On the Status of Popoluca in Zoque-Mixe

meaning of the utterance. A paleface may not be a man with a pale face; a grapefruit is not a fruit like a grape. Paleface and grapefruit, in fact, seem more like lexical choices on the order of Negro or orange than they do like the products of optional transformations. In the case of grapefruit, indeed, there is no ordinary way of designating the object except by use of the compound-a fact that would seem unaccountable if the use of the compound were the result of a choice on the same order as that between, say, tall man and man who is tall, or, for that matter, between automobile assembly plant and plant for the assembly of automobiles. As the latter example shows, there are many compound-types in English that seem to be genuine products of optional transformations. Lees' rule, for instance, for deriving gerundive-plus-noun compounds from noun-for-gerundive phrases (machine for washing -> washing machine, shoes for walking -walking shoes) meets the same requirements as are met by any other optional transformation: viz., it applies to any string that has the appropriate structure, and its products show a consistent distributional and semantic relation to their sources. Those rules that do not meet these requirements are not really transformational rules at all, but, rather, etymological formulas. Such etymological formulas are, to be sure, of great interest, since they summarize certain typical processes of wordformation in English, either current or obsolete. But their place in a generative grammar is highly questionable, and certainly their inclusion with rules of an essentially different type is confusing. In closing this review, I should like to mention what seems to me an important, if incidental, virtue of this diversely valuable book: namely, that it shows-more clearly, perhaps, than has ever been shown before-how very subtle and complex the structure of English is. The myth of the simplicity of English has been perpetuated by a good many linguists, particularly those linguists who happen to be native speakers of English and have never attempted to analyze it. This myth Lees' book should dispel once and for all. In so doing, the book should also help to explain why it is that, in spite of the efforts of a host of gifted students of the language (including, notably, Lees himself), there is still so much work to be done.