SIL Electronic Book Reviews 2005-013
URL: http://www.sil.org/silebr/silebr2005-013
The Noun Phrase
Oxford Studies in Typology and Linguistic Theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. 440. hardback $165.00, paperback $45.00. ISBN 0198237820 (hardback), 0199269645 (paperback).
Reviewed by Robert Bugenhagen
SIL International
This volume is a typological survey of morphosyntactic phenomena occurring within the noun phrase based primarily on a sample of fifty-two languages that were selected on the basis of maximal genetic diversity. The author has three primary aims: (1) “to give a cross-linguistic overview of the semantic and morpho-syntactic properties of the constituents of the noun phrase,” (2) “to propose a new, typologically adequate model of the underlying structure of the NP in the general framework of Simon Dik’s Functional Grammar (1997),” and (3) “to demonstrate that NP-internal ordering patterns can be accounted for in terms of a few general ordering principles” (p. 2).
Rijkhoff begins by discussing two problematic preliminaries: (1) do all languages have a distinct class of nouns? and (2) do all languages have hierarchically structured noun phrases? His answer to both questions is “no.” Regarding the question of the existence of a universally distinct form class of nouns, he cites Hengeveld’s (1992) classification of part-of-speech systems, which is reproduced below:
| Flexible | Type 1 | V/N/A | ||
| Type 2 | V | N/A | ||
| Rigid | Type 3 | V | N | A |
| Type 4 | V | N | — | |
| Type 5 | V | — | — | |
This classification is based on the function of predicates in a linguistic expression. V in the table refers to a verbal predicate “which, without further measures being taken, has a predicative use only,” N is a nominal predicate “which, without further measures being taken, can be used as the head of a term (NP),” and A is an adjectival predicate “which, without further measures being taken, can be used as a modifier of a nominal head” (Hengeveld 1992:58).
The author restricts his discussion of noun phrases to “lexical NPs which are headed by an underived noun and which are used to refer to a single discrete first order (i.e. spatial) entity or a single individual” (p. 19). Thus noun phrases headed by pronouns, collectives, mass nouns, and various types of abstract nouns are excluded from his study. He makes a very important distinction between “integral” and “non-integral” noun phrases (p. 19 ff.). Non-integral noun phrases correspond to phenomena that are elsewhere described under the rubric of non-configurational, scrambled, or flat structure. Non-integral noun phrases are not, strictly speaking phrases at all. Rather than constituting a single phrase exhibiting a head-modifier structure, the so-called constituents of the non-integral noun phrase are actually coreferring phrases occurring in a parallel, appositional relationship. When they are distinct phrases at the clause level, they may occur separated from each other, a phenomenon exhibited by many Australian aboriginal languages. Rijkhoff notes the possibility for some semantic modifiers of a referent to occur NP internally, while others occur in apposition. When this occurs, the internal and appositional modifiers may exhibit differing orders with respect to the head noun. This book discusses the morphosyntactic structure of integral noun phrases.
The second chapter introduces one of the key new concepts of the book: nominal aspect. Whereas verbal aspect has to do with the temporal dimension, nominal aspect deals with the spatial dimension. Rijkhoff begins this chapter by classifying noun phrases in his sample according to their behavior under quantification. Two properties are especially important (p. 29):
- whether or not nouns appear in a distinct plural form when modified by a numeral greater than one
- whether nouns can occur in a direct construction with a numeral or whether the numeral must first combine with a classifier
While there are four logical possibilities, in practice the combination numeral + classifier + overt plural marking on the noun is either non-existent or highly rare (the data in a few instances are unclear). Rijkhoff gives the following examples of the three actually occurring possibilities (p. 29):
| (1) | twee boeken | two book+PL | ‘two books’ (Dutch, numeral + noun + plural) |
| (2) | gaala lamaani | camel two | ‘two camels’ (Oromo, numeral + noun) |
| (3) | rôm sǎam khan | umbrella three CLF:long, handled object | ‘three umbrellas’ (Thai, numeral + classifier + noun) |
Constructions like the first are termed “singular object nouns,” while those like the second are instances of “set nouns.” In languages having singular object nouns, “an NP headed by a bare noun must [emphasis RDB] refer to a single individual” (p. 45), and plurality of a referent is obligatorily marked by distinct morphology on the noun. The author notes that “From a cross-linguistic perspective, obligatory number (plural) marking seems to be the exception rather than the rule” (ibid). Bare set nouns, on the other hand, are “transnumeral, i.e. those nouns are neutral with respect to the number of individuals they denote (ibid). Set nouns denote a set of one or more individuals.
