Southern German and several other western European languages was the result of the areal diffusion of innovative trends from Parisian French to contiguous languages and dialects. Such an analysis opposes Abraham and Conradie’s (2001) proposal that the collapse of the simple preterit was primarily motivated by principles of parsing and discourse. Drinka’s Sprachbund-position is rebutted in detail by Werner Abraham in his rejoinder entitled “The European demise of the simple past and the emergence of the periphrastic perfect: Areal diffusion or natural, autonomous evolution under parsing facilitation?” Abraham supports the hypothesis that the diffusion of the analytic past forms in western European languages has a heterogeneous base. Halldór Ármann Sigur
sson’s essay, “Agree and agreement— evidence from Germanic,” surveys morphological agreement phenomena in the Germanic languages. In addition, Sigur
sson investigates Chomsky’s (2000) notion of AGREE (Probe-Goal) in a recent instantiation of the minimalist program. Although descriptively adequate for some cases of morphological agreement, Sigur
sson finds that the ProbeGoal approach is not equipped to account for all morphological

340 Reviews agreement paradigms in Germanic. The central claim of this paper is that Agree reduces to Merge. Another contribution making a strong contribution to linguistic theory is Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes Grohmann’s “Left dislocation in Germanic.” Based largely on Grohmann’s (2000, 2003) notion of ANTILOCALITY, Boeckx and Grohmann construct a unified movement-based approach to left dislocation structures that distinguishes them from hanging-topic left dislocation. Jóhanna Bar
dall’s essay, “The semantics of the impersonal construction in Icelandic, German, and Faroese: Beyond thematic roles,” compares the semantics of verbal predicates selecting non-nominative (logical) subjects in Icelandic, German, and Faroese. After thorough investigation, Bar
dall dismisses the view that case assignment is determined by thematic roles. Rather, the author maintains that the semantics of these predicates express “events” unrelated to internal experience. In the end, Bar
dall argues that two levels of relations are necessary to properly account for the case marking of impersonal predicates in German: one involving the semantic relation between the (logical) subject and the predicate, and another profiling the emphatic relation between the speaker and his/her attitudes toward the content of the proposition. Two other papers in this volume, Hartmut Czepluch’s “Reflections on the form and function of passives in English and German” and Molly Diesing’s “The upper functional domain in Yiddish,” also make references to the effects pragmatics can have on the functional and structural identity of natural clauses. Czepluch probes into the formal and functional differences between English and German with respect to passivization, and discusses the unequal distribution of passives in these two languages. Diesing’s contribution examines the structure of the left periphery of natural clauses in Yiddish. Key data from verb-second constructions, wh-questions, and topicalization structures make a strong case for the claim that functional structures in natural clauses may vary cross-linguistically. C. Jan Conradie’s essay, “Verb sequence and placement: Afrikaans and Dutch compared,” addresses current changes underway in the placement of verbal elements in Afrikaans in comparison to Dutch. More specifically, Conradie seeks to explain the strong verb-final tendency

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

341

found in Afrikaans in spite of grammatical changes over the last 350 years in the direction of a VO pattern similar to that of English. In his essay, “Some remarks on the formal typology of pronouns in West Germanic,” László Molnárfi argues against the notion of structural deficiency in a formal typology of pronouns in West Germanic. After comparing the pronominal systems of Afrikaans and Dutch, he argues that the notion of structural deficiency in pronominals is based on discourse-functionality rather than Case. Furthermore, Molnárfi purports that deficient pronouns do not constitute a universal linguistic category. Rolf Thieroff’s essay, “The subjunctive mood in German and in the Germanic languages,” discusses the subjunctive mood, more specifically subjunctive 1, which is known for its function of reporting indirect discourse and optative mood meaning. Thieroff argues that with the exception of Icelandic, the subjunctive 1 is well on its way to being abolished in all Germanic languages. As a productive category, the subjunctive 2 also remains only in Icelandic. In all other Germanic languages, the subjective 2 tends to be replaced by the indicative, with the preterit tense remaining as it is. 3. Critical Analysis. It is well established by this collection of essays that even in a family of closely related languages such as Germanic a great deal of structural and functional variation exists. An overall strength of this volume is the thoroughness with which each topic is treated and discussed. As far as scope is concerned, the only criticism I have to offer is the lack of mention of syntax-pragmatic interface conditions. Only three articles— Bar
dall, Czelpuch, and Diesing—make explicit references to pragmatics. The topics of individual chapters range from the problems that have plagued linguistics for decades and those, like Thieroff’s essay on the subjunctive, that have not yet received much attention in the literature. The diversity of the articles is an asset to this volume, but at the same time much more work needs to be done. Perhaps, this collection can best be understood as a “call to arms” for other scholars—working in functional as well as theoretical linguistics—to consider the rich diversity of natural phenomena to be found in the Germanic family. For example, Diesing’s article brings to light many of the subtle, yet important differences in the structure of the left-periphery of Yiddish. What would be ideal is a continuation of this intra-Germanic research on

