The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar. Ed. by Alexander Adelaar and Nikolaus P. Himmelmann. New York: Routledge, 2005. Pp. 841. ISBN 9780700712861. $360 (Hb).

Reviewed by Craig Soderberg, Dallas, TX

This thorough book begins with five general or historical articles followed by twenty-three articles relating to specific Austronesian languages. Among the general articles, Alexander Adelaar, in ‘The Austronesian languages of Asia and Madagascar: A historical perspective’, points out that the Austronesian language family is the largest language family in the world with 1,200 members (making up 20% of the world’s languages). He also diagrams and describes the Proto-Austronesian and Proto-Malayo-Polynesian language families. In ‘Language shift and endangerment’, Margaret Florey lists seven factors that facilitate or hinder language endangerment. Hein Steinhauer’s ‘Colonial history and language policy in Insular Southeast Asia and Madagascar’ describes how western colonial powers contributed to the strengthening of national languages such and Indonesian and Malay. James J. Fox, in ‘Ritual languages’, gives examples of avoidance vocabulary and word tabooing as well as special registers like ‘prokem’, which is used by the youth of Jakarta. In ‘Typological characteristics’, Nikolaus P. Himmelmann groups various Austronesian languages according to certain features such as nasal assimilation, ‘right-ward’ reduplication, subjecthood, and alignment systems.

Following Waruno Mahdi’s article on ‘Old Malay’, Adelaar, in ‘Structural diversity in the Malayic subgroup’, discusses literary Malay varieties, Pidgin-derived Malays, and Malayic vernaculars, and gives characteristics of various Malay varieties. In ‘Colloquial Indonesian’, Michael C. Ewing notes some interesting discourse features of Indonesian. The remaining articles focus on specific minority Austronesian languages: ‘Tsou’ (Elizabeth Zeitoun), ‘Seediq’ (Naomi Tsukida), ‘Iloko’ (Carl Rubino), ‘Tagalog’ (Nikolaus P. Himmelmann), ‘Sama (Bajau)’ (Akamine Jun), ‘Kimaragang’ (Paul Kroeger), ‘Belait’ (Adrian Clynes), ‘Malagasy’ (Janie Rasoloson and Carl Rubino), ‘Phan Rang Cham’ (Graham Thurgood), ‘Moken and Moklen’ (Michael D. Larish), ‘Karo Batak’ (Geoff Woollams), ‘Nias’ (Lea Brown), ‘Javanese’ (Alexander K. Ogloblin), ‘Buol’ (Erik Zobel), ‘Makassar’ (Anthony Jukes), ‘Mori Bawah’ (David Mead), ‘Kambera’ (Marian Klamer), ‘Tetun and Leti’ (Aone van Engelenhoven and Catharina Williams-van Klinken), ‘Taba’ (John Bowden), and ‘Biak’ (Hein Steinhauer).

Each language article includes an introduction and sections on topics like phonology and orthography, basic morphosyntax, major verbal alternations, and deictics and directionals. In these remaining articles, some features making for Austronesian language-uniqueness can be seen. For example, Western Austronesian languages differ significantly in their deictic systems, showing parameters of variation that include the number of degrees of distance distinguished in a given system. Malagasy is unique for distinguishing seven different degrees. In Leti, the uniqueness is that deictics convey speaker’s attitude. The Kambera language is unique in that it has a particularly complex example of clitics.

This book is highly recommended for anyone considering publishing a linguistic description of an Austronesian minority language, since it contains numerous useful examples.

A beginner’s guide to Tajiki. By Azim Baizoyev and John Hayward. London: Routledge Curzon, 2004. Pp. xvi, 371. ISBN 0415315980. $55.95.

