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Review
Janina Brutt-Griffler, 2002, World English: A Study of its Development.
Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd., xiii + 215 pages,
ISBN: 1-85359-577-2 (pbk); 1-85359-578-0 (hbk).
Reviewed by MARKO MODIANO
Gävle University, Sweden
Janina Brutt-Griffler, in World English: A Study of its Development, has brought
to the discussion on bilingual education a taxonomy which attempts to account
for the phenomena of English as an international language. She also makes a
concerted effort to refute Robert Phillipson’s theory of linguistic imperialism
(see also Berns et al. 1998, 1999, and in reply, Phillipson 1999). The author’s
conceptualisation of macroacquisition, the learning of second/foreign languages
as a collective effort on the part of the speech community, as opposed to traditional views of the isolated learner striving to achieve proficiency in the foreign
tongue, is juxtaposed with the notion that English as a global language comes
into being through second language acquisition. At the heart of Brutt-Griffler’s
theory is the “agency of non-mother tongue English speech communities in the
two principal processes by which English has become a world language: language
spread and language change” (p. ix). Weaving a deconstruction of Phillipson’s
“unsubstantiated account” of British language policy for the dominions during
the colonial period with succinct explanation of her own sociolinguistic paradigm, the postcolonial in the colonial, Brutt-Griffler provides her readers with
some interesting alternatives to established linguistic principles. In the author’s
own words, an attempt is made to “offer an alternative to the notion that
hundreds of millions of people around the world have set out to learn English
because they are the passive victims of Western ideological hegemony”, and
wants instead to emphasise “their agency in (re)making world culture” (p. ix).
The book is divided into ten chapters and includes a full list of references
as well as an index. It is argued in ch. 1, “Images of World English: Writing
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English as an International Language”, that the key to understanding how
English became a global language lies in a linguistic investigation of how speech
communities acquire the tongue. Why the shift from the “idealized speaker/
listener to the speech community” is necessary for the development of the
macroacquisition theory is explained in ch. 2, “The Representation of the Social in a Social Science: Methodology in Linguistics”. In ch. 3, “Ideological and
Economic Crosscurrents of Empire”, the author investigates the association
between ideologies and economics in the development of language policy in the
dominions of the British Empire. The author argues in ch. 4, “The Contested
Terrain of Colonial Language Policy”, that contrary to what is commonly believed, the policies of the British in the colonies were essentially ‘reactive’ and
designed to limit the spread of English because, it was believed, ‘educated’
natives were not only unwilling to engage in manual labour but were furthermore prone to oppose colonial rule. Ch. 5, “Access Denied: Containing the
Spread of English”, delineates the true nature of colonial English education as
something reserved for the social classes who were to enter civil administration
and other positions of leadership and not something spread widely, for ideological reasons. A description of vernacular education, as well as the American
policy in the Philippines, where English was the language of instruction during
the period of US rule, is provided here.
An historical explanation is offered in ch. 6, “The Becoming of a World
Language”, which attempts to clarify what forces made possible the rise of
English as a global lingua franca as opposed to other languages of wider communication, such as Chinese, French, or Arabic. The theory of macroacquisition
is more fully developed in ch. 7, “Macroacquisition: Bilingual Speech Communities and Language Change”, and here the interrelatedness of language change
and language spread is explained. A distinction is made between the multilingual community acquiring English for intranational purposes and the monolingual community, through acquiring English, becoming a bilingual speech
community. Macroacquisition, in the two forms described in ch. 7, is investigated in ch. 8, “The Macroacquisition of English: New Representations in the
Language”, from the perspective of stabilisation of language change and the
consequent emergence of new varieties. The sociolinguistic profile of South
Africa is the focal point of this discussion. The issue of convergence, the unity
of World English, is discussed in ch. 9, “(The) World (of) English: English
in Convergence”, from the perspective of a centripetal force inherent in the
establishment of a world language speech community. In the final chapter,
“Decentering English Applied Linguistics”, some deliberation is offered on ELT,
the role of the non-native practitioner, and on second language acquisition as
an integral component in the construction of English as a global language.
There is a short appendix with graphs providing statistics on the number of
‘vernacular schools’ and ‘English schools’, as well as student numbers, in Ceylon
and the Federated Malay States from 1889 to 1936.
In the preface the author begins by establishing two positions, or what she
calls “the paradox of English in the world today” (p. vii). One, a predominant
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belief which the author is convinced is lacking in validity, is that English is the
possession of “Anglo-American, Western culture”, and as such, its use elsewhere is evidence of hegemony emanating from the centre. The other position,
the one the author supports, is that for those who are not mother-tongue speakers of English, the language is nevertheless “theirs because they have made it
so”, and consequently “English has become a world language to the extent that
it has been stripped of any simplistic association with Anglo-American and
Western culture” (p. vii–viii). As for Phillipson and others like him whose
analytical models stem from an exposé of the dangers of Western linguistic
hegemony, she claims that “[t]he center-driven narrative of English language
spread writes people residing outside the West out of their central role in
the spread of English and their place in making the language we call English”
(p. viii). What follows, in essence, is an attempt to explain how her second
language acquisition theory repudiates the ‘center-driven narrative’. BruttGriffler, showcasing the ‘agency’ of the Africans and the Asians in the
development of English as a global lingua franca, proposes a “shift in perspective” (p. 108) away from the notion that English ‘replaces’ local languages
(as is the case in the British Isles) and toward greater understanding of the
processes which have resulted in English being established ‘alongside’ local
languages in much of Asia and Africa, thus furthering the global development of
the tongue while at the same time allowing the bilingual aspects of English
among the non-native speaker constituency to occupy a central position in the
equation.
