Linguistic Society of America

Review
Author(s): sten Dahl
Review by: sten Dahl
Source: Language, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1979), pp. 199-206
Published by: Linguistic Society of America
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/412523
Accessed: 16-03-2015 08:41 UTC

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REVIEW ARTICLE
Semantics. Volumes 1-2. By JOHN LYONS. Cambridge: University Press, 1977.
Pp. xiv, 897.
Reviewed by OSTENDAHL, University of Goteborg

This is an impressive piece of work. Moreover, it is unique, and will probably

remain so: a nine-hundred page exposition of the study of meaning from the point
of view of several disciplines-well-written, eclectic, and comprehensive. I can
hardly think of any person other than Lyons who could write this book, and that
may be praise enough. If you are a linguist or philosopher, wondering what
recently published book would be most useful to have on your bookshelf, this is
no doubt one of the best choices. However, if you are wondering what textbook
to choose for next semester's introductory course in semantics, this is not the book
you should pick. Its length probably disqualifies it for that role; but there are also
other factors, e.g. L's tendency to write in the rambling essay style not uncommon
among British scholars. In particular, he may get off the main line of discussion
to elaborate on some minor point at length, after which the reader will have lost
the thread. More sub-headings and the use of typographical devices such as small
print would have been helpful here.
L says in his preface that when he began writing the book, six years ago, it was
intended as a 'fairly short one-volume introduction to semantics', and that the
work that he in fact produced turned out to be 'far longer, though in certain
respects it is less comprehensive'. One wonders what has been omitted: it is hard
to think of anything within semantics proper that L does not cover (except possibly
'applied semantics', see below). In fact, L's wish not to leave anything out has
made him include so much discussion of general linguistic problems that the book
might be regarded as a semantically-oriented introduction to linguistics, rather
than an introduction to semantics. One might say that L is the kind of person who
wants to say everything in one book and preferably in one sentence. (I owe this
formulation to Pierre Javanaud.)
The first volume contains nine chapters. Chapter 1 (pp. 1-31) is introductory
and presents such concept-pairs as USEvs. MENTION,OBJECT-LANGUAGE
vs. METALANGUAGE,and TYPEvs. TOKEN,in addition to discussions of the role of theories,
models, and data. It seems to me that this is not the optimal way to begin a general
introduction to semantics. What a person with little or no knowledge of the field
would need is a general overview that tells him what the important concepts and
areas are, what different views there are on what semantics is and should be, and
what place semantics has in different disciplines. Although some basic concepts
are introduced in Ch. 1, they tend to be of a technical kind which may scare away
many potential readers. In addition, L here introduces a number of notational
conventions which are subtle enough to baffle even a trained student of the field.
Thus he uses italics for what he calls 'forms', but single quotation-marks for
'lexemes' and 'expressions'-hardly a distinction that will be immediately clear to
most readers. The terms in question are in fact used as early as ?1.2, although it
199

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is not until ?1.5 that they appear with the asterisk which L uses for 'technical terms
when first introduced' (p. x.) This way of introducingterms without really introducing them is confusing, and hardly encouraging for a person who starts reading the
book in order to find out what semantics is about.
Chapter 2, 'Communication and information' (32-56), provides general semiotic
background, as do Chapter3,' Language as a semiotic system' (57-95), and Chapter
4,'Semiotics' (96-119). One can of course question whether the sections on the
'design features of language' and the origin of language, included in Ch. 3, really
belong in a book of this kind, particularly since none of the sections mentioned is
particularlyoriented toward semantics. More central to the field are the distinctions
between various kinds of signs, the different traditional 'theories of meaning' (i.e.
nominalism, realism, and conceptualism), and the division of semiotics into
semantics, syntactics, and pragmatics-all discussed in Ch. 4.
For many people,'semantics' equals 'argumentation analysis'. Even if one does
not accept this usage, I think 'argumentation analysis' or 'applied semantics' is
worthy of more attention than L has given it: the only place in the book where the
subject is touched upon is brief mention of' the so-called general semantic movement' (97).
Of the remaining chapters, Ch. 5 is on 'Behaviourist semantics' (120-37), Ch. 6
is on' Logical semantics' (138-73), and Chapters 8-9 are on' Structural semantics'
(230-335). This, combined with the lack of an introductory overview of the field,
may possibly induce the belief in naive readers that the three kinds of semantics
mentioned exhaust the field. Most of my comments are on Ch. 6 and on Ch. 7,
'Reference, sense, and denotation' (174-229)-perhaps because these are closest
to my own work, but probably also because of certain weaknesses specific to Ch. 6.
Although L refers to recent works by, e.g., Lewis and Montague, the works cited
as his main sources date (with one exception) from the forties and fifties. Accordingly, the view of logical semantics which he presents is outdated in many respects.
The reader gets no clear picture of how expressions are assigned interpretationsin
logical or model-theoretic semantics; in particular, there is no explicit treatment of
how the interpretation of a complex expression is derived from the interpretation
of its parts.
In ? 7.2, 'Reference' (177-97), quite a few importantconcepts are introducedand discussed.
In some cases, the definitions are unclear or confused. This holds for the concept of generic
reference,to which I shall returnbelow, and for the concepts of specificreferenceand referential
opacity.
The term 'specific' has been used to refer to at least two differentproperties of indefinite
noun phrases: (a) that the NP, as used in the context in question, entails the existence of a
specific individual in the real world; and (b) that the speaker using the NP has a specific individual in mind. These must be kept apart: an NP may well have the first propertywithout
having the second, as in Someone has stolen my wallet, but I do not know who. It is not clear

