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Yael Ravin, Lexical semantics without thematic

roles. Oxford & New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990. Pp. viii + 248.

Wendy K. Wilkins

Journal of Linguistics / Volume 28 / Issue 01 / March 1992, pp 241 - 251

DOI: 10.1017/S0022226700015115, Published online: 28 November 2008

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 REVIEWS
differences that are cultural and profound among modes of conduct towards
language. What is perhaps most remarkable in Lepschy's plan is his healthy
distrust of two troublesome things. One is the parochialism with which
certain phenomena can be overemphasized and others banished beyond the
pale. The other, more insidious one is what in far too many historiographical
attempts passes for ' theory': tenets whose true interest emerges only when
they are seen as compromises between, on the one hand, intellectual
experiences that are subtle and highly theoretical indeed but often hidden,
and, on the other, accepted ways of discoursing about words, thoughts, and
the world at large.
There will be six more chapters in the whole work. The editor himself will
contribute the last but one, which will be concerned with this century. It will
reflect his own experience and interpretation of the linguistic scene. What he
has in store for us cannot fail to benefit our central concern: to understand
the relationship of background, accomplishment and generalization.
Reviewed by HENRY M. HOENIGSWALD,
University of Pennsylvania.
(Received 13 June 1991)

Yael Ravin, Lexical semantics without thematic roles. Oxford & New York:
Oxford University Press, 1990. Pp. viii + 248.

After considerable serious attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s, interest
in thematic relations waned for at least a decade. Perhaps part of the reason
for the decline in interest was the inability of linguists to agree on appropriate
criteria for determining correct thematic analyses, beyond a few apparently
obvious cases. This frustration was well expressed by Tom Wasow, who
privately commented that working with thematic relations is 'a lot like
juggling with jello'. The renaissance of thematic relations-based accounts of
linguistic phenomena dates to the mid-1980s, although a number of linguists,
notably Ray Jackendoff and Leonard Talmy, had persisted in their use of
these decompositional notions throughout the period. The more general
renewed interest (at least among MIT-school linguists and their associates)
is probably due to the centrality of the theta-criterion in Government-
Binding theory, best known from Chomsky (1981).
Coincident with the resurgence of discussion about thematic relations has
been a recent rediscovery of lexical semantics more generally. This was
evident at MIT in the work of the Lexicon Project, as well as in an apparent
increase in the number of publications and conferences on aspects of the
lexicon. Ravin's book is thus timely and important. It is meant to support a
theory of the lexicon that is a development of the well-known decompo-
sitional semantics of Katz (for example Katz & Fodor, 1963). In doing
so it brings into question the theoretical usefulness and descriptive adequacy

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 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS
of thematic relations. More importantly, however, it addresses the yet bigger
theoretical issue of the autonomy of the several components of the grammar,
in particular the autonomy of semantic representation. Ravin is to be
applauded for directly addressing this central, and often controversial matter
(see Newmeyer, 1980). Whether one is ultimately persuaded by the arguments
for or against the autonomous-components view, it would seem time for this
issue to assume prominence again, particularly because the intellectual
descendants of autonomy now apparently adopt a non-autonomous view.
This, apparently, is the motivation for Ravin's focus on Government-
Binding theory and the minimal (one might even say scant) bibliography.
Ravin characterizes what she terms the ' restrictive' view of semantics as
one in which the only semantic notions of interest are thematic roles, because
only they seem to have syntactic relevance. This Principle of Syntactic
Relevance is characteristic of Fillmore's Case theory (Fillmore, 1968, 1977),
Chomsky's Government-Binding theory (especially Chomsky, 1981), and
the work of the MIT Lexicon Project (MLP; represented especially by the
contributions to Levin (1985). These linguists also adhere to a Correlation
Principle, according to which thematic roles determine the syntactic
configurations in which a predicate occurs. Contrasted with the restrictive
semantic theories are the non-restrictive ones, JackendofF (various works
from 1972 to 1987) and Ravin (the work under review), that do not adhere
to the two above-mentioned principles. Ravin's criticism of the restrictive
theories is that they are exactly that, restrictive. Their view of semantics is
impoverished by the adherence to the principles of syntactic relevance and
correlation, both of which are violations of the syntactic autonomy thesis.
JackendoflPs theory does not suffer from this restrictiveness or the violations
of autonomy, but instead is criticized for being too motion-based and for
having too rigid a formalism.
I will address the restrictive and non-restrictive theories separately, as does
Ravin herself for the most part. Ravin assumes throughout that the facts that
an adequate semantic theory ought to account for 'are determined by the
ability of speakers to interpret sentences' (114). This ability includes
recognizing ambiguity, anomaly, paraphrase relationships (between sen-
tences), analyticity, redundancy, contradiction, synonymy, sense inclusion,
autonomy, incompatibility and analytical entailment. The semantic concepts
inherent in linguistic expressions are to be determined on the basis of
semantic intuitions, just as syntactic and phonological intuitions are used
with syntax and phonology. To the charge that semantic intuitions are vague,
Ravin advocates Chomsky's (1957) prescription to write the grammar for the
clear cases and then 'to let the grammar itself decide' for the 'many
intermediate cases' (Chomsky, 1957:13-14). It is the task of linguistic theory
to sharpen the semantic intuitions 'by means of explicit and precise formal
representations' (10). Ideal though this may sound, Chomsky's suggestion
about letting the grammar decide proved to be notoriously difficult. First,