The attack Brutt-Griffler launches on Phillipson’s theory of linguistic imperialism, which carries on in one form or another throughout the book, is a
sober, well thought through attempt to undermine Phillipson’s thesis that the
spread of English, both during and after the colonial period, can be perceived
to be an ‘imposition’ on the linguistic integrity of dominated peoples. Instead,
Brutt-Griffler is convinced that “the spread of English involved a contested
terrain in which English was not unilaterally imposed on passive subjects, but
wrested from an unwilling imperial authority as part of the struggle by them
against colonialism” (p. 31). English is “the transformed language of the
anticolonial struggle” (p. 73). Thus, for Brutt-Griffler, the desire for English
“was a rational response and a conscious strategy to resist colonial rule built on
the exploitation of labor” (p. 73). In Brutt-Griffler’s criticism of Phillipson,
who is targeted as the source of the linguistic imperialism theory and whose
book Linguistic Imperialism (1992) is found to be lacking in scholarly stringency and to “contain factual inaccuracies” (p. 30), it is clear that in the period
leading up to WWII, British policy in the colonies was, contrary to what
Phillipson contends, designed to limit the number of people who received education in English. This furthers Brutt-Griffer’s thesis that the colonial subjects
themselves are responsible for the spread of English. It will be interesting,
certainly, to hear Phillipson’s response to this criticism. Nevertheless, the
polarisation of the question as it is handled by Brutt-Griffler and Phillipson,
their separate analyses of the causes and nature of the proliferation of English
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in Asia and Africa during the 19th and 20th centuries, while beneficial because
important questions are raised, is representative of simplification which does
not do the historical phenomena justice.
English, as it has come into being as a second language in former colonies of
the British Empire in Asia and Africa, is the result of complex processes. By
Brutt-Griffler’s own account, there were English schools, albeit fewer in number
in comparison to the vernacular schools, set up by the British in the colonies.
To these schools, which charged tuition, the elite of the society sent their children, who studied for a longer period in comparison to the pupils who attended
the vernacular schools. Upon completion of their education they often went into
the civil service. It is beyond doubt that they held privileged positions in society
and that people who had such qualifications were looked upon by others with
envy. This structure, English-language education as one of the few avenues to
an improved standard of living, was celebrated in colonial societies throughout
the colonial period and resulted in the increased status of English.
While it is reasonable to assume that many people wanted their children to
learn the tongue, the drive to learn English cannot be a simplistic correlation
between the desires of parents and children to acquire English and the socioeconomic benefits of proficiency. Other factors must be taken into account. The
radical reorganisation of society which came about through the introduction of
Western values and practices in the developing world has had a profound ontological impact on people living in such regions. Beyond doubt, Phillipson perceives such programs as an imposition, as an affront on the social and cultural
order of society. From the Leftist perspective which Phillipson represents, it is
reasonable to assume that Anglo-American hegemony in the colonies has been
resurrected in the post-war period by a neo-colonial ideology of dominance
through language education under the auspices of the British Council and other
British and American organisations and backed up by the publishing industry
in the UK and the US.
Brutt-Griffler’s position, which appears to be apolitical, is human rights
orientated in a postcolonial, postmodernist sense. She is especially concerned
with implied givens inherent in much scholarship on the subject which, in her
view, subjugate postcolonial people to peripheral positions of passivity. Instead
of defining a postcolonial as someone who is manipulated, who is the victim of
European domination and exploitation, the author attempts to prove that the
postcolonial is an active agent in the formation and creation of English because
it suits the needs of the postcolonial community. Unfortunately, as a result of
this analysis, the validity of linguistic imperialism as an empirically sound theoretical model comes into question, something which I believe Brutt-Griffler has
intentionally orchestrated. Indeed, like the promotion of Russian in Eastern
Europe during the Soviet era and the spread of Chinese in present-day Tibet,
we do most certainly have examples of linguistic imperialism in the world at
large. With the proliferation of Anglo-American involvement in global affairs,
the development of the Internet and information technology in and through
the English language, the promotion of English in the news services, in radio
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and television programming, in music as well as films, and the subsequent
marketing of manifestations of Western life (what Phillipson publicly calls
McDonaldization), it is clear that much effort is being made in the West to
export Western products, services, and ideologies to peoples living in developing regions. It is certainly logical to perceive such activity as essentially an
imposition when and if such involvement has a negative impact on the cultural
and linguistic integrity of the individual. Thus, from Phillipson’s political perspective, efforts to promote English which are being made primarily by the UK
and the US can be seen as examples of linguistic imperialism, and this process is
especially regretful, as Phillipson and Skutnabb-Kangas often point out, when
it results in the death of endangered languages (1996). Unfortunately, BruttGriffler says little of ‘language death’ in this volume, implying instead that the
spread of English into Asia and Africa essentially constitutes a state of multi- or
bilingualism and as such does not lead to the demise of moribund languages. If
such were the case, how does Brutt-Griffler account for diminishing linguistic
diversity in the wake of the global spread of English?