342 Reviews the structure of the extended CP-layer (see, for example, Putnam 2006, chapter 4). Concerning theoretical linguistics, one particular article, namely, Sigur
sson’s “Agree and agreement—evidence from Germanic,” presents some very innovative and interesting ideas that are worthy of further pursuit on a larger scale. In particular, Sigur
sson’s notion of replacing the long-held traditional Chomskian phrase structure rules with the notion of a Nucleus (that is, Head) and Edge (Specifier) configuration has the potential of bringing phrase structure closer to recent developments in clausal structure in terms of Chomsky 2006, which interprets the edge of strong phases (v*P and CP) as purely phonological domains. If symmetry is to exist (or to be maintained) between local phrase structures and larger ontological units such as phases, Sigur
sson’s approach needs to be considered in a larger context. 4. Final Thoughts. This collection of papers does an excellent job of exposing the rich variation of common functional and structural features in the Germanic family and how they are realized in the individual dialects, both diachronically and synchronically. The overall high quality of scholarship and thorough research of the individual essays makes this volume a valuable resource for linguists who research similar and/or related topics in Germanic linguistics. REFERENCES Abraham, Werner, and Jan Conradie. 2001. Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik. Präteritumschwund in gesamteuropäischen Bezügen: Areale Ausbreitung, heterogene Entstehung, Parsing sowie diskursgrammatische Grundlagen und Zusammenhänge. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. Step by step: Essay on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Urigereka, 89–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2006. UG from below. Ms., MIT. Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2000. Prolific peripheries: A radical view from the left. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland. Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2003. Prolific domains: On the anti-locality movement dependencies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

Putnam, Michael. 2006. Scrambling in West Gemanic as XP-adjunction: A critical analysis of prolific domains. Doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas.

Michigan State University Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages A-637 Wells Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA [[email protected]]

343

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006):321–343

REVIEWS

Deriving Coordinate Symmetries: A Phase-Based Approach Integrating Select, Merge, Copy, and Match. By John R. te Velde. (Linguistics Today, 89). Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2005. Pp. x, 385. Hardcover.
135. Reviewed by TIMOTHY OSBORNE , Pennsylvania State University 1. Derivation by Phase. John te Velde’s monograph presents a comprehensive and detailed theory of coordination cast within the Minimalist framework. The data are drawn mainly from English and German, although some Dutch data are included as well. The novelty of te Velde’s approach resides mainly in the understanding of the derivation; it builds on Chomsky’s (1998, 1999) concept of phase. The derivation proceeds phase-by-phase, rather than sentence-by-sentence. Derivation by phase has each conjunct of a (certain type of) coordinate structure being derived before the derivation of the next conjunct begins. In this manner, a derivational procedure such as Move can apply to a constituent in the one conjunct without having to apply to the parallel constituents in the other conjunct(s). The parallelism that does usually obtain across conjuncts is established by the interaction of the processes Copy and Match with active memory (AM). Once the initial conjunct is derived, its syntactic and semantic features are placed in AM, so that they can be copied to the non-initial conjunct(s) as soon as it/they are derived. The relevant features of a preceding conjunct are always pasted to those of the following conjunct(s). This approach contrasts with Across-the-Board (ATB) accounts, which assume that parallelism across conjuncts is established by the simultaneous application of a derivational procedure to all the conjuncts in a uniform manner. The utility of derivation by phase is perhaps best illustrated by instances of asymmetric coordination such as in 1 (adapted from p. 82).

322 Reviews (1) [CP Wenn [TP du das beste Bier bestellen kannst] when you the best beer order can und [TP ich mussi das billigste bestellen ti]] ... and

I

must the cheapest order

‘If you can order the best beer and I must order the cheapest, …’ The two conjoined clauses in 1 are asymmetric in the following sense. The second conjunct involves verb raising, whereas the first conjunct does not. An ATB account would have difficulties with such cases, since it assumes that movement in each conjunct within a coordinated structure proceeds in a like manner. Any account that focuses on conjunct symmetry is therefore challenged by such cases. In contrast, the derivation by phase approach allows the derivations of the two conjuncts to be distinct. What counts is that core aspects of parallelism obtain; it can suffice if the conjuncts are parallel with respect to certain features. In the case of 1, the conjuncts are parallel insofar as they are both TPs. 2. Central Components. While derivation by phase is perhaps the most unique and distinguishing characteristic of te Velde’s approach, there are a number of central components to the theory. These components are briefly enumerated here. The approach strives to account for the structure and behavior of coordination via the principles and procedures that are already acknowledged for non-coordinate structures. It maintains that coordination can be accounted for by using the standard derivational processes of the Minimalist Program that already exist for non-coordinate structures, that is, Select, Copy, Merge, and Match. No extra mechanisms or concepts are necessary. This view assumes that the structure of coordination is actually quite similar to the structure of subordination. The traditional stance, in contrast, assumes the two types of structure are quite distinct.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

(2) a.

XP Conj.

and

b.

323

XP

Conj.

Conj.

X(P) and

Conj.

The structure in 2a has the conjuncts in equi-level positions, it represents traditional assumptions about the nature of coordination. In contrast to 2a, something like the structure in 2b has become widely accepted in the generative paradigm. There one sees that the conjuncts are no longer in equi-level positions, but rather the second conjunct is on a level below the level of the first conjunct and is hence subordinate to the first conjunct. Te Velde’s approach pursues a variant of 2b. The variant of 2b that te Velde assumes differs substantially from other proposals in the area. Compare the following structures involving coordinated DPs adapted from pages 26 and 30: (3) a.