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 REVIEWS
there seem to be very few clear cases; second, most grammatical explanations
of any real depth or interest must rely on the intermediate cases for
formulation. But for the purposes of this review, it would not be productive
to pursue this question further. Rather, we should grant Ravin's point and
accept her characterization of the goal of a semantic theory (although it is
curious that in such an inclusive list of types of semantic intuitions, truth
conditions are nowhere mentioned).
Assuming Ravin's goal for linguistic semantics, the restrictive theories
simply do not measure up. They were not, of course, designed to, as Ravin
clearly understands. She argues further, however, that they do not measure
up according to their own criteria either. While each of the three assumes
thematic roles (or their equivalent), she argues not only that thematic roles
are not valid semantic entities, but neither can syntactic structure be
predicted from the meaning (the Correlation Principle). Instead she advocates
the autonomy of syntax and the independence of the semantic component.
After introductory discussions of the relationship between syntax and
semantics and the issue of autonomy (Introduction) and of restrictive versus
non-restrictive semantic theories (Ch. i), Ravin turns to Fillmore's Case
theory. While it is appropriate to credit Fillmore for his pioneering work on
Case and semantic roles, 23 pages are devoted here to a review and criticism
of a model whose strengths and weaknesses have already been widely
discussed in the literature. Nothing particularly new or noteworthy is
brought up about Case theory, nor is evidence given of any current
publication or research within the Case-theory model (other than a class
presentation by Fillmore himself that most readers will not have access to).
For Ravin's purpose, it would have sufficed to mention that Fillmore's work
suffered from reliance on the syntax-based principles and to move quickly on
to more current issues. This is, of course, more an editorial problem than a
linguistic one, due probably to the work (if the acknowledgements are
indicative) being first presented as a doctoral dissertation.
Chapter 2 presents an overview of Chomsky's Government-Binding
theory. Here again we run into an editing problem. If the reader is already
familiar with Government-Binding theory, this chapter seems too much like
an unnecessary (and too often inaccurate) book report. If, however, the
reader is not familiar with the theory, the overview is probably insufficient
and is certainly misleading in certain respects. Just by way of example, there
are three problems with the discussion in just a page and a half (54-55). First,
in considering the example
(1) *Bill is known [^ how [s t to solve the problem]],
Ravin suggests that Chomsky's account of the ungrammaticality involves a
Subjacency violation. In fact, the ungrammaticality follows from the
requirement that trace be governed (see Chomsky, 1981: 54, with a footnote
in which Chomsky explains explicitly why this is not a Subjacency violation).