whether L distinguishesthe two-or, if he does, which he has in mind. Thus, on the one hand,
he mentions several standard examples of specificityambiguitiesin the (a) sense; on the other

hand, he claims (189) that the sentence A friend has just sent me a lovely Valentine card is also

ambiguous with regard to specificity,and says this depends on 'whether he [the speaker]had a
specific person in mind ...'

On p. 146, L says: 'An alternativeterm for "truth-functional"is extensional*'. This formulation is misleading, since 'extensional' has a wider application than 'truth-functional':

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truth-functionsare functions from truth-values to truth-values, which are (according to the

standardFregeanview) only a special case of extensions,viz. extensionsof sentences.On p. 192,
L again uses 'truth-functional'and 'extensional' as synonyms: 'constructions, or contexts, are
opaque* (as opposed to transparent*)when they fail to preserve extensionality (i.e. truthfunctionality: cf. 6.2) under the substitution of co-referential singular expressions ...' This
statement is strange: it seems to imply that opaque contexts start out as extensional, and then
lose their extensionality.The correct definitionis that a context is opaque when a substitution
of co-referentialsingular expressions may lead to a change in the truth-valueof the sentence.
In several other places, L uses logical terms in an idiosyncraticway. Thus (155) he equates
'closed' with 'finite', and 'open' with 'infinite' (with regard to the cardinalityof sets). For at
least two reasons, this is a potentially misleading usage: a 'closed' interval in mathematical
jargon is an interval which has an end-point. A 'closed' class of expressions in linguistics is
usually understood as a class which does not admit the addition of any new members.None of
these concepts coincides with finite cardinality.
Another example is L's use of 'recursive'. On p. 320, he says: 'It must also be possible, in
principle, to handle certain recursive* combinations of SPOUSE(x,y) and SIBLING (X,y). One's

sibling's sibling is either oneself or one's sibling. But in a non-monogamous society, one's
spouse's spouse is not necessarilyoneself. It follows that a simple relation like SPOUSE(x,y) is
infinitelyrecursive...' It is hardto see what 'recursive'is supposed to mean here. 'Ancestor of',
which is cited by L as another example, is recursive in the clear sense that it can be given a
recursivedefinition. But there is no way, so far as I can see, that 'spouse of' can be defined in
that way. In any case, L should have stated more explicitly what he meant.
Parts of the chapterson so-called structuralsemanticsare said (270, fn.) to be 'an expansion
of chapter 10 of Lyons (1968)'. It is noteworthy that this field, understood as the study of
semantic fields and sense relations, takes a much more modest place here than it did in Lyons'
Introductionto theoreticallinguistics(Cambridge,1968)-which, no doubt, makes the treatment
of semantics in this work much more balanced.