&P DP

b. &P'

and

DP1 D

DP

N' N

DP2 and

DP

The structure in 3a is that of Munn (1987), Kayne (1994), Johannessen (1996, 1998), and Wilder (1994, 1996. 1997), etc. It sees the coordinator as the head of the entire coordinate structure, projecting up to the root node. Te Velde’s structure in 3b, in contrast, grants the coordinator a unique status. DP2 merges (it does not adjoin) to the tail end of DP1 in such a manner that the coordinator does not receive the status of a head. The coordinator in 3b does not project at all; it is therefore a defective lexical item. Te Velde produces numerous arguments demonstrating that 3b should be preferred over 3a. Concerning the large versus small conjunct debate, te Velde takes the middle ground. On the one hand, he assumes small conjuncts whenever possible, for example, DP+DP, NP+NP, AP+AP, and PP+PP. The nature of the structure in 3b even allows for certain small conjuncts that do not

324 Reviews actually qualify as constituents, given traditional assumptions; for example, John gave [Mary a record] and [Bill a book] (p. 202). On the other hand, te Velde assumes large conjuncts when necessary, namely when the unique structure illustrated in 3b no longer allows for strictly small conjuncts. There are three kinds of structures in which ellipsis is necessary: left-edge ellipsis (LEE), right-edge ellipsis (RNR), and conjunct-internal ellipsis (Gapping), as exemplified in 4. (4) a. LEE Billi got a book and ei will soon start reading it.

(p. 203)

b. RNR Bill loves ei and Peter tolerates [temperamental Italians]i. (p. 207) c. GAPPING Bill likesi spaghetti and Barb ei lasagna.

(p. 216)

The ellipses must be licensed by a c-commanding element. In the case of LEE, the licensor is the coordinator itself. In the cases of RNR and Gapping, the licensor is a prosodic element. Derivation by phase requires that the ellipses in these cases have all the properties of lexical items except their phonetic features (p. 9, 10, 181, 225, 290, 292). The full lexical items are generated in the course of the derivation, but they experience non-spell-out. In other words, the lexical items are deleted (p. 180f.). Despite his claims to the contrary (pp. 179), this heavy reliance on deletions actually positions te Velde’s theory between the large conjunct and small conjunct approaches. I return to this point in section 5. Te Velde emphasizes that the structure in 3b and derivation by phase with feature matching can together best address the characteristics of coordinate structures. On the one hand, the strong tendency for the conjuncts of coordinate structures to be parallel is accounted for by feature matching. Syntactic parallelism is assured when the features of the initial conjunct are pasted to each of the following conjuncts. Semantic parallelism is then assured by matching in LF. On the other hand, the numerous asymmetries that can obtain between the conjuncts of coordinate structures can be accounted for by the asymmetric structure shown in 3b, partial feature matching, and derivation by phase, whereby the derivation of one phase ( conjunct) need not always be exactly parallel to the derivation of the following phase(s).

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

325

3. Organization and Presentation. The book contains five chapters. Chapter 1 is brief; it provides an overview of the theory and of the presentation in the following chapters. Chapter 2 examines non-elliptical instances of asymmetric coordination. Asymmetric structures, such as those in 5a–c, are explored. (5) a. DP+AP George is [DP a geek] and [AP glad to be one].

(p. 19)

b. DP+CP You can depend [DP on my assistant] and [CP that he will be on time]. (p. 45) c. VF CLAUSE + V2 CLAUSE Wenn das Wetter schön ist, when the weather nice is und wir gehen zusammen in die Berge, dann … (p. 22) and we go together in the mountains then ‘When the weather is nice and we go to the mountains together, then …’ Despite the non-parallel categories, these structures are licit. Te Velde assumes that asymmetric conjuncts are licensed by virtue of matching of abstract features. He uses the term COORDINATE FEATURE MATCHING (CFM) (p. 13) to refer to the phenomenon. While the conjuncts (DP+AP) in 5a lack parallelism in syntactic category, they are parallel insofar as they both appear in the same position of the VP and both carry the abstract feature [+COMPL]. The situation is similar in 5b. There the conjuncts again lack parallelism in syntactic category (DP+CP), but they are parallel with respect to the abstract feature [+OBJECTIVE]. The situation in 5c is somewhat different. While the conjuncts there lack parallelism with respect to the position of the finite verb, they are parallel with respect to the abstract feature [+CLAUSE]. The varying verb positions are possible by virtue of derivation by phase. The first phase (= initial conjunct) is derived and spelled-out before the second phase (= second conjunct) is. Multiple spell-out of this sort allows the conjuncts to undergo separate derivations.

326 Reviews Chapter 3 presents the particulars of the structure te Velde assumes for coordination, that is, the structure illustrated in 3b, as well as the mechanics of derivation by phase. The discussion remains with nonelliptical structures, elliptical structures being addressed later in chapters 4 and 5. One of the main goals of the chapter is to convince the reader of the virtue of 3b over 3a. This point is convincingly argued based on data from various areas, for example, subject-verb agreement and feature checking, multiple conjuncts (not just two), and the defective nature of the coordinator. In presenting the mechanics of derivation by phase, the emphasis is placed on the nature of the derivational procedures, that is, Select, Merge, Copy, and Match. The first three procedures occur in “narrow syntax,” whereas the last occurs both in narrow syntax and then again at LF. Finally, the chapter returns to the asymmetries of coordination, examining them again in view of the particular aspects of structure and derivation that were presented earlier in the chapter. Chapter 4 explores the motivation for positing the existence of gaps, whereby a gap is assumed to have “all the features of a lexical item except its phonetic features” (p. 181); following Chomsky (1995:202– 203), “deletion” is assumed to occur “in PF” (p. 180); the phonetic features of the deleted lexical items are not spelled out. After examining the motivation for gaps, the discussion investigates the manner in which the gaps are licensed. Each gap must have a licensor. The gap of LEE is licensed by the coordinator itself, since the coordinator immediately ccommands the gap. The gap of RNR is licensed by the prosodic feature [PROS], which appears in the position that immediately c-commands the gap. And the gap of Gapping is also licensed by the prosodic feature [PROS], but this time [PROS] appears in a position that immediately ccommands C
or T
(p. 224). The structures in 6 show the basic licensing constellations for English.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

