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uni-erfurt.de>Feigenbaum, Susanne and Dennis Kurzon (2002), Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 50, John Benjamins, Hardback: ISBN: 1588111725, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: USD 90.00 Hardback: ISBN: 9027229562, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: EUR 100.00 Announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/13/13-2741.html Feigenbaum, Susanne and Dennis Kurzon (2002), Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context Series Title: Typological Studies in Language 50, John Benjamins, Hardback: ISBN: 1588111725, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: USD 90.00 Hardback: ISBN: 9027229562, Pages: vi, 304 pp., Price: EUR 100.00 St. Skopeteas, University of Erfurt, Germany Abstract: The growing interest in prepositions is reflected by this impressive collection of papers from leading scholars of various fields. The selected contributions of Prepositions in their Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Context focus on the local and temporal semantics of prepositions in relation to their context, too. Following an introduction which puts this new approach into a thematical and historical perspective, the volume presents fifteen studies in the following areas: The semantics of space dynamics (mainly on French prepositions); Language acquisition (aphasia and code-switching); Artificial intelligence (mainly of English prepositions); Specific languages: Hebrew (from a number of perspectives -- syntax, semiotics, and sociolinguistic impact on morphology), Maltese, the Melanesian English-based Creole Bislama, and Biblical translations into Judeo-Greek. Article 1. Title: Instability and the theory of semantic forms: Starting from the case of prepositions Author(s) : Yves-Marie Visetti and Pierre Cadiot Pages : 9-39 This article formulates a global semantic theory. The framework presented is based on Gestalt and phenomenological theories of perception and on the mathematical concepts of instability. The contribution of meaning in communication is described in a three-phases model: - 'motif' is the semantic entity corresponding to the entry of a sign in lexicon. It is a particular pattern of information structure that is repeated in all instances of a significatum. The following points are crucial: (a) Motifs are not invariant, but they have an instability to be stabilized in a particular interaction with natural language; motifs enable deviation (b) Motifs are neither figurative (cf. Talmy's schemes), nor abstract (cf. Langacker's configurations); they are patterns occuring in several instantiations of a polysemous entity (c) Motifs are dynamic, i.e. can be modified by their ongoing use in the communication (their modification is registered in semantic change). - 'profile' is the semantic entity including the interaction of motifs in a communicative context. In particular, motifs are getting stabilized through embedding in a syntagmatic unit and in a domain (music, business etc.), and through discourse organization (e.g. anaphors). - 'theme' is the result of profiling, the particular referential content that a sign takes in a certain occurrence. The article is not of particular interest for the study of prepositions, but it is a comprehensive outline of the semantic framework of Candiot and Visetti (2001). A case study on prepositions in terms of this framework is presented in article 2. Article 2. Title: Schematics and motifs in the semantics of prepositions Author(s) : Pierre Cadiot Pages : 41-57 This contribution is a case study on the French prepositions viewed in terms of the global semantic framework presented in article 1. The article deals with the French prepositions en, par, sur, sous, et contre. The analysis shows that: (a) there is no clear-cut distinction between spatial and non-spatial uses of prepositions and (b) the emic meaning of each preposition should be accessed in an immediate combination of schematic and intentional dimensions (cf. p.47). The description of each preposition aims at the identification of motifs (see article 1), that capture both spatial and non-spatial uses of prepositions. The uses of prepositions are subsumed under experiential types, e.g. the preposition contre displays the experiential types 'proximity with contact', 'opposition (contact)', 'exchange', 'proportion/comparison' (the methodological status of 'experiential types' is not explained in the article 1, that introduces the framework). At the next level of abstraction 'experiential types' are subsumed under a motif' in the case of preposition contre, the motif institutes the affinity of opposition and reconciliation (force/counter-force, posing/opposing). The case