Lexis Journal in English Lexicology

Book reviews | 2020 Recensions

Electronic version URL: http://journals.openedition.org/lexis/4416 DOI: 10.4000/lexis.4416 ISSN: 1951-6215

Publisher Université Jean Moulin - Lyon 3

Electronic reference Book reviews, 2020, Lexis [Online], connection on 11 April 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ lexis/4416; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/lexis.4416

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Alexeï KOSHELEV, Essays on the Evolutionary-Synthetic Theory of Language.On the Crisis in Theoretical Linguistics.Basic Meaning and the Language of Thought.The Unity of Lexical and Grammatical Polysemy Boston Academic Studies Press, 2019, 254 pages José Ramírez de Arellano

Keith ALLAN (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language Oxford University Press, 2019, 450 pages Frédérique Brisset

David CRYSTAL, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Third edition) Cambridge University Press, 2019, 506 pages Oscar Garcia-Marchena

Pius Ten HACKEN (ed.), The Semantics of Compounding Cambridge University Press, 2016, 264 pages Cathy Parc

Ingo PLAG, Word-Formation in English (2nd Edition) Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2018, 245 pages Cathy Parc

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Alexeï KOSHELEV, Essays on the Evolutionary-Synthetic Theory of Language.On the Crisis in Theoretical Linguistics.Basic Meaning and the Language of Thought.The Unity of Lexical and Grammatical Polysemy Boston Academic Studies Press, 2019, 254 pages

José Ramírez de Arellano

RÉFÉRENCE

Sandrine Sorlin L Essays on the Evolutionary-Synthetic Theory of Language. On the Crisis in Theoretical linguistics. Basic Meaning and the Language of Thought. The Unity of Lexical and Grammatical Polysemy. Academic Studies Press, Boston, 2019. ISBN : 978-1644690024, Prix : 91,73$, 254 pages

1 Cet ouvrage compte 254 pages, dont 23 correspondent à la bibliographie, 13 pages à la présentation, aux remerciements et à la table des matières. Il s’agit d’une traduction en anglais d’Aleksandr V. Kravchenko et de Jillian Smith, de l’ouvrage original en russe, Очерки эволюционно - синтетической теории языка, publié en 2017. Le titre comporte un pluriel (« Essays »), et les trois éléments du sous-titre laissent penser qu’il s’agit d’un recueil de trois essais distincts ayant pour point commun le fait de s’ancrer dans la Théorie évolutionnaire-synthétique du langage. En réalité il s’agit de trois thèmes principaux développés au long d’un ouvrage structuré en cinq chapitres.

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2 Le livre constitue la première présentation, dans une langue autre que le russe, de la théorie développée par l’auteur sur la base de ses travaux depuis 1989 dans les domaines de la linguistique cognitive, de la lexicologie et de la sémantique. Dans son argumentation théorique, ambitieuse et révolutionnaire, l’auteur défend l’apport explicatif de ses schémas face à ceux d’autres chercheurs appartenant aux aires russophone (Apresian, Mel’čuk) et anglophone (Lakoff, Wierzbicka). L’apport de la théorie évolutionnaire-synthétique du langage aux autres théories linguistiques est abordé dans la première partie du livre. Dans la préface, A. Koshelev décrit l’atomisation de la recherche en linguistique dans différentes théories, souvent incompatibles et sans lien entre elles, comme une situation désastreuse pour la linguistique et pour la recherche interdisciplinaire en général. La théorie évolutionnaire-synthétique est proposée, non seulement pour mieux rendre compte de certains phénomènes sémantiques, mais aussi pour apporter une voie de résolution aux clivages que connaît la linguistique en tant que discipline scientifique.

3 Cette forte visée théorique est clairement visible dans le contenu du Chapitre 1, intitulé On the contradictory nature of contemporary linguistic theories and how to change it for the better. En partant du principe que la linguistique théorique n’a, dans les 50 dernières années, pratiquement rien ajouté de nouveau aux faits universellement reconnus sur le langage en tant qu’objet d’étude global, l’auteur appelle à une théorie unifiée tenant compte des régularités diachroniques des fonctions linguistiques (et non seulement synchroniques) ainsi que des données recueillies sur les régularités fonctionnelles d’autres sous-systèmes humains. La réalité est pourtant celle d’une fragmentation de la recherche autour de théories mutuellement contradictoires, qui viennent le plus souvent remplacer d’autres théories plus anciennes - tombées généralement dans l’oubli sans avoir été pour autant réfutées – en proposant des paradigmes nouveaux de toutes pièces. Des approches comme celles de Saussure, Chomsky, Jackendoff, Lakoff, Wierzbicka et Mel’čuk diffèrent profondément dans les liens (d’inclusion, de modularité, d’autonomie, etc.) qu’elles établissent entre le langage et la pensée. Ces divergences en comportent d’autres lorsqu’il s’agit de rendre compte de phénomènes comme la polysémie ou d’émettre des hypothèses sur l’origine du langage. De surcroît, la fragmentation de la recherche en linguistique ne donne pas lieu à des polémiques fécondes, chaque courant ayant ses propres critères de validité. Cette problématique serait liée au fait que la linguistique peut être perçue comme une science naturelle ou selon qu’elle est perçue comme appartenant, au contraire, au domaine des humanités. L’auteur défend la pertinence et la vigueur de cet ancien débat et plaide pour la première option, en s’appuyant sur des citations de Meillet [1928], Shor [1926] ou Müller [1885]. Bien que des caractéristiques du langage telles que sa dépendance de l’entourage ou la variété et l’évolution rapide de ses différentes versions (les langues) l’éloignent des sciences naturelles, elles le rapprochent des sciences cognitives, que Koshelev défend comme étant d’une objectivité plus rigoureuse que les autres sciences humaines. C’est le détournement des recherches linguistiques d’aspects inhérents au langage tels que l’ontogénèse et la diachronie qu’il faut situer à l’origine de l’arbitraire des modèles actuels. Une théorie unifiée devrait finalement apparaître, objectivisée dans la connaissance des étapes du développement cognitif de l’enfant, question pour laquelle « il serait difficile de construire plus de deux ou trois modèles synthétiques » différents.

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4 Le Chapitre 2, intitulé A reference-based approach to describing notional words, aborde la sémantique des objets domestiques ou naturels courants et des verbes de mouvement et d’orientation en russe. Des substantifs tels que stul (chaise) et kreslo (fauteuil) servent d’exemple à l’auteur pour étayer sa théorie de la structure duale du signifié lexical. Le signifié de base (basic meaning) des noms et verbes « sensoriels » contient en même temps un prototype, fondé sur les référents les plus typiques du mot, et une fonction qui caractérise tous les référents, typiques ou non. La lexicographie tend à décrire les prototypes et peine à rendre compte des cas atypiques qui ne suscitent, en revanche, aucune hésitation de la part des locuteurs. Ainsi, une chaise se caractérise non seulement par ses quatre pieds, son siège, son dossier et son manque de rebords (traits prototypiques) mais tout autant par la position semi-relaxée que l’on prend quand on y est assis. Cette position, qui permet d’accomplir des tâches nécessitant l’activité des mains, constitue la fonction et s’avère être bien plus significative que l’absence de rebords pour distinguer une chaise d’un fauteuil, ce dernier impliquant une position relaxée, comme en attestent les images de chaises et fauteuils atypiques que l’on trouve dans ces pages. Cette dualité du signifié ne concerne pas que les substantifs. Le cas de verbes comme bežat (courir), dont le prototype n’est pas représentatif de cas comme celui d’une personne très âgée qui se hâte avec difficulté vers la porte du bus, appelle à distinguer l’aspect cinématique de l’action de son aspect dynamique. Contrairement au cas prototypique, la personne âgée ne décollera pas du sol, mais les deux cas auront en commun le moteur et le motif ou, autrement dit, la fonction, à laquelle revient la caractérisation ultime de l’action. Mais la question des signifiés de base ne peut que rappeler la notion des signifiés dérivés, de la métaphore, la métonymie et la polysémie. Ici, l’auteur montre comment les usages figurés créatifs sont davantage fondés sur la fonction que sur le prototype, mais les exemples fournis semblent particuliers au russe. Enfin, le supplément Three contemporary approaches to lexical polysemy (p. 127) confronte l’approche de l’auteur à celles de l’École Sémantique de Moscou, de George Lakoff et de Vyvyan Evans. A. Koshelev se montre d’accord avec Evans sur la nécessité d’une hiérarchie entre les usages littéraux et figurés, et critique l’approche de l’École de Moscou, fondée sur une homogénéité typologique et génétique de tous les usages. L’approche des catégories sémantiques radiales de Lakoff, qui ne nie pas les rapports génétiques entre les signifiés, aurait, quant à elle, tort de postuler qu’aucun principe général ne permet d’identifier le cas dérivé et le cas central. A. Koshelev déplore à ce propos l’absence d’une théorie de la motivation. Le chapitre fournit en annexe la correspondance épistolaire entre l’auteur et I. A. Mel’čuk en 1995, très éclairante et amène, ainsi qu’une description des phénomènes primaires du développement cognitif. Les expériences citées montrent que certaines notions cognitives telles que la contigüité ou la causalité sont acquises par l’enfant bien avant qu’il puisse commencer à se servir du langage, ce qui vient renforcer le modèle de Koshelev. Les caractéristiques du signe seraient ainsi redevables de celles du référent, alors que des catégories intermédiaires – dont Mel’čuk ne peut pas se passer – telles que le concept ou le signifié saussurien, ne devraient pas avoir une place prééminente.

5 Le Chapitre 3, Basic-level concepts as the neurobiological codes for memory, discute de l’approche développée par Lakoff et d’autres linguistes, pour qui tout concept de base serait composé d’une forme globale et d’une interaction physique humaine. Cette approche duale du concept, qui pourrait paraître en accord total avec celle présentée

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par l’auteur dans les chapitres précédents, est néanmoins critiquée comme incomplète. En prenant pour exemple le concept Stul (chaise), Koshelev affirme la nécessité de dédoubler le binôme forme globale + interaction en quatre catégories : la forme globale serait couplée à la fonction de l’objet, et l’interaction serait, à son tour, couplée à l’état psychophysique du sujet interagissant. Dans une explication qui rappelle la distinction entre cinématique et dynamique, la fonction de l’objet (permettre à une personne de s’asseoir d’une certaine manière visuellement reconnaissable « de dehors ») est à distinguer de l’interaction entre la personne et l’objet (déterminée par la manière dont la pesanteur du corps est rencontrée par la chaise) et de l’état psychophysique qui l’accompagne (semi-relaxation, disponibilité pour travailler sur une table, etc.). Ce système sémantique aux composantes indépendantes serait spécifique à l’être humain, selon les expériences neurobiologiques menées par Tsien [2008] avec des souris. En effet, les neurones de reconnaissance cognitive des souris semblent ne plus s’activer devant certains objets une fois qu’elles ont constaté l’impossibilité d’interagir avec eux. Enfin, le couplage du critère du prototype avec celui de la fonction peut avoir l’avantage de résoudre l’apparente contradiction entre le modèle de Lakoff, fondé sur des concepts flous par nature, et celui de Wierzbicka, qui s’appuie sur des catégories strictes : les catégories cognitives humaines sont à la fois floues (fondées sur des prototypes) et strictes (fondées sur des fonctions).

6 Le Chapitre 4 s’intitule Elements of a sensory grammar et aborde la valeur sémantique du génitif nominal russe lorsqu’il désigne la partie d’un tout. Des expressions comme dver’ kuxni (la porte de la cuisine) imposent un génitif en russe, alors que d’autres, comme koridornaja dver’ (la porte du couloir), l’interdisent et présentent, en revanche, une terminaison adjectivale. L’explication proposée par l’auteur réside dans le rôle fonctionnel essentiel, définitoire, de la porte comme composante de la cuisine (ou de toute autre pièce), un rôle accessoire dans le cas du couloir, puisque l’on peut imaginer des couloirs sans portes. Fort des nombreux exemples lexicaux analysés pour des mots « sensoriels » tels que les substantifs signifiant des objets ou les verbes de mouvement, Koshelev propose ensuite d’appliquer également la structure du signifié de base (prototype perceptif + fonction) à des phénomènes grammaticaux tels que la transitivité ou la réflexivité. Des auteurs comme Slobin, Givón, et surtout Wierzbicka, proposent une définition de la transitivité comme le fait que quelqu’un fasse quelque chose à quelque chose et produise ainsi sur ce quelque chose des conséquences voulues. Wierzbicka conçoit sa définition comme étant de nature prototypique, tout éloignement de ce cas de figure devant comporter une diminution des traits formels de la transitivité, tels que l’assignation de cas ou la viabilité de la voix passive. En cohérence avec son approche lexicale, Koshelev propose de coupler la valeur prototypique de la définition, qui ne rend compte que des cas typiques de transitivité, avec une valeur fonctionnelle pouvant couvrir la totalité des cas de transitivité. Cette valeur fonctionnelle serait déterminée par l’interprétation que l’agent fait de son action, les conséquences de celle-ci devant être pertinentes pour lui et pour son but. Des phénomènes de transitivité où l’objet ne subit pas de transformation, comme dans Mal’čik čitaet knigu (le garçon lit un livre) seraient ainsi expliqués, puisque le changement qui s’y produit n’est pertinent que pour le sujet de la phrase.

7 Le cinquième et dernier chapitre s’intitule On the single structure of lexical meanings of nouns and verbs. L’auteur développe ici son analyse métamérique de la structure sémantique en systématisant son concept de fonction. Le chapitre précédent présentait l’hypothèse que nous divisons un objet dans ses différentes parties en suivant la

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fonction générale de l’objet, composée ainsi de la somme des fonctions de ces parties. La composition d’un objet serait quelque chose d’unique et hiérarchisée, ayant pour centre la partie dominante dans la réalisation de la fonction principale de l’objet (par exemple, le siège dans une chaise). Les autres parties contribuant à la fonction principale sont attachées à la partie centrale par leur relation fonctionnelle. Ainsi, le dossier et les pieds d’une chaise sont liés au siège d’une manière spécifique, alors que d’autres points de jonction, par exemple entre les différents pieds ou entre les pieds arrière et le dossier sont insignifiants pour la fonction générale de la chaise. Koshelev insiste alors sur la primatie de cette valeur fonctionnelle dans la division de l’objet, notamment par rapport à d’autres telles que la forme physique de ses parties : les pieds d’une chaise peuvent présenter des formes très différentes (plus ou moins allongés, plus ou moins fins...), et un exemple extrême en seraient les pieds sphériques d’un fauteil, que l’on ne manque pourtant pas de nommer par le même mot. Cette argumentation s’appuie, de surcroît, sur des recherches en développement cognitif chez l’enfant (voir Landau et al. [1988 : 299-321]), en cohérence avec la vocation objectiviste et unificatrice de l’ouvrage.

8 Il s’agit, en conclusion, d’une excellente contribution à la compréhension des faits sémantiques et de leur fondement cognitif. Parmi les phénomènes grammaticaux analysés, le génitif nominal russe occupe une place importante, ce qui n’est pas sans renvoyer à l’ancrage de l’ouvrage dans le débat scientifique russophone. Un atout précieux de la publication de ces analyses se trouve non seulement dans l’amplification et la fluidité du débat scientifique mais, aussi, dans sa présentation de phénomènes linguistiques propres à une langue à forte flexion nominale et sans article (absents des principales langues occidentales). À ce propos, on peut regretter le fait que presque toutes les références extérieures à l’aire russophone appartiennent à l’aire anglophone, illustrant un rapport excessivement satellitaire pour un ouvrage qui se propose de prendre une place de consensus dans la recherche en linguistique. Aussi peut-on, en étant d’accord avec l’auteur dans la nécessite d’appuyer la recherche en linguistique sur l’étude d’autres systèmes, observer la focalisation exclusive sur la cognition ainsi que l’absence de toute mention aux dimensions sociolinguistique, communicative, pragmatique ou historique. Sur ce dernier point on ressent, malgré les quelques remarques ponctuelles, le peu de place accordée à l’analyse diachronique, compte tenu des prétentions très explicites de la Théorie Évolutionnaire-Synthétique du Langage pour dépasser le clivage synchronie-diachronie.