Reviewed by Mohammad Rasekh Mahand, Bu-Ali Sina University

This book offers a conversational approach to the study of Tajiki, the language of Tajikistan. The Tajik author, Azim Baizoyev, who has been involved in teaching Tajiki to foreign diplomats and professionals in various fields, has prepared the lessons of the book. As outlined in the ‘Editor’s preface’ (xii), these lessons have some key features: (i) they take ‘a topic-based, lexical conversational approach towards language learning’; (ii) they engage in ‘recycling of language information to facilitate language acquisition’; (iii) there are opportunities for exposure to language forms before they are explained in order to facilitate inductive learning; and (iv) the lessons use authentic language material, emphasize spoken language, and offer descriptions of the literary language, in which a balance between literal translation and sociolinguistically equivalent expressions has been attempted when both Tajiki and English are given.

Each lesson contains several sections. The first section offers a brief commentary in English on the subject matter of the lesson, which is followed by a list of key vocabulary items. In the third section there are dialogues that are centered on the theme of the lesson. The fourth is a grammar section, followed by exercises providing practice with the lesson’s new material. There are proverbs and short texts in some of the lessons, along with some discussion questions. The last section in each lesson gives a quiz.

The appendices contain examples of different text types (letters, speeches, jokes, poems, and the like). These offer insights into Tajiki culture and modes of thinking. After the appendices there is a section with grammatical tables, followed by a very useful Tajiki-English dictionary, containing over 4,500 definitions, of all the vocabulary found in the book.

The book could be used with a teacher or alone, and, although it is designed for beginners, those who wish to gain fluency in the language will find it a useful way to go further with the language.

Dictionnaire Fon-Français avec une esquisse grammaticale. By Hildegard Höftmann, in collaboration with Michel Ahohounkpanzon. (Westafrikanische Studien 27.) Cologne: Rüdiger Köppe, 2003. Pp. 424. ISBN 3896454633. €52.80.

Reviewed by Silvia Kouwenberg, University of the West Indies, Jamaica

Hildegard Höftmann is known among students of the Gbe languages for her 1993 work Grammatik des Fon (Leipzig: Langenscheidt). Strangely, no reference is made to this publication anywhere in the Dictionnaire Fon-Français. More generally, one might have expected a work of this nature to acknowledge its eminent forerunners, starting at least with Diedrich Westermann’s Grammatik der Ewe-Sprache (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1907).

The dictionary consists of three parts. Part 1, the introduction (11–20), briefly notes the classification of Fon within Niger-Congo, describes the historical and modern territorial bounds of the language, and notes the intended audience of the dictionary and some of the considerations that guided the compilation of the dictionary. It also explains the format of the dictionary’s entries, lists abbreviations, and explains the orthography, which follows the official Benin orthography—which, unusually, makes use of a number of phonetic symbols (ɖ, ɛ, ɔ). Part 2, the grammatical sketch (21–53), is subdivided into morphology (nominals, pronominals, verbs), syntax (where ‘élargissement du prédicat’ covers such topics as the use of markers of aspect, modality, and negation, as well as adverbial material; ‘proposition composée’ covers coordinated constructions; ‘phrase complexe’ pertains to various types of subordination), and a systematic summary (which illustrates tense, aspect, modality, and types of subordination). Part 3, the bulk of the work, is the Fon-French dictionary (55–424).

Missing from the grammatical sketch is a discussion of the phonology of Fon (see instead Hounkpati Capo’s A comparative phonology of Gbe, Berlin: Foris, 1991). Nonetheless, one cannot get around certain aspects of it as some of the morphology of Fon is templatic. Part 2 provides useful insights into the morphological processes that are extensively illustrated in the dictionary entries, but there are a few unfortunate mismatches. For instance, lànmɛ̀syɛ́nsyɛ́n ‘santé’ is described as a compound of lànmɛ̀ ‘corps’ and syɛ́nsyɛ́n ‘fort’ (22) but entered as an unanalyzable form in the dictionary (283); reduplicated sísí ‘respect’ (25) is missing from the dictionary listing. However, by and large, the dictionary is an excellent resource for the study of word formation in Fon, as complex forms are identified as such and the user is referred to the entries for the relevant component parts. About a third of the entries are accompanied by illustrations, adding to the usefulness of this work for linguistic research in the morphology and syntax of Fon.