(6) a. Licensing of LEE (adapted from p. 204) TP &

TP e

T' T

vP

Vfin

(...)

b. Licensing in RNR (adapted from p. 210) VP (…)

V' V

eP e'

PROS

e

TP &

TP(…)

327

328 Reviews c. Licensing in Gapping (adapted from p. 216) TP &

TP DP

T' T'

PROS

T'

vP ø

v' e

(...)

In addition to the requirement that gaps be licensed in PF, they must also be recovered in LF. The discussion of recovery is mainly concerned with the gaps that can and cannot be recovered. The central claim about recovery is that the licensor must c-command and immediately precede the gap. A gap is not licensed if an overt element intervenes between it and its licensor. This requirement predicts ungrammaticality in cases such as 7. (7) a. *Billi doesn’t want to write the short story and truthfully e1 won’t consider a novel. (p. 206) b. *Peter caught John (PROS) e1

Mary an eel in the Charles River, and Betty e2 in the Missisquoui. (p. 218)

The sentence in 7a is an attempt at LEE; this attempt fails because the stressed adverb truthfully intervenes between the licensor of the gap, that is, the lexical item and, and the gap itself, that is, e1.1 The sentence in 7b 1

Examples where the pre-verbal adverb is not stressed constitute exceptions, as in Billi doesn’t want to write the short story and definitely ei won’t consider a novel. The non-stressed adverb definitely does not block the licensing of the gap, despite te Velde’s claim. This sort of data motivates te Velde to modify the

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

329

is an instance of Gapping; it fails because the [PROS] feature cannot license e2 through the blocking element Betty. The last section in chapter 4 presents and examines the derivational specifics of coordinate structures involving ellipsis. Emphasis is placed on identifying the correct order of the derivational processes. The final chapter, chapter 5, is comparatively brief. It discusses some remaining issues, whereby the focus is on the correct analysis of the preverbal projections. Te Velde weighs in on the CP vs. TP debate for German. He argues against the generalized V
C analysis for all V2 clauses in favor of the TP analysis; that is, he argues for a TP analysis of subject-initial V2 clauses. His analysis allows for fine-tuning of the left periphery, whereby additional functional projections are assumed to intervene between CP and TP. 4. Discussion. Te Velde’s monograph represents a comprehensive study of coordination. The data examined and the issues addressed show the challenges and difficulties the phenomenon of coordination presents for syntactic theories. One sees why coordination is one of the most studied areas of syntax and why the area continues to motivate a seemingly unending stream of descriptive and explanatory accounts. Te Velde demonstrates that an approach in terms of derivation by phase is in a position to address many of these challenges. The basic structure te Velde proposes for coordination illustrated in 3b is indeed more appropriate than the alternative structure in 3a. The alternative in 3a is suited to address the asymmetries of coordination, since it has the conjuncts appearing in inherently unequal positions, that is, in Spec-&P and Comp-&P. It has difficulty, however, accounting for the symmetries of coordination, since there is nothing inherently symmetric about it. In this regard, te Velde’s structure in 3b is less asymmetric since the one conjunct is merged onto the tail end of the other. It is hence in a better position to allow for the symmetries of coordination. There are, however, a number of significant problems with te Velde’s theory and the manner in which it is presented in the book. The

claim. He must stipulate that non-stressed adverbs do not constitute blocking categories (p. 206).

330 Reviews presentation suffers from redundancy. The book is long, over 300 pages of main text with some 370 notes. The latter appear on the 41 pages that follow the main text. Working through the book hence requires a lot of flipping back and forth. More importantly, key points are repeated more than necessary, the result being that the text is redundant at times. For instance, the arguments for rejecting the structure in 3a in favor of the one in 3b are presented first on pages 25–27. These arguments appear again in detail on pages 89–99, and then thereafter in parts on pages 108, 112, 115–117, 122–123, and 132. The discussion of Ross’ (1967) data is another example of redundancy. Ross illustrates that the coordinator forms a constituent with the following conjunct, as opposed to with the preceding conjunct. The relevant data appear first on page 105, then again on pages 129 and 145. Some of the grammaticality judgments are debatable, for example, 2b (p. 3), 11a (p. 23), 64 (p. 48), 76a', 77a' (p. 219), iia,b (p. 344, n. 54), ia (p. 344, n. 58). One area where te Velde’s data differ from the literature is with those instances of gapping where an auxiliary verb has gapped without the main verb: (8) a. [Peter has kissed] and [Paul insulted] the young bride.

