84 REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS

resulting from the ‘conjunction reouction’ of the second coordinated

past tense.

Dept. of Phmetics and Lifiguistics,

SC/X&ofOriental and African S&dies,
University of London, England.

REFERENCES

KING, R. D., 1969.Historical linguistics and generative grammar. Englcwr~otl

Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, Inc.
KIPARSKI, P., 1968. ‘Tense and mood in Indo-European syntax’, Fou~k&om
of Language 4, 30-57.

F. R. PALMER (ed.), Pmodic analysis. Language and

Language Learning. Oxford University Press, London
1970. xvi, 356 pp. 40/-•.
This volume contains sixteen papers on prosodic analysis publish-
ed between 1948 and 1961 and a brief but helpful introduction by the
editor. All of the papers, except Firth’s ‘Sounds and prosodies’, have
been relatively inaccessible hitherto. The papers are lithographically
reproduced on greyish paper with narrow margins which gives the
book an unpleasing appearance but nevertheless makes available
some interesting work comparatively cheaply.
One of the objects in publishing the collection at this time is to ‘set
the record straight historically’ (xvi), to demonstrate to a linguistic
world which has largely rejected structuralist demands of ‘bi-uniqu+-
ness’, ‘separation of levels’ etc. that, long before the advent of gent!.-
rative phonology, phonologists of the Firthian school had already
rejected these demands. Indeed younger readers of this collection
may become somewhat weary of constant shots fired at an enemy
they have never known (see 104, 113, 133, 134, 172 for example). The
reiteration of the stance of prosodic analysis vis-a-vis phonemic
analysis may seem, to one who was not engaged ix!staking out a claim
in the late 40’s and 50’s, unduly polemical, a point made by Robins
in a footnote added to his 1953 paper: ‘In rereading what one so
confidently asserted sixteen years ago, one is inevitably struck with
the transience of methodological dogma and of theoretical contro-
 ..EVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS 85

V+WSY, a less~ that reeds to be relt-arned by the enthusiasts of each

( J05).
ists argued are now
~s~bi~j~yof coexistent phonological systems
cticjn of syntactic, morphological and
r, paper 5; Robins, paper 6; Bendor-
ssibility of one phonetic element expound-
ical element (E#endor-Samuel, paper 14),
one position in a word are not to
1:~ idcrrtificci with ur~its in 61th sitions’ (Allen, paper 4: 86), the
scccptancc~ of I,w notisns ‘syllable’ and ‘word’ as necessary ccnstructs
iu phorrolo~ical description, WI acceptance which charactcrises all
. 1 il *Y**‘
-” #.p**,c* cx.l~LC
jirosod;e ihrexs r+vr‘~, (
a*rJ 1&f& x&,rnU. =a” a in
ffir ~~wrr+fip 2
a... u generative frztnpwnrk
m-*__.w .w-_ _

de, Chomsky and Halle, 1968: 366ff., 354). The battle

(<seprinciples as necessary phonological principles was
clan over a period df thirty years (and, with more re-
by a few individuals in the United States, notably
‘l’waddell a.ntl Pike) and decisively won by the generative phcnolo-
gists in less than a decade - and with no thanks to the earlier fighters.
There rem ai IIS, however, one of the most interesting principles of
prosodic anr lysis which has not been generally adopted nor even, it
would appe3r from oile transatlarltiz attempt to explain it (Langen-
docn, 1968)) uri versally understoo& Firth characterized it as ‘The syn-
tagmatic sy:;tc m of the word complex’ (I l), the principle ‘of stating
WC and its musical attributes as distinct orders of
from the total phonological complex’ (5). This synthetic
approach is typical of much early work in British linguistics and is
thus expounded by Sweet (1906: 44) : ‘in language sounds are com-
bined to forrr~ sentences, and many sounds occur only in fixed
combinatiolls. Henl:e the necessity of synthesis as well as analysis.
Analysis rega.rIs each sound as a fixed, stationary point, synthesis as
a mimentary point ill (1,stream of incessant change . . . Synthesis
Looks mainly at the beginning and end of each sound, as the point
where it is linked 013to other sounds . . . There is also a more general
kind of syntht*sis Iwhich deals with the re&tio~s of sounds to one
another in solund groups . . . Synthesis . . . deals with the organic
and r]icoustic g~~~~~ g of sounds into syllables, etc., and the divisions
between these groups. ’ In this tradition is rooted the prosodic prin-
ciple of refusi.ng to ass&n a phonolo@al feature to one place in
86 REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDWS

structure when it can be shown that the feature is phonetic.zlly mani-

fested over several places. (For a clear discussion of this prmciple see
Allen’s paper 4, though in fact nearly all the papers in the collection
exemplify this pokt .) Whereas the phonemicist (and the generative
nhV?!cgis”c) llol~ls that in the English words bet and bed the domain
of phonological opposition rests in the final consonant, and any
difference in the quantity of the preceding vowel (or indeed of the
initial consonant) is held to be environmentally conditioned, thfl
pro&list, by the principle just enunciated, must assign the domairl
of the opposition not to the final consonant but to the whole word.
He must take into account the fact that, in the stream of speech, thth
nature of the final consonant is already predicted by the nature of
the vowel - the opposition is not uniquely identified by the final
consonant. In a limited sense Langendoen is right to equate this
approach with that of American ‘long-component’ analysis (1968 :
54). However Robins (1969: 113) in his review of Langendoen shows
that this equation is inadequate on at least three counts: (1) long-
component analysis presupposes a prior phonemic analysis (2) ‘a.
feature assigned to a prosody in one structure need not be assignc!:l
to the same prosody throughout the language when difflzrent sfruc-
tural relations apply’ and, (3) ‘No particular structures are idc~nt.ifieci
with the domains of long components, whereas it is cardinal for the
abstraction of a prosody that the feature or features assir:ned to it ELS
its exponent(s) should either characterize or demarcate a defini1.c
structure. Moreover . . . the structures to which prosodies arr refcr-
red may be grammatical . . . as well as purely phonological’.
This collection contains several papers which clcarlv\I assert the
synthetic pl*inciple. Particularly lucid exposition of this paint is a
feature of it.he papers by Henderson, Allen, Robins and Bendor-
Samuel. (I would recommend the newcomer to prosodic anwl\& lo
begin by reading Bendor-Samuel’s paper in this book anh :&o
Bendor-Samuel 1966). These writers not only state what they <Ire
doing but explain why they are doing it. There are other papers in
the collection which are less accessible to readers not brought up in
the Firthian tradition, papers in which the author states what. he is
d&g but assumes that the reader will understand why he is doing it.
Two papers which seem to me particularly difficult ‘in this respttct
are thkose by Halliday and Scott. Both of these articles need to be
read in a wider context. Halliday’s paper formed the appendix to a
 REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS a7