9 Peut-être, enfin, que cet ouvrage ne parviendra pas de son seul poids à opérer l’unification du champ de la recherche en linguistique recherchée par A. Koshelev. En tout état de cause, sa lecture passionnante et éclairante, tout comme la solidité et l’originalité des analyses qu’il contient, le vouent à devenir une référence incontournable dans le domaine de la linguistique cognitive.

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BIBLIOGRAPHIE

BROWN Roger, 1965, Social Psychology, New York: Free Press.

GIVÓN Talmy, 1990, Syntax: A Functional-typological Introduction, Vol. 2, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

LAKOFF George, 1987, Women, Fire and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

LANDAU Barbara, SMITH Linda B. & JONES Susan S., 1988, “The importance of shape in early lexical learning”, Cognitive Development, 3, Vol. 3, Elsevier, 299-321.

MEILLET Antoine, 1928, « Sur la terminologie de la morphologie générale », Revue des études hongroises 6.

MÜLLER Friedrich Max, 1885, Lectures on the Science of Language Vol. 2, London: Longmans, Green, and Company.

SHOR P. O., 1926, “Krisis sovremennoj lingvistiki”, Jafetičeskij Sbornik Vol. 5, Leningrade: Jafetičeskij Institut RAN, 32-71.

SLOBIN Dan Isaac, 1982, “The origin of grammatical encoding of events”, in HOPPER Paul J. & THOMPSON Sandra A. (Eds.), Studies in Transitivity, New York: Academic Press, 409-422.

TSIEN Joe Z., 2008, “Neural coding of episodic memory”, in DERE Ekrem, EASTON Alexander, NADEL Lynn & HUSTON Joe (Eds.), Handbook of Episodic Memory, Amsterdam: Elsevier, 399-416.

WIERZBICKA Anna, 1990, “Prototypes save: on the uses and abuses of the notion of ‘prototype’ in linguistics and related fields [Semantic universals and description of languages]” in TSOHATSIDIS Savas L. (Ed.), Meaning and Prototypes: Studies in Linguistic Categorization, New York: Routledge, 347-367.

WIERZBICKA Anna, 1996, Semantics: Primes and Universals. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

AUTEURS

JOSÉ RAMÍREZ DE ARELLANO José Ramírez de Arellano, Université de Paris Diderot, France José Ramírez de Arellano est actuellement doctorant à l’Université de Paris Diderot

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Keith ALLAN (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language Oxford University Press, 2019, 450 pages

Frédérique Brisset

RÉFÉRENCE

Keith Allan (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Taboo Words and Language. Oxford University Press, Oxford Handbooks in Linguistics, Oxford, 2019. ISBN : 978-0-19-880819-0, Prix : 130 € / £110, 450 pages.

1 Dès l’enfance, les mots tabous exercent une fascination sur l’être humain, qui s’exerce ensuite à en maîtriser l’usage au fil de son éducation sociale. Ce répertoire offre donc un champ d’étude vaste et sans cesse renouvelé, du fait de sa relativité géographique et diachronique, même si certains invariants demeurent. Le volume présenté ici rassemble vingt contributions de chercheurs internationaux qui en explorent les tenants et aboutissants selon des perspectives très variées, linguistiques bien sûr, déclinées également en sociolinguistique et neurolinguistique, mais aussi philosophique, psychologique, anthropologique, théologique ou traductologique, reflétant en cela la dimension contextuelle du concept même de tabou : comme le souligne dans son introduction le directeur de l’ouvrage, Keith Allan, ce qui est sujet à caution est en effet l’usage de ces dysphémismes en interaction (p. 2).

2 Cette dimension renvoie à l’étymologie du mot, tabu, importé du tongan en anglais par James Cook en 1777 : The word was used among the so-called Friendly Islanders – as an adjective – of items set aside for the use of priests and potentates. [...]. In importing the word he gave it a more general purpose, claiming it ‘has a very comprehensive meaning; but, in general, signifies that a thing is forbidden’ (Hitchings, 2009).

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3 Allan conclut son panorama introductif sur l’influence de ces tabous sur l’évolution des langues, notamment via la création d’euphémismes et métaphores populaires.

4 Ce riche volume s’emploie ainsi à décrire et analyser les tabous langagiers, principalement en langue anglaise, comprendre leurs statuts et emplois et les stratégies d’évitement qui en découlent dans leur gestion collective et individuelle, en 20 chapitres complétés par une bibliographie de près de 50 pages et un index des noms propres, lexèmes et notions de 10 pages.

5 Jonathan Culpeper explore un premier angle avec « Taboo language and impoliteness ». En compulsant la littérature scientifique sur le concept de politesse, il montre comment l’impolitesse ne saurait se réduire à la simple négation de son contraire, car cette stratégie attaque la face sociale, au sens goffmanien. Dans ce cadre, les mots tabous, bien que souvent semi- ou dé-sémantisés, jouent le rôle fréquent d’intensifieurs, que ce soit en emploi adjectival ou adverbial, comme le montrent les recherches en collocation ; ils actent l’intention agressive sans ambiguïté sur le plan phatique (via les traits identitaires de l’interlocuteur, par exemple, dans les insultes racistes).

6 Un tabou majeur est ensuite traité par Eliecer Crespo-Fernández dans « Taboos in speaking of sex and sexuality ». Les métaphores sont multiples dans ces champs, qu’elles soient euphémisantes ou dysphémisantes, selon les milieux et époques (voir les dénominations imagées des parties génitales). L’auteur explore le registre des pratiques sexuelles « non conventionnelles », qui lie explicitement sexe et animalité, en opposition aux diktats sociaux, moraux et religieux, telles les désignations d’homosexuel.le.s. Il relève de façon pertinente dans tous ces sous-champs la récurrence de sèmes porteurs dans les métaphores, « travail, chaleur, contenants, voyage, nourriture et alimentation, animaux, guerre et violence, outils, jeu/jouet et fleurs », dont la diversité reflète la complexité de la sexualité humaine (p. 60).

7 Le registre du rapport au corps est reconnu comme le plus producteur d’euphémismes parmi les notions taboues [Vince 1991], il n’est donc pas surprenant de trouver un champ lexical connexe abordé par Réka Benczes & Kate Burridge dans « Speaking of disease and death ». La récurrence périphrastique s’y explique par la peur induite par ces évènements biologiques, parfois devenue superstition, et le choix des métaphores influe sur les politiques de prévention via l’attitude des malades potentiels (p. 62). Les auteures se penchent sur trois groupes de pathologies stigmatisantes : SIDA, cancer et maladies mentales. La première s’est trouvée d’emblée confondue pour le public avec des communautés « perverses et dangereuses » : homosexuels, drogués, prostitués. Si le cancer paraît mieux accepté socialement, les avis d’obsèques fort périphrastiques témoignent de sa perception problématique (p. 66). Les paraphrases ritualisées autour des décès marquent l’inconfort face à un phénomène pourtant universel, façon de contourner l’incontournable, même en exploitant la visée humoristique de certaines images lexicalisées, comme celles personnifiant la mort dans de nombreuses langues- cultures (p. 73).

8 Ces trois premières études posent de facto la question des ressorts à l’œuvre dans l’expression des tabous, explorés par Timothy B. Jay avec « The psychology of expressing and interpreting linguistic taboos », qui introduit ainsi le bilan de 45 années de recherche ouvrant sur les neurosciences, et plaide pour une fécondation croisée des travaux sur le sujet, avec une prise en compte des facteurs contextuels comme variables affectant la production et la compréhension des tabous langagiers (p. 94).

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9 La conscience de ceux-ci se construit avec l’âge, comme il l’établit dans un second chapitre, « Taboo language awareness in early childhood ». Intimement liée à ce stade à l’expression des émotions, la construction des répertoires enfantins de ‘gros mots’ évolue ensuite, posant la question de leur perception et leur apprentissage. Jay considère aussi les limites éthiques et pragmatiques du recueil de données face à de jeunes enfants, ce qui explique la relative rareté des recherches en ce domaine, et préconise d’ouvrir ce champ sur la prise en compte du genre, l’usage d’une LV2 et une plus grande variété de populations aux plans ethnique, religieux, géographique (p. 107).

10 Le plaisir transgressif de l’usage des jurons, s’il survient tôt dans l’existence, ne se limite pas à cette tranche d’âge, et est exploré dans « Swearing and the brain », par Shlomit Ritz Finkelstein. La recherche clinique en neurophysiologie sur les désordres induits par l’aphasie, le syndrome de Tourette, la maladie d’Alzheimer et les traumatismes cérébraux révèle une connexion entre ces pathologies et l’usage d’interjections, due notamment aux atteintes à l’un des hémisphères cérébraux et aux variations hormonales et/ou de neuro-transmetteurs tels que dopamine et sérotonine. Finkelstein soumet deux hypothèses prometteuses pour expliquer leur lien avec la production de jurons : la concurrence entre ce comportement et l’agressivité physique comme mode de gestion de la douleur, et la place de l’interjection dans l’évolution du langage humain, entre vocalisation non verbale (rire, cri, pleurs) et langage articulé (p. 138).

11 Qu’en est-il alors des tabous liés à et usités par les communautés de sourds, sujet traité par Jami N. Fisher, Gene Mirus, & Donna Jo Napoli dans « Sticky: Taboo topics in deaf communities » ? Ils peuvent revêtir une dimension identitaire par rapport aux ‘entendants’, et les auteurs, dans leur vaste étude descriptive, insistent sur le rôle des échanges en langue des signes, qui permettent, entre autres, de traiter des tabous entre membres de la communauté des signeurs, en laissant une certaine latitude par rapport au public extérieur.

12 Les quatre essais suivants considèrent les tabous langagiers d’un point de vue linguistique : grammaire, impact sur l’évolution diachronique des langues, traduction, ou usage en langue seconde sont abordés successivement par Jack Hoeksema, Kate Burridge & Réka Benczes, Pedro J. Chamizo Domínguez et Jean-Marc Dewaele.

13 Le premier, dans « Taboo terms and their grammar » mène d’abord une étude contrastive entre anglais, allemand et néerlandais : si les interjections sont d’un emploi assez universel, pour leur fonction phatique, de nombreuses constructions syntaxiques ou lexicales récentes, comme l’affixation de mots tabous pour marquer l’emphase ou le degré par exemple, contribuent à et témoignent de l’évolution des emplois de ce registre dans le groupe des langues germaniques. Malédictions, injures, questions ou ordres emphatiques sont ici étudiés via des traductions comparées dans les trois langues.

14 Burridge & Benczes, dans « Taboo as a driver of language change », développent une approche historique, partant du postulat que son et sens sont intimement liés dans l’imaginaire des locuteurs. Leur étude de cas sur le lexème « cunt » illustre les paradoxes générateurs d’euphémismes et orthophémismes fondés, entre autres, sur les procédés lexicogéniques d’emprunt, métaphore et métonymie : voués à disparaître cycliquement selon un phénomène d’usure et d’atténuation sémantique mais aussi phonétique, ils sont remplacés par d’autres, dont l’obscénité décroît de même au fil du temps, même si certains ont une capacité de résistance étonnante et inexpliquée.

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15 Ces spécificités sont un des problèmes posés au traducteur, comme l’expose Chamizo Dominguez. La traduction des mots tabous a fait l’objet de maintes recherches ([Vidalenc 2004], [Scandura 2004], [Pettit 2005]), mais l’auteur distingue ici les mots tabous lexicalisés de ceux à usage occasionnel, en insistant sur la charge connotative, souvent loin du sens littéral initial, dont la polysémie présente un piège traductif. Du traducteur ‘créatif’ à l’(auto)-censeur, il illustre le dilemme auquel il faut faire face, avec des exemples fort variés, d’Homère à Descartes, en passant par Hergé ou une sit- com britannique, balayant anglais, espagnol, grec classique, français ou bas-breton.

16 La force perlocutoire du mot tabou est en effet perçue diversement en L1 et L2, sujet du chapitre signé Jean-Marc Dewaele : ce peut être dû à un manque de données contextuelles ou de maîtrise de la langue sur le plan socio-pragmatique ou linguistique, mais aussi à la charge affective inhérente à chaque langue pour le locuteur, comme le montre l’examen des réactions physiologiques à leur écoute. L’auteur souligne ainsi la complexité de leur emploi, et ipso facto la vulnérabilité des locuteurs seconds dans l’usage de ces lexèmes et collocations.

17 Suit un ensemble orienté sur les aspects idéologiques et philosophiques, incluant « Philosophical investigations of the taboo of insult » par Luvell Anderson, « Religious and ideologically motivated taboos » de Keith Allan et « Speech or conduct?: Law, censorship, and taboo language » par Christopher Hutton.

18 Le premier concerne les insultes, qu’Anderson définit comme manquement à une attente raisonnable en termes de comportement lors d’une interaction sociale. Il y intègre ainsi des échanges sans aucun vocable insultant, mais impliquant un présupposé totalement intégré par connivence entre le locuteur et ses auditeurs, comme dans les énoncés racistes. L’effet pragmatique du propos est alors assuré (la portée restrictive de « but » dans certaines énoncés ou les détails paraverbaux tels qu’un ton sarcastique à l’émission sont révélateurs), invitant implicitement l’auditoire à user de son imagination pour en inférer le caractère insultant.

19 Keith Allan poursuit avec un chapitre consacré aux tabous religieux, en posant leurs points communs et différences avec les tabous idéologiques. Comportementaux ou linguistiques, les premiers sont nombreux et imposent des restrictions, au nom d’une morale confinant parfois au fanatisme : leur transgression peut avoir des conséquences dramatiques dans certains cadres, comme le montre l’auteur avec l’exemple des martyrs, des procès en hérésie ou apostasie. De ce fait, le blasphème invite à maints euphémismes pour éviter ces extrêmes : Tout est une question de situation, et toute situation délicate renferme une potentialité euphémique [Vince 1991].

20 L’approche juridique de Christopher Hutton éclaire ensuite le concept de liberté d’expression, et son pendant, la censure au nom de l’ordre public et la protection de groupes sociaux vulnérables tels les enfants, en Australie, Grande-Bretagne et aux États-Unis. Historiquement, la common law s’est d’abord attachée au blasphème ; son acception s’est élargie au fil de siècles de jurisprudence, pour se restreindre ensuite au ‘profit’ du délit d’obscénité, dans les échanges publics, mais aussi les médias écrits et audiovisuels, voire les noms de marques ou de personnes : à chaque fois, en ligne de mire, la protection de la liberté d’expression mais aussi l’évaluation du droit et des limites du « speech-as-conduct » en tant que risque porté à l’ordre public (p. 284). Et quand la loi devient plus tolérante, ce sont les entreprises qui fixent leurs propres règles, dans le cyberespace par exemple.

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21 Les caractéristiques exposées ci-avant expliquent la surexposition de ces registres dans la vie publique, comme le montrent Gabriele Azzaro avec « Taboo language in books, films, and the media », Toby & Barnaby Ralph dans « Taboos and bad language in the mouths of politicians and in advertising », Elijah Wald avec « Taboo language used as banter » et Barry J. Blake dans « Taboo language as source of comedy ».

22 Le premier s’intéresse aux injures et jurons dans l’édition, le cinéma et les médias et à leur gestion par les organismes de contrôle au Royaume-Uni, en Australie et aux États- Unis. Cette étude chronologique met en évidence des glissements au fil du temps, de la censure au classement en passant par l’auto-régulation professionnelle, et de ‘l’appel au divin’ vers des expressions taboues à connotation sexuelle ou excrétoire, relativité diachronique constatée par maints auteurs, dont Steiner [1998] : The spectrum of permissible expression as against that which is taboo shifts perpetually.

23 La typologie des supports et des publics visés, les modalités de diffusion sont ici des critères déterminants pour en évaluer le degré d’acceptabilité.

24 Publicitaires et figures politiques sont confrontés aux mêmes enjeux d’exposition publique, comme le soulignent ensuite Toby & Barnaby Ralph. La remise en cause du tabou, qu’il soit scatologique, sexuel ou racial, peut alors découler de stratégies de démarcation assumées, mais risquées, d’autant que les critères de tolérance évoluent dans le temps. Ce chapitre s’avère un peu décevant, car la succession d’exemples proposés, trop souvent descriptive et quasi anecdotique, n’amène pas les auteurs à en tirer des conclusions transposables.