(p. 3)

b. [Wir wissen, daß Karl ein Auto gekauft hat], we know that Karl a car bought has und [Uwe nur eines geliehen]. and Uwe only one loaned

(p. 23)

‘We know that Karl bought a car and that Uwe borrowed one.’ Ross (1970, 1976) and Sag (1976:145) take instances of gapping such as 8a in English to be marginal.2 Maling (1972:106–107) and Lechner (2001:697f.) dislike cases such as 8b in German. Te Velde, however, assumes they are fully acceptable. The actual status of such cases can 2

Sentence 8a actually allows two distinct analyses: i. Peter has kissed (the young bride) and Paul (has) insulted the young bride. ii. Peter has kissed (the young bride) and Paul insulted the young bride. On the analysis shown in i, gapping does not obtain at all. Te Velde, however, assumes the analysis in ii.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

331

have an impact on the overall theory, since it provides a clue for differentiating between gapping and non-gapping instances of coordination. The theory’s reliance on deletions opens it up to the major criticism facing all large conjunct approaches. Te Velde actually rejects the large conjunct approach in its purest form (p. 179), that is, where every conjunct qualifies as a CP below the surface. At the same time, however, his theory posits three types of ellipsis (LEE, RNR, and Gapping). Ellipsis is understood as the result of deletions, which means that the approach pursues a large conjunct account of these three cases. (9) a. LEE (adapted from page 304) [Den Hund hat einer gefüttert] und [einer hat ihn geschlagen]. the dog has one fed and one has him hit ‘Somebody fed the dog and hit it.’ b. RNR (adapted from page 259) [John sold the neighbor the same set of paintings] and [Bill gave the visitor the same set of paintings]. c. GAPPING (adapted from page 224) [John didn’t write a novel] or [Sue didn’t write a short story]. The pre-deletion reading in 9a involves two people, whereas the postdeletion reading involves just one; the pre-deletion reading in 9b is nonsensical; and the pre-deletion reading in 9c is truth-functionally distinct from the post-deletion reading. Te Velde does not appropriately address the difficulty such examples pose. Note 25 on page 304 does seem to acknowledge the problem with 9a, suggesting that a “constraint against opacity” is responsible for the contrast. In order to overcome the problem in 9b, the derivation on page 259 must first select a set of paintings as the object of each conjunct, delete these objects, and then replace them with the same set of paintings. The difficulty with 9c is addressed by positing that the prosodic feature necessary for licensing of the gap conflicts with the prosodic feature associated with the negation. These explanations are unconvincing.

332 Reviews Te Velde’s theory is not unlike many other theories in this area. Most accounts of coordination within the generative paradigm acknowledge deletions at least to some extent; for example, Kayne 1994, Wilder 1994, 1996, 1997, Johannessen 1996, 1998, and Hartmann 2000. Therefore te Velde’s theory cannot be challenged on this point from within the generative paradigm. Concerning those frameworks that are less likely to so readily embrace deletions, however, for example, HPSG, LFG, Categorial Grammar, Word Grammar, and Meaning-to-Text, the heavy reliance on deletions reduces acceptance for the overall theory. To gain greater acceptance, theories of coordination that utilize deletions need to convincingly address in a transparent manner the challenge posed by data such as 9a–c. The two main arguments te Velde produces to demonstrate the presence of LEE are also unconvincing (pp. 185–187). The first of these involves indefinite subjects: (10) A woman was head of state in England and ei will soon be secretary of state in the US. Perhaps the most natural reading of 10 involves two women, one in England and one in the US. This reading is thus consistent with the predeletion structure, a fact that supports the presence of the ellipsis. Te Velde emphasizes this point time and again. The weakness in this reasoning, though, is seen in example 9a above, where the reading involving just one person is the only reading available. Example 11 further illustrates the problem. (11) [Jemand kam um vier] und [jemand ging um fünf]. someone came at four and someone left at five (Klein 1993:773) Klein (1993) and Hartmann (2000:67ff.) take such sentences as evidence against left-edge ellipsis; that is, the most natural reading of 11 involves only one person, contrary to what the pre-deletion structure predicts.3 It

3

Klein and Hartmann do not actually argue against the possibility of ellipsis in such examples, but rather they never even consider LEE a possibility in such cases. Their discussions of 11 focus on the contrast between 11 and i:

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

333

should be noted as well that examples such as 9a and 11, where just one person is involved, are the rule, whereas examples such as 10, where two persons are involved, are more difficult to generate. Te Velde thus emphasizes the significance of the exception in the debate, and in so doing, deemphasizes the rule. The second argument te Velde produces in favor of subject gaps in LEE references the V2 principle. Without an ellipsis, the clause in the second conjunct would violate the V2 principle. This principle requires one (and only one) constituent to precede the finite verb. While this argument is valid given the structure te Velde assumes for coordination, that is, the one shown in 3b, its validity relies on that structure (or one similar to it). Since non-initial conjuncts are right-merged onto the tail end of the initial conjunct, the possibility that the two conjuncts might share the subject is not available, for these conjuncts are in hierarchically distinct positions. In this regard, one should acknowledge that the structure traditionally assumed for coordination, that is, the one shown in 2a, can assume the subject is shared, for the conjuncts there are equi-level. The traditional approach to coordination can hence assume the following analysis: Jemand [kam um vier] und [ging um fünf] ‘Someone came at four and left at five’. This analysis has conjoined finite VPs, whereby the finite verbs can share the subject by virtue of their equi-level appearance. In short, te Velde’s second argument in favor of LEE arises out of theory-internal necessity. Te Velde’s understanding of Gapping is also problematic. It sees the prosodic feature licensing the gap appearing in the position that immediately c-commands the gap. The examples illustrating this licensing all have the ellipsis appearing in C
or T
(pp. 215, 218, 223), and the claim is made that “gapping occurs clause-internally and licenses only a finite verb and one or two redundant objects immediately following it” (p. 214). In this regard, it is not clear how the theory accounts for the distribution of gaps in cases such as 12a–c.

i.