study presented in this article offers an illustrative application of the framework presented in article 1. The analysis presented is interesting especially with respect to the subsumption of spatial and non-spatial uses of prepositions. Article 3. Title: The theoretical status of prepositions: The case of the ''prospective use'' of in Author(s) : Franck Lebas Pages : 59-73 This article is a contribution to the view of prepositions as relational elements, that do not bear semantic content. This theoretical view on prepositions is traced back to Brondal and is very well represented in French structuralism (Guillaume 1964, Potiet, Martinet etc.). In particular, this article deals with prepositions like during or in that - in addition to their relational property - contribute also to the meaning of the utterance. The semantic content of similar prepositions is a crucial challenge for the framework that treats prepositions as units with only syntactic function. In order to capture these properties the article is based on the differentiation between intrinsic and extrinsic properties of linguistic signs (Cadiot & Nemo 1997 i.a.). Extrinsic properties are include knowledge about the significatum of the sign, that is not necessarily involved in the truth-conditional content. The article contains a case study on the French preposition dans discussing different uses of this preposition (with particular emphasis to the prospective temporal use) in the viewpoint, that its semantic properties are extrinsic ones. Article 4. Title: Temporal semantics of prepositions in context Author(s) : David S. Br�e and Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann Pages : 75-113 The article is based on a temporal logic developed by the authors and deals with the interaction between temporal prepositions and verbal predicates in English. The first part of the article (pp. 77-88) introduces a formal procedure for the determination of temporal semantics including tense and aspect. The second part of the article introduces several classes of temporal prepositions: - event time = time interval of the PP: at, on, in, during, throughout, - event time </> time interval of the PP: before, after - event time = in a range between time of reference and time of the PP: since, until, till, by. The article surveys the interaction between these temporal prepositions and aspect, type of event (verb class), and tense. Article 5. Title: Prepositions and context Author(s) : Ian E. Pratt-Hartmann and Nissim Francez Pager : 115-126 The article surveys the relationship between aspectual class of the verb and spatial adverbials in the framework of formal semantics of Davidson (1967) and Parsons (1990). The analysis results in an interesting correlation between aspectual class and spatial adjunct, namely: - the spatial adjunct of event- and activity reporting sentences serves the localization of the event/activity, - the spatial adjunct is applicable to state reporting sentences only in a mereological use, namely if the spatial adjunct can be interpreted as localizing a part of the localized object. Consider e.g.: ? Mary believes in homeopathy in the garden. The road is muddy near the church. Article 6. Title: Prepositional phrases as noun modifiers in contemporary Hebrew: Grammatical, semantic and pragmatic motivations Author(s) : Esther Borochovsky and Hava Reppen Pages: 127-143 This contribution deals with the use of Hebrew prepositional phrases as noun modifiers. The article presents an classification concerning the determination of the choice of preposition. - the choice of preposition is lexically determined by the head noun, e.g. nouns denoting semantic relations between at least two entities govern in Hebrew the preposition ben 'between'. - the choice of preposition is lexically determined by the modifier noun, e.g. nouns indicating the class/category in which the head belongs to, e.g. 'dogs FROM the kind that leads the blind' are introduced with a particular preposition in Hebrew. - the choice of preposition is semantically determined. This case holds in constructions that allow an alternation of two or more prepositions. If the alternation is used to make a semantic distinction is assumed to be semantic, the most typical example being the choice of spatial/temporal prepositions. If the possible prepositions are freely interchangeable without making any difference in the truth value of the expression, then the motivation for the choice of preposition is assumed to be pragmatic (every choice serves the profiling of a different perspective of the same information). Article 7. Title: The Hebrew prepositions mi-/min ''from, of'': Same or different? Author(s) : Yishai Tobin Pages: 145-169 This paper is a contribution to lexical semantics dealing