It is possible for different sets of nouns in a language to exhibit different constructions. For example, in a number of the languages in Rijkhoff’s sample, only [+human] nouns function as singular object nouns, while all other nouns are set nouns.
The author subdivides nouns occurring in classifier constructions into two types, “mass nouns” and “sortal nouns,” depending on whether the co-occurring classifier is mensural (i.e. indicating size, volume or weight) or sortal (indicating other properties like shape). Nouns in classifier languages which lack a clear sortal / mensural distinction among the classifiers are termed “general nouns.”
Based on these quantification constructions, two semantic features are proposed for characterizing the morphosyntactic behavior of nouns in noun phrases: SHAPE and HOMOGENEITY. Nouns that are [+SHAPE] (i.e. singular object and set nouns) have a discrete, definite outline (shape) in the spatial dimension (p. 51) which the [-SHAPE] nouns in classifier languages lack. The semantic feature [HOMOGENITY] has to do with whether an entity can be added to or subtracted from without changing its essential identity. Mass nouns like water and gold are clear instances of homogeneous nouns. If one adds water to some water, or removes water from it, the result is still water. Rijkhoff proposes the following classification of nominal referent types (p. 54):
| –Homogeneity | +Homogeneity | |
| –Shape | General noun | |
| sort noun | mass noun | |
| +Shape | Set noun | |
| singular object noun | collective noun | |
In the study of verbal aspect, a distinction is made between Aktionsart (aspectual meaning that is inherently part of a verb’s lexical meaning) and inflectionally encoded aspect. Rijkhoff proposes a analogical distinction for nouns: Seinsart (“lexically inherent aspects of how a nominal is represented in the spatial dimension in terms of these features Shape and/or Homogeneity”) (p. 59) and “nominal aspect” (the inflectionally encoded expression of Shape and/or Homogeneity). Just as the speaker often has a choice in how to represent an event aspectually, there is often the possibility of different speaker perspectives on nominal aspect. Compare fifty grapes versus a pound/bunch of grapes, where the same noun can function as either a singular object noun or a mass noun.
The third chapter of the book is a discussion of nominal subclasses and some of their morphosyntactic consequences. A helpful distinction is made between “real” and “apparent” nominal subclasses. “Real” nominal subclasses (e.g. gender/noun classes, morphological declension classes, languages with a lexical distinction among nouns between those having alienable and inalienable possessors) are semantically more arbitrary, not being completely predictable from the properties of their characteristic referents. “Apparent” nominal subclasses are viewed by the author as being more of an epiphenomenon, since they are predictable from the properties of the typical referents of the nouns. Apparent nominal subclasses are most commonly based on properties like humanness/animacy and shape. For example, in some languages nouns co-occur with different positional verbs depending on whatever orientation their referents exhibit (For example trees would normally ‘stand,’ while rocks would ‘sit’.) Similarly, some American Indian languages like Sarcee have classificatory verbs, which select for Objects of particular shapes. Encoding of Objects and other more peripheral syntactic roles also may vary depending upon whether the referent is human/animate or non-human/inanimate. A final common source of apparent nominal subclasses are classifiers which select for nouns whose referents have particular characteristics (often shape).
Chapters four through six survey noun modifiers expressing quality, quantity, and location in Rijkhoff’s sample of 52 languages. Quality modifiers express inherent features of the referent and may either be grammatical (i.e. Rijkhoff’s category of nominal aspect), or lexical (i.e. adjectives). In contrast to genuine number marking, which obligatorily distinguishes between singular and non-singular numbers of referents, nominal aspect is usually optional and serves to further specify the nature of the set referred to by a set noun, whether it “consists of a one individual (singleton set)” or is “a set of multiple individual entities which together form a collective (collective set)” (p. 103). Such elements “do not indicate number but rather indicate the way the nominal property is represented in the spatial dimension” (ibid). The author observes that the distinction between genuine plural marking and collective nominal aspect helps account for why languages with set nouns frequently exhibit “number discord,” in which a noun phrase referring to multiple entities occurs with a verb inflected with singular agreement. In such instances the verb complex has the theoretical possibility of agreeing with either the set itself (in which case singular agreement occurs) or the number of individuals in the set (in which case plural agreement occurs) (p. 105). In languages exhibiting a combination of plural marking and collective nominal aspect, plural marking is associated with factors such as definiteness, specificity, and humanness/animacy of the referent. Three historical sources for collective aspect marking noted by Rijkhoff (p. 119) are the words for ‘small’ and ‘big’, group classifiers, and third person plural pronouns while some instances of singulative aspect seem to derive from articles and demonstratives.