Brutt-Griffler states that “[s]ince the development of World English extends
back at least until the early nineteenth century, it is hardly possible to attribute
World English to the conscious policies concerning English teaching that took
place after World War II” (p. 27). Coupled with the understanding that, for
the spread of English, “the essential actor is the acquiring speech community”
(p. 23), as Brutt-Griffler claims, the significance of English language learning
programs conducted in developing nations by the UK and the US after WWII is
nullified. This position is problematical for a number of reasons, one being the
radical surge in popularity of English among non-native speakers after WWII,
which has established the language as the primary global lingua franca. Before
this period, English competed with German and French in Europe, and globally
with other languages of wider communication, in a manner significantly different from what emerged after 1945. What transpired prior to WWII set the
stage, so to speak, for the global development of the language after the cessation
of hostilities. The emergence of Britain and the US as victors in the post-war
period, as well as their dominant economic stature, had an enormous impact on
the status of English in mainland Europe, in Japan, as well as in other regions
of the world and contributed to the dominance the language currently now
maintains.
The upswing in ELT activities which has been taking place in Africa and
Asia under the auspices of the British Council and other British and American
governmental, semi-governmental, and private organisations has helped secure
for English a prominent position among the common people to a much greater
extent in comparison to the role English played during the period of colonial
rule. In order to construct a sociolinguistic theory which can explain the spread
of English in Asia and Africa, we need sound historical data (which, it appears,
has not previously been forthcoming), as well as a platform that takes into consideration how various segments of the indigenous populations were subjected
to English domination, their part in the acquisition and development of English,
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and the programs initiated by the colonial powers during the period of domination as well as after the granting of home rule. The role of domination politics
in the dissemination of the English language cannot be overlooked in the
empirical investigation of second language varieties flourishing in Asia and
Africa. If we take the cultural contexts of institutional EFL in the EU as an
example, the British Council and the Cambridge examination apparatus play
central roles in the development of English in places such as Greece and Spain.
This ‘involvement’ on the part of the British in the linguistic affairs of southern
Europeans must be taken into account in the study of the appropriation of
English as a foreign language in mainland Europe. If one were to follow the
theoretical line of reasoning outlined in Brutt-Griffler’s work, such would not
be the case. Thus, Brutt-Griffler’s model, while of great value for the discipline, must be further modified before it can be taken as a comprehensive
analytical tool designed to explain the phenomena of English as a global lingua
franca.
Another drawback with this volume is perhaps that the term ‘World English’ is not adequately defined. Moreover, how Brutt-Griffler’s theories can
have a bearing on language learning needs to be further developed. The role of
English as a foreign language in such places as Europe and South America, and
what this means for the global development of English, is completely ignored.
Having said as much, it is clear that for ELT in all non-native learning contexts
where English is not the majority language of the community, that is to say, for
ESL and EFL teaching and learning outside of the mother-tongue nation states,
Brutt-Griffler’s theoretical grounding is a giant leap forward. The differentiation of varieties as components of a global language, where traditional privilege
given to so-called native-speaker nation-state varieties is no longer operational
and where the belief that non-native-speaker varieties should be devalued is
discarded, leads to the type of level playing field which has been desired in ELT
for some time. It is certainly possible that the profession, having come to terms
with the issue of ‘imposition’ in ELT, will be able at the local/regional level to
bring to English teaching the educational standards and practices which reflect
the needs and desires of the speech community, as opposed to Anglo-American
notions of Standard English and the goal of near-native proficiency in either
American English or British English. The role of the non-native practitioner in
ESL/EFL instruction is given credit long overdue (only recently have we seen
discussions on the non-native practitioner in the literature [see, for example,
Braine 1999]). Moreover, the cultural contexts in which the learner operates
take a central position in the conceptualisation of bilingual language learning,
something which will further the development of ELT immensely. Brutt-Griffler’s
program, centring the global spread and use of the language on the perspectives
of the non-native speech community, represents a radical departure from traditional practices and beliefs. Now a theoretical framework exists which can be
utilised in the development of cultural studies modules and in the educational
standards deployed in instruction, as well as in the role that the non-native
practitioner can play in such transformations. Not only does Brutt-Griffler’s
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theoretical program bring the non-native speech community’s contribution
to the development of English to the forefront (where I think it should be);
many native as well as non-native teachers of English will find that it makes
possible the acceptance of global English without the nagging suspicion that
such acceptance means that one is an active agent in the perpetuation of linguistic imperialism.
Brutt-Griffler’s taxonomy constitutes a brilliant narrative, one which offers
substantial advancements to our understanding of the issue of English as a
world language. Bringing language contact, spread, and change in line with
theoretical awareness firmly rooted in postcolonial and postmodern thought,
the author, taking Pennycook’s lead, makes a number of breakthroughs. This
book is a must, seeing as it so poignantly settles the record on British policy and
practice in the colonial period while at the same time exposing weaknesses in
Phillipson’s theory of linguistic imperialism. The volume is recommended reading for those interested in English as a second language, in second language
acquisition, in ELT for non-native users of the tongue, in bilingual education,
and in those areas of postcolonial studies concerned with issues of culture and
language. While seemingly reserved for those initiated in the discourse of
postmodernism and postcolonialism, the book is actually accessible to a wider
readership. Its message, well delineated and eloquently expressed, will profoundly influence readers concerned with the global manifestations of English.
