AUTHOR(S): Fabián, Constantino Martínez TITLE: Yaqui Coordination SERIES: LINCOM Studies in Native American Linguistics 59 PUBLISHER: Lincom GmbH YEAR: 2007
Lilián Guerrero, Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México
SUMMARY Yaqui coordination is a monographic book based on the author's Ph. D. dissertation entitled _Yaqui Coordination_ (University of Arizona, 2006). Within the Optimality Theory framework, the analysis focuses on the function and distribution of the coordinator 'into(ko)' at the level of sentence, verbs and nouns. The author claims that Yaqui sentence and verbal coordination is best analyzed as an adjunct rather than a coordinate structure type. Evidence for this claim comes from the fact that 'into(ko)' occupies several positions within the coordinated structures, and these variable positions question the function of the coordinator as a head.
The book is structured into an introduction, five chapters, and a conclusion; the latter addresses topics for future researchers.
The introduction sets up the basic ideas behind the analysis, and establishes the empirical and theoretical goals. Some basic information about the Yaqui language is also introduced, especially the distribution of the coordinator particle 'into(ko)' and different types of coordinate structures, e.g. coordination of like (equivalent) units, and coordination of unlike units. The rest of the chapter exposes the basic principles of Optimality Theory (OT).
Fabián centers his attention on defining coordination not as a coordinated relationship but as an adjunction process in which the coordinator can function either as a conjunction or as an adverb. In Yaqui, the coordinator 'into' – the most common and productive conjunction particle - can appear in three positions in relation to the second conjunct: (i) first position meaning at the beginning of the second conjunct, e.g. [Joan bwika] into [ Peo ye'e] 'John sings and Peter dances'; (ii) second position, after some element of the second conjunct, e.g. [Joan bwika] [Peo into ye'e]; and (iii) last position either as the last element in the first conjunct or at the end of the whole sentence, e.g. [Joan bwika] [Peo ye'e into(ko)]. The first position - the expected pattern - is easily explained in any theoretical account. From a formal syntactic point of view, the first conjunct is the specifier, the coordinator is the head and the second conjunct is its complement. The challenging data comes from the last two positions since the specifier-head-complement structure is not easy to accommodate.
Chapter two provides a literature review on coordination, all of the literature reviewed subscribes to formal syntactic approaches. The theoretical proposals commented on here can be organized into two major groups. The former agrees that a coordination structure is a headed construction where the head is the coordinator (cf. Abeillé 2003; Camacho 2003). The second group provides a different conception allied to the idea that the coordination is not a 'headed' construction. Instead, the position of the coordinator is irrelevant for the syntactic analysis (cf. Peterson 2004; Yuasa and Sadock 2002). The author explicitly follows Borsley (2005)'s observations among which include that coordinators have quite different combinatorial properties including a host-adjunct relation.
Chapter three describes the relevant data on Yaqui sentence coordination. The first part describes the distribution of the particle 'into'. Based on the author's corpus, 'into' occurs in first position under the following circumstances: (i) the grammatical subject is the same in both clauses, (ii) the subject is a pronoun, and (iii) there is not a topicalized element in the second conjunct sentence. The last point is based on Dedrick and Casad's (1999) observations. Accordingly, 'into' usually appears in second position when the subjects are different. The coordinator can finally appear at the end of the first conjunct or at the end of the second conjunct. It is here where the author claims that 'into' may express additional (adverbial) meanings, especially when accompanied with other particles such as 'boeytuk' ('because'), 'into juchi' ('and again'), 'ian into' ('and now'). Part of the evidence of segmenting the coordinator as attached to the first conjunct or in the middle of the two units is the possibility of a pause in the former. However, very few examples actually illustrate the co-occurrence of 'into' as the last element of the first conjunct and a pause following.
The second part of the chapter provides the analysis of this paradoxical data. First, several proposals about the structure of Yaqui coordination are mentioned. Then, the possibility of 'into' as the head coordinator is discarded, and its adverbial properties are highlighted. The author finally proposes an alternative analysis for the structure of coordination when 'into' appears in second position: ''the subject of the second conjunct has been fronted because of topicalization and is adjoined to CP. An additional adjunction process introduces a full CP (first sentence). This adjunction process is licensed by the presence of the feature [coord] in the CP'' (p. 123). Based on the adjunct-host relationship, the rest of the chapter tries to establish the relevant constraints and their ranking within the OT framework.
Chapter four moves to other structure types and introduces the notions of Ordinary Balanced Coordination and Unbalanced Coordination. It is shown that the Yaqui language does not allow the conjunction of individual verbal heads when unbalanced. The only apparent exception seems to involve a more complex construction, the so-called ''verbal chaining structures'' marked by -kai. As the author points out, such -kai constructions involve both subordinated and coordinated characteristics. However, the morpho-syntactic, semantic and pragmatic functions of this construction type are far from clear, and thus its interaction with coordination is still an open question in the Yaqui grammar.