The author has not attempted exhaustive coverage of Fon’s lexicon. At c. 8,000 entries, the choice of words for inclusion was based on the considerations set out on p. 13, such as the frequency of occurrence in her corpus of texts (representing a wide range of traditional and modern text types) and general acceptance by Fon speakers as supported by the judgments of several respondents and the author’s own observations. Given the large territory over which Fon is spoken, which makes variation unavoidable, the author’s choice betrays her support for the goals of standardization rather than full documentation.

The Aryanpur progressive Persian-English dictionary, one-volume, concise. By Manoochehr Aryanpur-Kashani (with the collaboration of S. M. Assi). Tehran: Computer World, 1384 Sh/2005. Pp. iv, 1596. ISBN 9648603200. 109,000 Rials.

Reviewed by Muhammad-Reza Fakhr-Rohani, University of Qom

The above dictionary (henceforth APPED) is an abridged edition of an earlier work, viz. The Aryanpur progressive Persian-English dictionary (4 vols, 2003). Unlike its predecessor, the APPED is designed to be affordable for students. Regarding coverage, it can be compared, and ranked, with Francis Steingass’s Comprehensive Persian-English dictionary (1892) and Solaiman Haim’s New Persian-English dictionary (1934–36).

The APPED offers several notable features. It gives equivalents of the vocabulary and idioms of current Persian as spoken in Iran. In addition to Persian cultural terms, a large number of newly coined words and phrases are also included with equivalents and/or translations. Notable is the inclusion of modern technical terms in a wide variety of disciplines. It renders several English equivalents for any given Persian headword, though the various meanings are not discriminated. It would have been more useful for the Persian-speaking user if the equivalents were either divided according to their senses or supported by some usage notes or synonym-discrimination paragraphs.

There are some shortcomings in the APPED as well. It seems that it was written with the assumption that only Persian-speaking users would consult it, though this is certainly not the case. The key to the transcription system offers no sample words in English to assist the English-speaking user with the phonetic value of the Persian pronunciations given. It is surprising that the six-vowel system of Persian phonology is represented by seven vowel symbols, and the glottal stop is represented by a single inverted comma. The Persian dental plosives are represented by their alveolar counterparts, which may easily mislead a person new to Persian. In addition, there are diphthongal transcriptions, but there are no diphthongal phonemes in Persian phonology (though phonetically some vowels may sound diphthongal). Given that the phonetic and phonological systems of Persian and English are different, an attempt to inform the English-speaking user of such delicate points as, for example, there being only dental and not alveolar plosives in Persian would have been useful. Moreover, the transcriptions hardly reflect the pronunciations of Persian-speaking readers, though the pronunciations given do reflect those of the written forms.

The example sentences provided should be revised and edited. Besides the sentences beginning with proper names, the rest rarely begin with capital letters, and, surprisingly, a great majority of them lack a full stop. These deficiencies, no doubt, will certainly mislead beginners who wish to consult the dictionary.

The APPED demands revision with regard to the Oriental loanwords in English. Although many such loanwords, particularly from Arabic or Persian origins, are recorded in great English dictionaries, most of them are not recorded in the APPED. These include words that pertain to religious, social, and cultural institutions. Despite the practice of some dictionaries, such as Steingass’s and Haim’s, which provide etymological information, however brief, the APPED remains reticent in this regard.

The APPED could be improved in many ways and prove to be a more reliable dictionary, serving its users for a longer period of time.

Theory construction in second language acquisition. By Geoff Jordan. (Language learning & language teaching 8.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2004. Pp. xviii, 295. ISBN 158814821. $42.95.

