An areal-typological study of American Indian languages north of Mexico By Joel Sherzer (review)

REVIEWS737 does not have this effect. One would like an explanation for this, and an explanation of the derived constituent structure produced by the rule. Finally, an investigation of the semantic and pragmatic conditions of Preposing would certainly be interesting. J also discusses what is apparently a passive (400 ff.) In this construction, a non-subject is moved to surface subject position, before the verb. If it was originally the object of a preposition , it leaves behind a copy; otherwise not. The underlying subject follows the verb, which appears in its 'hypothetical' form. (This means, among other things, that a copy of the subject is prefixed to the verb; this copy has different morphology from the pronominal trace discussed in the preceding paragraph.) Consider these active and passive sentences: (6)A Toki a chiloit a babier. 'Toki threw away the letters.' (7)A babier a lechiloit a Toki. 'The letters were thrown away by Toki.' There are two mysteries to the passive. First, why does it affect such a large range of nonsubjects ? As J shows (405-7, 455-6), the passive allows not only objects and oblique NP's to appear as surface objects, but also NP's from embedded clauses. This range is more typical of topicalization than a passive. Second, why does the verb appear in its 'hypothetical' form, a form which is otherwise restricted to various types of irrealis clauses? Despite the reservations indicated above, I would like to express my over-all admiration for Sohn's and Josephs' grammars. Both are serious attempts to deal with the task of writing for linguists and native speakers—a task whose difficulty should not be underestimated. In addition, both contribute substantially to our knowledge of Micronesian languages. The publisher should be congratulated for the attractive format ofthese grammars, and the Government ofthe Trust Territory ofthe Pacific will be thanked by everyone for financing their publication (thereby, I assume, making possible their reasonable price). Both books are interesting and inexpensive enough that every linguist can enjoy them. REFERENCES Bender, Byron W. 1971. Micronesian languages. Current trends in linguistics, 8: Linguistics in Oceania, ed. by Thomas A. Sebeok, 426-65. The Hague: Mouton. Lakoff, George, and Stanley Peters. 1969. Phrasal conjunction and symmetric predicates. Modern studies in English, ed. by David A. Reibel & Sanford A. Schane, 113-42. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. [Received 20 July 1977.] An areal-typological study of American Indian languages north of Mexico. By Joel Sherzer. (North-Holland linguistic series, 20.) Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1976. Pp. xiv, 284; maps. Reviewed by Michael Silverstein, University of Chicago This ambitious work, based on a 1968 University of Pennsylvania dissertation, 'is concerned with the distribution of phonological and morphological traits in the languages north of Mexico, and not with lexical or vocabulary items' (p. 9). Its three professed aims are 'to determine to what degree phonological and morphological traits have diffused in North America, to delimit linguistic areas, and to compare the linguistic areas with culture areas that have been posited by anthropologists on the basis of non-linguistic culture' (p. xiv). 738LANGUAGE, VOLUME 54, NUMBER 3 (1978) Sherzer's discussion is divided into fifteen chapters, of which the central eleven (20-218) are annotated inventories ofthe traits present and absent in each particular culture area, as defined in the Smithsonian's forthcoming Handbook of North American Indians (William C. Sturtevant, general editor). These are introduced by two chapters (1-19). The first gives an historical characterization of areal linguistic studies in North America, as they have evolved in American anthropology and Amerindian linguistics (omitting, therefore, all reference to European work). The second defines the labels used for areal trait types, and sets out the traits examined in an organized check-list. The data are summarized by two final chapters (219-63); one compares the extension of linguistic areas with the culture areas that serve as the initial framework; the other tabulates the universal implicational laws exemplified in the sample of traits examined, noting exceptional cases in the data. Many readers of Language may be unfamiliar with the long and distinguished history ofthe concept of'area' in American anthropology. Even before the Boasian tradition, anthropologists looked...