Um vier kam und um fünf ging jemand. at four came and at five left someone ‘Someone came at four and someone left at five.’ Unlike sentence 11, the preferred reading of i involves two people. Hartmann uses this contrast to argue in favor of ellipsis in RNR.

334 Reviews (12) a. weil [er sie gesehen hat] und [sie ihn]. because he her seen has and she him ‘because he saw her, and she him’ b. [Mir me

so etwas am Abend zu sagen], so something at evening to say

und [dir am Morgen], weigert er sich. and you at morning refuse he himself ‘To say such a thing to you in the evening and to me in the morning, he refuses.’ c. with [John keen on Mary] and [Mary on Bill] … (Hudson1989:86) The gaps in these cases do not appear in C
or T
, and examples 12b and 12c do not involve finite verbs. Example 12c does not even contain a verb. Another difficulty with te Velde’s understanding of gapping occurs due to the prosodic licensing of the gap. The relevant prosodic feature [PROS] is reliant on the contrastive stress placed on the initial remnant, which means [PROS] immediately follows the initial remnant. Given this assumption, no gap may ever precede the initial remnant because it would not be licensed by a c-commanding [PROS]. In this respect, many cases that are arguably instances of gapping cannot be acknowledged as such because there is an unlicensed gap preceding the initial remnant; for example, the cases in 13a,b. (13) a. Fred called you yesterday before the game, and me too. b. Arbeitest du heute, und er work you today and he

morgen? tomorrow

‘Do you work today and him tomorrow?’ Example 13a is an instance of Stripping; it is ambiguous. Many linguists assume Stripping to be a particular manifestation of Gapping, for example, Williams (1977:112, note 6), Chao (1988), and Lobeck (1995:28). On the reading where me is the logical subject, the gap follows the

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

335

remnant, as te Velde’s theory assumes. On the other reading, however, where me is the logical object, the gap must precede the remnant, which te Velde’s theory does not allow.4 Example 13b is also arguably an instance of Gapping because of the flexibility in phonological identity of the finite verb across the conjuncts is characteristic of Gapping (du arbeitest versus er arbeitet). The same problem facing te Velde’s theory is evident in the ambiguity of 14. (14) Did Bill drink coffee or tea? This question can be a polar question (Answer yes/no), in which case there is a single intonation curve with rising intonation on tea; or, it can be a constituent question (Answer coffee/tea), in which case there is rising intonation on coffee, a pause, and then falling intonation on tea. The former reading involves constituent coordination, that is, Did Bill drink [coffee] or [tea]?, and is hence non-problematic for te Velde’s theory. The latter reading, however, requires gapping, that is, [Did Bill drink coffee] or [tea]? and is a problem since the gap precedes the one remnant tea. To conclude, the most convincing aspect of te Velde’s approach is its emphasis on feature matching. Examples such as 5a–c above demonstrate that parallelism between conjuncts need not be complete, but rather it can suffice if certain core features of the conjuncts are parallel. Syntactic, morphological, as well as semantic features can all play a role. In this regard, I think it is fair to say that the approach represents a move away from the strictly configurational account of coordination to a more functional one, whereby “functional” is understood mainly in terms of feature matching. The book should interest linguists investigating coordination in the Minimalist framework.

4

Te Velde might analyze such cases in terms of “Late Merge” (p. 122), whereby the second conjunct is merged onto the structure after the derivation of the entire sentence is complete. The question to be addressed in this regard is whether Late Merge and Stripping might actually be different names for the same phenomenon.

336 Reviews REFERENCES Chao, Wynn. 1988. On ellipsis. New York: Garland Publishing Chomsky, Noam. 1995. The minimalist program. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 1998. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 15. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (= Step by step, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka, 2000, pp. 89–155. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) Chomsky, Noam. 1999. Derivation by phase. MIT Occasional Papers in Linguistics 18. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. (= Ken Hale. A life in language, ed. by M. Kenstowicz, 2001, 1–52. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.) Hartmann, Katharina. 2000. Right node, raising, and gapping: Interface conditions on prosodic deletion. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hudson, Richard. 1989. Gapping and grammatical relations. Linguistics 25.57– 94. Johannessen, Janne. 1996. Partial agreement and coordination. Linguistic Inquiry 27.661–676. Johannessen, Janne. 1998. Coordination. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kayne, Richard. 1994. The antisymmetry of syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Klein, Wolfgang. 1993. Ellipse. Syntax—Ein internationales Handbuch zeitgenössischer Forschung (Syntax—An international handbook of contemporary research), ed. by Joachim Jacobs, Arnim von Stechow, Wolfgang Sternefeld, and Theo Vennemann, 763–799. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Lechner, Winfried. 2002. Reduced and phrasal comparatives. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20.683–735. Lobeck, Anne. 1995. Ellipsis: Functional heads, licensing, and identification. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maling, Joan. 1972. On “gapping and the order of constituents.” Linguistic Inquiry 3.101–108. Munn, Alan. 1987. Coordinate structure and X-bar theory. McGill Working Papers in Linguistics 4.121–140. Ross, John. 1967. Constraints on variables in syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. Ross, John. 1970. Gapping and the order of constituents. Recent developments in linguistics, ed. by Manfred Bierwisch and Karl Heidolf, 245–259. New York: Mouton.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