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 JOURNAL OF LINGUISTICS
Second, there seems to be confusion about an example allegedly cited in a
forthcoming work by Freidin:
(2) *It is odd [John to like t\.
Ravin says that by the principles of Case, bounding and binding, this
example should be grammatical because, among other things, 'John is
assigned Case by the verb like, which governs it' (55). This, of course, cannot
be so because then PRO would never be allowed in subject position of a
tenseless clause; in other words,
(3) It is odd [PRO to like John]
would be ruled out by Case theory. Case is not assigned by the verb like to
the subject, rather, nominative Case is assigned by tensed INFL and thus, in
(2) is not assigned at all in the embedded clause. An example such as (2) is
therefore not sufficient to demonstrate the need for another principle (theta
theory). Finally, there is a misrepresentation of the real intent of the theta-
criterion. Ravin uses the statement given in Chomsky (1981: 36): 'each
argument bears one and only one theta-role and each theta-role is assigned
one and only one argument'. This is indeed the version of the theta-criterion
most often cited in the literature. As such, it is subject to various well-
founded criticisms, Ravin's (55-58) among them. However, as is made clear
by Chomsky (1981: 335), in a restatement of the theta-criterion, the intent is
to characterize theta positions and to prevent the accumulation of roles on
a given NP in the course of a derivation. For this updated version of the
theta-criterion, Ravin's criticism is not relevant.
What seems a pity is that these distracting sections in the overview of
Government-Binding theory, along with much of Chapter 3, need not have
been included in the book at all. Ravin's main point, well taken, is that theta-
theory is really no semantic theory at all. It suffers severely from both
restrictive principles. For Government-Binding, the content of the theta-
roles is irrelevant and, as such, theta theory becomes another aspect of
syntax. Ravin makes this point forcefully on page 66:
In view of this syntactic nature of theta-marking, one questions why
theta-roles have been linked to semantic notions at all. Why were they not
simply introduced for what they are, marking a new type of grammatical
relation between a head and its subject and complements? The answer
appears to be that the semantic link was mentioned as an attempt to
provide justification for the existence of theta-marking, by linking it to
semantic concepts familiar from other theories. But since theta-marking is
an abstract type of grammatical marking bearing no semantic import, this
semantic link is most often ignored.
What becomes clear here is that Ravin's desiderata for a theory of semantics
are not addressed by Chomsky (1981).

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Again in Chapter 4, devoted to a presentation of Jackendoff s theory of
semantics, there is an evident editing problem. Too many versions of
Jackendoff s theory are discussed at once. For example, he is criticized for
Gruber-like analyses from 1972 that he gave up by 1983. Given that
Jackendoff is so prolific a writer, and in light of the many modifications his
theory has undergone over the years, Ravin would have been well advised to
restrict her commentary to Jackendoff s 1987 article, with necessary
digressions to the more comprehensive 1983 book. In any case, Jackendoff s
work is not subject to the restrictiveness criticism in that it adheres to neither
of the syntax-based principles. Instead, it is faulted as a theory of semantics
per se, especially in the later Chapters 8 and 9. Unfortunately, nowhere in the
book does Ravin mention the most attractive aspect of Jackendoff s view of
semantics: its relationship to questions of cognition more generally. Ravin
does not seem to realize that Jackendoff s Conceptual Structures are not part
of linguistic semantics, but, rather, are meant to be relevant to other (all?)
cognitive domains as well. I return to this issue below.
Next (Ch. 5) Ravin turns to a discussion of the MLP, seen as an attempt
to incorporate into Government-Binding theory a more adequate version of
thematic roles. Central to MLP theory are the linking rules that associate
lexical conceptual structures (LCSs) with predicate-argument structures
(PASs). These linking rules provide the mechanism through which MLP
observes the Correlation Principle. In order to criticize these rules, Ravin
provides a sample LCS for run (96):

(4) run: [X comes to be at LOCATION]

The MLP linking rules would associate the X with the direct argument
variable in the PAS (in other words, a direct object). For an intransitive such
as run, this is, of course, wrong. But this is only a problem if the LCS for
run does indeed contain [X comes to be at LOCATION]. But Jackendoff (on
whose semantic representation Ravin claims the MLP linguists would rely)
would be unlikely to analyse run in this manner. Rather, Jackendoff (for
example, 1983: 163-165) uses run as an example of a verb that indicates a
THING traversing a PATH. Thus, the criticism directed at the MLP use of the
linking rule is only relevant for Ravin's less-than-desirable thematic analysis
of run. It does not get at the heart of the problem with the Correlation
Principle. What does successfully address the heart of the problem is the
discussion of unaccusative/unergative distinctions in English (97-99). Ravin
demonstrates that
The Correlation Principle... fails to hold across intransitive verbs. On one
hand, there is a syntactic correlation between the syntactic class a verb
belongs to (unergative or unaccusative) and the D-structure defined for it
within the GB framework; on the other, there is a semantic correlation
between the kind of action a verb depicts and the distribution of adjuncts