Reviewed by Marcus Callies, Philipps-University Marburg

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) is a comparatively young field of research that is increasingly being viewed as a branch of cognitive science. There is still little agreement on what phenomena of SLA are to be explained and what counts as an explanation. Moreover, researchers appear to have reached only a minimal consensus as to what the object of study of a theory of SLA is and what the goals of such a theory are. Instead, the field has witnessed a proliferation of theories and, even more so, of models, hypotheses, and theoretical constructs. SLA being an interdisciplinary enterprise, its theories draw on and have been influenced by a large number of other disciplines within the social and cognitive sciences such as linguistics, psychology, and sociology. Thus, only little progress toward a unified theory of SLA has been made.

The present book provides an overview of long-standing issues and debates in SLA and presents a comparative analysis of rival SLA theories. While theory proliferation is usually considered a weakness of a discipline, Jordan asks whether having various theories really is a disadvantage. He suggests that we may actually need more than one unifying theory to break up the many research areas subsumed under SLA. J argues that instead of setting up virtually impossible conditions for an SLA theory, competing theories need to be evaluated in terms of well-defined, rational assessment criteria that can serve as a common basis for theory construction. Thus, unlike existing volumes that aim at providing an overview of SLA theories (Diane Larsen-Freeman and Michael Long, An introduction to second language acquisition research, London: Longman, 1991; Rosamond Mitchell and Florence Myles, Second language learning theories, London: Arnold, 1998), J sets up a series of such criteria (his ‘Guidelines’), based on theories of science, against which existing theories of SLA are evaluated in the second part of the book.

Part 1 discusses fundamental issues concerning the construction and assessment of SLA theories. In Ch. 1, J outlines some key terms and current problems in SLA, explores the central issues in the philosophy of science (Chs. 2 and 3), defends the rationalist case (Ch. 4), and presents his guidelines for theory assessment (Ch. 5). Part 2 examines various theories, models, and hypotheses of SLA and evaluates them in terms of how well they stand the test of the guidelines. J discusses Noam Chomsky’s theory of universal grammar (UG) and its role in an explanation of SLA (Chs. 6 and 7), as well as approaches to SLA that ‘offend the guidelines’, such as contrastive analysis, Stephen Krashen’s monitor model, variable competence models, environmentalist theories, and the sociopsychological constructs of aptitude and motivation (Ch. 8). Ch. 9 provides an assessment of mostly cognitive approaches that, according to the author, represent ‘signs of progress’ on the road to a theory of SLA: error analysis, the morpheme order studies, developmental studies, processing approaches, and the competition model. Finally, in Ch. 10, J concludes that a theory of SLA should address what L2 competence is, how it is acquired, and how it is put to use. He argues, however, that the domain of SLA theories needs to be far wider than Chomsky’s, as it needs to explain not only a more complex competence, but also performance. The volume ends with a bibliography, and name and subject indices.

In sum, the book provides a useful and highly accessible introduction to the philosophical background to SLA and a good overview of the development of theories and models in SLA. This overview, however, is not fully exhaustive in that, for example, a highly influential approach in SLA such as markedness and (typological) language universals is not discussed. Still, this volume is extremely valuable due its critical approach and comparative evaluation of theories. Thus, it should be of great interest and benefit not only to specialists and researchers, but also to newcomers to the field who need a comprehensive overview.

Clausal syntax of German. By Judith Berman. (Studies in constraint-based lexicalism.) Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2003. Pp. 200. ISBN 1575863626. $25.

Reviewed by Ivan Ortega-Santos, College Park, MD

Based on her 2000 University of Stuttgart dissertation, Judith Berman’s book focuses on the status of subjects, complement clauses, and the debate on the existence of traces in German, a language with relatively free word order and a relatively rich morphology. In particular, B discusses verb-second constructions, so-called ‘subjectless’ clauses, expletives and agreement, weak-crossover, long-distance dependencies, the distribution of subordinate clauses, and the cooccurrence of correlative pronouns and embedded clauses. The framework used is lexical-functional grammar (LFG). B’s goal is not only to shed light on such topics but also to present their relevance for the theory of LFG in general.

