The problem of presentative sentences in Modern Dutch By Robert S. Kirsner (review)

REVIEWS429 Lloyd, Paul M. 1979. On the definition of Vulgar Latin: The eternal return. Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 80.110-22. Malkiel, Yakov. 1960. A tentative typology of Romance historical grammars. Lingua 9.321-416. [Repr. in his Essays on linguistic themes, 71-164. Oxford: Blackwell, 1968.] Meyer-Lübke, Wilhelm. 1890-1902. Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen. 4 vols. (Ill: Formenlehre, 1893.) Leipzig: Fues [Reisland]. [French trans, by E. Rabiet et al. Paris: Welter, 1890-1906 (Morphologie, 1895). Repr., New York: Stechert, 1923.] Pulgram, Ernst. 1963. Synthetic and analytic morphological constructs. Festschrift Alwin Kuhn (Innsbrucker Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaft, 9/10), 35-42. Innsbruck. Tagliavini, Carlo. 1949. Le origini délie lingue neolatine: Introduzione alia filología romanza. Bologna: Patron. [Spanish trans, of 5th ed. (1969) by J. Almela. México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1973.] [Received 7 July 1981.] The problem of presentative sentences in Modern Dutch. By Robert S. Kirsner. (North-Holland linguistic series, 43.) Amsterdam: North-Holland, 1979. Pp. xii, 215. /55.00. Reviewed by William Z. Shetter, Indiana University The little teach-yourself grammar that provided my introduction to Dutch, thirty-five years ago, offered a reasonable sketch of the grammar; but at one point, it inexplicably left me floundering on my own. It was written by a native speaker, who frequently used sentences containing a nearly unnoticeable word er without ever deeming it necessary to explain what it was doing there. Later experience suggested that the ubiquitous word was indeed beneath everyone's notice, which for many years left me making and refining my own hypotheses to account for all its occurrences and to produce correct sentences. The temptation was strong to take it as a mere 'particle' or a match with unstressed 'there', though this fell somewhat short of capturing distinctions such as (1)Wie studeert anthropologie? 'Who (is the one who) studies anthropology?' (2)Wie studeert er anthropologie? 'Who (if anyone ever) studies anthropology?' This eventually led to the conclusion that er has a vaguely locative sense, but a complex variety of applications. It may well have been near this same time that Gunnar Bech also suspected the native grammarians of not sufficiently appreciating the complexities ofthis feature; his classic monograph (Bech 1952) attempted to present a total picture ofits functions, in part by deriving sentences introduced by er from 'plain' sentences. Since then, the problem has received something more like the attention it deserves: the work under review, the first since Bech by a non-native, lists 21 items offering substantial contributions to the discussion. By now, however, we find the whole problem so weighty with theoretical implications that Kirsner can take on only 'the most central of the problems surrounding er: its use as an apparent "expletive" or "dummy subject " in sentences which, for the sake of convenience, we shall provisionally term "presentative"' (p. 1). 430LANGUAGE, VOLUME 58, NUMBER 2 ( 1982) The reader who suspects at this point that we are dealing with a grammatical molehill will soon find himselfin a thicket of subtleties and unexpected semantic distinctions which, K persuasively insists, have a concrete basis in the grammar . E.g., (3)Een hond blaft. (4)Er blaft een hond. Ex. 3 (my numbering) has the meanings ? dog {barks, is barking}; Any dog barks'—or, as in the opening of one of Snoopy's novels, ? dog barks. [A woman screams ...]' But 4 narrows this to ? dog is barking; There is a dog barking', forming a contrast between vivid and non-vivid narrative. K (p. 3) gives further examples showing nuances of this distinction: (5)Overtreders worden vervolgd 'Trespassers will be prosecuted.' (6)Er worden overtreders vervolgd 'Trespassers are (being) prosecuted.' Ex. 6 has a further possible interpretation not mentioned by K: 'Some trespassers are prosecuted.' Though most discussions of er make a sharp distinction between locative and non-locative meanings, K confirms my own suspicion that locativity, however attenuated, is difficult to shake off entirely: (7)Een hond blaft er ? dog is barking (there).' (8)Laten we blij zijn. Je bent er! 'Let's be happy. You're alive!' Ex. 7 shows that non-initial er turns into an anaphoric locative—a meaning that is hard to disclaim, even in 8, in...