In Chapter 8, which treats semantic fields, one misses referencesto Wittgenstein's

concept of 'logical space' and Quine's 'conceptual space'.
Chapter 9 is devoted to 'sense relations', defined (270) as 'relations of sense
holding within sets of lexemes'. (L's spelling is inconsistent: 'sense relation'
alternates with 'sense-relation'). Examples of such relations are opposition, contrast, hyponymy, and the part-whole relationship. I sometimes feel uncertain about
the value of discussing semantic problems in terms of such relations: it often seems
that these relations are best regarded as secondary, the primary ones being those
that hold between the referents of the terms in question. In particular, this applies
to the part-whole relationship, which is said (311) to hold between lexemes such
as arm: body and wheel:bicycle.
L argues against the view that 'it is all a matter of our general knowledge of the relations
which hold between entities in the external world' (313). 'There are,' he says, 'numerous
lexemes ... whose meaning cannot be specified independentlyof some part-whole relation of
sense. How could we hope to analyse the meaning of "sleeve" or "lapel" without invoking a
part-whole relation between these lexemes and "coat", "jacket", "garment" etc ...' (314).
But the question is whether the part-whole relation is differentin kind from any other relation
which is involved in the meaning of lexemes. We could, e.g., ask: 'How could we hope to
analyse the meaning of "calf" without invoking a parent-offspringrelationship between that
lexeme and "cow"?' (Similarly for the husband-wife relation (king:queen),the agent-action
relationship (ruler:rule)etc.) In principle, any relation that can hold between entities in the
world could be used to relate actual or possible lexemes in this way, and could thus be called a
'sense relation'.
In the last section of Ch. 9, L discusses componentialanalysis, to which he takes a skeptical
attitude. Here L uses the term 'product', saying that in componential analysis,' "man'5 is the

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and HUMAN'(319), and that 'in this case, it is plausible to interpret

product of MALE,
ADULT,
"product" in terms of the conjunction of sense-components'. But 'product' has also a
different use in logic, under which the relation 'father-in-law of' would be said to be the
(relative) product of the two relations 'father of' and 'spouse of'. This concept is in fact
implicitly employed by L when he uses notations like SPOUSE-OF-SIBLING-OF(X,y), and says that

'the sense of "brother-in-law"might be represented(in part at least) as MALE(X) & (SPOUSE-OFSIBLING-OF(X,y)) v SIBLING-OF-SPOUSE-OF (X,y).' (In view of the fact that L devotes severalpages
to the analysis of terms for in-law relations in English and Russian, it is rather strange that he
never considers the possibility of analysing these terms by assigning a separatemeaning to the
suffix in-law).
When L says (284) that Russian has six lexemes for 'brother-in-law' and 'sister-in-law', it
should be pointed out that these lexemes (surin,dever'etc.) are disappearingfrom daily use, and
are not even known by many Russian speakers-in itself, an indication of the decreasing
importanceof kinship relations in the society.
Chapters 10-12, opening Volume 2, are entitled 'Semantics and grammar'I, II, and III respectively (373-511). It is perhaps to these chapters that my remark
above applies most clearly, that the book is more of a semantically-oriented introduction to linguistics than an introduction to semantics. In these chapters, L covers
such disparate subjects as grammaticality, semantics in generative theory, grammatical ambiguity, parts-of-speech, subject and predicate, determiners, quantifiers
and classifiers, locative subjects, causativity, transitivity, roles, and theme-rheme.
In his discussion of 'the ontological basis' of the parts-of-speech,L distinguishesfirst-order
entities, such as individual physical objects and persons; second-orderentities, such as events,
processes, and states-of-affairs; and third-orderentities, viz. 'such abstract entities as propositions, which are outside space and time' (443). One looks in vain in this hierarchyfor such
entities as sets: L comments about them that 'the ontological status of numbers, sets, etc ... is
of secondary importancefor the semanticistwhose main interestlies in describingthe structure
of naturallanguages' (446). It appearsfrom this statementthat one does not talk about sets and
numbers in natural language-hardly a defensibleclaim. Some of L's comments make it seem
as if his hierarchycorrespondsto that which underliesthe concepts of 'first-order'and 'higher
order' logic: 'First-orderentities are such that they may be referredto, and propertiesmay be
ascribed to them, within the framework of what logicians refer to as first-orderlanguages'
(443). But second-orderentities in logic are, e.g., propertiesand sets; and third-orderentities, if
one talks about them at all, would be properties of properties, or sets of sets-not at all the
same thing as propositions.
?12.4 is misnamed'Valency', althoughthis concept is not introduceduntil five of the section's
eight pages have passed.
Chapter 13, 'The lexicon' (512-69), contains sections on the structure of lexical
entries, complex lexemes, homonymy, and polysemy (once more).
In Chapter 14, 'Context, style, and culture' (570-635), we enter an area which
many linguists would regard as belonging to pragmatics. Here L discusses Hymes'
concept of Communicative Competence, the Gricean theory of conversational
implicature, the concept of presupposition, the so-called contextual theory of
meaning of J. R. Firth and his followers, and stylistic and diachronic variation. In
the last section of this chapter, 'Sentences and texts', L distinguishes 'systemsentences', which are 'abstract theoretical constructs, correlates of which are
generated by the linguist's model of the language-system in order to explicate that
part of the acceptability of utterance-signals that is covered by the notion of
grammaticality', from 'text-sentences', which are 'context-dependent utterancesignals (or parts of utterance-signals), tokens of which may occur in particular