After presenting the LFG framework, B studies verb-second phenomena and the free distribution of subjects and objects. Such discussion, together with the fact that the subject may be included in VP-topicalizations, leads her to conclude that syntactic functions in this language are not structurally encoded but rather identified by morphology (Ch. 3, 23–44). As to the status of subjects, B argues that German is consistent with the subject condition (the requirement that every sentence have a subject (Baker 1983)) in spite of the fact that certain kinds of finite clauses can or must occur without a lexically realized subject. Such apparent counterexamples would be explained by the satisfaction of the subject condition by the verbal agreement morphology (Ch.4, 45–74).

With regard to the debate on the (non)existence of traces, B defends the view that local word-order alternations do not involve an antecedent-gap configuration, but nonlocal dependencies do. The fact that in German free word order is restricted to the local clause suggests that morphology identifies the syntactic functions only locally. Under this view, in the case of nonlocal dependencies an empty category in the local domain of the predicate is necessary to guarantee the right predicate-argument relation (Chs. 5 and 6, 75–121), an analysis in the spirit of Bresnan 2001. In addition, B argues that sentential arguments bear the same grammatical function as the corresponding nominal or prepositional arguments, in contrast to the traditional LFG analysis. Other proposals are that in German, there is a thematic as well as a nonthematic es, and that finite clauses in sentence-initial position are obligatorily left-dislocated.

This work not only is remarkable as the first-large scale treatment of German syntax in LFG, but it also discusses different hot topics within that theory (e.g. the subject condition or the status of traces).

Modality in Slavonic languages. Ed. by Björn Hansen and Petr Karlík. Munich: Otto Sagner, 2005. Pp. xxiv, 388. ISBN 3876909163. €23 (Hb).

Reviewed by George Cummins, Tulane University

This volume contains the proceedings of the Regensburg-Brno conference on modality held at the University of Regensburg, November 2004, and co-hosted by Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. It presents twenty-four papers by Slavists from twelve nations. The papers are divided into four parts: ‘New perspectives on modality in semantics’, ‘New perspectives on modality in language contact, ‘New perspectives on modality in language change’, and ‘New perspectives on pragmatic and cultural aspects of modality’. The variety of topics and theoretical approaches is stimulatingly rich. I list only a few without giving their full titles: modality and semantic maps (Ferdinand de Haan), force dynamics and Russian impersonal modals with dative subjects (Egbert Fortuin), formal modal logic and reference (Mojmír Dočekal), the typology of irrealis and modal structures (Vladimir Plungian), the grammaticalization of modals as seen in a Slavic parallel corpus (Johan van der Auwera, Ewa Schalley, and Jan Nuyts), epistemic modality and evidentiality (Viktor Xrakovskij), the new Regensburg diachronic corpus of Russian (Roland Meyer), modality in OCS and other historical varieties of Church Slavonic (Radoslav Večerka, Eva Pallasová, and Alla Kozhinova), modality in speech act theory and pragmatics (Björn Wiemer, Hanna Pulaczewska, and Milada Hirschová).

The papers presented by the editors are especially interesting and stand out for their elegance and persuasiveness. Pavel Caha and Petr Karlík’s ‘Where does modality come from?’ analyzes Czech modal adjectives such as viditelný ‘visible’ using minimalism, distributed morphology, and Karlík’s work on Czech microsyntax. The verbal roots in question must be able to assign an external theta-role and must be able to license their internal arguments by structural case. Czech morphology distinguishes the nomen agentis formant -tel- and the adjective formant -n-. Psych-verbs and intransitives can’t form these modals, but unergatives, a subclass of intransitives, can form agentive nouns in -tel-, such as cestovatel ‘traveler’. The first morpheme in words like viditelný assigns the external theta-role, while the second is introduced into the syntax by an index and binds the internal theta-role inside it. Evidence from Czech shows that this is a natural solution, one with implications for the theory of the lexical origin of word-formation processes. Björn Hansen’s ‘How to measure areal convergence: A case study of contact-induced grammaticalization in the German-Hungarian-Slavonic contact area’ measures the areal clines of polyfunctional modal predicates using bundles of weighted features (isopleths). Slavic languages culturally and historically closest to German show its influence clearly, with the single exception of Slovene. The more remote Bulgarian and Russian show no influence, nor does the typologically distant Hungarian.