Some of the more valuable insights offered in this book, and there are many,
shed new light and offer novel perspectives on several issues in sociolinguistics.
For example, with the notion that “language spread in its linguistically meaningful sense refers not to speaker migration but to macroacquisition” (p. 26),
Brutt-Griffler shifts the focus in our understanding of ‘spread’ from the migrations and actions of native English speakers of European descent to the community acquiring English as an L2. This shift in perspective, I am sure, will in the
years ahead support the advancement of our understanding of English as a
global language.
References
Berns, M. et al. (1998) (Re)experiencing hegemony: the linguistic imperialism of
Robert Phillipson. Review essay. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 8.2: 271–82.
— (1999) Hegemonic discourse revisited, and A closing word. International
Journal of Applied Linguistics 9.1: 138–41, 142.
Braine, G. (ed.) (1999) Non-native educators in English language teaching.
Mahwah N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Phillipson, R. (1992) Linguistic imperialism. Oxford University Press.
— (1999) Linguistic imperialism re-visited – or re-invented. A rejoinder to
a review essay, and A closing word. International Journal of Applied
Linguistics 9.1: 135–37, 142.
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Phillipson, R. & T. Skutnabb-Kangas (1996) English only worldwide or language ecology? TESOL Quarterly 30.3: 429–52.
[Received 10/9/02]
Marko Modiano
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Modern Languages Section
Gävle University
SE-801 76 Gävle
Sweden
e-mail: [email protected]
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Review
Steven Jones, 2002, Antonymy: a Corpus-Based Perspective.
London & New York: Routledge, 193 pages, ISBN: 0415263743.
Reviewed by MICHAEL STUBBS
Univesity of Trier, Germany
At first sight, this book appears to treat a narrow and specialized topic, but it is
an interesting case-study which illustrates two important general issues: first,
the pervasiveness of antonymy in texts and its unique psychological status (which
is presumably a linguistic universal); and second, the possibilities of corpus
data, as opposed to introspective data, in studying lexical relations. Both topics
have potential applications (which the author does not develop, but which I will
mention briefly, given the readership of this journal).
Chs. 1 and 2 start from well-known points from the large literature on
antonymy: it is more widespread than other lexical relations; it covers relations
of different kinds (gradable antonymy, complementarity, converseness, etc);
it can be difficult to distinguish from hyponymy (e.g. love and hate are both
kinds of emotions) and synonymy (e.g. girl and boy are both human, non-adult:
antonyms typically differ along just one semantic dimension); and it is a lexical,
not a conceptual, relation (rich and poor are antonyms, but affluent and broke
do not stand in a well-established lexical relationship). There are many other
good examples of the many variants of antonymous relations.
Jones gives a neat statement of the main advantage of large corpora as data:
they can tap into not just one mental lexicon, but thousands (p. 21). He summarizes other work on antonymy, most importantly the corpus study by Justeson
and Katz (1991), who showed that antonymous adjectives co-occur much more
frequently than would be expected by chance, and that antonymy is not only
a paradigmatic systemic relation but also a syntagmatic textual relation
(pp. 21–2). His main aim is then to use corpus data in order to study the
textual functions of antonyms, primarily their intra-sentential functions and
their co-occurrence statistics (pp. 25–6).
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Crucial questions therefore concern “issues of data and methodology” (the
subtitle of ch. 3). First, Jones needed a computer-readable corpus. The corpus
he used was largish (280 million running words) but narrow (all from one
British up-market national daily newspaper, The Independent) and therefore
certainly not representative of English language use in general (e.g. his data
contained over 300 instances of the collocating pair recession–boom). But corpus work has to start somewhere, and the important questions are whether
sampling within this corpus allows valid generalizations about this text-type,
and whether the study generates predictions which can be tested on other independent corpora. Second, he needed a sample of antonym pairs. He decided on
a set of 56 pairs for detailed study, including adjectives (new–old), verbs (agree–
disagree), nouns ( fact–fiction), and adverbs (quickly–slowly). In selecting these
pairs, Jones abandons corpus-based methods: his list draws on previous research but is “based largely on [his] own intuition” (p. 29). He admits (p. 175)
that “in some respects, this makes a mockery of objectivity”, and this aspect
of the study is indeed puzzling. He argues (p. 29) that “it is impossible to rely
on anything other other than intuition when it comes to a psycholinguistic
phenomenon such as antonymy”. Yet this contradicts the points from Justeson
and Katz and also suggestions from Jones himself (more on this below). Third,
he needed a sample of sentences in which the antonym pairs co-occur. I found
the detailed rationale here slightly difficult to follow, but essentially he ended
up with “3,000 examples of intra-sentential antonym co-occurrence” (p. 35),
whilst ensuring that each pair was represented by a reasonable number of
instances.