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texts*' (622). The distinction is problematic, since it in fact conflates two distinctions:
that between langue and parole, and that between context-dependent and contextindependent utterances.The grammar,according to L, is only to generate'idealized
utterances in the particular sense of the term "idealization" that is implied by
"decontextualization": they are derived from utterances by elimination of all the
context-dependent features of utterances' (588). It is not clear to me how this idea
is to be carried out.
Chapter 15 is entitled' Deixis, space, and time' (636-724); accordingly, it treats
deictic expressions, tense, aspect, and locative expressions, and in addition contains
a brief discussion of the theory of 'localism'. I shall return below to L's treatment
of tense. In his discussion of aspect, one is slightly astonished to find a statement
(708) that 'according to what is probably the standard analysis these days', Russian
exemplifies the 'punctual-non-punctual' distinction. However, it turns out that L's
concept of punctuality is such that what he has in view is not too far from what
most people would regard as the concept underlying Russian aspect.
Chapters 16-17 (725-849) treat mood, modality, and illocutionary force. They
include a treatment of the theory of speech acts, a discussion of different types of
speech acts, negation, different modalities, and the performative hypothesis.
Throughout these two chapters, L uses three concepts which he regards as components of the logical structure of utterances: the phrastic, the tropic, and the
neustic.' The phrastic of a sentence (or perhaps rather of a speech act) is its propositional content-something which is common to corresponding declarative,
jussive (e.g. imperative),and interrogativesentences.The tropic is what distinguishes,
e.g., a declarative sentence (said to have an ' it-is-so' tropic) and an imperative
sentence (with a 'so-be-it' tropic). The neustic 'is that part of the sentence which
expresses the speaker's commitment' (750); thus an asserted declarative sentence
(as opposed to, e.g., an embedded one) has an 'I-say-so' neustic.
I am rather skeptical about this kind of analysis. It seems to me to share some of the weaknesses of the performativehypothesis,against which L gives quite a numberof good arguments
(?17.5). In particular,L's claim that there are three kinds of negation, correspondingto the three
components of the logical structure,fails to convince me. L himself makes the reservationthat
'our own treatment of negation ... might be justifiably criticized ... for using a single negation

operator, in differentpositions or with variation of scope, to account for the several kinds of
negation that we have discussed' (776-7).
According to L (770), an utterancein which 'we express our refusal or inability to perform
the illocutionaryact of assertion, promising,or whateverit might be', e.g. I don'tsay that John
is afool, is a negation of the neustic. As L adds, 'this is in itself to performan illocutionaryact:
an act of non-commitment.' That is, this kind of negation is an operation which makes one
kind of speech act into another kind of speech act; it is thus rather differentfrom 'ordinary'
negation, which is a function from propositionsto propositions.(In addition, even if we accept
L's analysis here, the operation he is talking about would operate on the whole speech act,
rather than on just the neustic.) In other words, we are dealing with entities of rather different
kinds; and it can indeed be questioned whether it makes sense to subsume them under one
category, in particular if one takes into account the fact that they behave differently with
respect to, e.g., 'the law of double negation': a refusal to refuse to promise is not the same
thing as a promise.
1 These are taken from R. M. Hare, 'Meaning and speech acts', Philosophical Review 79.3-24
(1970).

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L notes that a negated statement,such as It is not raining,can be used either to deny a claim
that has been made or could have been made, or just to assert a negative proposition. He makes
a distinction between what he calls 'context-bound' and 'context-free' statements 'to account
for the differencebetween the denial ofp and the simple assertion of not-p'. Further,he claims
(771) that this correspondsto a distinction between a negation of the tropic and a negation of
the phrastic. L's grounds for making this identificationare not entirely clear: perhaps he has
been led to it by the observation that locutions such as It is not the case that p or It is not so
that p are mostly used to express 'context-bound' negation, i.e. to deny some claim that is
explicitly or implicitly present in the context. But note that this is quite naturally so: in a
construction like It is (not) the case that p, the that-clausehas the function of a referringexpression that picks out the proposition p, which is then commented upon in the rest of the
sentence. It is exactly this bipartite structure which makes such constructions suitable for
expressingcontext-bound statements. But L's analysis of sentences into phrastic, neustic, and
tropic assigns this kind of structureto ALLstatements.