This volume is a thought-provoking contribution to modality theory and will be of interest to Slavists, general linguists, and students of semantics, pragmatics, formal linguistics, and modal logic.

Multiple wh-fronting. Ed. by Cedric Boeckx and Kleanthes K. Grohmann. (Linguistics today 64.) Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. 292. ISBN 1588114198. $169 (Hb).

Reviewed by Sharbani Banerji, Ghaziabad, U. P. India

Multiple wh-questions do not show the same syntactic effects in all languages. The positions to which wh-phrases (whPs) move show typological variation, as well as variation within a language depending on the interpretation of the whPs. Thus, superiority effects too show typological variation. With Noam Chomsky’s minimalist program as the theoretical base, this collection of eleven papers tries to unravel the mysteries of wh-movement in various languages. The two most important works that have served as the background for most of the papers are Catherine Rudin’s (1988) work ‘On multiple questions and multiple wh-fronting’ and a series of works (e.g. 1997) by Željko Bošković on multiple wh-fronting.

In the ‘Introduction’ (1–15), the editors present a brief overview of the topic. In the first paper, ‘Symmetries and asymmetries in multiple checking’ (17–26), Cedric Boeckx compares the pattern of multiple wh-fronting attested in Bulgarian with that in Serbo-Croatian, and explains the differences by underlining the distinction between Match and Agree. In ‘On wh-islands and obligatory wh-movement contexts in South Slavic’ (27–50), Željko Bošković shows that all of the differences between Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian multiple wh-fronting constructions can be traced to the PF status of the Bulgarian interrogative C. ‘On the nature of multiple fronting in Yiddish’ (51–76), by Molly Diesing, concentrates on the issues of superiority and landing sites of multiple wh-fronting in Yiddish and its status in the overall typology of multiple wh-fronting. Marcel den Dikken, in ‘On the morphosyntax of wh-movement’ (77–98), makes a distinction between question-word phrases, echo-question phrases, and indefinites in terms of [+/–Wh] and [+/–Focus] features, and claims that wh-fronting targets different Specs. In ‘German is a multiple wh-fronting language!’ (99–130), Kleanthes K. Grohmann proposes a typological tripartition of wh-movement into zero, singular, and multiple wh-movement languages. He then argues that German is, on the one hand, like Bulgarian, and on the other, like Italian.

‘Deriving anti-superiority effects: Multiple wh-questions in Japanese and Korean’ (131–40), by Youngmi Jeong, studies anti-superiority effects in Japanese and Korean, and how the effect is avoided if there is an additional wh-element. The account does not rely on the empty category principle (ECP). Anikó Lipták, in ‘Conjoined questions in Hungarian’ (141–60), discusses conjoined multiple questions in Hungarian, providing evidence for a binary branching analysis of coordination. In ‘Persian wh-riddles’ (161–86), Ahmad R. Lotfi examines multiple wh-questions in Persian and proposes a timing analysis of the differences between wh-arguments and adjuncts in Persian. In ‘Non-wh-fronting in Basque’ (187–227), Lara Reglero offers an analysis of multiple questions in Basque, in the light of Bošković’s Attract-all-F approach. Joachim Sabel, in ‘Malagasy as an optional multiple wh-fronting language’ (229–54), analyzes (multiple) wh-questions in Malagasy, a wh-in-situ language that displays partial and full wh-movement as well.