25 Les deux contributions suivantes étudient les tabous langagiers comme source de comique, le premier en tant qu’outils de raillerie, et le second comme vecteurs humoristiques dans le cadre du théâtre ou des sketches. Wald se consacre d’abord à la limite ténue entre boniment humoristique et agressivité, et aux origines anthropologiques de cette pratique africaine, devenue aux États-Unis le ressort des « dozens » (voir Morice [2012]), tournois d’insultes salaces ancêtres des battles de rappeurs, dans lesquels les tabous les plus variés sont remis en cause, à commencer par l’inceste et la figure de la mère. Il faut y voir un affichage communautaire, théâtralisé, destiné autant à l’interlocuteur qu’aux témoins de ces échanges, récepteurs plus ou moins aptes à apprécier la valeur ludique de la transgression.

26 Cette valeur est fondamentale dans l’usage de mots tabous par les humoristes, comme le montre Blake au chapitre 19. Les allusions sexuelles, par exemple, abondent chez les auteurs comiques, de Chaucer aux Monty Python, en passant par Shakespeare et Shaw, par le biais parfois de malapropismes ou de jeux polysémiques qui exploitent sous- entendus et connivence avec le public pour leur appréhension par celui-ci, façons de transgresser le tabou sans explicitement le briser.

27 Pour conclure, Stanley H. Brandes propose « An anthropological approach to taboo words and language ». Plus spécialement dédié aux « joking relationships » déjà évoquées par Wald (cf. supra) et à leur rôle dans les relations intra- et extra-communautaires, il balaie les pratiques africaines, amérindiennes ou afro-américaines, à travers l’exemple de surnoms ou de boutades à base ethnique, mais aussi des joutes de « dozens » : le tabou prend alors un caractère quasi artistique, dont Brandes note la dimension culturelle, capitale pour le décodage de ces jeux de discours, dont la compréhension repose sur des paramètres paraverbaux autant que langagiers.

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28 En résumé, ce volume fort logiquement structuré offre une contribution essentielle à l’appréhension d’un phénomène langagier commun à tous les groupes humains, à des degrés divers. La complémentarité des études offertes est une des forces majeures de l’ouvrage, qui ne se limite pas à une simple compilation, loin de là. En témoignent les nombreux échos d’un auteur à l’autre, au prix parfois de quelques redites et répétitions entre chapitres, redondances qui signent toutefois la cohérence de l’ensemble et jalonnent la construction d’une véritable problématique.

29 Les chercheurs y montrent que la verbalisation du tabou est in fine aussi taboue que son objet. Les stratégies d’évitement, dysphémisantes, euphémisantes ou orthophémisantes, illustrent de facto la force du langage dans l’imaginaire collectif et individuel : les tabous les plus répandus suscitent des répertoires infinis et non figés de lexèmes et collocations imagé/es pour nommer l’innommable, garantissant au locuteur d’assurer sa fonction de communication mais aussi la portée illocutoire de son message, au sein de conventions où chacun peut dès lors préserver sa face et moduler son expression selon le contexte. La démonstration est ici faite avec force de l’inscription du tabou langagier dans un système construit socialement, avec des incidences psychologiques, étayées par la recherche médicale, et pragmatiques, à de multiples niveaux, systématisation qui traverse les aires géographiques et temporelles.

BIBLIOGRAPHIE

HITCHINGS Henry, 2009, The Secret Life of Words, How English Became English, London: John Murray.

MORICE Philippe, 2012, « ‘Commerce de singe’ et Signifying Monkey », in PAQUET-DEYRIS A-M & SIPIÈRE D. (Eds.), Le cinéma parle ! Études sur le verbe et la voix dans le cinéma anglophone, CICLAHO 6 : Univ. Paris-Nanterre, 309-325.

PETTIT Zoë, 2005, “Translating Register, Style and Tone in Dubbing and Subtitling”, The Journal of Specialised Translation n°4: http://www.jostrans.org/issue04/art_pettit.php

SCANDURA Gabriela L., 2004, “Sex, Lies and TV: Censorship and Subtitling”, Meta n°49/1, 125-134.

STEINER George, After Babel, 1998, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

VIDALENC Jean-Louis, 2004, « ‘Four-letter words’ et évolution du lexique anglais », Cahiers de la recherche, Lille, Université Charles de Gaulle, n°31, 31-40.

VINCE Jennifer, 1991, « Quelques néologismes à fonction euphémique en anglais contemporain britannique », Cahiers Charles V n°13, Travaux de linguistique énonciative, 181-192.

AUTEURS

FRÉDÉRIQUE BRISSET Frédérique Brisset, EA CECILLE, Université de Lille-SHS, France

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Spécialiste de traduction et traductologie (anglais-français), Frédérique Brisset est docteure en études anglophones de l’Université Sorbonne Nouvelle et Maîtresse de Conférences honoraire à l’Université de Lille. Elle mène des recherches en traduction audiovisuelle, lexicologie contrastive, stylistique et herméneutique de la traduction. Ses derniers travaux portent sur la place de l’interculturalité en doublage audiovisuel (in Insights into Audiovisual and Comic Translation, Univ. de Cordoue, 2019), le traitement traductif de l’onomastique politique au cinéma (Al-Kīmīya, n°16, Univ. St Joseph, Beyrouth, 2019) et la traduction des emprunts et de l’argot dans les comédies de gangsters (in Traduire la criminalité, perspectives traductologiques et discursives, Villeneuve d’Ascq, Presses du Septentrion, 2020).

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David CRYSTAL, The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language (Third edition) Cambridge University Press, 2019, 506 pages

Oscar Garcia-Marchena

REFERENCES

David Crystal The Cambridge Encyclopedia of English Language. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2019.ISBN: 978-1-108-42359-5, Price: 36 €, 506 pages

1 This comprehensive encyclopedia is 506 pages long, includes a preface, an introductory chapter and 24 more chapters distributed in six parts concerning different topics: the history of English, its vocabulary, grammar, spoken and written varieties, use and language acquisition. It is completed by a useful webography and by an essential section on further readings for each section of the book, which allows to deepen any of the subjects. Besides, it contains three indexes about linguistic items, authors and topics respectively.

2 The book constitutes a unique reference work on the current knowledge on the English language, and includes a presentation of different aspects of each subfield, together with illustrations, data tables, maps, diagrams and separated panels, which include anecdotal or specific cases that exemplify and provide deeper insight on the topic in question. Some chapters even include exercices with answers in the side page, which adds an interactive component to the work.

3 Almost every page of the 25 chapters contains at least one of these items, which ensures the pedagogical aim of this ambitious work. This regular distribution of theoretical content, case studies and anecdotal articles make the work comprehensive and easy to understand. As the authors puts it in the preface, he strived for “a balance

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between talking about the language and letting the language talk for itself”, following the model of his preceding work The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Language.

4 The pedagogical nature of this book makes it suitable for different kinds of reader. Students of the English language, English linguistics or general linguistics will find a unified account of the numerous topics that are included in the study of language in general, and the English language in particular. Besides, thanks to its structured account and the combination of scientific information with illustrations and small independent articles, non-academic readers interested in the English language will also find useful insights on any aspect of the subject, either in the form of particular information or illustrative examples.

5 The first chapter “Modelling English” consists of a short introductory diagram showing the relationships between the different aspects of the study of language that are exposed in the body of the work, following the classical dichotomy: structure vs. use. The following chapters are grouped in the aforementioned six thematic parts, each part containing a variable number of chapters between two and six, all dealing with the main areas of study of a particular subfield. These six chapters also differ in length: 120 pages are devoted to Part 1 (The History of English), and 178 to Part 5 (Using English), with the remaining parts ranging from 30 to 75 pages.

6 The first part, “The history of English”, presents the first seven chapters in chronological order: “The origins of English”, “Old English”, “Middle English”, “Early Modern English”, “Modern English” and, lastly, “World English”, which enlarges this traditional classification. For each chapter, the author offers an account of basic axes of synchronic description: spelling, sounds, grammar and vocabulary, as well as other aspects like existing corpora and major milestones in the history of the language for each period, like The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Chaucer, Shakespeare, etc.

7 As we mentioned, Crystal’s work is useful and delightful for both students in linguistics and people interested in the English language. Nevertheless, some parts of the work are more accessible than others, as a consequence of the subject treated. For instance, Part 1 contains a large quantity of data, from which a part (like the description of Old English) is somehow specialised, which makes it less accessible for those lacking linguistic background. In contrast, Part 2, deals with a more familiar subject for the reader not acquainted with linguistics: vocabulary, and it is therefore more accessible for readers without prior knowledge in linguistics.

8 Grammar being the subject of Part 3, the account is necessarily incomplete. It presents a selection of salient topics, with the advantage of not using any technical terminology. In this way, this part is almost entirely composed of panels containing examples of grammatical features. Part 4 offers a description of two technical aspects in the description of English: phonetics and writing. As a consequence, it is composed of fewer illustrations, anecdotes and examples, and is therefore less educational, but it succeeds in presenting a schematic account of the basis of English phonology, phonetics and writing in a few pages. To conclude the work, Part 5 adds some topics on English language acquisition and study. Only a small number of phenomena are presented, but they are precisely illustrated with corpus data and charts.

9 Having considered these contents, one can wonder the interest of grouping the history of English in a single volume (Part 2), its grammar (Parts 3 and 4) and its acquisition and study (Parts 5). The inclusion of a diachronic description (Part 2) and a synchronic one (Parts 3 and 4), seems ambitious but logical in an encyclopedic work of this kind.

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However, the last part breaks its thematic coherence, since it addresses topics that are not related to the English language itself, but with its learning. Still, this part undoubtedly enriches the account of the description of English with new parameters of analysis; it would be a pity to omit the data on the language acquisition and on the properties of English put forward by corpus studies. This is a characteristic of Crystal’s work: it aims to include basic references to every sub-field in the study of English, including the most recent trends.

10 Chapter 2, “The origins of English”, is a short introduction presenting the mythical and historical origin of English that precedes Chapter 3 about Old English. Together with the basic account of the language, this chapter addresses a number of questions: runes, early literature and its devices, phonetic changes, different sources of vocabulary like Latin and Old Norse, Scandinavian influence and the emergence of dialects. Another valuable asset of the chapter is the number of illustrated examples of early writing samples, often accompanied by their transcription and translation, which can be particularly useful for both students and dilettantes. Likewise, the presence of maps is essential for understanding the birth of Old English dialects.

11 Chapter 4, on Middle English, presents the continuity of the English language through the historical events and their effect on the transformation of the language, and discusses topics such as the change and continuity of literary tradition, the Chaucerian work, the Norman and French influence and changes in the different aspects of the language: sound system, spelling, grammar, morphology and vocabulary. Special attention is also drawn to the development of Middle English dialects and the origins of the standard variety. All these contents are presented in a clear and summarised fashion. As in the preceding chapter, the panels’ contents are of great value: pictures of various literary works are accompanied by their transcription, and the use of maps and diagrams constitute an essential contribution for understanding Crystal’s account.

12 Chapter 5 presents a synchronic description of Early Modern English, roughly between 1400 and 1800 AD, and focuses on a number of subjects: the emergence of printing in England, main texts such as the various versions of the Bible, authors like Shakespeare, changes in grammar and sound, the stabilisation of the language (influenced by the regularisation of spelling or punctuation), and the publication of Johnson’s dictionary. Again, illustrations allow to have a visual image of the protagonists and reference works, and panels offer several examples of each point.

13 Chapter 6 provides an outline of some interesting topics on Modern English, like the grammatical changes at the beginning of the period, the influence of prescriptive grammar, modern varieties of English, the American linguistic identity and current trends in lexical creation. Some tables offer specific data on these matters, like the evolution in the creation of scientific vocabulary and the preferred pronunciation of some terms. Besides, thanks to numerous images, it introduces and illustrates a number of literary personalities that contributed to the linguistic identity of Modern English, like Charles Dickens.

14 Chapter 7 deals with the varieties of English across the world, such as Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, South and South-East Asia, Colonial Africa and South Pacific, paying special attention to the synchronic and diachronic description of US varieties. Although such an ambitious coverage is necessarily schematic, maps and diagrams allow us to relate them to derivations of either British or American English. It also

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presents interesting data on the use of English as L1 and L2 through the world, and the grouping of these varieties under different standards of English.

15 The second part of the book, grouping chapters 8 to 12, is dedicated to the lexicon, and explores its nature, its sources, etymology, structure and a number of lexical-semantic concepts like taboos and clichés. Chapter 8 introduces this part, broaching the subject of the size of the lexicon and some kinds of items that make part of it, like abbreviations and proper nouns. Chapter 9 further tackles the subject, presenting the sources of the English vocabulary and some word-formation rules, such as compounding or neologisms, providing amusing illustrated examples of popular and literary culture.

16 Chapter 10, dedicated to etymology, tackles the traditional subjects of semantic change and folk etymology, and develops the more original question of proper names for places, people or objects. Place names are illustrated with several maps that present the sources of place names in England, the US and Canada, and people names are analysed for their type, variations, and use through time.

17 Chapter 11 investigates the structure of the lexicon, addressing subjects such as semantic fields, thesauri, syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic relationships, collocations, lexicalisation and semantic relationships like synonymy and hyponymy. The use of panels for diagrams and example constitutes an essential tool in this chapter to illustrate structural relationships within the lexicon. Chapter 12 enriches this account with the inclusion of its connotative aspects: taboo, swearing, jargon, slang, doubble- speak, political correctness and archaisms, among others.

18 Part 3 deals with the grammar of English by addressing a number of topics: the definition of syntax, morphology, parts of speech and sentence structure, in Chapters 13, 14, 15 and 16 respectively. Chapter 13 distinguishes the concepts of grammatical knowledge and prescriptive grammar, and introduces basic concepts that will allow non-linguists to easily understand the following chapters. Chapter 14 presents some salient features of English grammar, such as suffixation for noun number and case and verb tense system. The examples are very specific, but accessible thanks to their schematic disposition. Here, as in the rest of the work, accessibility is preferred to depth.

19 Chapter 15 continues this technical description, dealing with parts of speech and its sub-classes, according to their particular semantic, morphological or syntactic properties. Again, the synoptic presentation allows the reader to have a quick overview of the basic units of analysis. Similarly, Chapter 16’s account of sentence structure contains a profusion of structured topics, like sentence types and functions, clause elements, phrases, verbal properties (such as aspect, voice and tense), information structure and textual coherence. This broad account is especially useful to get acquainted with one of these particular topics, but it is less explicit in the relationship between these different aspects of grammar.

20 Shorter than the other parts, Part 4 is composed of only two chapters, 17 and 18, which deal with spoken and written English respectively. The first one presents the basics of the English phonological and phonetic system, paying particular attention to the description of the most complex aspects, like vowels and diphthongs, and focusing on the place and manner of articulation, syllable structure, connected speech, prosody and

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sound symbolism. Except for this last topic, the chapter is necessarily technical, but clear enough to provide basic knowledge to any reader lacking linguistic background.

21 Chapter 18 addresses the subject of writing, and is composed of two different parts. The first one presents a description of the items in the Latin alphabet, with its origins and variants, both synchronic (upper case vs. lower case) and diachronic, and finishes with a couple of concepts of textometry: frequency and distribution. The second part continues the technical account, and includes some pedagogical material for dealing with various heterogeneous topics: graphemic symbolisms and variety, graphology, spelling and punctuation.

22 Section 5 of the work completes the description of the English language given in the preceding chapters by adding a different perspective. If Parts 2 to 4 deal with the different aspects of English language as an abstract system, Part 5 describes the way the English language is used, and more particularly, the different axes of variation according to classical analysis. These axes include diatopic, diastratic and diaphasic differences, but Crystal’s work includes also more innovative frames like the specificities of various textual genders and the use of English in the internet sphere.

23 Chapter 19 enlarges the description of language use by taking into account the use of sentences in actual discourse. It pays special attention to current trends in language study such as conversation and presents some existing models of analysis, covering both monologic and dialogic differences. It also contains an interesting description of language variation in text types and speech media, including recent text types born with the internet revolution.

