Modern Aztec grammatical sketches Edited by Ronald W. Langacker (review)

REVIEWS211 Gravius, Daniel. 1661. Het heylige evangelium Matthei en Johannis ... overgeset inde Formosaansche tale, voor de inwoonders van Soulang, Mattau, Sinckan, Bacloan, Tavokan, en Tevorang. Amsterdam. Happart, Georgius. 1650. Woord-boek der Favorlangsche taal. [Translated in Campbell.] Klaproth, Julius Heinrich. 1822. Sur la langue des indigènes de l'île de Formose. Journal Asiatique 1.193-202. Li, Paul Jen-Kuei. 1972. On comparative Tsou. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sínica, 44.311-38. ------. 1977. The internal relationships of Rukai. Bulletin of the Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sínica, 48:1.1—92. Ogawa, Naoyoshi, and Erin Asai. 1935. Myths and traditions of the Formosan native tribes [in Japanese]. Taipei: Taihoku Imperial University. Pawley, Andrew, and Lawrence A. Reíd. 1976. The evolution of transitive constructions in Austronesian. Working Papers in Linguistics, University of Hawaii, 8:2.51-74. Stanley, Patricia. 1974. Syntax of Tsou verbs: Implications for comparative studies. Paper presented at the First International Conference on Comparative Austronesian Linguistics, Honolulu. Tung, T'ung-ho, et al. 1964. A descriptive study of the Tsou language, Formosa. (Institute of History and Philology, Special publication 48.) Taipei: Academia Sínica. Wolff, John U. 1973. Verbal inflection in Proto-Austronesian. Parangal Kay Cecilio Lopez, ed. by Andrew Gonzales (Philippine Journal of Linguistics, Special monograph 4), 71-91. Quezon City. [Received 20 March 1980.] Modern Aztec grammatical sketches. Edited by Ronald W. Langacker. (SIL publications in linguistics, 56; Studies in Uto-Aztecan grammar, 2.) Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics and University of Texas at Arlington, 1979. Pp. x, 380. Reviewed by Una Canger, University of Copenhagen This work, the second ofa set ofthree volumes edited by Langacker, contains sketches of four modern Aztec dialects, prepared by participants in a SIL UtoAztecan workshop held under Langacker's direction from January through April 1976 at Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, Mexico. The four sketches are on Tetelcingo , by David H. Tuggy; North Puebla Náhuatl, by Earl Brockway; Huasteca Náhuatl, by Richard and Patricia Beller; and Michoacán Nahual, by William R. Sischo. No map is given to show the geographical location of the four dialects. Volume 3 will contain sketches of five other Uto-Aztecan languages. In the foreword, L states that 'the purpose of these sketches [in volumes 2 and 3] is to provide Uto-Aztecan scholars, linguists generally, and other interested people with reasonably comprehensive basic information about a variety of Uto-Aztecan languages.' He continues: 'To facilitate understanding and comparison, we have adopted fairly uniform transcriptions, abbreviations, and formats.' Langacker 1977 (reviewed by Miller 1979) presents his overview in a format which L has developed over the years in working with Uto-Aztecan languages; and this format is used in the present volume. Thus grammatical 212LANGUAGE, VOLUME 57, NUMBER 1 (1981) information is organized in the following larger units: 'Introduction', 'Phonology ', 'Syntax of simple sentences', 'Derivational morphology', 'Nominal constituents ', 'Complex sentences', 'Subordination', and 'Text'. Most of these units are further divided into labeled sections; e.g., under 'Verbs', we find 'Stems', 'Incorporation', 'Syntactic marking', 'Non-syntactic affixation', and 'Over-all verb structure'. In each article the authors' task has been to fill in the given sections with material from the one dialect they have studied. Thus the main part of the sketches naturally consists of examples with translations, with little or no comment. The analysis of the examples must be deduced from the segmentation , morpheme translations, and titles of the sections under which the examples are entered. Thus, in the section on 'Verb morphology', Tuggy (42), under adj +X = V, has '-¡.wl-iew become adj' with the example cicil-iew-i (red-VR-iNTRNs) 'reddens': we are to understand that verbs are derived from adjectives with the suffix -iW-ietv-i. The sketches are thus like organized inventories of forms and constructions; and in uncontroversial cases this may be sufficient. But there is no discussion of the many problems which the authors must have faced in filling the sections with appropriate examples. In Aztec it is often difficult to determine whether a stem or root is a noun, an adjective, or a verb. On p. 43, Tuggy again uses 'red' in an example: under X + Y...