He was now in a position to use this data-base to classify more and less
frequent textual functions of antonymy and to propose new ways of categorizing
the relation, and this is where his main original contribution comes. Two classes
account for the bulk of instances. In “ancillary antonymy” (39% of instances),
a sentence which contains a familiar antonymous pair (e.g. love–hate, rich–
poor) also contains a second related opposition. The conventional pair signals a
nearby contrast and generates a new opposition:
I love to cook but I hate doing the dishes
a rich country with poor people
In “co-ordinated antonymy” (38%), a pair of antonyms signals the inclusiveness
or exhaustiveness of a scale:
everyone, rich or poor
whether he was right or wrong
Chs. 4, 5 and 6 discuss these proposed new categories, plus a further six
(minor) classes, with detailed statistics on how frequently different pairs occur
in different textual functions. For example: all 56 pairs can function as coordinated antonyms, and in his sample two pairs (confirm–deny, disprove–prove)
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always do, the pair (rightly–wrongly) almost always does, and the resulting
phrase (rightly or wrongly) is highly idiomatic. His examples and statistics
suggest many hypotheses for future work but are much too detailed to summarize here. Ch. 7 attempts an estimate of just how widespread antonymy is in his
corpus. Almost one sentence in 200 contains both members of an antonymous
pair from his list of 56, but this is almost certainly an underestimate (p. 119)
since his list does not include many other pairs, not to mention other contrasts
between singulars and plurals, past and present tense, and so on. Ch. 8 discusses antonym sequence (why good and bad rather than bad and good?):
words with positive connotations tend to come first, and base forms tend to
precede derived forms (e.g. correct or incorrect). Ch. 9 considers the relation
between different kinds of antonyms and what they are used for but fails to find
much of interest (it is important to report negative findings): “the textual function of antonymy is not greatly influenced by either word class or by gradability”
(p. 153). Ch. 10 discusses where new antonyms (e.g. style–substance) come
from: probably from their frequent occurrence in frames (see below). Ch. 11 is
a useful but rather repetitive summary.
I return briefly to questions of method. Jones admits that the “most pressing
area for research” (p. 177) is automatic antonym retrieval, and he criticizes
dictionary makers (p. 167) for using only intuitive methods to identify antonyms (though this is a case of the pot calling the kettle black!). Yet he cites
(p. 22) Justeson and Katz arguing that textual co-occurrence provides a “criterion for assessing just which word pairs are antonyms”, and he himself
proposes a way out of an exclusive reliance on intuition. He lists several
lexico-grammatical frames which often enclose antonyms and which could therefore be used to help identify them: between x and y, both x and y, either x or y,
whether x or y, and so on. It is certainly not the case that these frames always
enclose what would intuitively be recognized as antonyms, but these frames
could be searched for candidates. Using his own statistical data, he also proposes criteria for “good antonyms” (pp. 117–18), including frequency of cooccurrence and a high observed/expected ratio of co-occurrence. These criteria
confirm that his intuitively constructed list does indeed include “good pairs”.
The “most hardcore” pairs (p. 118) which he identifies (in his newspaper
corpus) are bad–good, female–male, high–low, peace–war, poor–rich and
private–public.
It would have been very useful if Jones had tried to establish a more comprehensive set of such frames and then fed the discoveries back into his list for
investigation. For example, one textual signal of contrastive phrases, which he
does not mention, is the word is outright, which often occurs in (attested)
examples such as:
often the fox is wounded rather than killed outright
farce and outright chaos
elation and outright despair
an outright Tory victory . . . a clear Labour majority
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I am not suggesting that pairs such as wound–kill or farce–chaos would be
recognized intuitively as antonyms. But Jones argues convincingly that antonymy
operates on a continuum from higher to lower fidelity pairs, that there is a
relation between what frequently happens in texts (use) and how the mental
lexicon is organized (system?), and that oppositions can be “created by context”
(p. 51). Context here includes other recognized antonyms and grammatical
frames.
In terms of method, the work is corpus-based. Jones started with his own
intuitions about antonyms and studied, in his corpus, the pairs that he had
thought of intuitively. This certainly produced valuable findings that no-one
could have produced from introspection. But he could have proceeded more
radically by identifying frames which often contain contrasting pairs, extracting the pairs which meet certain criteria (such as frequency of co-occurrence
but also intuitive appeal as “good antonyms”) and then studying the behaviour
of these pairs in the corpus. This does not avoid the use of intuition (no method
can do that), but it would have been one more safeguard against circularity in
the analysis.
It would also have been useful, and relatively quick and simple, for Jones
to test at least some of his findings on other corpora (e.g. those available freely
on the Web), which contain samples from a wide range of text-types: spoken
and written, formal and informal, factual and literary, intended for different
readers, children and adults, lay and expert, and so on. Independent data
would have allowed him to corroborate or falsify his findings: he plays fairly
free and easy with the word “proof ” (e.g. pp. 22, 115, 123). But I admit that he
couldn’t do everything, and he presents precise findings which others can now
test in this way.
I will conclude with a few comments of concern to the readership of this
journal. Jones mentions applications of his study only in passing. He emphasizes the unique psychological place of antonymy and points out that literary
texts are often structured around repeated oppositions (It was the best of times,
it was the worst of times . . . , p. 5) and that dictionaries could use his methods
to improve how they handle semantic relations. However, he makes no proposals
about how his findings could be used in studying the mental lexicon, doing
stylistic analysis of literary texts, writing better dictionary or thesaurus entries,
or teaching vocabulary. All of these substantial topics could be developed:
again, he presents findings which others can use.
In summary, the book provides a clear demonstration that antonymy has
textual functions. It uses a limited data-base and starts from a list of antonymous
pairs which is at odds with his observational corpus methods. But there are
many precise findings and an original proposal for a text-oriented classification
of antonyms. His findings suggest both follow-up descriptive studies with more
balanced corpora and also several kinds of applied studies.