with two partially synonymous prepositions of Hebrew, namely mi- and min 'from, of'. The author applies a methodology of semantic analysis developed by himself in previous publications (cf. Tobin 1990; 1994) in order to describe the opposition of both prepositions. The article includes a short but comprehensive overview of the theoretical framework and a detailed survey of empirical data from real communication, that are presented and discussed with additional information about their context. The analysis covers the macro-level of discourse and the micro-level of sentence. Use of prepositions in idioms and use in non-conventionalized utterances are also considered. The distinction of these prepositions is accounted in terms of the feature of ''semantic integrality'' assumed to be a fundamental feature of human cognition and perception. The preposition mi- is proved to be the marked form of the opposition and the preposition min the marked one. Article 8. Title: A contrastive analysis of French and Hebrew prepositions: The case of sans, bli-belo and lelo Author(s) : Susanne Feigenbaum Pages : 171-191 The article is an analysis of the use of the French preposition sans contrasted to its equivalents in Hebrew beli, belo and lelo. The preposition sans is shown to be polysemous: (a) it may be used as a trivalent operator, negating an event that is implied by the predicate: Il tonne sans pleuvoir 'it thunders without raining' (b) it may be used as a bivalent operator, negating an event that is not implied by the predicate, but presupposed through the context: Marcus attend en bas mais cette fois sans les billets pour le cinema 'Marcus is waiting downstairs, but this time without the tickets for the cinema' (c) it may be used as monovalent operator (in complex units, idioms, etc.): the prepositional phrase does not negate a presupposed event, but functions as a manner adverbial: Tu n'as pas très faim aujourd'hui, sinon tu aurais mange sans attendre. 'you are not very hungry today, otherwise you would have eaten immediately' The Hebrew equivalents of sans are several negative particles with partially overlapping uses. The distribution of the particles is partially conditioned by the syntactic environment, partially by the semantic properties, and partially by stylistic properties. Beli 'with not etc.' is a negative word used with NPs, infinitives, and clauses. Mibeli 'without etc.' is restricted to infinitives and clauses. Belo 'without etc.' is used with NPs, infinitives and clauses. And lelo 'lacking etc.' is used only with NPs. The most frequent negative word is lelo (=> lelo is unmarked). On the other hand, beli is used very frequent in idioms, and this is an evidence for its expressivity. Tentatively the unmarked preposition lelo is preferred in monovalent negation, whereas beli in plurivalent negation. In formal registers like literature or legal texts, the use of belo is preferred. Article 9. Title : A language in change: Declined prepositions in spoken Modern Hebrew as a case study Author(s) : Inbar Kimchi-Angert Pages : 193-207 This article presents an empirical study concerning the declension of prepositions in Hebrew. Hebrew prepositions are inflected for person (nominal origin) and may be divided into several declension classes according to the morphemes used for the declension: (a) identical to the noun in singular, (b) similar to the noun in singular, (c) like nouns in plural, and (d) other. In Contemporary Hebrew there is significant variation concerning he use of these declensions. The article presents empirical data from speakers with different demographic profiles and provides several generalizations about the intra-linguistic motivation (analogy, dissimilation, etc.) and the social distribution (age, sex, origin, education, etc.) of the deviations from the normative declension system. Article 10. Title : The French preposition in contact with Hebrew Author(s) : Miriam Ben-Rafael Pages : 209-229 This contribution considers the use of French prepositions in two cases of language contact between French and Hebrew: (a) acquisition of French as a second language by native Hebrew-speaking learners; (b) a variety of French (namely Franbreu) spoken by native French-speaking immigrants in Israel. The research considers deviations from Standard French in both cases with respect to (i) the semantics of prepositions with special emphasis to the highly grammaticalized French preposition ''à'' and (ii) the control of prepositions by the verb with special emphasis to the infinitive constructions. In the first case, there are significant instances of over-generalization of the use of preposition ''à''. In the second domain, the most striking deviation is the omission of the prepositions ''à'', and ''de'' in