24 Chapter 20 enriches the account of the use of English with a presentation of regional variations, mainly by showing and commenting excerpts from newspapers in the two main models of language use, US and UK English. It displays some of the most salient differences in pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary. It also makes extensive use of maps and dialectal atlases to account for the internal variation in these two models, providing detailed data, including UK varieties of English such as Scots, Irish and Welsh English, and world varieties like Canadian, Caribbean, Australian, New Zealand, South African and South Asian English. This account is necessarily schematic, but allows the reader to grasp the general idea of the particularities of English worldwide.

25 Chapter 21 deals with social variation, including topics such as prescriptivism, and gender-respectful use, but most of it focuses on the particularities of English in different occupational domains, like science, law, and politics, as well as within media types: journal, broadcasting, sports, publicity, etc. Similarly, Chapter 21 integrates data from recent trends in corpus linguistics that aim to cover a maximum diversity of language use. In its aim for exhaustivity, it also includes very specific uses of language, like chess, heraldics and recipe books.

26 Chapter 22 goes even further in the description of language variation; if Chapter 21 aimed to cover a wide range of cases of particular language use for communication purposes, this chapter explores the possibilities of language variation for other purposes, like playing, creating social distance, humour, and stating literary or personal identity. Particular attention is given to humour and the expression of identity, detailing their specificities in the different levels of language: phonetics, syntax, morphology, vocabulary and writing. It concludes with a reference to forensic

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linguistics, which analyses personal differences for creating scientific reports used in legal matters.

27 Under the title “Electronic variation”, Chapter 23 closes Part 5, presenting here the particular uses in digital media, and the different characteristics of its various text types: text messages, e-mail, chat groups, blogs, etc., as well as the particular use of language for humorous purposes. More interestingly, it presents schematically the distinctive features of English in electronic-mediated communication (EMC) or netspeak. The chapter analyses the particularities regarding word-formation, graphology (spelling, capitalisation, spacing, etc.), punctuation, grammar, discourse and pragmatics. The work’s account of recent topics in electronic-mediated communication can be an advantage, since it informs about the latest trends on the subject as few book do, and a disadvantage, since these data will soon be outdated by the quick development of technology and its (linguistic) practises. In any case, the comprehensive nature of the work makes necessary the inclusion of this chapter, which will remain as a witness of the state of electronic-mediated communication at the end of the 2010s.

28 The last section of the work introduces some topics regarding language acquisition and study, making use of recent tools. Chapter 24 displays a number of examples that give a general idea about the way children acquire language, and their use of sounds, words, morphology and syntax in the early stages of their learning. It also mentions some insufficiencies in language production, like those created by aphasia, stammering or language delay.

29 Finally, chapter 25 concerns the use of digital tools for the analysis of English, such as corpus and electronic dictionaries. It presents a typology of corpus, some examples of the most important ones, and some techniques for analysing corpus data, like tagging and structuring. However, it does not address more specialised methods like parsing. Similarly, the account on electronic dictionaries mentions new systems of words classification, like wordtrees, but does not mention other important ones, like the creation of lexico-semantic ontologies. This chapter is in this way less deep than the rest, undoubtedly due to the aim of the work to give preference to accessibility over depth.

30 All things considered, in this book, the reader will not find answers to questions about grammatical rules or pronunciation, either of descriptive or prescriptive nature, of a particular item of the language. It is not a grammar book, and as such, it does not describe how English as a particular instance of language works, but how it works as a specimen of natural language, as a macro-system. Nonetheless, the comprehensive coverage of this description makes it unique for the number of subjects addressed in a unified and structured fashion.

31 In this way, Crystal’s Encyclopedia provides a detailed and user-friendly account of almost every aspect concerning the English language that a non-specialist could be interested in. On the one hand, the illustrations, examples and straightforward language make it accessible for all readers; on the other hand, the specificity of data and the wide coverage of subjects makes it also an interesting tool for linguists. Besides, thanks to the simple and explicit structure of the work, the reader can easily find the answer, an example or a development for any particular question about the linguistic description of English other than grammatical rules.

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32 Nevertheless, the reader should keep in mind that this is a reference work dealing with basic matters on the scientific discipline of linguistics, not a manual that can be easily read from beginning to end. Indeed, the detailed account of the subjects covered in the book makes it informationally dense to an extent that it would be overwhelming to read it from cover to cover. The extent of the coverage of this work can be illustrated by comparing it to the program of a university curriculum on English Linguistics: Parts 2 to 4 could provide material for independent subjects in the first year of the degree.

AUTHORS

OSCAR GARCIA-MARCHENA Oscar Garcia-Marchena, EILA, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3 Dr. Oscar Garcia Marchena teaches Spanish linguistics at University Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris 3. He teaches Spanish syntax, morphology and synchronic and diachronic phonetics to undergraduates. His research revolves around the syntax of verbless clauses in corpora of contemporary Spanish. He holds a MA from University Paris 3 in Linguistics, a MA from the University of Seville in Spanish and English, and a PhD in Linguistics from University Paris Diderot. He is a member of the AESLA and AELINCO linguistic associations.

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Pius Ten HACKEN (ed.), The Semantics of Compounding Cambridge University Press, 2016, 264 pages

Cathy Parc

REFERENCES

Pius Ten Hacken (ed.) The Semantics of Compounding, Cambridge university Press, 2016. ISBN: 978-1-107-09970-8, Price: 87,97€, 264 pages.

1. General observations

1 Pius ten Hacken is Professor of Translation Studies at Innsbruck University. He has published articles in specialized journals like Linguistische Berichte Sonderheft, Quaderns de Filología: Estudis lingüístics, SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics, Kwartalnik Neofilologiczny or CORELA. He has released chapters or whole books mostly on morphology ever since 1994. He “has worked on the machine translation project Eurotra and at universities in Basel (Computer Science and General Linguistics) and Swansea (French and Translation Studies)” (p. i).

2. Synopsis of the book

2.1. Introduction

2 The eleven pages written by Pius ten Hacken, which are very clear, correspond to the first chapter where the semantic dimension is emphasized from the outset. It soon becomes obvious that the book, which “was inspired by a workshop organized at the 19th Congrès International des Linguistes / International Congress of Linguists, which

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took place in Geneva from 21 to 27 July 2013” (p. x), is aimed at specialists or advanced level students. For instance, the abbreviations used page 1 in the phrase “RDPs and Variable R” are only explained page 3. The author chooses a historical point of view to take stock of the research carried out on compounds: he goes back to the 1960s where you can find “The oldest generative account of compounds” (p. 2) and quotes the main references – R. Lees, J. Katz as well as P. Postal – before mentioning J. Levi and M. Allen in the late 1970s or E. Selkirk in the 1980s. He discusses their theories, analyses the interplay of influences and does not evade the main problems: trying to find solutions implies detailing a particular linguistic framework so as to see how to improve it. That is why he focuses on three of them: Ray Jackendoff’s [2002], Rochelle Lieber’s [2004] and Pavol Štekauer’s [1998, 2005]. The book is thus composed of articles by various European and American contributors who have chosen one of these theories, the most represented being R. Jackendoff’s. The content is quite abstract because of this theoretical angle, but also concrete thanks to the numerous examples provided from the start. The cross-language approach enables the contributors to reach a wider readership, the questions of linguistic borrowing and of potential intersections between languages being at stake.

3 There are three parts: the first is devoted to “Frameworks” (p. 13-68), the second to “Noun-noun compounds” (p. 69-149) and the third to “Other compound types” (p. 151-207), which makes for a logical line of reasoning. As stated by the author, chapter 12, which is entitled “Three analyses of compounding: a comparison” and spans 22 pages, serves as a conclusion. It offers a comparison between the three frameworks and reflects the editor’s open-mindedness as readers can select the theory they prefer: they can easily see which is most appropriate depending on the exemplars and the context. The 14-page References section is organized in alphabetical order and it is a pity to notice that no categories whatsoever have been defined. Hinged on either the nature of the document or the theory under study, they could have facilitated the reader’s choices. The 5-page Author index is very useful and quite detailed given that under the author’s name each work is designated by its year of publication, itself followed by the page number of the quotes in the present book. What is more, the links to other references which might be useful within a discussion have been added. The 3-page Subject index includes lower- and upper-case words, among which some are synthesized by their abbreviations within brackets, while cross-references are introduced by the phrase “see also”. Hence, it is easy for the reader to learn more on a given topic.

3. Detailed presentation of each chapter

3.1. Chapter 2, “English noun-noun compounds in Conceptual Semantics” by Ray Jackendoff

4 By asking R. Jackendoff to write the first chapter himself, P. ten Hacken has enabled us to know more about one of the three theoretical frameworks on which the book focuses, which is a good idea. Within the framework of “Conceptual Semantics” (p. 18), which “incorporates a great deal of what is usually called pragmatics” (p. 18), the main tenets are linked to “the Head Principle” or to such linguistic phenomena as coinage,

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“recursivity” and interpretation. As far as the latter is concerned, two factors come into play according to the author of this article: semantic interpretation is highly dependent on the pragmatics of the words being combined and on the contextual specifics of use. The language-user must home in on the intended meaning of a novel compound by making use of (a) the semantic details of the constituent words and (b) the discourse and extralinguistic context. Syntax does not give much support. (p. 18)

5 When analyzing compounds, you have to keep in mind rules without forgetting exceptions and ask yourself whether paraphrasing is possible or not as you have to take into consideration “the limits of compositionality” (p. 18). R. Jackendoff suggests “the simple event schema” (p. 20), the phrase “event schema” being borrowed from R. Langacker [1987] as well as C. Fillmore and S. Atkins [1992]. He defines as “promiscuous (by contrast with ambiguous)” (p. 20) words like boxcar or pontoon bridge that can have multiple meanings “simultaneously, in cooperation rather than in competition” (p. 20). Other keywords he relies on are “profiling” (p. 21), “action modality” (p. 22) and “cocomposition” (p. 24), which he passes in review before pondering in more detail “the Head Principle and the Argument Schema” (p. 25) along with “the Modifier Schema” (p. 26).

6 “Given two nouns N1 and N2 that mean X1 and Y2 respectively” and F being the “function

F (X1, Y2) that yields the meaning of the compound [N1 N2]” (p. 18), he proposes “thirteen basic functions” (p. 27) to help classify compounds, which are very convenient and easy to use. They are: CLASSIFY (X, Y), BE (Y, X), SIMILAR (X, Y), KIND (X, Y), BE (X, AT/IN/ON Y), COMP (X, Y), MADE (X, FROM Y), PART (X, Y), CAUSE (X, Y), MAKE (X, Y), X serves as Y, HAVE (X, Y), PROTECT (X, Y, FROM Z). He then hints at the possibility of there being more relations, as many as twenty or thirty, as a result of “all the variants and reversibility” (p. 31). To illustrate his theory, he has a look at some locative relations around such examples as water fountain, coal mine or gas pipe among others, which permits him to use

material from the meanings of N1 and N2. The last section, which is devoted to “generative schemata for F” (p. 33-35), shows how basic functions can overlap and how proper function has to be factored in when construing the meaning of some compounds like barbershop or piano bench. Others like pig tail or sea horse exemplify “metaphor coercion” (p. 34-35), which is tackled before the “closing remarks” of this thought-provoking paper.

3.2. Chapter 3, “Compounding in the lexical semantic framework” by Rochelle Lieber

7 R. Lieber presents her own framework in three parts and deals with compounds and their interpretation from a morphological point of view. She uses two metaphors in her theory: that of “the semantic skeleton which contains those aspects of lexical and affixal meaning that are syntactically relevant” and that of “the semantic body which contains all aspects of meaning that are encyclopedic in nature” (p. 38). The term “skeleton”, which might not be considered a fine one especially for the study of modern languages that keep evolving, proves problematic since the corresponding concept does not apply to all compounds. As such it does not contribute to a comprehensive coherent framework, contrary to the tools used by her fellow theoreticians:

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For these compounds [coordinate ones], as with the attributive compounds discussed in the next section, we cannot rely merely on the skeletons of the compounded elements to explain the range of possible interpretations. (p. 47)

8 Although there are differences between languages, a list of “semantic features” (p. 39-40) that are part of a “universal inventory” is provided (p. 39) while “the principle of coindexation” which R. Lieber proposed in 2009 is further detailed.

9 All these elements make for a more abstract framework than R. Jackendoff’s and a more difficult one to handle too though the starting point is S. Scalise and A. Bisetto’s 2009 clear classification of compounds. Their three categories are taken up – subordinate, coordinate and attributive – while a further distinction is made between endocentric and exocentric compounds. R. Lieber, who talks about “affixation” as opposed to “compounding”, analyzes the three categories around the suffixes -er and -ee especially.

In the case of N1N2 where N2 is an “eventive deverbal noun”, she shows that N1 can be a subject or a complement and insists on the fact that “subject interpretations of compounds based on nominalizations in -ation or -ing” (p. 44) had long been believed to be impossible, notably by T. Roeper and D. Siegel [1978] or E. Selkirk [1982]. She then focuses on the “Event reading skeleton” vs the “result reading skeleton” (p. 44) and on “Non-affixal (de)verbal compounds” in which “one element is always interpreted as an argument of the other” (p. 45-46). She thinks that she has greatly improved on the previous literature on the subject and says so explicitly: “the most thorough analysis, to my knowledge, is that given in Lieber [2010]” (p. 46). Yet in coordinate compounds, the notion of skeleton does not apply, which proves problematic, as written above. You might wonder why R. Lieber asserts that “The argument for exocentricity hinges on the hyponymy test: if we consider blue-green to be neither a sort of blue nor a sort of green, then the compound arguably might be considered exocentric” (p. 47, n5). Indeed, “blue-green” is supposed to be a certain kind of green, which is to say a green tinged with blue as opposed to “green-blue”, which denotes a certain kind of blue tinged with green. It is clear that in such adjectival compounds one colour is deemed to be

prevalent: the one denoted by Adj2 in Adj1Adj2. 10 The concatenation of “lexical semantic representations” in the case of attributive compounds (p. 49) is not really informative. This also goes towards proving that R. Lieber’s approach is more descriptive than analytical, contrary to R. Jackendoff’s where the clear-cut categories can be applied to a wealth of compounds. We might also ask ourselves whether the adjective “American” can be described as “- scalar” (p. 50 since the sentence “That’s not a very American way to behave.” could be acceptable. There is no thorough explanation of rock hard given that in the description “[+material ([i])] [˗dynamic, +scalar ([j])]”, which is not particularly legible, the reasons why *stone hard is ungrammatical are not stated. You may think it is a pity that none of the following adjectival compounds were provided as points of comparison: stone-blind, stone-cold, stone-deaf, stone-dead and *rock deaf, for instance. In the analysis of exocentricity, which is defined as being multi-faceted and draws on L. Bauer’s theory [2010], the case of doctor-patient understood as “a single person who is both doctor and patient at once” (p. 52) might have been exemplified. It would have been interesting to check whether it features in any corpus or whether it is just a theoretical example.

11 Although the conclusion offers a recapitulation in the form of generalizations, the sentence “attributives are unrestricted in the relationships that can be expressed between compound members” [53] might have been expanded on. It could have been

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stimulating to know whether there is really not a single counterexample in any corpus or in the literature. R. Lieber deplores the fact that “frameworks like Distributed Morphology [Harley 2009]] or Borer’s exocentric model [Borer 2013] still try to account for compounding within purely syntactic frameworks” (p. 53). Yet, readers may think that one theory can be enriched by another and that different frameworks might be complementary. The real challenge would be to offer simultaneously semantic and syntactical explanations so as to bring the two fields of research together instead of stressing that they are mutually exclusive.

3.3. Chapter 4, “Compounding from an onomasiological perspective” by Pavol Štekauer

12 P. Štekauer here completes two chapters he wrote in 1998 and 2005 to detail his theoretical framework, which differs from others including in terminology. According to him, the semasiological approach to word formation does not put enough emphasis on meaning, which explains why in the onomasiological framework, the word “compounding” is not used in the same way. Historically speaking, form and meaning were considered to be interrelated by F. de Saussure, the Prague School of Linguistics and then Cognitive Linguistics. The present article was written from the perspective provided by M. Dokulil [1962] and focuses on a “triad of relations” with a practical goal, a pragmatic one, in mind: “the extralinguistic reality”, “the speech community” and “the word formation component (word formation rules)” (p. 55). The point of view is that of the language-user, which is very attractive because you can project yourself into the linguistic situations that are alluded to, the speech act being common to us all. While he does not use any abstractions or jargon the better to study productivity and language coiners’ preferences, P. Štekauer does not forget to mention all the factors coming into play such as the socio- and psycholinguistic ones, which makes for a comprehensive theory. Clear definitions are provided whenever a term potentially unknown to readers is used, for example “onomasiological” and “onomatological”.