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003
REVIEW 151
Reference
Justeson, J.S. & S.M. Katz (1991) Redefining antonymy: the textual structure
of a semantic relation. Literary and Linguistic Computing 7: 176–84.
[Received10/9/02]
Michael Stubbs
FB2 Anglistik
Universität Trier
D-54286 Trier
Germany
e-mail: [email protected]
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003
152INTERNATIONAL
FEDERICO CORRIENTE
JOURNAL
OF
APPLIED LINGUISTICS, Vol. 13, No. 1, 2003 152
Review
Jeffrey Heath, 2002, Jewish and Muslim Dialects of Moroccan Arabic.
London: Routledge, 598 pages, ISBN: 0–7007–1514–2.
Reviewed by FEDERICO CORRIENTE
Saragossa University, Spain
Field workers and researchers on Arabic dialectology often carry out their task
with a sense of urgency, aware as they are that the main and richest source of
information sought by them, i.e., particular dialects as free as possible from
koinéisation and intermingling, not only have become awfully scarce already
but also have a very short life expectancy, as the socio-economic conditions
prevailing in most areas of the Arabic-speaking countries are eradicating isolation, the best ally of dialects, through the combined agency of trade, communications and mass media.
In countries like Morocco, with a high rate of emigration from the countryside and mountain districts to the urban areas, and even abroad in the case of
the Muslim majority, and a drastic dwindling of the Jewish minority in the last
decades, the proverbial complexity of its dialectological map tends to evolve to
much simpler patterns at a very fast pace. As a matter of fact, Heath had to
collect an important share of his materials in Israel from Moroccan Jews resettled there, whose offspring cannot be expected to preserve any allegiance to
Moroccan or any other kind of Arabic, let alone to retain the local dialectal
features practised by their parents. But even in the case of Muslim dialects of
areas with a strong and steady historical character, such as Chaouen, field
workers are familiar with an increasing scarcity of truly reliable informants, as
most people, especially men and young people, are prone to prefer the prestige
of koinéized forms to their own old ones, of which they retain only passive
command, if any.
Merely on account of this, having probably salvaged very important dialectal evidence that would have been entirely lost within a few years, Heath’s
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford
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REVIEW 153
book would deserve high praise, to which I must add my commendations for
the excellence of his field work methods and ensuing analysis of elicited data.
However, as the best homage to be paid to an important work is not only
to commend it but to comment on it as well, I will provide some notes in the
hope that they can be useful to other users or even constitute an inventory of
additions for future editions.
Pp. 1–2: In Heath’s classification of Arabic dialects, I entirely miss any
reference to the basic dichotomy between Eastern and Western branches. Such
an omission has, no doubt, some theoretical grounds that can be guessed by
specialized scholars; however, for the average reader of linguistics, even of
Arabic dialectology, it might have been instructive to be informed of the arguments in favour of such positioning. The replacement of that traditional geographical classification with a new one into peninsular, extrapeninsular and
metamorphosed dialects does not match the facts better, at least in my view.
For example, some Yemenite dialectal areas, obviously peninsular, are more
loosely connected to Najdi than Najdi is to some Iraqi dialects which, however,
cannot be labelled peninsular on a geographical basis.
P. 2: It is perhaps customary to speak of the Arab conquest of Spain or, as
on p. 81, of the Spanish origin of some Andalusi Arabic words. While admitting
that many people do know that these are only makeshift devices to avoid the
awkward terms ‘Iberian Peninsula’ and ‘Southern Iberian Romance’, it cannot
be denied that they are also misnomers, unfair to an ignored Portugal, and
wrongly suggesting the identity of all the peoples who have ever lived in the
Iberian Peninsula with the modern political entity called Spain, which by no
means predates the 16th century, as well as the identity of the Romance dialect
spoken in Al-Andalus with the Castilian language, developed much later as a
younger sibling from Iberian Late Latin dialects under different conditions.
P. 4: Downplaying the influence of Andalusi Arabic on Early pre-Hilalian
Moroccan, as Heath appears to suggest, while acknowledging it in the northern
areas of this country, leaves very little room perhaps for would-be Early Southern pre-Hilalian Moroccan, as very few places south of Fes were truly arabicized
until much later, and of Fes we know that at least one half of its population was
of Andalusi descent. Given the steady and intense post-Islamic demographic
interchange between both shores, acknowledged by Heath, the well-known faster
arabicization of Al-Andalus, even without totally forsaking Romance, and the
dubious upkeep of a Low Latin dialect in Mauritania Tingitana for many decades before the Arab invasion, we must concede the common origin of the
dialects brought to the West by the Arab conquerors, as well as the immediate
onset of a differentiating process, if only on account of clearly diverse substrata. But this process was immediately checked by Andalusi immigration in
the case of Moroccan Arabic (MA), which makes it extremely difficult to evaluate its linguistic impact with any degree of accuracy.
P. 20: To the sources for the study of the dialect of Chaouen, one should
now add the work carried out by F. Moscoso from Cadiz University, most
particularly his yet unpublished Ph.D. dissertation.
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P. 23: The description of Andalusi immigration to Fes as a consequence of
“a dynastic shake-up” may be interpreted as a dynastic change, which was not
the case. In fact, those refugees had to flee or were forced to abandon Cordova
as a consequence of their uprising against Alhakam I, who defeated them and
was replaced by his son àAbdarrahmón II.