The chapter on quantifying modifiers in the noun phrase is relatively brief. One matter especially important for the field linguist is the need to distinguish between genuine plural number marking, collective nominal aspect, and the use of quantifiers like ‘some’, ‘several’ and ‘many’ to express non-singularity of the referent. Many times these conceptually different categories are conflated in linguistic descriptions as “plural marking.”
The chapter on localizing modifiers discusses such things as demonstrative pronouns, articles, relative clauses, and possessive modifiers, all of which help to identify and anchor NP referents in the discourse world.
The remainder of the book attempts to synthesize the findings of the preceding chapters by first proposing a universal underlying structure of the noun phrase which resembles that of the clause/basic predication (p. 224).
| Clause/Predication | ||||||||||||
| [p2b | Location | s2b] | ||||||||||
| [p2a | Quantity | s2a] | ||||||||||
| [p1 | Quality | s1] | ||||||||||
| tense | semelfactive, iterative, etc. aspect | verbal aspect | Time |
|
||||||||
| VERB | ||||||||||||
| ––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––– | ||||||||||||
| NOUN | ||||||||||||
| demonstrative pronoun | number | nominal aspect | Space | adjective | lexical numeral | relative clause, possessor NP, etc. | ||||||
| [w1 | Quality | t1] | ||||||||||
| [w2a | Quantity | t2a] | ||||||||||
| [w2b | Location | t2b] | ||||||||||
This structure is intended to account for the typical scopes of quality, quantity, and temporal/locative modifiers in the clause and noun phrase. In the diagram p and w are various operators, whereas s and t are various lexical satellites that modify verbs and nouns.
Following the discussion of this structure, the author seeks to account for word order generalizations within the noun phrase via the following general principles:
- The principle of increasing complexity: “There is a preference for ordering constituents in an order of increasing complexity” (p. 249).
- The principle of domain integrity: “Constituents prefer to remain within the boundaries of their domain; constituents of a domain prefer not to be interrupted by embedded domains” (p. 250)
- The principle of head proximity: “Constituent ordering rules conspire to keep the heads of different domains as close together as possible” (p. 251).
- The principle of scope: “Modifiers tend to occur next to the part of the expression that they have in their scope” (p. 313).
The second of these principles expresses the fact that, in general, constituents of a phrase tend to occur together rather be discontinuous, and is an elaboration of Behaghel’s (1932:4) iconic principle that “what belongs together semantically is also placed together syntactically.”
Summary and Recommendations
This book would be a valuable addition to the libraries of several different audiences. Field linguists working in languages with complex noun phrases will gain some ideas on the range of different morphosyntactic possibilities for which they should be on the look out, and will profit from some of the careful categorial distinctions made by the author like (1) collective nominal aspect versus plural number marking, and (2) noun marker versus article. This latter distinction is one linguists working in Oceanic languages would do well to bear in mind, since these are commonly conflated as “articles” in linguistic descriptions. Typologists will profit from the many tables in the book summarizing the properties of the languages in Rijkhoff’s sample. And theoretical syntacticians will profit from the wide range of data presented, which any theory they propose should be able to handle.
There are several misprints in the book which should be corrected in future editions, e.g. “Since some language use reduplication” (p. 149), “a discussion of how may wives a man had” (p. 157). Also the author occasionally attributes emotion to linguistic categories as in “Constituents prefer to remain within the boundaries of their domain; constituents of a domain prefer not to be interrupted by embedded domains (p. 250) and “adjectives show no preference for pre- or postnominal position” (p. 308) [italics RDB].
References
Behaghel, Otto. 1932. Deutsche Syntax: eine geshichtlichte Dostellung. Vol iv. Worstellung-Periodenbau. Heidelberg: Carl Winter.
Dik, Simon C. 1997. The theory of Functional Grammar (2nd revised edition, ed. by Kees Hengeveld) Part 1: The structure of the clause. Part 2: Complex and derived constructions. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Hengeveld, Kees. 1992. Non-verbal predication: theory, typology, diachrony. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.