13 In the second part, basic principles are proposed to illustrate the theory, which is founded on the speaker’s cognition. Semantic categories “like Agent, Patient, Instrument, Location, Time, and Manner” are set in a system that centres on what the author calls: the onomasiological mark (modifier in the mainstream approach), which specifies the base, consists of the determining constituent and the determined constituent, the onomasiological base standing for a class to which the object to be named belongs. (p. 56)

14 P. Štekauer clearly demonstrates how to apply “the Morpheme-to-Seme-Assignment Principle” (p. 57), which mobilizes both the paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes. He shows us how to represent “the onomasiological structure” (p. 58) through simple examples like writer, novelist, guitar player and guitarist. He also reflects on the competition which takes place between two conflicting tendencies: one towards “semantic transparency”, the other towards “economy of expression” (p. 58). It might have been of interest firstly to know how the choice between the suffixes -or, -er or -ist operates when it comes to determining the agent and secondly to carry out studies in compatibility. The mention of “different naming strategies” (p. 58) leads P. Štekauer to determine which complex words can be said to be either “listener/reader-friendly” or “speaker/writer-friendly” (p. 58). It seems that the higher the degree of semantic

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transparency, the lower the degree of economy of expression, the more likely the word is to belong to the former category. For readers to know how to articulate word formation and word interpretation, interesting onomasiological “types” are then neatly developed, which enable the author to do away with terms like “prefixation, suffixation, back-formation, blending, conversion, reduplication”. One example is the adjective “unhappy”, which pertains to onomasiological type 7 (p. 61):

OT 7 Mark Base

R R

Negation Quality

un happy

15 The third part deals with the onomasiological analysis of compounds around four categories: SUBSTANCE, ACTION, QUALITY and CIRCUMSTANCE. The compound baby book is chosen as an instance of polysemy, which gives P. Štekauer the possibility to scrutinize meaning predictability. While opposing verbal compounds and primary compounds, he insists that exocentric compounds are not headless, contrary to what might have been written in the literature. According to him, “at the onomasiological level – the base is always present no matter whether or not it is represented at the onomatological level” (p. 63). To prove his point, he quotes the example of redskin, a compound which can denote a person, more precisely a Native American, or a potato. He makes it clear that “Not all exocentric compounds pertain to the same type” (p. 63). He also passes in review the other three categories – ACTION, QUALITY, CIRCUMSTANCE –, by illustrating them along the same lines, that is to say by choosing examples that are immediately understandable.

16 In the conclusion, a very clear visual representation of the “onomasiological model of complex words” (p. 67) helps you memorize the main points and compare this original approach to others: while reducing theoretical tools to a bare minimum without ever oversimplifying the discussion or jeopardizing the reasoning, it is easy to apply to all compounds.

3.4. Chapter 5, “Categorizing the modification relations in French

relational subordinative [NN]N compounds” by Pierre J. L. Arnaud

17 In the introduction the author indicates that the framework he has chosen is that of Cognitive Linguistics and starts by summarizing its tenets. He thinks that it is necessary to expand on research carried out in the field: we need descriptions and inventories of these relations in order to understand the processes and semantics of compounding. Such inventories are also necessary for comparative and computational linguistics. The aim of the research presented here is descriptive: to produce a taxonomy for French compounds and to compare French with English with respect to relations. (p. 72)

18 The first part of the article is devoted to the presentation of “French relational

subordinative [NN]N compounds” and the parallel between French and English

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coordinative and subordinative compounds, which are illustrated by a figure (p. 73). What proves useful here is the literal word-for-word paraphrase and the translation into English, which makes the specificity of French compounds stand out. It is manifest that there is a majority of “morphologically and syntactically left-headed” compounds in French (p. 73). A distinction is established between “semantically two-headed” coordinatives and “semantically single-headed” subordinatives in French (p. 72). The differences between the two languages are obvious when it comes to the pluralization of the non-head.

19 In the second part, P. Arnaud hints at research “on the semantics of English and French relational compounds” (p. 74) to tell us more about the various theories that are organized around different categorizations of compounds. He goes back to A. Darmesteter’s 1874 study, then to the late 1940s down to the present and tackles the problem of interpretation which precludes exhaustivity. Ambiguity is also at stake since some compounds suffer from the “vagueness of category descriptions” (p. 75). After analyzing the issues related to those taxonomies, he shows why the prepositional approach to French relational compounds was not reliable and why another classification was needed.

20 In the third part, he presents his initial research, which harks back to 2003, and gives explanations of the method he has chosen. He says it was necessary for him to use paraphrases which, for simplicity’s sake, were kept as short as possible, and to keep in mind that there is “a continuum of abstraction in the categories” (p. 79). The numerous examples allow you to understand quickly the new taxonomy, which betrays the influence of A. Hatcher [1960] as well as of M. Noailly [1990]. They are followed by the presentation of four new categories: “ANALOG (denotes analogy in an aspect of the head), BE (denotes a state of the head), NON-HEAD SYMBOLIZES HEAD and NON-HEAD SYMBOLIZED BY HEAD” (p. 81). Then comes the “Application to an extended data set” (p. 81) with the aim of reaching “a more precise formulation of a relation to which these units clearly belong in the first place” (p. 82). This enables us to grasp why some new categories were added, which now brings the total to fifty-eight. The focus is then on the five most frequent relations which are illustrated in a table although one has to allow for some overlap between relations, a phenomenon that P. Arnaud links to what R. Jackendoff calls examples of “promiscuity”. Compared to the latter’s Conceptual Semantics model, P. Arnaud’s is much less characterized by formalism. His comparison between French and English relational compounds is very stimulating as it enables us to get a better idea of the particularities of each language. He notices that the telic relation prevails in French relationals and underscores the complexity of compound semantics, “compounding consist[ing] basically in the pairing of concepts” (p. 89). Finally, the synthesis in the appendix, which does away with any complicated representation, is very clear and accessible even to students.

3.5. Chapter 6, “The semantics of NN combinations in Greek” by Zoe Gavriilidou

21 Zoe Gavriilidou first establishes a distinction between a sentence and a compound regarding the principle of compositionality understood from a semantic point of view. To highlight the specificity of compounds, she lists the research carried out by J. Levi, D. Cruse, P. Downing, B. Warren, V. Adams, N. Fabb, R. Dirven, M. Verspoor, R. Benczes,

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C. Gagné, T. Spalding, P. Štekauer and C. Charitonidis to infer that “major issues regarding especially the semantic interpretation of components remain open” (p. 96). Having chosen R. Lieber’s framework, which, as she points out, is articulated around a semantic / grammatical skeleton and a semantic / pragmatic body, she nevertheless refers to S. Scalise and A. Bisetto’s 2009 “tripartite classification of compounds” (p. 96). The focus is on NN combinations in Greek and the three subtypes applying to them,

which differ in the relations between N1 and N2 as well as in the “degree of semantic transparency” (p. 99). Several examples are given to illustrate the four semantic patterns at stake: coordinate NN combinations, attributive NN combinations, some of which have expressive non-heads, attributive NN combinations with denominational function and attributive NN combinations with expressive meaning.

22 In the analysis of example (8) a) ρολόι-μαϊμού [rolόi-maimú] (lit. ‘watch-monkey’, i.e. a fake watch) (p. 103; 106), it might have been apt to quote the English verb to ape. In example (9), which is centred on the Greek compounds for “woman-psychologist” and “psychologist-woman”, it might have been interesting to know in more detail why the nouns can be in the reverse order (p. 103) and why there is no difference in connotation as the author says (p. 105). She later insists that “a coordinate interpretation is ruled out [in Greek] because the two elements are not given totally equal status”, the Greek word for woman being used as a modifier (p. 108). She disagrees with S. Scalise and A. Bisetto on the question of the role of the skeleton: according to her, in Greek attributive NN combinations with expressive meaning as in French, Spanish or Italian, “the skeleton seems to play a role in making an evaluative or degree reading of the combination possible” (p. 107). That is the case in “έρευνα-μαμούϴ [erevna-mamοuϴ] (lit. ‘research-mammoth’)”, which denotes “research that lasted for a long time and gathered lots of data” (p. 106). In the concluding summary, she emphasizes the role of the skeleton in coordinate and attributive NN combinations with expressive meaning and the differences she has mentioned in Greek.

3.6. Chapter 7, “The semantics of compounds in Swedish child language” by Ingmarie Mellenius and Maria Rosenberg

23 This article, which gives us an overview of first language acquisition, is another cross- language study that widens the scope of the book. For the authors, creative coinages are the occasion to ask three questions related to the status of the morphological head in some children’s compounds, the semantic relations within the NN compounds and their frequency. After first defining the characteristics of Swedish compounding, I. Mellenius and M. Rosenberg comment on the research in the domain, taking up H. Clark’s five principles. They also refer to H. Clark and R. Berman [1987] as well as to J. Becker [1994] so that readers can set their own comparisons between Hebrew, English and Swedish regarding children’s linguistic tendencies as they utter novel compounds or lexically innovate in any other way. I. Mellenius quotes her own 1997 PhD thesis to show how children make progress when learning their mother tongue and how compounds as well as their constituents can be interpreted.

24 A presentation of both authors’ corpus-based approach and of the semantic structure of NN compounds produced by Swedish children follows. We learn that the latter know where to place the head at a very early stage, i.e. when they are as young as three and a half, and that their interpretation is influenced by the context. The classification

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suggested by the authors, which is reminiscent of previous research, especially R. Jackendoff’s 2009 and 2016 writings, is exemplified by five types of “Purpose relations”. In the case of the “Part-whole relation”, “a strict criterion” of use has been established, “which can be formulated as ‘one cannot take away the part without causing damage to the whole’” (p. 119). In example (11), motorbil ‘motor-car’, for ‘car’ (p. 119), a parallel might have been drawn with English as people originally said “motor-car” and not just “car”, that means of transport being a new invention at the time, as opposed to a horse-drawn vehicle, for instance. We can notice the same phenomenon in French, where “auto” is short for “automobile”, i.e. “voiture à moteur”. Regarding the “Whole-part relation”, to which the authors decided to apply the same strict criterion of use, it might have been assumed in example (12) handfinger ‘hand- finger’, for ‘finger’ (p. 119), that the child included the noun “hand” maybe because he or she did not know the Swedish word used for toes. He or she might just have wanted to lay emphasis on the contrast with a view to making himself or herself understood. As far as the “Composition relation” is concerned, two different views are detailed, H. Clark’s 1985 and J. Windsor’s 1993, which were not shared by I. Mellenius as early as 1997. Indeed, she thought that “children’s novel compounds most often manifest temporary relations” (p. 120), thus setting well-established compounds apart from coinages. Two types of “Location relation” then come under scrutiny, but the explanation of example (20) kaffeglas ‘coffee-glass’ is debatable: the sentence “Our classification is based on a discourse situation where a coffee glass refers to a glass that happens to have coffee in it” (p. 121) sounds odd given that in English we would then rather use the phrase “a glass of coffee”. Indeed, “a coffee glass”, which simply denotes a certain type of glass as opposed to “a wine glass” for instance, can be empty; the same distinction occurs between “a cup of coffee” and “a coffee cup” or “a cup of tea” and “a teacup”.

25 The relations defined as Both: N1 is N2, Comparison: N2 similar to N1, Possession: N2 belongs to

N1, Product: N1 source for N2, Source: N2 source for N1, Content: N2 about N1 and Protect: N2

protects from N1 make good reading before the study of argumental relations (p. 125). We might wonder about the inclusion of curling iron in the latter category: to what extent is it different from the purpose relation in that case? The authors have to complete the previous list with “Complex relations” that are “accidental” and due to “particular discourse situations” (p. 125) before they can analyze the frequency of the semantic relations in a table. They can thus make clear what pertains to generalizations or to individual profiles (p. 126). Their comment on the telic relation as being the most frequent (p. 125) echoes P. Arnaud’s remark about French relationals (p. 89). To conclude, I. Mellenius and M. Rosenberg stress the role of cognition in language acquisition and expand on the question of meaning by comparing children and adults: word creation cannot be studied without any insight into understanding, and although they are convinced that “we have no means of knowing” how established NN compounds are analyzed by the child, there is evidence of decomposition in the case of coinages. A lot remains to be discovered when it comes to NN compounds, especially novel ones, which is why both authors are glad to finally make interesting suggestions for further studies of context dependency and pragmatic explanations so as to explore in greater depth the adults’ or children’s linguistic usage.

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3.7. Chapter 8, “The semantics of primary NN compounds: from form to meaning, and from meaning to form” by Jesús Fernández- Domínguez

26 This chapter starts with a comparison between P. Štekauer’s and R. Jackendoff’s theories to highlight their similarities and differences. After quoting previous semantic research on compounds by O. Jespersen, A. Hatcher, R. Lees, P. Downing and J. Levi, a definition of primary NN compounds is proposed while the problem of meaning predictability is tackled. The clear summary of the main characteristics of the onomasiological and of the semasiological approaches is articulated around the comparison between P. Štekauer’s model and the traditional morphological approach. Then the focus shifts to the main features of Parallel Architecture as defined by

R. Jackendoff, including function F which links N1 to N2 and is preferred to R. Lees’ paraphrasing (p. 135). What is at stake in Conceptual Semantics is the number of meanings a compound may have and the potentiality of “promiscuity” in R. Jackendoff’s phrasing. We are then faced with two options: either there is an action- argument relationship between the constituents of the compound or there is not, which is why there are two classes of compounds with different semantic relations.

27 The dissimilarities between the two theories regarding the labels used are summed up in two tables page 137. In P. Štekauer’s model, “each of [his] labels is intended to be assigned to one compound constituent and the semantic link between them is left unexpressed” (p. 138) whereas in R. Jackendoff’s it is specified and reversibility is studied. As far as COMP[osition] (X, Y) and MADE (X, FROM Y) are concerned, one might wonder whether there might be some overlap, a remark J. Fernández-Domínguez also makes in footnote 8 page 139. Several examples of the fundamental meanings within α NN compounds are listed, among which no. (16), bird1 song2, [SONG2 ; [MAKE (BIRD1, α)]], whose paraphrase “a bird that produces songs” sounds strange in lieu of “a song that is produced by birds”. J. Fernández-Domínguez emphasizes two innovations introduced by R. Jackendoff: the “SIMILAR (X, Y)” and “PROTECT (X, Y, FROM Z)” relations. The differences between the two formalizations stand out all the more pages 139 to 142: P. Štekauer’s is pared down to the minimum data while R. Jackendoff’s does not forget any semantic detail.

28 The next subsection is devoted to what we learn about language as a whole when studying NN compounds: what roles are assigned to syntax, to the lexicon and to word formation? It is shown that syntax only intervenes in word formation through the lexicon: “the key is the different approaches adopted by PA and the onomasiological model towards the tasks of syntax in relation to word information” (p. 143). Although R. Jackendoff postulates the potential agent where necessary while P. Štekauer does not, although extralinguistic/pragmatic material features in PA but not in the onomasiological model, two figures illustrate three parallels between the two theories pages 144 and 145. Both linguists consider “word formation as a separate module” while they “strictly discriminate the roles of word formation and the lexicon, and forbid direct access between word formation and syntax”. Their “interpretations of lexical entries” are “analogous in that in both cases the lexicon stores the syntactic, phonological and semantic information that cannot be recovered from word formation” (p. 145). To conclude, the author sums up this enlightening contrast as follows: “the onomasiological approach gives preference to the semantics derived

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directly from word formation, while PA is interested in the entirety of meaning” (p. 149).

