Theoretical perspectives on Native American languages Edited by Donna B. Gerdts and Karin Michelson (review)

REVIEWS 215 Mithun, Marianne. 1984. The evolution of noun incorporation. Lg. 60.847-94. Miyagawa, Shigeru. 1989. Structure and case marking in Japanese. (Syntax and Semantics , 22.) San Diego: Academic Press. Perlmutter, David M. 1978. Impersonal passives and the unaccusative hypothesis. Berkeley Linguistics Society 4.157-89. Pesetsky, David M. 1982. Paths and categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. Sadock, Jerrold M. 1980. Noun incorporation in Greenlandic. Lg. 56.300-19. Saito, Mamoru. 1985. Some asymmetries in Japanese and their theoretical implications. Cambridge, MA: MIT dissertation. ------, and Takashi Imai (eds.) 1987. Issues in Japanese linguistics. Dordrecht: Foris. Tateishi, Koichi. 1989. Subjects, SPEC, and DP in Japanese. Northeastern Linguistic Society 19.405-18. Travis, Lisa, and Gregory Lamontaigne. 1988. A structural theory of adjacency. West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics 7.173-86. Ueyama, Ayumi. 1989. Category MP in Japanese. Kyoto University, ms. Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics Morrill Hall Cornell University Ithaca, NY 14853-4701 [Received 8 July 1991; revision received 11 September 1991. Theoretical perspectives on Native American languages. Edited by Donna B. Gerdts and Karin Michelson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989. Pp. xii, 289. Cloth $52.50, paper $19.50. Reviewed by Willem J. de Reuse, University ofArizona Theoretical Perspectives on Native American Languages is a collection of eleven papers stemming from a symposium held at the State University of New York at Buffalo, March 14-16, 1985. The languages under discussion belong to six of the major Native American families of Canada: Algonquian (Ojibwa and Cree), Athapaskan (Babine, Carrier, Dogrib, Sekani, and Slave), Eskimo (Inuktitut), Iroquoian (Mohawk), Salish (Halkomelem), and Siouan (Dakota). Obviously, the fact that these languages are Canadian is a matter of geographic convenience; the collection is equally relevant to the study of Native American languages of the United States, since all the families discussed here, and many of the languages as well, are represented south of the Canadian border or in Alaska. A brief preface (xi-xii) emphasizes the importance of the interaction of upto -date theoretical perspectives with descriptive fieldwork on little-known languages . This is a viewpoint defended in previous collections of similar scope, such as Nichols & Woodbury 1985, and it is one with which I must wholeheartedly agree. The volume is divided into two parts. The papers contained in Part 1, 'Problems in Phonological Representation', are the following. Patricia A. Shaw, in 'The complex status ofcomplex segments in Dakota' (3-37), uses a wide variety of theoretical constructs, and Karin Michelson, in 'Invisibility: Vowels without a timing slot in Mohawk' (38-69), deals with CV-phonology. The next two 216LANGUAGE. VOLUME 68, NUMBER 1 (1992) papers examine Athapaskan languages in a Lexical Phonology framework: Sharon Hargus, 'Underspecification and derived-only rules in Sekani phonology ' (70-103), and Keren D. Rice, 'Vowel initial suffixes and clitics in Slave' (104-32). The last paper in this section is different in orientation, since it deals with phonological universals and compares some Asian, African, and Mexican languages with two Athapaskan languages, Babine and Carrier: EungDo Cook, 'Articulatory and acoustic correlates of pharyngealization: Evidence from Athapaskan' (133-45). Part 2, entitled 'The Morpho-syntax of Complex Verbal Morphology', contains four papers dealing with agreement or argument structure within various versions of the Government-Binding framework: Leslie Saxon, 'Agreement in Dogrib: Inflection or cliticization?' (149-62); Ann Grafstein, 'Disjoint reference in a "free word order" language' (163-75); Glyne L. Piggott, 'Argument structure and the morphology of the Ojibwa verb' (176-208); and John T. Jensen & Alana Johns, 'The morphosyntax of Eskimo causatives' (20929 ). The two final papers are J. Peter Denny's 'The nature of polysynthesis in Algonquian and Eskimo' (230-58), a Logical Semantic account, and Donna B. Gerdts' 'Relational parameters of reflexives: The Halkomelem evidence' (259-80), written in a Relational Grammar framework. There is a rather extensive index (281-89). Shaw's paper discusses the status of complex segments, i.e. aspirate and ejective voiceless stops, in Dakota, a Siouan language. These function as unit phonemes in some respects and as clusters in others. The author's presentation of data is superb (though I would question her claim that word-final voiced stops arise through low-level phonetic processes), and there...