337

Ross, John. 1976. Clausematiness. Formal semantics of natural language, ed. by Edward Keenan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 422–475. Sag, Ivan. 1976. Deletion and logical form. Doctoral dissertation, MIT. (Reproduced by the Indiana University Linguistics Club, 1977). Wilder, Chris. 1994. Coordination, ATB, and ellipsis. Minimalism and Kayne’s asymmetry hypothesis (Groninger Arbeiten zur germanistischen Linguistik 37, ed. by Jan-Wouter Zwar), 291–329. Groningen: Center for Language Cognition. Wilder, Chris. 1996. V2-Effekte: Wortstellungen und Ellipsen. Deutschtypologisch, ed. by Ewald Lang and Gisela Zifonun, 142–180. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter. Wilder, Chris. 1997. Some properties of ellipsis in coordination. Studies in universal grammar and typological variation, ed. by Artemis Elexiandou and Tracy A. Hall, 59–106. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Williams, Edwin. 1977. Discourse and logical form. Linguistic Inquiry 8.101– 139.

Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures Pennsylvania State University 311 Burrowes Building University Park, PA 16802 USA [[email protected]]

338 Reviews Focus on Germanic Typology. Edited by Werner Abraham. (Studia Typologica, 6). Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2005. Pp. xxviii, 336. Paperback.
69.80. Reviewed by MICHAEL T. PUTNAM, Michigan State University

1. Introduction. Even within a family such as Germanic constituted of such closely related languages, marked linguistic differences exist among the individual languages (and groups of languages). Unfortunately, this rich ocean of typologically diverse structural and functional distinctions often goes unnoticed. Accordingly, the purpose of this volume is not to provide a typological description of an entire language family, but rather to feature specific phenomena characteristic of a particular Germanic language, and to compare and contrast these phenomena with functional or structural equivalents in one or more other Germanic languages. The present collection focuses predominantly on synchronic functional and structural microvariation, with focus on the following languages: Afrikaans, Danish, Dutch, English, Faeroese, German, Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish, Yiddish, and, to a lesser extent, regiolects and dialectal phenomena. In this volume, two dominant interface issues are investigated in great detail—the morphology/syntax and syntax/semantic interfaces. Another division among the papers in the volume also deserves mention, that is, the distinction between descriptive treatments of linguistic phenomena and those which are developed in terms of generative linguistic frameworks. 2. Summary of Contents. Although papers focusing on diachronic issues in Germanic typology are in the minority, there are still three contributions addressing historical typological topics in German. In his essay, “What happened to English?,” John H. McWhorter goes to great lengths to show that inflectional morphology represents perhaps only the tip of the iceberg with regard to the historical Germanic grammatical properties that English has shed in the course of its development. The aim of his paper is to argue that the difference between English and its sister languages comprises a much larger array of features than merely loss of inflection or a “tendency toward analyticity,” and that the larger awareness that English has moved

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

339

toward a “different typology” than its relatives is “traceable to a causal factor rather than being a random ‘uninteresting’ development” (p. 56). By incorporating various examples of grammatical constructions (such as inherent reflexives, external possessor marking, grammatical gender marking on determiners, derivational morphology paradigms, etc.) from most of the Germanic languages, McWhorter attempts to draw support for his hypothesis that English, in comparison with related languages, tends to be significantly less “overspecified” semantically and less “complexified” syntactically. This paper counters the much discussed claim that the grammar of modern English was solely shaped by external linguistic forces (for instance, Scandinavian and Romance) to become some sort of creolization of these external sources and Anglo-Saxon. McWhorter’s presentation of the historical data challenges such a proposal; the morphological syncretism—as a consequence of functional changes—is already present in the source languages of Early Modern English documents. The other two essays centering on diachronic issues consist of a response and its rejoinder. Bridget Drinka’s essay, “Präteritumschwund: Evidence for areal diffusion,” makes the case that reduction and eventual elimination of the simple preterit in Southern German and several other western European languages was the result of the areal diffusion of innovative trends from Parisian French to contiguous languages and dialects. Such an analysis opposes Abraham and Conradie’s (2001) proposal that the collapse of the simple preterit was primarily motivated by principles of parsing and discourse. Drinka’s Sprachbund-position is rebutted in detail by Werner Abraham in his rejoinder entitled “The European demise of the simple past and the emergence of the periphrastic perfect: Areal diffusion or natural, autonomous evolution under parsing facilitation?” Abraham supports the hypothesis that the diffusion of the analytic past forms in western European languages has a heterogeneous base. Halldór Ármann Sigur
sson’s essay, “Agree and agreement— evidence from Germanic,” surveys morphological agreement phenomena in the Germanic languages. In addition, Sigur
sson investigates Chomsky’s (2000) notion of AGREE (Probe-Goal) in a recent instantiation of the minimalist program. Although descriptively adequate for some cases of morphological agreement, Sigur
sson finds that the ProbeGoal approach is not equipped to account for all morphological