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of manner and instrument. What is lacking is a correlation between the
syntactic classification and the semantic one. Without it, the syntactic
behavior cannot be determined on the basis of meaning.
Probably the strongest aspect of the discussion of MLP is that devoted to
alternation verbs such as load. Ravin is particularly successful at casting
doubt on the analyses provided by Hale & Keyser (1986). The MLP claim
'that semantic classes correlate with, and therefore determine, both the
thematic structures and the syntactic configurations of their members' (no)
is shown to be doubtful. This is an important demonstration for the purposes
of questioning non-autonomous syntax-semantics theories.
Finally, in Chapter 6, after n o pages of review of other theories, Ravin
begins to outline her own view of semantics, making clear that her work is
a development of Katz's theory of semantic decomposition. Much of what is
covered in this chapter is familiar from Katz's own work. Theoretically
important here is the clear demarcation between syntax and semantics (a
strict autonomy thesis) as well as a clear belief in a semantic domain separate
not only from syntax but from pragmatics and world knowledge as well.
Ravin's analyses of particular lexical items throughout the second half of the
book are well reasoned and thought-provoking. She uses the Katzean
formalism elegantly and argues successfully for many of the distinctions she
expects a lexical entry to account for. In spite of the careful analyses and
obvious descriptive power of the formalism employed, it is always possible
for a reviewer to quibble about one detail or another. Rather than pursue
particular details, it is probably better to raise a general issue that is relevant
for any decompositional semantic theory. This deals with how labels for the
primitive parts, or nodes, are determined. A further question is how to gather
evidence about any particular node.
Consider the analysis for causative break given by Ravin on page 129:

((Event) (t° to tn))

(Physical)
((Effort) (X)) ((Change) (Y))
(physical entity) -/"^N^rigid physical __
/ Xstuff) (Sudd~en)
(Causation) ((Condition) (t0)) ((Condition) (tn))
I I I
((Applying (Whole) ((Divided into) (Z))
force to) (Y)) (several portions)

X—[subject] Y—[object] (Z—[object of into/in/to-??])

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Next consider the sentence in (6):
(6) The forces of wind and water were slowly breaking (up) the massive
glacier.
This particular example might make us question the inclusion of (Sudden) in
the semantic marker, even though we realize that the usual case of breaking
involves a sudden change. Would this be reason to modify the semantic
marker, or would (6) be an example of some sort of (metaphorical?)
extension relevant for the special physical properties of glaciers? A clever
enough linguist might be able to construct problematic examples for almost
any proposed semantic marker. Yet at the same time we can recognize the
importance of an analysis that captures intuitions about core cases, at least
where these can be determined.
Another question having to do with evidence involves the fact that it is
difficult to choose between alternative, but similarly motivated analyses. For
the explicitly non-causative break by oneself, Ravin (130) suggests the
semantic marker shown in (7) as relevant for example (8).

(7) ((Event) (t° to tn))

(Physical) ((Change) (X))

physical stuff)
(Sudden)
0 n
(Effort) ((Condition) (t )) ((Condition) (t ))

(A/(Causation)) (Whole) ((Divided into) (Y))

(several portions)

X—[subject] (Y—[object of into/in/to-PP])

NULL—[object of by-PP, coreferential with subject]
(8) The window broke by itself.
According to Ravin, (Effort) indicates 'a certain active involvement in the
event' (129). One could easily suggest that (Effort) is not relevant for the
subject the window in (8). But how could we choose between the competing
analyses? Unfortunately, we would again seem to be 'juggling with jello'.
There is a further point to be made with respect to this explicitly non-
causative example. Ravin criticizes Jackendoff s theory by saying that while
he can adequately distinguish causative from non-causative he cannot
distinguish the explicitly non-causative (The window broke by itself) from The
window broke (131). But why can he not use exactly the same sort of device

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that Ravin has employed, namely an explicit statement of non-causation
(A/(causation))? Just as Jackendoff can embed a GO function in a CAUSE
function, he could embed a GO function in an A/CAUSE function. Ravin's use
of (A/(causative)) is not something that follows naturally as a consequence
of anything in her theory; it is, instead, a formal device used to represent
what she wants it to. Repeatedly, Ravin's comparisons of her own approach
to JackendofPs suffer from an insufficient appreciation of the power of the
Jackendovian model. Also repeatedly, however, she highlights aspects of
meaning that others, including Jackendoff, would be well advised to note.
Her attention to the distinction between sense indeterminacy and ambiguity
provides a case in point.
Chapter 7 fleshes out the theory of semantic decomposition through
discussion of the configurational rules, the projection operations of
attachment and embedding, and the 'placedness' of predicates. It is in the
discussion of placedness that Ravin returns to the central question of
autonomy. She, correctly I would suggest, detects a dangerous circularity in
the non-autonomous, restrictive view of semantics. In the restrictive theories
assuming a necessary correspondence between a predicate's semantics and its
syntactic behaviour, the predicate's placedness and role-assigning properties
correspond to its syntactic complementation structure.
There is a danger of circularity in the establishment of such cor-
respondences, if the same syntactic criteria are used to determine both
syntactic complements and semantic arguments. To avoid circularity,
semantic arguments must be determined independently of syntax. Thus, in
determining how many arguments a predicate can (or must) take, it will
not do to look at the number of NPs and PPs it can take. Instead, the
placedness should be determined on the basis of full semantic rep-
resentations of the meaning of predicates. (158)
But, of course, the restrictive theories provide no apparatus for determining
'full semantic representations'. Neither can they respond to the range of
combinations of explicit and indeterminate arguments and possible syntactic
realizations that Ravin summarizes on pages 167-168. To the considerable
extent that Ravin's analysis is on the right track, this is a devastating
commentary on restrictive semantic theories.
While Chapter 7 gives evidence of the sophisticated lexical, compositional
analysis possible in the proposed theory, it also hints at a surprisingly
circumscribed view of meaning. On page 137 Ravin says