P. 27: The kind of vessels sailing between Portugal and Morocco before
1769 did not exactly need much refuelling. This expression appears infelicitous.
P. 29: Khawwara appears to be a mistake and should be Hawwórah.
P. 52: There is no connection between MA nqqOz = nggOz and Classical
Arabic (CA) {nqT}, being as it is a normal reflex of CA {nqz}.
P. 55: zdOm or better YWOm ‘to push’ should not be connected to any other
origin than CA {Tdm} ‘to collide’, as correctly indicated on p. 160 for TWOm ‘to
tread on’.
P. 148: MA ram l/nwwOl ‘last year’ does not necessarily reflect the standard
Arabic article /al-/, as it cannot be separated from Andalusi Arabic ramáwil
(cf. also ramaqábil ‘next year’). These phonemic and syntactic anomalies connected with the definite article may often reflect the Yemenite allomorph /am-/
(cf. Egyptian Arabic imbmriQ ‘yesterday’ < albmriQ), itself another variant of
the original West Semitic form */han-/. It stands to reason that *rmm+am sawwal
should by haplology have become *rmm+awwal, whence the Andalusi Arabic
form or, by sonorant dissimilation, *rmman/lsawwal, whence the MA form.
The same remark could apply to generalized assimilation of the definite article
in front of ‘lunar’ consonants (p. 169): the original assimilated consonant might
have been /m/, not /l/.
P. 183: MA midum ‘fatty’ does not belong to {ydm} but to {sdm}.
P. 186: MA byar ‘wells’ would be a poor example of inserted /y/ in ablaut
derivation, as it originates through a regular phonetic rule from CA bismr.
P. 188 and ff.: I have long shared Heath’s views on the absence of phonemic
vowel quantity in MA; however, it might be revealing to connect such a feature
with the same situation in Andalusi Arabic and Northern Berber.
Pp. 210–211: Heath’s treatment of the durative prefixes (ka-, ta-, la- etc.)
is a detailed synchronic survey which invites reflection. When coupled with
diachronic and panchronic insights, it could lead to an interesting integrated
solution, namely, the common ancestry of all those allomorphs in Yemenitebased dialects. As I have contended on more than one occasion, in my view only
their prevailing presence in the two main arabicizing waves, pre-Hilalian and
Hilalian, can provide a cogent explanation for the innovated creolized shape of
the 1sg./pl. imperfective prefix. Furthermore, given the close connection between durative and imperfective prefixes, it would make sense that both kinds
would share one common origin in this particular case.
As Heath emphasises, I had previously suggested that the t/k alternation
might go back to variability in the 2sg. auxiliary construction *kunt/ka taktub
as part of the decreolization process of Yemenites shifting from South to
North Arabian, to which he pointedly objects that such a generalization to the
whole paradigm would be typologically unlikely. Although that case could be
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strengthened by considering that *kunt/ku naktub would also lead to the same
result, thus leaving an isolated 3sg. ready to yield to Systemzwang, his remark,
together with my recent reading of Belova (1996: 69–72), suggest a more thorough and convincing picture of this matter, as summarized here:
a) There is almost a general consensus that the durative prefixes reflect an
auxiliary verb kmna ‘to be’, with a semantic shift from an imperfect or conditional marker to present tense, for which I offered an explanation in Corriente
(1977: fn. 233) by positing the loss of a polite nuance.
b) Nevertheless, the conspicuous presence of hl ‘to be’ in Himyaritic, an
isogloss connecting this North Yemenite Mischsprache with Ethiopian rather
than with South Arabian, and the fact that even Classical Arabic exhibits remnants of it (like the interrogative marker hal and the exhortative hallm), not to
mention Modern Yemenite (e.g. mm hallqS ‘he is not here’), make us suspect
that the creolized dialects spoken by Yemenites during their shift from South
Arabian to North Arabian might have varied between kn and hl ‘to be’, and
therefore between auxiliary constructions such as *halla yaktub (whence
la+yaktub), *kunt/ka taktub (whence t/ka+taktub) etc., of which Western Arabic would have selected, mixed and preserved some traces, with peculiar diatopic
or functional distribution.
c) This hypothesis not only provides a single comprehensive solution to the
diverse shapes of the durative prefixes, but has an additional advantage from a
syntactic and semantic viewpoint: if we concede that Himyaritic hl could function like its Ethiopic counterpart haläwä = hallo, we find a striking shared
feature in both cases, namely, the capacity not only to convey the durative or
continuous nuance (e.g. halloku OsäkkOb ‘I was lying’), but also present existence (e.g. ranbäsa hallo ‘there is a lion’). Obviously, this would allow us to
dispense with any other explanation for the modal shift alluded to above.
d) This hypothesis would exclude interference from Berber as a partial
explanation for the la- prefix and could accommodate the rare Jewish variants
da- and a- by considering them parallel remnants of an auxiliary qarad (‘to sit
or remain’, cf. the Iraqi present marker da-), again excluding the agency of the
Berber prefix ad-, which has a future, not a durative connotation. Phonetic
change would easily take care of the variant na- (< la), and cases where the 1sg.
requires ku- vs. ka- or the 1/2sg. have ti- vs. ta- would be either survivals of old
distinctions or attempts at reintroducing inflectional markers in the durative
prefixes, reflecting its former verb status.