larger work (Halliday, 9%) and Scott’s paper appeared as a sequel

td, ‘The rns~ilo~ylM& in Szechuanese’ (194B). It was, I think, an un-
fortunate &Xi Gijtpnto ~u~~j~h E nd of Scott’s papers without
the first. hi Hill (f 9% 1 224) su ts Me two articles . . . give two
sur;cessive 4 8 ;es i na.lysis of the same corpus’.
%heW axcl”dler pro ic principles than the synthetic one wvhich
havt! not l)t:~rrgenerally adopted with, I think, less loss to phonolo-
&+x%1 t hcory. one of th is the mystifying principle of ad /2oc, of
which PaIrnc~twrites (I : 2) ‘the approach is ad hoc in the sense
f t hew a rc broad general principles the details of the
cata:gtu%*sWI~If htl elawipiiifir:ationdepend on the nature of the materi-
al .’ One of t h * rtwlt 3 of the application of this principle in the col-
Itactiol (of p:ilbt*rs inn&r discussion, is that the reader mus;t be pre-
*%‘I11’11,
t’“%” \I! -“PI QIII *II-t\ trr
1\1 <3%lcal ,l.J <mr+r
Q$U” Iliff
\--1CId-r~*l*
CG. b‘a*i ---q-$
FI\JI..d\ ua! frameworks as he passes
from OIWp:~l)~~r= to anot her, since the an lzoc principle insists that the
phdlntamat ic z:nd j~ros0dic systems of one language are in no way
corr~p~~rrrbl~~ t .I thoi;;e of any other language. (Here one may reason-
ably ask hovl~, thlln, it is possibic for an individual to utilise any
previous ling u&tic ctxperic~nce whcrl 1~ learns another language.)
Tl& appro~\ 11 HI<I~, ~~~mt~what superficially, be characterised as
esscrltially ‘1~MXSpocuC and 'anomalist ’ (see, for a discussion of thic,
Robins ch;rr teterisat ion of prosodic analysis in paper 12). This is a
point of vicvtl which is difficult for a phanemicist or a generative
linguist - whose approach might, again somewhat superficially, be
characteriselc as essentially ‘God’s truth’ and analogist - to compre-
hend’ still 1~~sto sympat hise with. (As 1,Vons, 1968: 8 remarks ‘The
controvcr?;y t?etwt&en ‘an@ogists’ and ’ &omalists’ is still with us.‘.)
This is p~~=iz;~pswhy Langendoen, in his discussion of some of the
papas inclu&d in this collection (papers 2, 4, 5, 10, 11, I=? z:,d 15),
a~~1~i~rentl~~ f Cls to appreciate what it was that the prosodists were
t ryirlg to &I. To suggest that ‘prosodic ana:+ may be viewed as a
notational c .,nvtantion for indicating phonological rules’ (Langen-
dot-l], ]%$: $1) i:%to ik;north a fundamental difference in philosophical
nyproach * ‘1 he si)ublkcation Of this collection of papers must be
cvolcomttd in that, quite apart from the intrinsic value of much of the
irk rdert!, ij enables ‘lhe interested reader to explore for himself the
data ;dnd discussion of prosodic analysts rather than merely to read
a poIeGca1 ;rccount la,, 1~2 writer with a very different view of phono-
logical descr*iption. It enables the reader to see that, whereas it is per-
88 REVIEWS - COMPTES-RENDUS

fectly possible to reformulate prosodic statements in generative

terms (as Langendoen and others have successfully done), the
emphasis of the description is thereby changed from a primary
interest in the statement of synthesis, in Sweet’s terms, to a pri,nary
interest in analysis. In this sense the book should, valuably, serve
to ‘set the record straight’.

Bept, ofLiquistics, Gillian BROW N

&iv. of
Edinburgh,
Adam Ferguson Building,
Edinburgh 8,
Scotland.

REFERENCES

BENDOR-SAMUEL,J. T., 1966. ‘Some prosodic features in Terena’. In: C. E.

?33azell, J. C. Catford, M. A. K. Halliday and R. H. Robins (eds.), .Ifi
memwy of J. R. Firth, London, Longmans.
CHOMSKY, N. and M. HALLE, 1960. The sound pattern oi English. New York,
Harper and Row.
HALLIDAY, M. A. Ii., 1959. Secret history of the Mongols. Oxford.
HILL, T., 1966. ‘The technique of prosodic analysis’. In: C. E. Raaell, J. C.
Catford, M. A. K. Hailiday and R. H. Robins (eds,), In memory of J. R.
Firth. London, Long mans.
LANGENDOEN, D. T., 1968. The London School of Linguistics. Cambridge,
Mass., M.I.T.
LYONS, J., 1968. Irttvodmtion to tkeovetzhalha&tics. London, C. tJ. 1”.
PALMER, F. R., 1965. A liqpistic study of the English ewb. London, Longmans.
ROBINS, R. H., 1969. Review of Langendocn : The London School of Linguistics.
Lg45, (1).
SCOTT, N. C., 1948. ‘The tnonosyllable in Szechuanese’. BSOA S 18,
SWEET, H., 1906. rl pvi?lzerof phonetics. Oxford.

Walter A. KOCH, ZW TheoriG des Lautwandels. Studia Scmia-

tica, Series Practica 2. Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlrag,
1970, pp. xx + 364.
This book is a Miinster doctoral dissertation of 1962. In his preface
the author says that to revise it would involve him in writing what
would amount to a new work, and he therefore offers it unchanged.
It follows closely the views of H. Weinrich’s writings in this sphere,