Current Progress in Chadic Linguistics: Proceedings of the International Symposium on Chadic Linguistics, Boulder, Colorado, 1-2 May, 1987.

• Author: Wolff, H. Ekkehard

This volume contains fifteen papers from the third (not fourth, as the editor maintains in his introduction) of its kind Chadic linguistics meeting in Boulder, Colorado, in 1987. The topics of the papers tend to show the increasing attractiveness of Chadic language structures for general linguistic discussions in recent theoretical frameworks on syntax. Yet the major issue remains the diachronic perspective in which many authors place their contributions, thereby showing how Chadic linguistics has come of age.

Syntactic questions are dealt with in six contributions. L. Tuller ("Variation in Focus Constructions," pp. 9-33) establishes three types of FOCUS (=focalization and question) constructions in Chadic: in situ, pre-sentential, postverbal. Her paper focuses on the postverbal type which displays some interesting intra- and interlinguistic variation. The issue of a general postverbal FOCUS position is the more fascinating when we remember that Chadic contains languages with both SVO and VSO neutral word order. T. argues within the Government and Binding framework. For postverbal FOCUS she dismisses both ideas that +FOCUS could be either assigned to a sentence-final /SPEC,CP/ position or that +FOCUS is assigned by the verb. Rather, she proposes that INFL (I) functions as a FOCUS assigner when it contains a raised verb. This cleverly accounts for phonological intra-language differences found between V+DO and V+FOC-DO constructions! Inter-language variation of V+FOC+DO vs. V+DO+FOC is then explained in terms of Case Theory. As interesting as the paper may be because of its theoretical implications, it should be pointed out that it is also extremely interesting from descriptive and comparative points of view within Chadic. It is, to the best of my knowledge, the best contrastive overview of such constructions that has been published hitherto for this language family.

Working in the same theoretical paradigm as Tuller, B. J. Johnson ("Case Assignment in Hausa, Kanakuru, and Ngizim," pp. 35-54) uses data from three Chadic languages to take issue with some notions within Case Theory. She rejects inherent case, assumes that governors assign case only once, and claims that NPs may surface case-free, thus rejecting the Case Filter as proposed within the received case framework. The arguments are based on the observation that dependent ("accusative case") pronouns are replaced under certain conditions by ("case-free") independent pronouns. J. relates this to the fact that in all cases studied the (independent) pronoun is no longer governed by the verb and therefore cannot be assigned accusative case (semantically, however, it still functions as the direct object of the verb!). Independent pronouns are also used in non-verbal sentences: Again, "nominative" case cannot be assigned (since there is no verb present). J. then tries to stretch her analysis to cover the continuous ("imperfective") paradigm which--among other things--tends to be characterized by the nominalization of the verb. At least in the case of Hausa J. runs into serious trouble here because she bases her arguments on oversimplified descriptions, not taking into account the far-from-clear distinction between "primary" and "secondary" verbal nouns.

R. C. Marquis ("Word Orders in Gude and the VSO Parameter," pp. 55-86) sets out to explain why Central Chadic Gude allows two word orders: VSO and SVO, and tries to do so within the Government and Binding paradigm. Like most papers of this kind (including the two just reviewed) the reader is first of all told which analyses are wrong for whichever reasons within the chosen theoretical...