Taken as a whole, the set of configurational rules determines all possible

configurations of semantic markers and all possible relations among the
concepts represented by them. The set of rules provides a map of the
conceptual and semantic universe.

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 REVIEWS
This view of meaning as that conveyed in linguistic structures stands in sharp
contrast to JackendoflPs notion of the relationship of Conceptual Structure
not only to language but to other cognitive and perceptual domains as well.
A comparison of these views on meaning would have been highly desirable,
but it is not clear that Ravin appreciates the importance of the differences
between the two views. This becomes evident in the chapters analysing event
concepts (Chs. 8 and 9). Throughout, there is implicit as well as explicit
comparison with Jackendoff. The main criticism is that the Jackendovian
approach is too dependent on concepts derived from verbs of motion. This
may or may not ultimately prove to be true. Ravin, of course, focuses on the
problematic cases rather than on those where broad generalizations are
captured by use of the motional analyses. But nowhere does she address the
usefulness of the motional analysis in other, non-linguistic, cognitive
domains. In fact, in spite of Jackendoff s many lengthy discussions of the
importance of PATHS in a surprisingly diverse array of conceptual structure
domains, Ravin makes no mention of PATH whatsoever.
Certain other criticisms of Jackendoff seem simply to miss the point. The
discussion of stay (177-178) provides an example. Ravin's criticism of
Jackendoff involves the fact that the test for action, What Y did was X,
indicates that stay involves an action: What John did was stay in the room.
According to Ravin, this is a problem because stay does not express action;
it expresses a state. But this is exactly what Jackendoff denies (various
references, including 1983: 172; 1990: 43-44). STAY, like GO, is an EVENT
function, whereas BE, ORIENT and GOEXT are STATE functions. The evidence for
the EVENT status of stay (conceptual structure STAY) is the event test: What
happened was that John stayed in the room. Given that stay indicates an
EVENT, it is perfectly appropriate for the VP stay in the room to be treated as
an action. Ravin's intuitions about 'staying' do not coincide with
Jackendoff s proposed analysis. This is not a problem with the analysis,
however. This is actually one of the too few cases where we have semantic
tests to guide our analyses. And JackendoflPs analysis of stay is perfectly
consistent with the independent tests he suggests.
Other criticisms of Jackendoff need to be independently evaluated. This is
made difficult because Ravin, in her discussions, does not avail the reader of
the full power of Jackendoff s machinery. Almost nothing is said about the
various tiers of Conceptual Structure; nor is mention made of the binding of
variables within and across the tiers. It would be valuable to know
Jackendoffs own responses to Ravin's commentary. She presents several
challenges, for example, the two different senses of lose, exemplified by Beth
lost the doll and The plane lost altitude. Movement along a PATH away from
the subject would seem inappropriate for the second case. Along with the
consideration of lose, there are other challenges that Ravin sets for any
practitioner of lexical semantics. These include the treatment of internal