L notes (141) that' the term "proposition" ... has been the subject of considerable
philosophical controversy.' He then defines a proposition as'what is expressed* by
a declarative sentence when that sentence is used to make a statement.' This
definition leaves a number of possibilities open, particularly because the term
'expressed' in the definiens, although starred as a new technical term, is not itself
defined. (L often presupposes that the context is enough to explain the terms
marked by asterisks: the result sometimes is simply that the reader is left with the
uneasy feeling that the terms in question are being used in some entirely new and
mystical sense known only to L.) It is clear, however, that propositions are distinct from sentences, and that they are semantic rather than syntactic entities. It is
therefore strange to find the statement (148) that 'propositions are composed of
terms*'-since terms (of which, according to L, there are two kinds; names and
predicates) are syntactic, not semantic entities (or so one would assume). L allows
for the possibility that 'different sentences of the same language may express the
same proposition' (142); but he gives no example of this (nor the converse
case, that one sentence expresses two or more propositions). Sentences which
differ only in the choice of coreferentialterms would seem to be natural candidates
for this case; but if propositions are composed of terms, it is hard to see how this
would be possible. What one misses here is some indication of the identity
criteria for propositions-i.e., under what conditions we would say that two
sentences express the same proposition or do not.
Discussing the relations between intensions and extensions, L claims (160) that Frege and
many others have taken 'the extension of a proposition to be its truth-value(and the intension
of a proposition to be its meaning).' Here again, there seems to be a confusion of semanticand
syntacticconcepts. In fact, what Frege said was that truth-valuesare the extensionsof sentences,
and that the intensionsof sentencesare 'Gedanken', a term usuallytranslatedas 'propositions'.
If propositions are semantic entities, they can have neither intensions (or, for that matter,
meanings) nor extensions; they are themselves intensions.
The problem of identity criteria for propositions, mentioned above, is also relevant for the
question of how propositions are related to temporal concepts. Beginning on p. 149, L repeatedly refers to the 'tenselessness' or 'timelessness' of propositions. There is considerable
inconsistency and lack of clarity in his treatment of these concepts; it seems that he has been
unable to make up his mind on the question.Let us firstmakeclearwhat the issues involved are.
A sentence like
It
was rainingcannot be assigned a truth-valueunless we specify a temporal
point of referencewhere it can be evaluated (accordingto whetherit is in fact rainingor not, at
that point in time). We may now take at least two points of view with regardto the propositions

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expressed by this sentence. We may say that the sentence expresses the same proposition,
regardlessof its implicit temporal reference, but that the temporal point of referencemust be
determinedbefore the truth-valueof the proposition is determined.Alternatively,we may say
that, dependingon the temporalreference,this sentencemay expressdifferentpropositions,and
that each proposition has a definitetruth-value.In the first case, time goes into the determination of the truth-valueof the proposition; in the second, it goes into the determinationof the
identity of the proposition itself. In model-theoreticterms, the question is, What is the domain
of the function which correspondsto the proposition:world-timepairs, or just worlds? This is a
question of terminology: what kind of entity do we want to dub 'proposition'? I prefer to
reserve the term for the second kind of entity, calling the first a 'propositional concept'. Now
one may of course say that both propositions and propositionalconcepts are 'timeless', but in
different ways: for propositions, time is irrelevantfor the determinationof their truth-value;
for propositional concepts, time is irrelevantfor their identification.I think, however, that the
term 'timelessness' in both these uses leads to more confusion than clarification, and L's
treatment has sufferedfrom this.
Thus L sometimes gives us the impression that 'tenselessness' and 'timelessness' are interchangeableterms (e.g. 809: 'the term "tenseless", or "timeless", can be interpretedin several
differentways'), or at least that they coincide in one interpretation(163); elsewhere (679), we
are warned that 'tenselessness is sometimes confused with timelessness'. On p. 163, we learn
that propositions can generally be said to be 'timeless'; but on p. 680, a distinction is made
between 'timeless' and 'time-bound' propositions, where a timeless proposition is said to be
'one for which the question of time-reference ... simply does not arise: the situation ... is