the infinitive constructions, e.g. il est possible () rester en Europe. From the comparison between French language acquisition and Franbreu results that the deviations are much more numerous in the case of acquisition. Article 11. Title : ''Preposition'' as functor: The case of long in Bislama Author(s) : Dennis Kurzon Pages : 231-248 The major theoretical point of this contribution concerns the subdivision of prepositions in lexical and non-lexical. The author discusses the distinction between prepositions that ''have full semantic meaning, i.e. those words with antonyms, e.g. after/before, and those that ''are highly polysemic and act syntactically more as functors'' (p. 232f.). With respect to this distinction the author studies empirical data from Bislama (Melanesian creole spoken in Vanuatu). In particular, the empirical data concern the Bislama preposition ''long'' and show that the use of this preposition is extremely polysemous so that its semantic value can be interpreted only with respect to the specific context. Based on this evidence the author concludes that the preposition long in Bislama has a principal syntactic function, namely ''to indicate a syntactic relationship between the verb and its complement, and sometimes between the verb and its modifiers'' (p. 246), but it is so polysemic, that it becomes semantically meaningless. Article 12. Title : Prepositions in modern Judeo-Greek (JG) Biblical translations Author(s) : Julia G. Krivoruchko Pages : 249-267 The article deals with the use of prepositions in Jewish translations of the Bible into Greek. The research is based on a modern translation (19th century). The article compares the use of the prepositions in the manuscript with the Standard Greek variety and the regional variety spoken in the environment, where the manuscript was compiled (Epirus). The translation is rather narrow, aiming at the preservation of the sense of the original text. The most important deviations reported in the article are not interferences from Hebrew, but (a) the reduction of the Greek prepositional paradigm in the translation and (b) deviations in the use of case, especially the generalization of accusative, characteristic for the northern Greek dialects. The article is of great empirical importance, since the variety of Greek presented is very marginally studied. Apart from the Biblical Judeo-Greek, that is the main subject of the contribution, the article provides also important evidence for the syntax of the variety of Greek that is assumed to be in contact with the variety of the studied document, namely the dialect of Epirus in 19th century. Article 13. Title : Quddiem and some remarks on grammatical aspects of Maltese prepositions Author(s) : Rami Saari Pages : 269-282 The article surveys the uses of Maltese prepositions with special emphasis to the preposition quddiem 'in front of'. The descriptive chapters deal with: - the declension of Maltese prepositions (suffixation through possessive pronouns), - the use of prepositions as adverbs (without a nominal argument), - the use of prepositions in word-formation (nouns, adjectives, verbs), - the relationship between prepositions and nouns (the most Maltese prepositions being of nominal origin), - the nominalization of prepositional phrases (=the use of prepositional phrases as arguments of prepositions). - the use of prepositional phrases in phraseologisms. Article 14. Title : Locative prepositions in language acquisition and aphasia Author(s) : Mark Leikin Pages : 283-297 This article studies the use of prepositions in first language acquisition and in language distortions (in particular aphasic patients). A number of verbal and non-verbal tasks have been used with native Russian speakers focusing on the use of locative prepositions/adverbs and the performance of object locating tasks. The most important results are substitutions of spatial prepositions in the performance. These substitutions are shown to be in line with a cognitive map of spatial relations, based on the semantic relations among them. EVALUATION OF THE VOLUME (a) Contents The edited collections covers a variety of subjects concerning the prepositions. The most articles deal with locative and temporal prepositions, but other semantic categories of prepositions are also studied in the volume (e.g. the French preposition sans in article 8). Several syntactic constructions are discussed in different articles such as the use of prepositional phrase as a verbal complement/adjunct as a nominal modifier, use of prepositions in word-formation, adverbial use of prepositions, etc. The object languages studied in the most articles are French and Modern Hebrew. A number of articles deal with other languages as well: English (article 4), Bislama (article 11), Biblical Judeo-Greek (article 12), Maltese (article 13), and Russian (article 14). The theoretical frameworks used in the individual contributions show also a significant variation. Article 5 provides an application of Davidsonian semantics, article 7 an application of the theory of Semantic Intergrality of the author, articles 1-2 outline and illustrate the semantic framework of Pierre Candiot, article 11 uses representations from X-bar syntax. A theoretical point with particular interest for the syntactic treatment of prepositions that is found in the most contributions in the volume, is the formal treatment of prepositions as functors (and not as heads of prepositional phrases) according to the French structuralist tradition (Guillaume, Martinet, Potier etc.). A discussion of this formal treatment in the introduction of the edition would be very useful, especially for readers that are not familiar with this theoretical view. However, the book provides an outline of this theoretical viewpoint in article 3. Many contributions show very innovative (and not yet sufficiently discussed in the literature) results about the prepositions. See e.g. the correlation between states/events and spatial adjuncts in article 5, or the classification concerning the determination of preposition in article 6 (though not indisputable viewpoint). Some articles are of great empirical interest such as article 12 on Judeo-Greek, or article 9 on Hebrew prepositional declensions in change. Several domains of linguistic research are represented in the articles of the volume, e.g. sociolinguistics (article 9, etc.), language description (article 11, 13, etc.), language contact (article 11, 12, etc.), first language acquisition (article 14), second language acquisition (article 10), language distortions (article 14), semiotics (article 1, 7, 8, etc.). Although the theoretical and interdisciplinary polyphony is indisputably one of the merits of the volume, the articles are rather independent contributions under the general topic ''prepositions'' than interrelated approaches from complementary perspectives/with complementary evidence. There are only very few cross-references between the articles in the collection. (b) Styles Concerning the styles of the handbook, the edition is very good with only a very few minor typographical errors (e.g. p. 115: a sentences; p. 151: prepostion). The general editorial policy tends rather to respect the choices of the individual contributors than to normalize the styles throughout the collection. E.g. some articles are preceded by an abstract (articles 4, 5, etc.), whereas other articles are not (articles 2, 11, etc.). The most articles have numerated headlines (e.g. articles 1, 2, 3, etc.), however not all (e.g. article 13). The same policy is followed with respect to the formal aspects of linguistic editing. Expressions in the object language are set in some contributions in italics, in other contributions in normal font. The morphological transcriptions use almost exclusively words in the book language (English) avoiding any abbreviations of grammatical terms. One contribution, namely article 13 on Maltese has abbreviations of grammatical terms as glosses (in this case a list of abbreviations would be useful, especially for the readers that are not familiar with, and do not know the flectional categories of Maltese; however, the abbreviations used are in general understandable). References Cadiot, P. & Visetti, Y.M. (2001), Pour une th�orie des formes s�mantiques : motifs, profils, thèmes. Paris : Presses Universitaires de France. Cadiot & Nemo (1997), Propri�t�s extrinsèques en s�mantique lexicale. Journal of French Language Studies, 7, 1-19. Davidson, D. (1967), The logical form of action sentences. IN: Rescher, N. (ed.), The Logic of Decision and Action. Pittsburgh: University Press Guillaume, G. (1964), Language et science du language. Paris: Nizet i.a. Martinet, A. (1985). Syntaxe g�n�rale, Colin, Paris Parsons, T. (1990), Events in the Semantics of English: a Study in Subatomic Semantics. Dordrecht: Kluwer Pottier, B. (1987), Th�orie et analyse en linguistique, Paris, Hachette Tobin, Y. (1990), Semiotics and Linguistics. London, New York: Longman Tobin, Y. (1994), Invariance, Markedness and Distinctive feature analysis: A Contrastive Study of Sign Systems in English and Hebrew. Amsterdam, Philadelphia: Benjamins ABOUT THE REVIEWER Stavros Skopeteas works at the University of Erfurt and is interested in linguistic typology, language change, formal syntax, and computational linguistics (Ph.D. dissertation 2002, "Spatial constructions in Greek: Language Change in Functional Perspective" [lang=German]).Mail to author|Respond to list|Read more issues|LINGUIST home page|Top of issue