Chapter five deals with nominal coordination and provides a background on nominal and verbal classes in Yaqui. It analyzes different instances of coordination at the phrase level, numbers in nouns and verbs, suppletive verbs, and coordinated phrases and verbal agreement. In the Uto-Aztecan family, in general, and in Yaqui, in particular, there are a dozen of suppletive verbs where the intransitive verbs agree in number with the subject and the transitive verb agrees in number with the object. The author's point here is to illustrate the behavior of such suppletive verbs with coordinated nouns. Except for a few cases of lexically plural nouns (e.g. 'lizards', 'shoes'), the expected pattern is found: coordinated nouns demand plural suppletive forms. For transitive verbs, a conflict may arise: coordinated nouns marked by -ta (object position) may not require suppletive forms. An OT analysis is proposed to solve this apparent case-number conflict.
The last chapter, a conclusion, reviews the main findings of the research and goes over the partial conclusions included at the end of each chapter. Finally, some topics waiting for future research are commented on.
EVALUATION This is an outstanding contribution to the syntactic description of a construction barely studied in the Yaqui grammar. The book has various strengths in several aspects, and contributes with relevant data to formal-oriented theories, in general, and to the Optimality Theory, in particular. The constant reference to others ' theoretical works undoubtedly enriches the theoretical claims in this book. At the same time, it gives the reader the opportunity to become acquainted with certain conceptual frameworks. In this vein, and in order to evaluate their advantages and drawbacks of these frameworks, it would be really stimulating if the author could have included some important references on the topic from less formal works (cf. Haspelmath 2007).
Some minor critical remarks which do not diminish the value of the work at all relate to the organization of the several subsections, and the repetitive contents and examples, which is sometimes distracting and confusing. A table illustrating the distribution frequency would help the reader to figure out which of the three basic positions of the coordinator is the most common and how subject identity may interact with such position preference. At the same time, in the sentential coordination section, several examples include a pause (a comma) between the two conjuncts, e.g. 'you played, and I slept'. Apparently, this is true independently of the coordinator position. In the absence of an explicit comment on this issue, one may wonder if there is a different intonational contour among the two sentential units and how it may impact the analysis. This is important given the fact that 'into' has a prominent pragmatic function in the language.
As previously noticed by Dedrick and Casad (1999), 'into' is also a pragmatic particle which may indicate focal elements. This is not the only element that appears in second position, since pronominal subjects usually appear after any first element in the clause. Except for few cases of data from Crumrine's (1961) texts, the examples come from direct elicitation. This kind of data is indeed necessary for exploring particular grammatical aspects - such as full coordinated nouns with suppletive verbs - structures that rarely appear in natural contexts. However, the inclusion of spontaneous data - especially from more recent oral texts and/or the same dialect as the consultants - would provide more insights on the discourse-pragmatic functions of the coordinator's distribution. Also, text data would allow the author to explore the interaction of the two aspects, the pragmatic functions of 'into' and the pragmatic function of the second position, which is not restricted to coordination. More importantly, data from actual oral texts would validate or refuse the hypothesis that the distribution of the coordinator is determined by the identity of the subjects, a claim that has not been observed yet cross-linguistically.
REFERENCES Abeillé, A. 2003. A lexicalist and construction based approach to coordination. In _Proceedings of HSPG Conference_, East Lansing, Michigan.
Borsley, R. D. 2005. Against ConjP. _Lingua_ 115, 461-482.
Camacho, J. 2003. _The structure of coordination: Conjunction and Agreement Phenomena in Spanish and Other Languages_ (_Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory_ 57). Dordrecth: Kluwer Academic Publisher.
Crumrine, J. 1961. _The phonology of Arizona Yaqui, with texts_ (_University of Arizona Anthropological Papers_ 5). Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Dedrick, J. M. and E. Casad. 1999. _Sonora Yaqui Language Structures_. Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
Haspelmath, M. 2007. Coordination. In _Language Typology and Linguistic Description_. Shopen, T. (Ed). Cambridge, MA: Cambridge University Press.
Martínez F. Constantino. 2006. _Yaqui Coordination_. Ph. D. Dissertation. University of Arizona.
Peterson, P. 2004. Coordination: consequences of a Lexical-Functional account. _Natural Language and Linguistic Theory_ 22: 643-679.
Yuasa, E. and J. Sadock (2002). Pseudo-subordination: A mismatch between syntax and semantics. _Journal of Linguistics_, 38: 87-111.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER Lilián Guerrero has a Ph.D. in Linguistics from the State University of New York at Buffalo (2005). She is an associated researcher at the Seminario de Lenguas Indígenas, in the Instituto de Investigaciones Filológicas-Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM). Her main academic interests have been related to the syntax and semantics of some Uto-Aztecan languages spoken in Northwest México, in particular, the Yaqui language. Her recent publications deal with the form and function of Yaqui complementation, and she is currently engaged in the study of certain properties of the argument structure in some of the Sonoran Uto-Aztecan languages.
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