P. 214: It is difficult to accept that the characteristic 1sg. and pl. imperfective marking in Western Arabic (nv- and nv—u, respectively, instead of sv- and
nv- elsewhere) is “one of several morphological restructurings that followed the
loss of the glottal stop” when we consider that the same loss took place in the
Eastern dialects approximately in the same manner and epoch without leading
to the same result. In view of the fact that traces of levelling that marker are
found even in Egypt, the point of departure of all Arab migrations to the West,
and the significant proportion of Yemenites in the Arab settlement of Egypt, it
is easier to assume that this phenomenon is just another creole development of
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those language-shifting groups. In this way, 1st person marking matched the
other two by also marking the pl. with –q, instead of asymmetrically using a
different consonant as a marker of number. We could agree with Heath that
this process would have been helped or even triggered by the weakness or total
disappearance of the glottal stop (*ana aktub > naktub) without forgetting,
however, that zero markers are not uncommon in language structure, since
they appear as the outcome of a phonetic process, e.g. malk(o) ‘my king’ in
Syriac.
P. 220: The merger of the 2sg. masc. and fem. markers in -t(i) is very likely
a consequence of interference from Andalusi Arabic, as pointed to by the geographical proximity to the Iberian Peninsula of the areas where it takes place,
in contrast with the fact that substratal Berber keeps both genders apart in
such cases, like most Neo-Arabic dialects.
P. 238: The phonetic explanation for l- > n- in the dative preposition
appears to be the correct one. Neither Spanish en = Latin in, mostly locative,
nor Berber n-, basically a genitive marker, would have been functionally
appropriate as a replacement for such an important tool of Arabic grammar.
P. 243: While accepting the synchronic statement made by Heath for the
form of the 1sg. possessive suffix, it might be useful to explain the diachronic
origin of forms such as KKa- ‘father’ and xa- ‘brother’, which are not old
accusatives but simply reflect Old Arabic dialects, e.g. Balhóriï, which had
preferred invariable abàn and axan (after Ibn Yaàôv 1882: 62).
P. 302: The conclusion that the plural form mxayOd for mxOdda ‘pillow’ is
an isolated aberration does not take into account the presence in MA of parallels such as mrayOm for mrOmma ‘loom’, qmayOX for qmOXXa ‘shirt’, and mQayOX
for mQOXXa ‘avenue’. Since similar cases for almost the same items are extant in
Andalusi Arabic, where the status of gemination is weakened by its frequent
inhibition in substratal Romance, the likelihood of just another borrowing is
high.
P. 304: I must recant my mistake in Corriente (1997: 243) about the Greek
origin of sabaniyyah. The correct solution is in Yóqõt (undated) under the
entry Saban, “a place which gave its name to the sabaniyyah, a kind of sturdy
linen cloth”.
P. 337: The obscure origin of amaQla and ndOQ ‘worse’ might be explained
by Standard Arabic samm saQlmh ‘o, how nice’ and an irregular elative *samdaQ
of mamdqQ ‘commendable’, through euphemistic antiphrasis (cf. Andalusi Arabic laWíf ‘bad’, usually ‘kind, pleasant’).
P. 377: A maTdar like tafOllu ‘joking’ is morphologically akin to Andalusi
Arabic tamannú ‘wish’, tabahú ‘arrogance’ and tasaqTú ‘questioning’. Even its
meaning can be construed as a semantic evolution of ‘getting rid of obnoxious
lice’, which makes any Berber connection unnecessary.
P. 468: Dissimilative Xu lbnat ‘two girls’ in Northern Tangiers reminds us of
záw in a Valencian document (see Corriente 1977: 236).
P. 495: In searching for the origin of the allomorph of the relative pronoun
di extended with -n, one should perhaps contemplate not only the possibility of
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Berber interference but also a likely connection with the epigraphic South Arabian demonstrative Mn and its Qatabanian relative allomorph Mm, in view of the
presence of so many South Arabian features in Western Arabic.
Any reader of the preceding lines can easily detect in these suggested additions and corrections a certain insistence, perhaps even fixation, on two issues,
namely the strong impact of Andalusi Arabic on MA and the ubiquitous presence of “Yemenite” creole features in the whole of the Western Arabic branch.
Such convictions may well be just the consequence of having followed a certain
path in my research during the last decades. In any case, I must conclude this
review by reinstating my greatest respect and admiration for the huge contribution Heath makes with this book to studies of Arabic dialectology.
References
Belova, A.G. (1996) Xim’yaritskij Jazyk Moscow: Vostounaya Literatura.
Corriente, F. (1977) A grammatical sketch of the Spanish Arabic dialect
bundle. Madrid: Instituto Hispano–Arabe de Cultura.
— (1997) A dictionary of Andalusian Arabic. Leiden: Brill.
Yóqõt (undated) Murjamu lbuldmn (‘A dictionary of countries’). Beirut: Dór
[ódir.
Ibn Yaàôv (1882) IarQ al-MufaTTal (ed. G. Jahn). Leipzig.
[Received 14/11/02]
Federico Corriente
Estudios Arabes e Islamicos
Universidad de Zaragoza
50009 Zaragoza
Spain
e-mail: [email protected]
© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2003