Basic linguistic theory (review)

Volumes 1 and 2 of Basic linguistic theory are the first of a three-volume set scheduled to be completed in 2011. The front matter describes the work as a ‘new and fundamental characterization of the nature of human language and a comprehensive guide to their description and analysis’. This is an accurate portrayal. These books are monumental and destined to become classics, equatable to the two volumes entitled Language by Sapir (1921) and Bloomfield (1933), and to Givón’s Syntax, volumes 1 (1984) and 2 (1990), but in each case surpassing them in scope, detail, rigor, and coherence. Dixon presents a complete, fully articulated, and cohesive explication of grammar, with extensive elaboration on every major grammatical structure found in the world’s languages, as well as many minor ones.

This work squarely falls within the field of linguistic typology, as it is broadly crosslinguistic and comparative, and aims to provide a summary of the prototypical grammatical patterns found in the world’s languages and how languages deviate from these prototypes. The works are empirically based on deep crosslinguistic grammatical study and analysis. The adjective ‘deep’ is used here specifically to refer to the detailed study of grammars, comprehensive theoretical statements of how a particular language is structured and used, produced by people who spend years—and often decades—immersed in a language. D, perhaps more than anyone in the history of our field, has devoted his academic life to the careful study of grammars. And this, together with his well-known fieldwork on dozens of languages, the writing of four grammars himself (Dixon 1972, 1988, 2004, 2010), and decades of supervision of doctoral and postdoctoral grammar writers, has given him a deep and comprehensive understanding of an immense sample of languages. Data from every part of the world and from languages with highly distinct typological profiles are cited throughout.

Vol. 1, Methodology, presents the theoretical framework and methodological principles of the study, whereas Vol. 2, Grammatical topics, and the imminent Vol. 3, Further grammatical topics, provide detailed studies on virtually every major aspect of grammar; the scope is simply breathtaking. The volumes are extensively cross-referenced and each contains a glossary and comprehensive indices. Chapters are broken into well-conceived subsections and contain useful summaries at the end. Each chapter of Vol. 2 concludes with ‘What to investigate’, a bullet-pointed guide to analysis of the subject in any language. These are thus indispensable volumes for fieldworkers. They provide more depth than Payne’s (1997) Describing morphosyntax, and more breadth and coherence than Language typology and syntactic description (Shopen 1985).

These books will be of interest to several overlapping audiences. First, they are for anyone who finds delight in the complexity and diversity of the world’s languages and the linguistic subsystems on which they are based. These volumes are teeming with detailed and fascinating examples, elegant argumentation, reflections on language and culture, anecdotes from fieldwork, and delightful analogies. They can rekindle the sense of discovery and amazement in the complexity and genius of language that can easily get lost in the grind of academic careers. Second, these volumes are for linguistic theorists, who have before them a coherent exposition of functional-typological ‘basic linguistic theory’. And third, they are explicitly aimed at grammar writers, particularly those who are new to the endeavor and about to embark on fieldwork. In addition to the chapter-specific ‘What to investigate’ guides in Vols. 2 and (presumably) 3, the majority of Vol. 1 is addressed to this audience, especially the chapters on the following topics: principles of grammar writing; analysis, argumentation, and explanation; terminology; typological method; phonology; the lexicon; and field linguistics. Readers should be warned, however, that D is strongly opinionated and does not mince words. He readily describes particular practices or analyses (and by extension the linguists who use them) as ‘wrong’, ‘sloppy’, ‘unreliable’, ‘unrevealing’, or just plain ‘bad’. The book is filled with ‘shoulds’, ‘musts...