340 Reviews agreement paradigms in Germanic. The central claim of this paper is that Agree reduces to Merge. Another contribution making a strong contribution to linguistic theory is Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes Grohmann’s “Left dislocation in Germanic.” Based largely on Grohmann’s (2000, 2003) notion of ANTILOCALITY, Boeckx and Grohmann construct a unified movement-based approach to left dislocation structures that distinguishes them from hanging-topic left dislocation. Jóhanna Bar
dall’s essay, “The semantics of the impersonal construction in Icelandic, German, and Faroese: Beyond thematic roles,” compares the semantics of verbal predicates selecting non-nominative (logical) subjects in Icelandic, German, and Faroese. After thorough investigation, Bar
dall dismisses the view that case assignment is determined by thematic roles. Rather, the author maintains that the semantics of these predicates express “events” unrelated to internal experience. In the end, Bar
dall argues that two levels of relations are necessary to properly account for the case marking of impersonal predicates in German: one involving the semantic relation between the (logical) subject and the predicate, and another profiling the emphatic relation between the speaker and his/her attitudes toward the content of the proposition. Two other papers in this volume, Hartmut Czepluch’s “Reflections on the form and function of passives in English and German” and Molly Diesing’s “The upper functional domain in Yiddish,” also make references to the effects pragmatics can have on the functional and structural identity of natural clauses. Czepluch probes into the formal and functional differences between English and German with respect to passivization, and discusses the unequal distribution of passives in these two languages. Diesing’s contribution examines the structure of the left periphery of natural clauses in Yiddish. Key data from verb-second constructions, wh-questions, and topicalization structures make a strong case for the claim that functional structures in natural clauses may vary cross-linguistically. C. Jan Conradie’s essay, “Verb sequence and placement: Afrikaans and Dutch compared,” addresses current changes underway in the placement of verbal elements in Afrikaans in comparison to Dutch. More specifically, Conradie seeks to explain the strong verb-final tendency

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

341

found in Afrikaans in spite of grammatical changes over the last 350 years in the direction of a VO pattern similar to that of English. In his essay, “Some remarks on the formal typology of pronouns in West Germanic,” László Molnárfi argues against the notion of structural deficiency in a formal typology of pronouns in West Germanic. After comparing the pronominal systems of Afrikaans and Dutch, he argues that the notion of structural deficiency in pronominals is based on discourse-functionality rather than Case. Furthermore, Molnárfi purports that deficient pronouns do not constitute a universal linguistic category. Rolf Thieroff’s essay, “The subjunctive mood in German and in the Germanic languages,” discusses the subjunctive mood, more specifically subjunctive 1, which is known for its function of reporting indirect discourse and optative mood meaning. Thieroff argues that with the exception of Icelandic, the subjunctive 1 is well on its way to being abolished in all Germanic languages. As a productive category, the subjunctive 2 also remains only in Icelandic. In all other Germanic languages, the subjective 2 tends to be replaced by the indicative, with the preterit tense remaining as it is. 3. Critical Analysis. It is well established by this collection of essays that even in a family of closely related languages such as Germanic a great deal of structural and functional variation exists. An overall strength of this volume is the thoroughness with which each topic is treated and discussed. As far as scope is concerned, the only criticism I have to offer is the lack of mention of syntax-pragmatic interface conditions. Only three articles— Bar
dall, Czelpuch, and Diesing—make explicit references to pragmatics. The topics of individual chapters range from the problems that have plagued linguistics for decades and those, like Thieroff’s essay on the subjunctive, that have not yet received much attention in the literature. The diversity of the articles is an asset to this volume, but at the same time much more work needs to be done. Perhaps, this collection can best be understood as a “call to arms” for other scholars—working in functional as well as theoretical linguistics—to consider the rich diversity of natural phenomena to be found in the Germanic family. For example, Diesing’s article brings to light many of the subtle, yet important differences in the structure of the left-periphery of Yiddish. What would be ideal is a continuation of this intra-Germanic research on

342 Reviews the structure of the extended CP-layer (see, for example, Putnam 2006, chapter 4). Concerning theoretical linguistics, one particular article, namely, Sigur
sson’s “Agree and agreement—evidence from Germanic,” presents some very innovative and interesting ideas that are worthy of further pursuit on a larger scale. In particular, Sigur
sson’s notion of replacing the long-held traditional Chomskian phrase structure rules with the notion of a Nucleus (that is, Head) and Edge (Specifier) configuration has the potential of bringing phrase structure closer to recent developments in clausal structure in terms of Chomsky 2006, which interprets the edge of strong phases (v*P and CP) as purely phonological domains. If symmetry is to exist (or to be maintained) between local phrase structures and larger ontological units such as phases, Sigur
sson’s approach needs to be considered in a larger context. 4. Final Thoughts. This collection of papers does an excellent job of exposing the rich variation of common functional and structural features in the Germanic family and how they are realized in the individual dialects, both diachronically and synchronically. The overall high quality of scholarship and thorough research of the individual essays makes this volume a valuable resource for linguists who research similar and/or related topics in Germanic linguistics. REFERENCES Abraham, Werner, and Jan Conradie. 2001. Präteritumschwund und Diskursgrammatik. Präteritumschwund in gesamteuropäischen Bezügen: Areale Ausbreitung, heterogene Entstehung, Parsing sowie diskursgrammatische Grundlagen und Zusammenhänge. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: The framework. Step by step: Essay on minimalist syntax in honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. by Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Urigereka, 89–115. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Chomsky, Noam. 2006. UG from below. Ms., MIT. Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2000. Prolific peripheries: A radical view from the left. Doctoral dissertation, University of Maryland. Grohmann, Kleanthes. 2003. Prolific domains: On the anti-locality movement dependencies. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

Journal of Germanic Linguistics 18.4 (2006)

Putnam, Michael. 2006. Scrambling in West Gemanic as XP-adjunction: A critical analysis of prolific domains. Doctoral dissertation, University of Kansas.

Michigan State University Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages A-637 Wells Hall East Lansing, MI 48824-1027 USA [[email protected]]

343