Typology of Verbal Categories: Papers Presented to Vladimir Nedjalkov on the Occasion of His 70th Birthday (review)

In the introduction to this book, the editors highlight two important contributions to the field of linguistics made by Vladimir Nedjalkov. First, he has helped to expand the interaction between linguists working in Russia and those working in the western world. Second, he has added greatly to the understanding of sundry verbal categories, especially causatives, resultatives, and tense/aspect/mood. To these I might add a third, that Nedjalkov has furnished careful research on several understudied languages including Evenki, Nivkh, and Chuckchi. The 22 papers in the volume are cast in the spirit of Nedjalkov’s work and serve as a fitting acknowledgment of his achievements.

The articles, written primarily in English but also with three in German and three in French, are arranged into four sections: ‘Ergativity and transitivity’; ‘Voice, causative and valency’; ‘Tense and mood’; and ‘Verbal categories and language universals’. The quadripartite structure serves much more as a matter of convenience than a significant division as many of the papers might properly have appeared in more than one section, e.g. ‘Causalité, causativité, and transitivité’ (7–27) by Jean-Pierre Desclés and Zlatka Guentchéva, and the fourth section contains papers that have little to do with one another, cf. ‘Defining converbs’ (273–82) by Johan van der Auwera and ‘Die Verneinung als funktional-semantische Kategorie (unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Streckformen des Deutschen und Russischen)’ (287–308) by Ronald L ötzsch.

Though differing greatly in style, subject matter, and length, the contributions to this book supply plenty of substantive analyses and data. There is no way to summarize them all adequately here, so I have selected just three articles which to me best capture the character of the book. In ‘Transitivity increasing operations in Tariana’ (47–59), A lexandra Y. Aikhenvald describes four causative constructions found in this North Arawak language: a morphological causative, a serial causative construction, and two periphrastic causative constructions. The choice of which causative to use is based on a complex of properties. These include the transitivity of the verb being causativized, the degree of control being assigned to the causee, and the nature of the causer’s effort. While none of these parameters is unusual, Aikhenvald points out that they rarely give rise to four distinct causative structures in a single language.

Masayoshi Shibatani’s contribution, ‘Voice parameters’ (117–38), proposes that the confluence of several semantic parameters can be used to account for the voice oppositions found in particular languages. Of particular importance is the principle of maximization, which states ‘Maximize the contrast in grammatical meaning as much as possible’. Shibatani intends this principle to capture the fact that certain voice oppositions, e.g. active vs. passive, are common whereas others (e.g. active vs. middle with no passive in the language) are highly unusual. He notes a variety of other parameters as well such as whether a language allows passive forms on intransitive bases and whether volitionality is required of the agent in passive constructions. He then demonstrates how the parameters can be employed to account for the existence of impersonal passives in some languages.

In ‘Verb formation in Leko: Causatives, reflexives, and reciprocals’ (195–203), Simon van de Kerke furnishes data about verbal categories in Leko, a largely unresearched language isolate in Bolivia. K describes a system of verb formation that evinces many correspondences to Quechua, which leads him to wonder whether the similarity may be due to extended contact between the languages. This turns out to be a query that must be left unanswered because of the lack of information about other neighboring languages spoken in the area, all of them still awaiting detailed study.