{"id":540,"date":"2010-06-04T10:00:17","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T08:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elanguage.net\/blogs\/booknotices\/?p=540"},"modified":"2010-03-18T12:05:41","modified_gmt":"2010-03-18T10:05:41","slug":"540","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/?p=540","title":{"rendered":"Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance"},"content":{"rendered":"
Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance:<\/strong> Problems in comparative linguistics. Ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald<\/strong> and R. M. W. Dixon<\/strong>. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 453. ISBN 9780199283088<\/a>. $60.<\/div>\n

Reviewed by Picus S. Ding<\/strong><\/a>, Macao Polytechnic Institute<\/em><\/p>\n

This volume is a collection of papers presented at a workshop held in 1998. In Ch. 1 (1\u201326), Alexandra Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon provide a thorough introduction to the issues of areal diffusion and genetic inheritance.<\/p>\n

In Ch. 2 (27\u201343), Peter Bellwood<\/strong> investigates the \u2018Archaeology and the historical determinants of punctuation in language-family origins\u2019. Calvert Watkins <\/strong>discusses areal diffusion in \u2018An Indo-European linguistic area and its characteristics: Ancient Anatolia\u2019 in Ch. 3 (44\u201363). This area is later revisited in Geoffrey Haig<\/strong>\u2019s study of modern pan-Anatolian structural parallels, \u2018Linguistic diffusion in present-day East Anatolia: From top to bottom\u2019 (Ch. 8, 195\u2013224).<\/p>\n

Chs. 4\u20137 focus on languages of the southern hemisphere. R. M. W. Dixon discusses \u2018The Australian linguistic area\u2019 (Ch. 4, 64\u2013104), while Alan Dench<\/strong> investigates Western Australia in \u2018Descent and diffusion: The complexity of the Pilbara situation\u2019 (Ch. 5, 105\u201333). In \u2018Contact-induced change in Oceanic languages in North-West Melanesia\u2019, Malcolm Ross<\/strong> concentrates on Takia (Ch. 6, 134\u201366), and in \u2018Areal diffusion, genetic inheritance, and problems of subgrouping: A North Arawak case study\u2019 Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald addresses problems of subgrouping in the languages of the Amazon (Ch. 7, 167\u201394).<\/p>\n

Chs. 9\u201312 investigate languages of the Far East. Randy LaPolla<\/strong> explores \u2018The role of migration and language contact in the development of the Sino-Tibetan language family\u2019 (Ch. 9, 225\u201354). N. J. Enfield<\/strong> pursues a case study \u2018On genetic and areal linguistics in mainland South-East Asia: Parallel polyfunctionality of \u201cacquire\u2019\u2019\u2019 (Ch. 10, 255\u201390). James Matisoff<\/strong> deals with \u2018Genetic versus contact relationship: Prosodic diffusibility in South-East Asian languages\u2019 (Ch. 11, 291\u2013327), and Hilary Chappell <\/strong>describes \u2018Language contact and areal diffusion in Sinitic languages\u2019 (Ch. 12, 328\u201357). Several problems can be found in these chapters. Contrary to Enfield\u2019s description (275), the Cantonese morpheme dak<\/em> \u2018acquire\u2019 can take a temporal adverbial complement (e.g. mai dak loeng jat zau laan-zo<\/em> \u2018bought for two days [and] then broke down\u2019) but cannot take an extent complement (e.g. *siu dak gin ngaa m-gin ngaan<\/em> \u2018laugh to the extent that [one can] see the teeth but not the eyes\u2019), which differs from its corresponding functions in Modern Standard Chinese. Additionally, Chappell\u2019s hybridization of two relative clause structures in Cantonese (342), both in the formula and in the example, should have the word order of Relative Clause + GENITIVE + DETERMINER + CLASSIFIER + HEAD NOUN PHRASE. Finally, alignment problems are found with LaPolla\u2019s examples (235).<\/p>\n

The next two chapters are devoted to languages in Africa. Gerrit Dimmendaal<\/strong> approaches the problems of \u2018Areal diffusion versus genetic inheritance\u2019 from an African perspective (Ch. 13, 358\u201392), and Bernd Heine <\/strong>and Tania Kuteva<\/strong> discuss \u2018Convergence and divergence in the development of African languages\u2019 (Ch. 14, 393\u2013411). Finally, Timothy Curnow<\/strong> concludes the volume by asking \u2018What language features can be \u201cborrowed\u201d?\u2019 (Ch. 15, 412\u201336).<\/p>\n

Although the contributors have raised several thought-provoking questions, few solutions are advanced. This reflects the field\u2019s insufficient understanding of the evolution of languages and the difficulty of reconstructing the basic linguistic picture of a prehistoric language family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Areal diffusion and genetic inheritance: Problems in comparative linguistics. Ed. by Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald and R. M. W. Dixon. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. Pp. xvi, 453. ISBN 9780199283088. $60. Reviewed by Picus S. Ding, Macao Polytechnic Institute This volume is a collection of papers presented at a workshop held in 1998. In Ch. 1 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":542,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions\/542"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.linguisticsociety.org\/booknotices\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}