outside time altogether', examples being 'the so-called eternal truths of mathematics and
theology'.
The problematicconcepts of' timelessness' and 'tenselessness' crop up again in L's treatment
of 'generic reference' (193-7). He says that a sentence like The lion is a friendly beast 'may be
used to assert a generic proposition: i.e. a proposition which says something, not about this or
that group of lions, or about any particularindividuallion, but about the class of lions as such.'
Such propositions are 'not only tenseless, but timeless'. Here we are clearly operatingwith that
interpretationof 'timeless' under which only some propositions, e.g. mathematicalones, are
'timeless'. This is confusing, since we learned only 30 pages earlier that all propositions are
timeless. L goes on to say that The dinosaurwas a friendly beast seems to be an immediate
counter-exampleto what he has said. But the past tense here, he says, is not part of the generic
proposition: the past tense is employed because the speaker believes that dinosaursare extinct.
However, on p. 196, L quotes sentenceslike Thelion is extinct or Thelion is no longerto be seen
roaming the hills of Scotland, as 'perfectly normal sentences, which can be used to assert a
generic proposition'. But these sentences clearly refer to the present time, and would thus be
'time-bound'. It may even be questioned whetherThelion is afriendly beast must be interpreted
as timeless, and whetherthis can be regardedas a condition for its being a generic proposition:
species are known to change their properties,and a sentence like Thisinsectis resistantto DDT,
but it was not a year ago is normal. It seems to me that someone who utters Thelion is a friendly
beastcan only be said to have committedhimself to the presentpropertiesof lions, accordingto
him: the question whether the statement was or will be valid for other times is left open.
A further problematic concept is that of omnitemporality.An omnitemporal proposition,
according to L, 'is one that says that something has been, is, and always will be so: it is a
proposition whose truth-valueis constant for all values of t,, in a finite or infinite set of timepoints or time-intervals...' (680). This definitionconfuses two differentthings. I can make the
statement It is, has always been, and will always be raining, although the propositional concept
'It be raining' does not have a constant truth-value for all points in time. Thus one must
distinguish when something is true and when it is claimed to be true.

Apparently L has not coordinated the various sections in which time and tense
are discussed. It is hardly any wonder that inconsistencies of this kind arise in a
book of this length: rather, it is astonishing that there are not more of them.

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Keeping the manuscript of such a book under control is indeed a considerablefeat:

L and Cambridge University Press must be commended for accomplishing it.
When it comes to its formal side, L's book has at least one weak spot, viz. the
indexes, which are rather like what one would expect from a not-too-sophisticated
computerized indexing program. Some examples from the subject index: 'stimulus'
and 'stimuli' are listed separately, with different page references; the same goes for
'English perfect' and'perfect in English'. There is a reference to p. 713 under
'Ancient Greek aorist'; under 'Ancient Greek' and' Greek', we find no referenceto
this page (but to a host of others); under 'aorist', we find nothing at all. There are
scores of similar cases. Under 'sense', we find about 20 references; then there is a
separate entry for 'sense (Sinn)' with a single referenceto p. 251 (also listed under
'sense')-and then a third entry, simply called 'Sinn', with a single reference to
p. 198.
The first volume has two references under 'American' (which, incidentally, is
separate from 'American English'); if you look them up, the first belongs to the
sentence 'If an Englishman uses referentially the expression "the queen" and an
American the expression "the president" ...' (181), the second to the phrase 'the
so-called post-Bloomfieldian school, which was dominant in American linguistics
in the period immediately following the Second World War' (230). One of the
references under'Russian' turns out to be to' Russian scholars like Meljcuk' (323).
As for the index of personal names, those mentioned only in footnotes have for
some reason been considered worthy of inclusion in the index in the second volume,
but not in the first. There are separate entries for co-authors, which makes it hard
to find the second member of a pair.2
[Received 15 March 1978.]
Here is a list of minorerrors(ignoringsimple misspellings):p. 15, line 20, asteriskmisplaced;
p. 119, line 3, sematics for semantics (this is a recurrenterror); p. 285, line 14, svojacinicafor
svojacenica;p. 329, line 39, muzkojfor muzskoj; p. 332, line 9, referenceto 12.3 instead of 12.6;
p. 351, line 33, Minksyfor Minsky; p.411: Spang-Hanssen1954is not listed in the bibliography.
2

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