3.8. Chapter 9, “An analysis of phrasal compounds in the model of Parallel Architecture” by Carola Trips

29 In this first article of the third part, which is “entitled “Other compound types”, the emphasis is put on phrasal compounds, which, according to the author and contrary to what generative models might have led us to believe, combine morphology and syntax. To start with, it is useful to learn about the five properties she outlines so as to be able to tell phrasal compounds from non-phrasal compounds. The hyphen versus quotation marks ratios enable her to ponder the link to lexicalization and stress that regarding intonation new research is needed. She underlines the fact that phrasal compounds are a written phenomenon and that it is essential to set different categories for “pseudo- phrasal compounds” and “real phrasal compounds”, in P. Hohenhaus’ words (p. 158). The formal properties of the latter, which are determined by the presence or absence of a predicate, are all listed clearly pages 159-160 before the links between heads and non- heads come under study pages 161-163. The recent research on phrasal compounds, especially A. Spencer’s as well as R. Lieber and S. Scalise’s, has stated the problem of “the lexical integrity hypothesis” that is not premised on any interaction between syntax and morphology.

30 Carola Trips then comments on recent German papers dealing with phrasal compounds to make her point through comparisons. She explains why she has chosen to apply R. Jackendoff’s Parallel Architecture to English phrasal compounds and demonstrates why “For the interpretation of PCs containing a predicate, instances of metonymy are crucial” whenever “the semantic relation between the phrasal non-head and head is not direct” (p. 172). She then rightly schematizes her analyses before discussing R. Lieber’s framework quickly and applying it to a couple of phrasal compounds so that readers get a clear idea of the contrast with R. Jackendoff’s model.

3.9. Chapter 10, “Adjective-noun compounding in Parallel Architecture” by Barbara Schlücker

31 Among the differences between adjective-noun compounds and noun-noun compounds, the author throws into relief the fact that they do not have the same semantic relations although both categories are believed to share a “classifying meaning” (p. 178). While relying on R. Jackendoff’s Parallel Architecture, she highlights the contrast between regularity and idiosyncrasy regarding noun-noun compounds “at least in Germanic languages such as English and German” (p. 179). She also outlines Construction Morphology as defined by G. Booij in 2010 to compare it with R. Jackendoff’s framework and discuss schemas along with meaning relations. The distinction between classifying and non-classifying nominal compounds leads to the question of “the abstract semantic structure” (p. 181): where is the classifying meaning included? She also studies synthetic compounds and compounds with proper names, which are followed by a few of R. Jackendoff’s similar examples page 182. As far as “beta cell” and “X-ray” are concerned, we might wonder whether they are real noun-noun

compounds given that letters of the Greek and Latin alphabets are used instead of N1.

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32 In the case of adjective-noun compounds appearing in theories on concept categorization, examples might have come in handy to establish a distinction between “type concepts” and “token concepts” (p. 183) and thus render the paper less abstract. Barbara Schlücker, who draws on L. Ortner and E. Müller-Bollhagen’s [1991], S. Simoska’s [1999], W. Motsch’s [2004] and her own 2014 pieces of research, points out that German adjective-noun compounds can be seen in Parallel Architecture as falling into “at least six semantic subclasses” (p. 185). This enables her to compare adjective- noun compounds with “relational adjectives of the non-native type and their relation to corresponding noun-noun compounds” (p. 185) with the aim of broaching the topic of semantic specialization. After quoting a few instances of German adjective-noun compounds in which the adjective directly modifies the head noun, she focuses on possessive compounds whose interpretation is this time metonymic. She is also interested in adjectives with an adverbial function or which are used not as modifiers but as implicit nominal arguments, as well as in compounds that have a causal meaning component. She stresses that “noun-noun compounds can be classified according to the particular semantic modification relation involved” (p. 189), which is not the case of adjective-noun compounds although both are classificatory in meaning. The last subclass she discusses is that of adjective-noun compounds with relational adjectives before she concludes on the new function she proposes: IS A SUBTYPE OF “which takes the subconcept and the superconcept as its arguments” (p. 191).

3.10. Chapter 11, “Neoclassical compounds in the onomasiological approach” by Renáta Panocová

33 The author of this paper, who has chosen the onomasiological perspective, ponders the neoclassical compounds that mostly feature in technical and scientific papers, which implies examining their degree of transparency and their productivity. While contrasting the combinations of two bound stems and of one bound stem plus a word, she wonders whether neoclassical compounds constitute a distinct class within the category of compounds and where to place the boundary between word formation and borrowing. The problems with terminology stem from the absence of consensus on bound stems and the confusing definition of neoclassical elements in the literature as either affixes, prefixes or suffixes, or as “combining form[s]” by the Oxford English Dictionary (p. 194). L. Bauer used the phrases “Initial combining form” and “final combining form” in 1983 and 1998, when S. Scalise and A. Bisetto talked about “semiwords” in 2009 and P. ten Hacken about “neoclassical formatives”. M. Aronoff did not see them as “entities of their own” in 1976 just like A. Lüdeling et al. in 2002, who did not determine any precise status for them. To make things clearer though, P. ten Hacken proposed a test as early as 1994 “to determine whether an element is a stem or an affix” (p. 194).

34 Contrary to M. Aronoff and A. Lüdeling, R. Panocová herself is of the opinion that “[t]he delimitation of the morphological status of neoclassical elements has a direct impact on the definition of the morphological process which combines them” (p. 195). She is keen on showing the differences between the onomasiological and semasiological approaches to specify “neoclassical formatives” or “neoclassical combining forms” within P. Štekauer’s framework. According to her, these phrases, which seem more appropriate because P. Štekauer does not refer to “affixation, compounding, blending

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and conversion”, correspond to the status of “linguistic signs”: compounds have a meaning and a form although they differ from affixes in the sense that “the direction of attachment” is not given (p. 197). Before quoting several examples from the OED, she comes back to P. Štekauer’s onomasiological type, OT, and to his onomasiological structure, which consists of “the onomasiological base (OB) and the onomasiological mark (OM) divided into the determined and determining constituents” (p. 198). After this didactic parenthesis, she analyzes a few complex neoclassical compounds and notices that the principle of linguistic economy prevails, which is why P. Štekauer refers to types 3 and 4 as “speaker/writer-friendly, but less listener/reader-friendly” (p. 202). She also alludes to her own 2014 research, which enabled her to assert that “the number of neoclassical words resulting from back-formation is relatively high” (p. 203). The comparison between English and Russian corpora is a revealing sign of the importance of “[w]ord formation and borrowing in the onomasiological theory” (p. 203) as summarized in the conclusion: “Systematic and rule-governed neoclassical word formation as found in English is covered in the word formation component whereas neoclassical formations in the form of borrowings, as found in Russian, belong to the domain of the Lexicon” (p. 207).

3.11. Chapter 12, “Three analyses of compounding: a comparison” by Pius ten Hacken

35 This chapter, which serves as an effective conclusion, starts with the dichotomy between “classification and interpretation” (p. 211). P. ten Hacken draws up a list of the problems inherent in previous theories the better to compare the three frameworks presented in the volume. He specifies where the focus is in each of them and sums up the main points before illustrating the three approaches by applying their principles to the same compounds, mainly from Dutch. Examples of primary nominal compounds are followed by those of verbal compounds, to which they are opposed in the generative tradition, and by those with verbal non-heads. The final synopsis of the “similarities and differences” is a very useful reminder to readers who might not have read all the chapters.

4. Remarks

36 Although the layout is very neat, a larger and darker font as well as a wider spacing would have been gentler on the eyes, and all the more so as the analyses are often quite abstract.

5. Strong points

37 The great asset of the book is the detailed contributions by specialists in the field and, among them, the three theoreticians whose frameworks are highlighted. The rational plan that has been chosen allows a gradual progression from theory to practice and from generalities to particularities. Such didactic props as summaries, numbered sections and subsections as well as figures and tables enable any reader to understand quickly what compounding is all about. The scope of the book is greater thanks to the different types mentioned: the authors do not just deal with Noun + Noun, but also with

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Adjective + Noun and neoclassical compounds. The cross-language studies that have been carried out give you the opportunity to learn more about foreign languages such as French, German, Swedish or Greek and as a result, about the specificities of English. The issues of meaning and interpretation come across as being central and show why semantics can no longer be bypassed in theories that aim to be as comprehensive as possible. Because of those qualities, The Semantics of Compounding is indeed a must-read!

BIBLIOGRAPHY

ADAMS Valérie, 1973, An Introduction to Modern English Word Formation, London: Longman.

ALLEN Margaret Reece, 1978, Morphological Investigations, PhD thesis, University of Connecticut.

ARONOFF Mark, 1976, Word Formation in Generative Grammar, Cambridge University Press.

BECKER Judith A., 1994, “‘Sneak-shoes’, ‘sworders’, and ‘nose-beards’: A case study of lexical innovation’, First Language, Volume 14, 195-211.

BENCZES Réka, 2006, Creative Compounding in English, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

BAUER Laurie, 2010, “The typology of exocentric compounding”, in SCALISE & VOGEL (Eds.), Cross- Disciplinary Issues in Compounding, 167-176.

BOOIJ Geert, 2010, Construction Morphology, Oxford University Press.

BORER Hagit, 2013, Taking Form, Oxford University Press.

CHARITONIDIS Chariton, 2014, “The linking of denotational and socio-expressive heads in Modern Greek and English compounding”, Italian Journal of Linguistics, Volume 26, no. 2, 9-50.

CLARK Eve V. & BERMAN Ruth A., 1984, “Structure and use in acquisition of word-formation”, Language, Volume 60, 542-590.

CLARK Herbert H., 1996, Using Language, Cambridge University Press.

CRUSE D. Alan, 1991, Lexical Semantics, Cambridge University Press.

DARMESTETER Arsène, 1874, Traité de la formation des mots composés dans la langue française comparée aux autres langues romanes et au latin, Paris: Franck.

DIRVEN René & VERSPOOR Marjolein, 1998, Cognitive Exploration of Language and Linguistics, Cognitive Linguistics in Practice 1, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

DOKUKIL Miloš, 1962, Tvoření slov v češtině I. Teorie odvozování slov, Prague: Nakladatelství Československé akademie věd.

DOWNING Pamela, 1977, “On the creation and use of English compound words”, Language 53, 810-842.

FABB Nigel, 1998, “Compounding”, in SPENCER Andrew & ZWICKY Arnold M. (Eds.), The Handbook of Morphology, Wiley-Blackwell, 66-83.

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FILLMORE Charles & ATKINS Sue, 1992, “Toward a frame-based lexicon: The semantics of RISK and its neighbors”, in LEHRER Adrienne & FEDDER Kittay Eva (Eds.), Frames, Fields, and Contrasts, Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 75-102.

GAGNÉ Christina L., 2001, “Relation and lexical priming during the interpretation of noun-noun combinations”, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory & Cognition 1, 236-254.

HARLEY Heidi, 2009, “Compounding in distributed morphology”, in LIEBER Rochelle & ŠTEKAUER Pavol (Eds.), The Oxford Companion of Compounding, Oxford University Press, 129-144.

HATCHER Anna Granville, 1960, “An introduction to the analysis of English noun compounds”, Word, Volume 16, 356-373.

HOHENHAUS Peter, 1998, “Non-lexicalizability as a characteristic feature of nonce word formation in English and German”, Lexicology, Volume 4, no. 2, 237-280.

JACKENDOFF Ray, 2002, Foundations of Language: Brain, Meaning, Grammar, Evolution, Oxford University Press.

JACKENDOFF Ray, 2009, “Compounding in the Parallel Architecture and Conceptual Semantics”, in LIEBER Rochelle & ŠTEKAUER Pavol (Eds.), The Oxford Companion of Compounding, Oxford University Press, 105-129.

JESPERSEN Otto, 1942, A Modern English Grammar on Historical Perspectives. Part VI: Morphology, Copenhagen: Munksgaard.

KATZ JERROLD J. & POSTAL Paul M., 1964, An Integrated Theory of Linguistic Descriptions, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

LANGACKER Ronald W., 1987, Foundations of Cognitive Grammar, Volume I, Theoretical Prerequisites, Stanford University Press.

LEES Robert B., 1960, The Grammar of English Nominalizations, Bloomington: Indiana University Press and The Hague: Mouton (reissued 1963. 5th printing 1968).

LEVI Judith N., 1975, The Syntax and semantics of non-predicating adjectives in English, PhD thesis, University of Chicago.

LIEBER Rochelle, 2004, Morphology and Lexical Semantics, Cambridge University Press.

LIEBER Rochelle, 2006, “The category of roots and the roots of categories. What we learn from selection in derivation”, Morphology, Volume 16, 247-272.

LIEBER Rochelle, 2009, “A lexical semantic approach to compounding”, in LIEBER Rochelle & ŠTEKAUER Pavol (Eds.), The Oxford Companion of Compounding, Oxford University Press, 79-104.

LIEBER Rochelle, 2010, “On the lexical semantics of compounds: Non-affixal (de-)verbal compounds”, in SCALISE Sergio & VOGEL Irene (Eds.), Cross-Disciplinary Issues in Compounding, 127-144.

LIEBER Rochelle, forthcoming, “On the interplay of facts and theory”, in SIDDIQI Daniel & HARLEY Heidi (Eds.), Morphological Metatheory, Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

LÜDELING Anke, SCHMID Tanja, and KIOKPASOGLOU Sawwas, 2002, “On neoclassical word formation in German”, in BOOIJ Geert & VAN MARLE Jaap (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 253-283.

MELLENIUS Ingmarie, 1997, The acquisition of nominal compounding in Swedish, PhD thesis, Lund University Press.

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MOTSCH Wolfgang, 2004, Deutsche Wortbildung in Grundzügen.2., überarbeitete Aufl., Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

NOAILLY Michèle, 1990, Le Substantif épithète, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.

ORTNER Lorelies and MÜLLER-BOLLHAGEN Elgin, 1991, Deutsche Wortbildung: Typen und Tendenzen in der Gegenwartssprache, Vierter Hauptteil: Substantivkomposita, Berlin, New York: de Gruyter.

ROEPER Thomas, and Siegel Muffy, 1978, “A lexical transformation for verbal compounds”, Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 9, 199-260.

SCALISE Sergio & BISETTO Antonietta, 2009, “The classification of compounds”, in LIEBER Rochelle & ŠTEKAUER Pavol (Eds.), The Oxford Companion of Compounding, Oxford University Press, 34-53.

SCHLÜCKER Barbara, 2014, Grammatik im Lexikon. Adjektiv+Nomen-Verbindungen im Deutschen und Niederländischen, Linguistiche Arbeiten 553, Berlin, Boston: de Gruyter.

SELKIRIK Elizabeth O., 1982, The Syntax of Words, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

SIMOSKA Silvana, 1999, “Die morphologische und semantische Vielfalt des Adjektiv+Nomen- Kompositums”, Deutsche Sprache, Volume 27, 156-187.

SPALDING Thomas L., GAGNÉ Christina L., MULLALY Allison C. &HONGBO Ji, 2010, “Relation-based interpretations of noun-noun phrases: A new theoretical approach”, in OLSEN Susan (ed.), New Impulses in Word-Formation, Hamburg: Buske, 283-315.

SPENCER Andrew, 2005, “Word-formation and syntax”, in LIEBER Rochelle & ŠTEKAUER Pavol (Eds.), The Oxford Companion of Compounding, Oxford University Press, 73-97.

ŠTEKAUER Pavol, 1998, An Onomasiological Theory of English Word-Formation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins.

ŠTEKAUER Pavol, 2005, Meaning Predictability in Word-Formation, Amsterdam, Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

WARREN Beatrice, 1978, Semantic Patterns of Noun-Noun compounds, Göteborg: Acta Universitatis Gothoburgensis.

WINDSOR Jennifer, 1993, “The function of novel word compounds”, Journal of Child Language, Volume 20, 119-138.

AUTHOR

CATHY PARC Cathy Parc, ICP, France Cathy Parc is Senior Lecturer in English at ICP, coordinator of English teaching at the Pôle Langues. She holds a Ph.D. in English Studies from the Sorbonne Université-Paris IV, and has passed the “agrégation” in English with a major in Linguistics. She is the author of Calvin et Hobbes de Bill Watterson. La philosophie du quotidien (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013. ISBN 978-2-343-00054-1. 132 p.), a French translation of Elizabeth Jennings’ s Collected Poems 1953-1985 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014. ISBN 978-2-343-04434-7, EAN 9782343044347. 640 p.), L’anglais du monde politique (Paris: Technip et Ophrys Éditions, Collection anglais de spécialité, 2014. ISBN 978-2-7080-1401-5. ISBN 978-2-7080-1402-2. Vol. 1: 280 p. Vol. 2: 224 p.), and English Words for Economics. Vocabulaire anglais contemporain de l’économie (Paris: Éditions Ellipses, 2015.