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versus external causation and the many varying explanations of instruments
with event predicates. No semantician ought to pass up the discussion
dedicated to these issues.
Perhaps inevitably, anyone persuaded to follow Ravin's proposed theory
must ask how the basic semantic concepts are to be determined. After
suggesting a decompositional semantic marker for read, Ravin says that
instigation cannot be distinguished from action for simple verbs like read.
She then goes on to recognize
the need for some method of reasoning in order to differentiate between
real semantic concepts, such as causation and action, and vague semantic
descriptions, such as 'instigator'. Real semantic concepts are those that
are needed in order to represent semantic properties of linguistic
expressions and semantic relations that hold among them. Thus, the
inspection of minimal semantic pairs establishes which concept is needed
in order to differentiate between two senses that would be indistinguishable
without it. Causation is what distinguishes the causative sense of break
from its non-causative sense. Action is what distinguishes 'watch the girl'
from 'see the girl'. But there are no minimal pairs requiring a distinction
between the presence and absence of instigation. It is therefore not a real
semantic concept. (174)
This minimal-pair criterion would, of course, be excellent. But how often can
it actually be put to use? Even Ravin herself, I think, would be hard pressed
to show minimal-pair evidence for such basic primitives as (Event), (Change),
(Condition), (Ability) and the like. Even for concepts that appear much
lower in the semantic markers, minimal pairs would be scarce, say for
(Scanning) or (Decoding) (used in the analysis of read). In spite of our desire
for independent criteria, perhaps we will always end up, to some extent,
juggling with jello.
Chapter 10 of the book recapitulates and summarizes the need for non-
restrictive semantics. This, after all, is the central and strongest point of the
book. The criticisms of the restrictive theories, particularly of the correlation
between semantic and syntactic structure, are especially well taken. The
attempt to distinguish the two non-restrictive theories (Jackendoff and the
present book) on adequacy grounds is considerably weaker. Weaker still are
the overviews of various theories (Fillmore, GB, MLP), but these are also
basically irrelevant to the central point to be made. I, as one personally
committed to the autonomous-systems view, would look forward to future
work by Ravin and would benefit from a careful, extended comparison of her
(and Katz's) work with that of Jackendoff (1990).

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REFERENCES
Chomsky, N. (1957). Syntactic structures. The Hague: Mouton.
Chomsky, N. (1981). Lectures on Government and Binding. Foris: Dordrecht.
Fillmore, C. J. (1968). The case for Case. In Bach, E. & Harms, R. T. (eds.) Universals in
linguistic theory. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. 1-90.
Fillmore, C. J. (1977). The case for Case reopened. In Cole, P. & Sadock, J. M. (eds.) Syntax and
semantics, vol. 8: Grammatical relations. New York: Academic Press. 59-82.
Freidin, R. (forthcoming). Foundations of generative syntax.
Hale, K. & Keyser, J. (1986). Some transitivity alternations in English. Lexicon Project Working
Papers, 7. MIT: Center for Cognitive Science.
Jackendoff, R. (1972). Semantic interpretation in generative grammar. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
Jackendoff, R. (1983). Semantics and cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Jackendoff, R. (1987). The status of thematic relations in linguistic theory. Lin 18. 369-411.
Jackendoff, R. (1990). Semantic structures. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Katz, J. J. & Fodor, J. A. (1963). The structure of a semantic theory. Language 39. 170-210.
Reprinted in Fodor, J. A. & Katz, J. J. (eds.) The structure of language. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1964. 479-518.
Levin, B. (ed.) (1985). Lexical semantics in review. MIT: Center for Cognitive Science.
Newmeyer, F. J. (1980). Linguistic theory in America. New York: Academic Press.
Reviewed by WENDY K. WILKINS,
Department of English,
Arizona State University.
(Received 10 July 1991)

Yen-hui Audrey Li, Order and constituency in Mandarin Chinese. (Studies

in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory.) Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990.
Pp. x + 222.

Chinese presents an interesting challenge to both a Greenbergian typological

and a Chomskyan generative approach to word-order universals. The basic
word order of Chinese appears to be SVO, prepositional and N-final. Put
another way, Chinese is head-initial within VPs and PPs but head-final
within NPs. This would run counter to many of the predictions produced by
both Greenberg's (1963) word-order correlations and Chomsky's (1981)
head parameter. In the book under review, Audrey Li proposes a Case
analysis of word order and constituent structure in Chinese within the
framework of Chomsky's Government-Binding (GB) theory. She attempts
to demonstrate that by imposing abstract Case onto the grammar of Chinese,
word order and constituent structure in the language can be given a
satisfactory explanation through the interaction of a number of modules
such as X-bar theory, Case theory and the head parameter. On the whole, the
book is an impressive work of scholarship, covering a wide range of data and
comprising a great deal of stimulating discussion. Even though I disagree
with Li on many aspects of her analysis, I have no hesitation in
recommending the book to anyone who is interested in Chinese syntax.
Chapter 1 begins with a brief discussion of the problems posed by Chinese

251