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ISBN 9782340-008373. 384 p.). She has published articles on linguistics and literature, especially poetry, as well as several book reviews in Lexis.

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Ingo PLAG, Word-Formation in English (2nd Edition) Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2018, 245 pages

Cathy Parc

REFERENCES

Ingo Plag Word-Formation in English, Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics, 2018. ISBN: 978-1-316-62329-9, Price: £30.99, 245 pages.

1. General observations

1 Ingo Plag is Professor of English Linguistics at Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. He has published articles in specialized journals like Linguistics, Language or English Language and Linguistics and in works like the Yearbook of Morphology [2001], Word- Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe [2016] or Word Knowledge and Word Usage: A Cross-Disciplinary Guide to the Mental Lexicon [2017]. He is the author of Morphological Productivity: Structural Constraints in English Derivation [1999]. Word- Formation in English was first published in 2003. The phrase “Word-Formation” emphasizes the author’s aim, which is to specify from a morphological point of view the main processes at work in the creation of words.

2 In the Preface to the Second Edition (p. xi), the author, who dedicates his book to his team, states the reasons why an update was required: In particular, the work with Laurie Bauer and Shelly Lieber on The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology, published in 2013, showed me that certain concepts and theoretical notions needed to be reconceived and modernized in the light of the new evidence that had become available by that time.

3 In the Preface to the First Edition (p. xiii-xiv), which has also been included, he already mentioned the help he had received from his colleagues and the hints that had been

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provided by his students. The book was dedicated to his “academic teacher, mentor, and friend, Professor Rüdiger Zimmerman”. You also learn that his main source of inspiration was “a review article on Katamba’s morphology textbook” written in 1999 by Joel N. Nevis and John T. Stonham. His belief is that “everyone is a linguist, even if it is sometimes hard work (for both teachers and students) to unearth this talent”.

4 The new version of Word-Formation in English will be of interest to you if you wish to study one of the main linguistic processes which come into play in any language, whether you be a learner who wants to acquire the basic notions of morphology or a specialist whose desire it is read about the latest research. If you are willing to further your knowledge, other works belonging to the same series, “Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics”, deal with topics pertaining to domains such as semantics, syntax, phonetics and phonology, dialectology and varieties of English, pragmatics and grammar, language acquisition, the construction of meaning, as well as the main theories.

2. Linguistic framework

5 The author makes it clear that the approach chosen, whose goals are explicitly practical, does not rely on a specific linguistic theory, but favours the references which seem the most appropriate according to the topic at issue. Readers are thus invited to discover the latest findings and select the points of view they like best, which means that they cannot feel constrained by any analytical bias.

3. Synopsis of the book

6 From pages 1 to 3, the “Introduction: What This Book Is about and How It Can Be Used” states the topic straight away and gives all necessary instructions to readers. While taking stock of the universal situation in which words are taken for granted, the author wonders about the creativity at work in “word-formation”. He also ponders on the nature of the relationship between simple words and complex words. The intended readership is mainly of undergraduate level since all the explanations are provided for the student to become autonomous in their “own analyses of English (or other languages’) complex words” (p. 1). As no particular theoretical framework has been selected, the use of the textbook depends on what the teacher, student or general reader is looking for.

7 There are three parts: chapters 1 to 3 correspond to the definitions of “basic notions”, chapters 4 to 6 are descriptive and deal with “different kinds of word-formation processes in English” while chapter 7 is focused on “the role of phonology in word- formation and the nature of word-formation rules”. The introduction ends on a humorous note with the mention of the term teachees, which arouses the reader’s curiosity: you will undoubtedly want to find out more about this noun and ask yourself whether it is “a possible word of English” or not. Starting with an example, a concrete one, is a good way of concluding this brief introduction, which is remarkable for its clarity: no jargon is used, essential definitions are already given so you understand that more complex paragraphs are to be found afterwards. The author’s point is to make a

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good impression on the reader, who hopefully will not be deterred from going on studying each chapter.

8 The only question you might ask yourself is why the refusal to choose a particular theoretical framework has not been justified from the outset: is it because according to Ingo Plag none really achieves its aims or relies on precise enough concepts? Or is it on account of his wish to let practice prevail over theory so that readers might be trained in carrying out linguistic analyses? Does he think that it is better to propose several approaches which, to some extent, complement one another or does he prefer to give you the opportunity to select the one you like best? In which case, you may deduce that open-mindedness might be the reason for such an absence.

9 The seven chapters, which go from the general to the particular, from the most accessible to the most complex data, feature in the table of contents on pages vii, viii and ix. They all follow the same pattern: an “outline” at the top of the page announces key definitions, which are explained in detail in the multiple analyses that are carried out before a “summary” is included at the end. A few lines on “further reading” are then added as well as some exercises adapted to the basic and advanced levels. Thanks to that overall layout, it is easy to understand how the transitions operate from one chapter to the next and all the more so since the logical links between the various linguistic issues are obvious: the presentation of “Basic Concepts” (chap. 1) leads to “Studying Complex Words” (chap. 2), “Productivity and the Mental Lexicon” (chap. 3), “Affixation” (chap. 4) , “Derivation without Affixation” (chap. 5) and “Compounding” (chap. 6), to end with “Theoretical Issues: Modeling Word-Formation” (chap. 7). The telegraphic style used in the heads and subheads, which are made up of one word or more, enables readers to immediately get a clear idea of what the textbook is all about. It soon becomes manifest too that theory is not the main focus, the last chapter serving as a conclusion since “Answer Key to Exercises” is to be found right after the summary of Chapter 7.

10 The ‘References’ section covers nine pages, but it is not so long as to disorientate readers. The selection that is presented is a medley of books, articles in paper format and online articles in alphabetical order with an obvious emphasis on the English language, especially “General American English” (p. 2), and mostly on written English. It may be regrettable that the great variety of resources you have at your disposal has not been divided into categories, either according to the nature of the reference, to the thematic content or to the degree of specialization involved so that a beginner and a specialist might have known which items are most suitable for them. A distinction could have been established between firstly general introductions to morphology reflecting various schools of thought as well as their theoretical frameworks and secondly more specialized material, to end with the most highly complex works. Another possibility might have been to introduce them chapter by chapter since themes have been predetermined in their succession and all the more so because bibliographical advice is given at the end of each chapter of the book.

11 Nevertheless, the comparative studies between British and American English or between Italian, German and other languages are of interest, as well as the fact that phonology has been taken into account so that oral English has not been forgotten (cf. Mari Ostendorf, Patti Price and Stefanie Shattuck-Hufnagel, for instance). Behavioural studies (cf. Robert A. Rescorla and Allen R. Wagner) as well as those focused on “theories of associative learning in animals” (cf. John M. Pearce and Mark E. Bouton)

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have also been added so that, all in all, you are provided with a wealth of seminal works.

12 The three-page Subject Index is very useful if you are looking for a definition, as are the two-page Affix Index and the two-page Author Index. We can guess that it is for clarity’s sake that the Affix Index has not been included in the Subject Index. That way, it is easier to flip through the book and find a precise reference.

4. Detailed presentation of each chapter

4.1. Chapter 1

13 If you are what the author calls “a novice”, you would be well-advised to read the first chapter, which is the shortest one. Otherwise it will be difficult for you to understand the others. The author establishes very useful distinctions between crucial linguistic terms and resorts to visual props like tree diagrams or words above and below curly brackets to help you navigate through the transitions, temporary conclusions and numbered examples. The latter illustrate key rules and exceptions, the special cases being naturally of particular interest.

14 Yet, what is a little confusing is the use of the term “grammatical word” for walk in (a) “Franky walked to Hollywood every morning.”, (b) “You’ll never walk alone.”, (c) “Patricia had a new walking stick.” in Exercise 1.1 page 18 and in the Answer Key page 198. What Ingo Plag means by such a phrase is nevertheless explained there: “walked in (a) is a grammatical word because it is a verb that is specified for tense, in this case past second person”. This categorization does not correspond to the one normally used in phonology for instance where “grammatical words” are defined as tools in contrast to lexical words which,like the verb walk, bear informative content. 15 The phonological transcription [oʊ] instead of /əʊ/ for in NATO is derived from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English like all the other transcriptions as the author writes page 8, but it is not the typical IPA one. This is a recurrent phenomenon throughout the book. What is more surprising is the following statement: “[bi] could refer to two different ‘words,’ e.g. bee and be” (p. 8). In fact, is usually transcribed as /'bi:/ and only the strong form of be would correspond to it.

16 The sentence “Or consider the fact that only words (and groups of words), but no smaller units, can be moved to a different position in the sentence” (p. 8) is not always true because it is only the case for some words. For instance, we cannot say “*the house big” although some attributive adjectives like “present” can be placed after the noun. The assertion “in ‘yes/no’ questions, the auxiliary verb does not occur in its usual position but is moved to the beginning of the sentence” (p. 8) is a little confusing too because it is based on the premise that the assertion is the starting-point. The deduction “Hence the auxiliary verb must be a word. Thus syntactic criteria can help to determine the wordhood of a given entity.” (p. 8) also seems to be misleading: does it mean that as a consequence a lexical verb, which can never be put before the subject, would not be a word?

17 The comparative analyses between English and German offer you the possibility to understand better the specificity of the former while the variety of language-users ranging from the illiterate to the experts is also taken into account. Hence, tangible

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facts inevitably prevail over assumptions and valid criteria are set. That is why the phonological, semantic, and syntactic approaches are preferred to “orthography only” as is the one based on the “internal integrity rule” (p. 5). The opposition between written and oral English, which both allow the speaker to reach for particular stylistic effects, also plays a role in the description of compounds or creations, which are obviously the main issue.

18 The definitions of lexemes, homophones, morphologically complex words, and morphemes whether bound or free, are followed by the distinction which is established between roots, stems or bases, between roots in general and bound roots in particular. The terms “affix”, “prefix”, “suffix” and “infix” are made clear while the study of derivatives implies having a look at the “mechanisms that regulate the distribution of affixes and bases” and determine the “combinatorial properties of morphemes” (p. 11). “Concatenation” vs. “non-concatenative ways to form morphologically complex words” then come under scrutiny as does the process of “conversion, zero-suffixation or transposition” (p. 12), which takes place for instance between noun and verb (eg. walk). You will learn more about truncation, clipping (p. 12), blends (p. 13), acronyms and abbreviations (p. 13) as well as about the contrast between inflection and derivation (p. 13-17), which respectively involve word-forms as opposed to lexemes. “Non- transparent formations” are also at stake within derivational morphology as are the restrictions applying to the possible combinations.

4.2. Chapter 2

19 The morpheme, which is “a unit of form and meaning” (p. 20), was studied in the previous chapter, but now the author wishes to focus on the theoretical “problems of the mapping of form and meaning” (p. 20). The aim is to differentiate a derived word from a complex word as opposed to a simplex word (p. 26), and from “a compositional linguistic expression” (p. 26). Ingo Plag also goes back to the notion of “conversion” and the question of the “presence of a zero-morph” while broaching truncation again and introducing “extended exponence” (p. 23) to show that morphemes are discontinuous (p. 24). As far as monomorphemic words like “prefer” are concerned, according to him, morphology should be viewed independently of etymology. Several pages, which are devoted to verbs and “their nominalizing suffix[es]” (p. 26), feature references to the literature on the subject, which leads the author to favour “a gradient view of morphological complexity” (p. 27) as suggested by Laurie Bauer, Rochelle Lieber and Ingo Plag in The Oxford Reference Guide to English Morphology [2013]. The statement “It can thus be argued that government is morphologically less complex than for example, assessment or improvement whose phonological and semantic behavior is fully predictable from the morphemes that make up these words” (p. 27) is intriguing since you may feel that it is precisely the opposite: is not government more complex in fact since one of its pronunciations, /'gʌvmFnt/, is less predictable just like its pointing to “the people who govern” and not to the “action or result of governing”, as in the other two nouns quoted?

20 The study of the complementary distribution of adjectival suffixes -al and -ar and of the “morpho-phonological alternations” (p. 30) is instructive. When zooming in on the prefix un-, you will learn about the existence of three prefixes: the de-adjectival, denominal and deverbal one, and about the restrictions that apply (p. 31-35). The

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notion of complementarity then proves useful and the word-formation rule that is suggested can only be a tentative one at that stage: as the author remarks, “the task of the morphologist would be to find out more about the exact nature of the restrictions mentioned in the rules” (p. 36). For instance, the -th suffix does not make it possible to create new words through the process known in linguistics as “analogy” (p. 37). In back-formation, words are analogically derived by deleting a suffix (or supposed suffix)” as with the verb edit which was derived from the noun editor (p. 38). And in the case of multiple affixation (p. 39), parasynthetic forms may be encountered such as decaffeinate (p. 41).

21 Regarding the statement “the verb interview does not mean ‘view between’ but something like ‘have a (formal) conversation’” (p. 21), one could remark that originally people were supposed to see each other to be able to talk together before the introduction of technical devices that enable users to communicate with each other or with one another from a distance. Page 21, the distinction between “phonetic” and “phonological” forms should have been explained to those of the readers who are students. Page 31, the phrase “the hypothesis is falsified” (p. 31) might have been worded with the help of the adjective “false” instead, as in “results that could potentially falsify the initial hypotheses” (p. 43) where the meaning rather seems to be that of the verbs to contradict or to undermine. In the key to exercise 2.5 on pages 205-206, it could have been added that semantically speaking both ingenious and indifferent differ from all the other adjectives on the list because they are not the antonyms of different or *genious.

22 When it comes to phonology, the transcription [ʌnhӕpq ] with j as exponent at the end F0 (p. 21) is not the usual IPA one, neither is that of fall vs. fell ([ɔ] E0 [ε]) (p. 23) where the IPA symbols should have been /ɔ:/ and /e/. And ought not the definite article in isolation have been transcribed as /'ði:/ instead of [ði] (p. 28)? Ingo Plag also declares that in the verb explain “the first syllable of the base is pronounced [εk] instead of [qk]” (p. 29), but in Jones’s pronouncing dictionary for instance, we can find both transcriptions: /qk'spleqn/ and /ek'spleqn/. The sentence “the insertion of [F] with words ending in [t] and [d] (mended, attempted) can be analyzed as a case of dissimilation” (p. 29) is odd considering that the usual pronunciation of <-ed> in those words is /qd/. The definition “One of the two allomorphs occurs when a consonant follows, the other when a vowel follows” (p. 28) is problematic because it should have read: “when a consonant sound / when a vowel sound follows”. Otherwise how would it be possible to account for such examples as “the university”, where the definite article is pronounced /ðF/ and “a union” where it is not which is used, /j/ being the first sound that is heard and a consonant one at that, although in spelling both words start with a vowel? I can also mention the uncommon wording of the phrase “for + verb in - ING” in the sentence “Use tree diagrams for representing the structure…” (p. 43) instead of the usual infinitive “to represent”, which expresses a goal.

4.3. Chapter 3

23 The phrase “the mental Lexicon”, which is introduced and defined page in Chapter 1, is an interesting one: it is eye-catching and raises several questions. For instance, to what extent is it different from what we usually conceive of as the lexicon? The notion of “productivity”, of a word-formation rule especially, leads Ingo Plag to focus on the

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affix: what are the mechanisms that determine whether an affix is productive or not? The distinction between “possible and actual words” (p. 45) based on the study of “semantically transparent forms” (p. 46), whose meaning is predictable, implies examining some counter-examples like knowledgeable and probable (p. 47) which do not respectively mean “can be knowledged” and “can be probed”. Concerning “complex words in the lexicon” (p. 47), it is stimulating to see how the brain processes them, which allows for “psycholinguistic arguments” (p. 51), and to factor in the role played by “frequency of occurrence”.

24 Scrutinizing the measure of productivity and the factors that come into play in the process involves analyzing neologisms, hapaxes and “extent of use” as defined in 1993 by Harald R. Baayen in On Frequency, Transparency and Productivity (p. 54). In so doing, the author should have established a clearer distinction between “neologisms”, “new words” and “hapaxes” although he states page 54 that “a hapax legomenon […] could […] simply be a rare word of the language (instead of a newly coined derivative) or some weird ad-hoc invention by an imaginative speaker” (p. 55) and a few pages later that “a new word is created to give a name to a new concept or thing” (p. 59). A few concrete examples given from the outset pages 54-55 would have made the demonstration more effective. The restrictions to productivity that pertain to phonology, morphology, syntax and semantics may be influenced by usage-based factors too. Homonymy or synonymy blocking (p. 63) is related to “the principle of ambiguity avoidance” (p. 63), which is why Ingo Plag presents “type-blocking and token-blocking” as defined in 1988 by Franz Rainer in Towards a Theory of Blocking, although he does not agree on the former notion (p. 67).

25 As far as the style of writing is concerned, it is strange to see the recurring use of the for + -ING phrase in “For illustrating the frequencies of derived words in a language corpus, let us…” (p. 50). The expression “in short” could have been used in “Hapax legomena (or hapaxes for short)” (p. 54). Page 66, a question mark has been added before the word decentness whereas pages 64-65 it is not the case, which is a little confusing because the status of this noun might seem uncertain to some readers. The nouns discoursiveness and discoursivity (p. 67) should have been spelt discursiveness and discursivity.

4.4. Chapter 4

26 The question of knowing whether an affix is “a bound or free morpheme” is answered thanks to the example of compounds, which implies the distinction between an affix and a bound root. The latter term is here more precisely defined than in Chapter 1, as “neoclassical elements”, also called “combining forms”, are introduced in detail (p. 72). According to Ingo Plag, they should be considered to be compounds and not “cases of affixation”. You will learn more about the large databases available to researchers and the ‘Advanced search’ options on the OED website with the example of <-ment> (p. 73-77). The general properties of English affixation, be they phonological, morphological or semantic, are investigated with the example of the Latinate affixes as compared to those of Germanic origin. The chapters on prosodic structure are a little more complex to grasp although it might interest you to know more about the differences between the non-native suffixes, which tend to be vowel-initial, and the native ones, which tend to be consonant-initial (p. 79). An in-depth presentation of

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nominal (p. 87), verbal (p. 92), adjectival (p. 94) and adverbial suffixes (p. 97) follows, which has required extensive research, like the following review of prefixes. Yet, instead of devoting one paragraph or more to each of these affixes, it might have been a good idea to present them in a series of tables. Readers could have compared them at a glance and would have been able to memorize them more easily. The layout is thus intended for specialists rather than for students who just want to check an affix or two.

27 The acceptations provided for the adjectives economic vs. economical are profitable vs. money-saving (p. 96), but the former also has the meaning of “related to economics”. As far as the -ive suffix is concerned (p. 97), about which Ingo Plag writes that “some forms feature the variant -ative without an existing verb in -ate: argumentative quantitative, representative”, the exception preventative might have been added. Page 99, -im, -il and -ir should have been included in the paragraph about -in because among the examples mentioned are the adjectives implausible, illegal and irregular. Page 100, -ir should have featured in the paragraph on non- because of the example of irrational. The transcription [lɛss] (p. 72) for less does not follow the IPA rules, neither do those of obscene and obscenity, obsc[i]ne, obsc[ɛ]nity, (p. 92) or of produce, [djus] (p. 97), but these are a consequence of the author’s choice, as quoted above.

4.5. Chapter 5

28 This chapter deals with “non-affixational word-formation processes” like conversion, truncated names, -y diminutives, clippings, blends, abbreviations and acronyms (p. 106). The first question is that of the “directionality” of conversion between verb and noun, which is taken up from a previous chapter. Ingo Plag refers to the history of language to show that derived words are generally semantically more complex than their bases “since affixes normally add a certain meaning to the meaning of the base” (p. 107). It is appropriate to mention that the frequency of occurrence is lower for derived words but as far as “ring” is concerned page 107, the semantics of “rang” could have been detailed line 2 in the column entitled “meaning”. The role of inflection and, notably in the case of phrasal verbs, of stress is studied at length (p. 108), but for clarity’s sake it might have been better to mention a “particle” instead of a “preposition” in column 3b on the very same page. The topic of “conversion or zero- affixation or the overt analogue criterion” (Gerald Sanders [1988:160-161]) is then broached by Ingo Plag, who says that there is no basis for “the assumption of a zero- affix” (p. 111), insisting that conversion should be viewed as “non-affixational” (p. 112). According to him, this process is morphological and not syntactic except in adjectives notably used when referring to “persons collectively” (p. 114). An exception such as *the pretty might have been on the list drawn up page 113, to compare it to the beautiful for instance, which does not imply a class of people.

29 The author then expands on prosodic morphology, which was already introduced in Chapter 4, to examine truncated names as well as -y diminutives and clippings from a phonological point of view (p. 115-120). Clipped compounds also known as blends, whose shapes are “crucially constrained by prosodic categories” (p. 122), are subject to three types of restrictions: syllable structure, size and stress. The chapter, which makes good reading, ends with abbreviations and acronyms, both categories being better- known to the general reader (p. 124), although “the question of whether abbreviations are new lexemes or simply new surface forms, i.e. allomorphs, of the same lexeme” is

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more complex. According to Ingo Plag, the abbreviation differs from the base word semantically speaking because it has a connotation that is related to a social meaning as we can see in START and SALT. That is why he asserts that abbreviations can be markers of social identity.

4.6. Chapter 6

30 This chapter is devoted to the ways of recognizing compounds, compounding being defined by the author as “the most productive type of word-formation process in English”, but also as “the most controversial one in terms of its linguistic analysis” (p. 131). Compounds are not always made up of two words only, yet it is demonstrated that it is generally possible to analyze polymorphemic words as “hierarchical structures involving binary (i.e. two-member) subelements”. The property of recursivity (p. 133) is useful when dealing with compounds, each being “a word that consists of two elements, the first of which is either a root, a word or a phrase, the second of which is either a root or a word” (p. 134). A possible classification is based on the syntactic nature of the head, which determines the major properties of a compound: it can be a noun, a verb or an adjective. What is stimulating too is the notion of semantic head to be found either inside the compound in the case of an “endocentric compound” or outside it in the case of an “exocentric compound” as well as the mention of “canonical and non-canonical compounds” suggested by Laurie Bauer (p. 135). The “coordinative compounds” as Laurie Bauer calls them, which may be “exceptions to the binarity constraint” are divided into three classes: “appositional, additive or compromise compounds” (p. 140). You are provided with keys to interpreting and analyzing nominal compounds thanks to the linguistic notion of argument: Ingo Plag believes that in argumentative compounds, the left element is an argument of the head (p. 143). He is convinced that: the interpretation of compounds depends on the possible conceptual and semantic properties of the nouns involved and how these properties can be related to create compositional meaning in compounds. (p. 144)

31 With noun-noun compounds, the interpretation depends on “the argument structure of the head, the semantics of the two nouns, the possible conceptual relationship between the two nouns, and on the surrounding discourse” (p. 145). Stress in adjectival, verbal and neoclassical compounds, especially in relation to informativity (p. 148), is also detailed as well as the special case of “triconstituent compounds” (p. 149) before the problem of compounding as pertaining to syntax or morphology is tackled.

4.7. Chapter 7

32 This chapter is much more abstract so it is rather intended for specialists who would like to check whether an overall theory of word-formation is possible (p. 162), its criteria being according to Ingo Plag “falsifiability”, “internal consistency”, “elegance”, “explicitness” and “empirical adequacy” (p. 163). He says it could be built around “the interaction of phonology and morphology”, “the ordering of affixes in multiply affixed words” along with “the form and nature of word-formation rules” (p. 163). That is how he comes to define degemination (p. 164) and in the context of generative grammar, to ponder the theories of “lexical phonology” and “stratal phonology”. He is particularly interested in the ways an affix might be selected by a base so that “base-driven” or

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“affix-driven restrictions” can be specified (p. 172). Morphological complexity can be construed with reference to Jennifer Hay as “a psycholinguistically real notion which heavily relies on the segmentability of affixes”, compared to other theories which are founded exclusively on “structural distributional evidence” (p. 173). Four theories are hinted at in relation to “the form and nature of word-formation rules”: the morpheme- based approach, the word-based approach, analogy – as in dieselgate which is modelled on Watergate – and Naive Discriminative Learning. According to Ingo Plag, the first one is “especially suited for the analysis of affixational morphology but there are problems with non-affixational processes” (p. 181). The second one has a lot in common with it as it also stems from the belief that “words are created by applying some abstract patterns instead of deriving them directly on the basis of other words” (p. 185). When dealing with analogy, more examples could have been provided page 187 especially to illustrate Royal Skousen and Thereon Stanford’s 2007 theory. In the fourth one, which “is based on a well-established theory of learning from cognitive psychology” (p. 188), there are no morphemes and no morphological boundaries. This is where the author gets even more technical so it might be a little difficult for students to follow.

4.8. Answer Key to Exercises

33 In the Answer Key to Exercises, we might wonder why on page 200 Ingo Plag writes that “Considering the meaning of slow vs. slowly, aggressive vs. aggressively, for example, there is no difference in meaning observable” when we know that the adjective refers to the state of something or someone while the adverb usually refers to the manner of doing something. Page 206, instead of “fill the gaps”, the usual phrase “fill in the blanks” might have been used. Page 210, the stress has been forgotten on the verb absolutize which is quite rare. Page 215, the example of choir with /kw/ for could have been taken into account since it contradicts the assertion according to which “ is always pronounced [k]” though other examples like church have been given below to illustrate the pronunciation [tʃ]. Page 217, UFO has been transcribed as [jufoʊ] and [juεfoʊ] and not in IPA as /ֽ◌ju:ef'Fʊ/. Page 225, no comma features after 2 in 2000 dollars and page 226 Dar.wi.ni.a.ni.sm sounds odd given that the usual term is Darwinism.

5. Remarks

34 Although we have to keep in mind that the author does not always choose much when it comes to editing a book, a larger font would have been easier on the eyes, especially as the ink is quite pale and the paper not that white. A blacker shade of ink would have made our reading a lot more comfortable while the text would have looked less compact if lines had been left between paragraphs.

35 On page xv, you will find a list of “Abbreviations and Notational Conventions”, where it is a little confusing to notice that V is the abbreviation of “verb or vowel” while V refers to “the extent of use” defined by Harald R. Baayen as we later learn page 53. Three different symbols might have been preferable, for instance Vb for verb, V for vowel, and E for extent of use. The same goes for P, which stands for “productivity” and for “prepositional”, while “word” is symbolized by “Wd” in “prosodic word, PrWd” but by “W” in “word-formation rule, WFR”. Why not use the same symbol for that keyword? It would have made the abbreviations clearer and more consistent while

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their use might have been systematized throughout the book, thus enabling readers to memorize them more easily. It would also have become useless to remind them of the author’s choices, for instance page 5 where you can read “(fish brackets are used to indicate spellings, i.e. letters)”, or page 6 “(note that the asterisk indicates impossible words, i.e. words that are not formed in accordance with the morphological rules of the language in question)” and page 8 “(throughout the book I will use phonetic transcriptions as given in the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English)”, etc. Although the aim is to make everything clear to readers who have skipped page xv, such repetitions or information provided in passing may seem superfluous to those who have not. The use of square brackets for phonetic representation instead of the conventional slashes surrounding IPA symbols is uncommon.

6. Strong points

36 The author is very didactic so “novices” will certainly find a wealth of resources in Word-Formation in English. The keywords are defined at every step and temporary definitions are completed in subsequent chapters so that the student can choose to read one part of the book independently of the others or in the succession Ingo Plag has opted for. The introductory paragraphs and concluding summaries help you memorize content very quickly as well as the numerous templates, tables and graphs.

37 The great asset of the book is the user-oriented approach it reflects: it is particularly intended for intermediate and advanced students, who can apply what they have learned in the very interesting exercises to which a very clear and detailed key has been provided. After perusing Word-Formation in English, they will inevitably become more proficient at linguistics, especially morphology, and will have gleaned a lot of suggestions for future research topics in the field.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BAAYEN Harald R., 1993, “On frequency, transparency and productivity”, in BOOIJ Geert, & VAN MARLE Jaap (Eds.), Yearbook of morphology 1992, Dordrecht, Boston & London, Kluwer Academic Publishers: 181-208.

BAUER Laurie, LIEBER Rochelle & PLAG Ingo, 2013, The Oxford reference guide to English morphology, Oxford, Oxford University Press.

HAY Jennifer & Plag Ingo, 2004, “What constrains possible suffix combinations? On the interaction of grammatical and processing restrictions in derivational morphology”, Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, Volume 22, no.3: 565-596.

NEVIS Joel N. & STONHAM John T., 1999, “Learning morphology: what makes a good textbook?”, Language, Volume 75: 801-809.

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OSTNEDORF Mari, PRICE Patti & SHATTUCK-HUFNAGEL Stefanie, 1995, Boston University radio speech corpus, Philadelphia, Linguistic Data Consortium.

PEARCE John M. & BOUTON Mark E., 2001, “Theories of associative learning in animals”, Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 52, no. 1: 111-139.

PLAG Ingo, 1996, “Selectional restrictions in English suffixation revisited: A reply to Fabb (1988)”, Linguistics, Volume 34: 769-798.

PLAG Ingo, 2002, “The role of selectional restrictions, phonotactics and parsing in constraining suffix ordering in English”, in BOOIJ Geert E. & VAN MARLE Jaap (Eds.), Yearbook of Morphology 2001, Dordrecht, Boston & London, Kluwer Academic Publishers: 285-314.

PLAG Ingo, 2016, “English”, in MÜLLER Peter O., Ohnheiser Ingeborg, OLSEN Susan & RAINER Franz (Eds.), Word-Formation: An International Handbook of the Languages of Europe, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter: 2411-2427.

PLAG Ingo & BAAYEN Harald R., 2009, “Suffix ordering and morphological processing”, Language, Volume 85, no. 1: 109-152.

PLAG Ingo & BALLING Laura W., 2017, “Derivational morphology : An integrated perspective”, in PIRRELLI Vito, DRESSLER Wolfgang U. & PLAG Ingo (Eds.), Word knowledge and word usage: A cross- disciplinary guide to the mental lexicon, Berlin, Mouton de Gruyter.

PLAG Ingo, DALTON-PUFFER Christiane & BAAYEN Harald R., 1999, “Morphological productivity across speech and writing”, English Language and Linguistics, Volume 3: 209-228.

RESCORLA Robert A. & WAGNER Allan R., 1972, “A theory of Pavlovian conditioning: Variations in the effectiveness of reinforcement and nonreinforcement”, in BLACK Abraham H. & PROKASY William F. (Eds.), Classical conditioning II: Current research and theory, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts: 64-99.

SANDER Gerald, 1988, “Zero derivation and the overt analogon criterion”, in HAMMOND Michael and NOONAN Michael (Eds.), San Diego & London, Academic Press: 155-175.

SKOUSEN Royal & STANFORD Thereon, 2007, AM: Parallel, http://humanities.byu.edu/am.

AUTHORS

CATHY PARC Cathy Parc, ICP, France Cathy Parc is Senior Lecturer in English at ICP, coordinator of English teaching at the Pôle Langues. She holds a Ph.D. in English Studies from the Sorbonne Université-Paris IV, and has passed the “agrégation” in English with a major in Linguistics. She is the author of Calvin et Hobbes de Bill Watterson. La philosophie du quotidien (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013. ISBN 978-2-343-00054-1. 132 p.), a French translation of Elizabeth Jennings’ s Collected Poems 1953-1985 (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2014. ISBN 978-2-343-04434-7, EAN 9782343044347. 640 p.), L’anglais du monde politique (Paris: Technip et Ophrys Éditions, Collection anglais de spécialité, 2014. ISBN 978-2-7080-1401-5. ISBN 978-2-7080-1402-2. Vol. 1: 280 p. Vol. 2: 224 p.), and English Words for Economics. Vocabulaire anglais contemporain de l’économie (Paris: Éditions Ellipses, 2015. ISBN 9782340-008373. 384 p.). She has published articles on linguistics and literature, especially poetry, as well as several book reviews in Lexis.

Lexis , Book reviews