The collection ends with ‘Multiple wh-fronting in Serbo-Croatian matrix questions and the matrix sluicing construction’ (255–84), by Sandra Stjepanović, who analyzes the positions to which whPs move in Serbo-Croatian .The behavior of multiple wh-phrases with respect to superiority in sluicing constructions reveals that sluicing must be a PF phenomenon.

Lexicography and the OED: Pioneers in the untrodden forest. Ed. by Lynda Mugglestone. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002. Pp. x, 293. ISBN 0199251959. $40.

Reviewed by Marcus Callies, Philipps-University Marburg

Lexicography and the OED, now available in paperback, is a collection of articles devoted to the endeavors in both lexicography and lexicology that led to the making of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the accepted authority on the evolution of the English language over the last millennium. Using much unpublished material from the archives of Oxford University Press and the Murray papers, an international team of scholars sets out to explore the development of this pioneering enterprise, focusing on the history, conception, and editing of the OED’s first edition, which was then published as the New English Dictionary on Historical Principles.

In the opening chapter ‘ “Pioneers in the untrodden forest”: The new English dictionary’, Lynda Mugglestone describes how the change of the principles of lexicography in the second half of the nineteenth century influenced and guided the dictionary’s conception and editorial process, and gives an overview of the many difficulties the editors encountered in the early stages. In ‘Making the OED: Readers and editors. A critical survey’, Elizabeth Knowles presents a detailed study of the many individuals who were involved in the making of the dictionary and how they interacted in the editorial process, focusing on the OED’s mostly outside volunteer readers, subeditors, and editors, among whom were such diverse figures as J. R. R. Tolkien, who worked on the staff of the OED in his early years, and J. C. Minor, the schizophrenic American surgeon and soldier who was a patient at Broadmoor Mental Asylum.

Using data extracted from the OED’s CD-ROM version, ‘OED sources’, by Charlotte Brewer, examines how the lexicographers determined the range and nature of the texts to be used for the quotations, revealing the dominance of canonical literary authors over nonliterary works, such as scientific texts. Noel Osselton compares the OED with similar endeavors by lexicographers in France, the Netherlands, and Germany in ‘Murray and his European counterparts’.

The following articles cover a range of specific topics. Anne Curzan, in ‘The compass of the vocabulary’, and Penny Silva, in ‘Time and meaning: Sense and definition in the OED’, investigate the selection of entries and the writing of the definitions for the OED, and Dieter Kastovsky, in ‘Words and word-formation: Morphology in OED’, looks into the OED’s organizational principles to include complex lexical items, with etymology being the all-important criterion. Eric Stanley examines the policies adopted by the editors toward the use of Old, Middle, and Early Modern English texts in ‘OED and the earlier history of English’, while Michael Rand Hoare and Vivian Salmon (‘The vocabulary of science in the OED’) and Michael K. C. MacMahon (‘Pronunciation in the OED’) deal with linguistic registers and pronunciation, respectively.

Finally, in ‘ “An historian not a critic”: The standard of usage in the OED’, Mugglestone takes up the paradigm shift in English lexicography and the changing role of the lexicographer from an authoritative language preserver to an impartial linguistic observer, while Richard W. Bailey, in ‘ “This unique and peerless specimen”: The reputation of the OED’, discusses the significance of imperialism, profit, and philology as driving forces behind the project. The volume is rounded off by three appendices: ‘OED sections and parts’, by Jenny McMorris, lists publication dates of the individual sections, parts, and volumes; ‘OED personalia’, by Peter Gilliver, provides short biographical notes of individuals who have contributed actively to the dictionary in several ways; and ‘The OED and the public’, by Bailey, gives a select bibliography of notices and reviews of the OED that appeared from the second half of the nineteenth to the first half of the twentieth century. The book closes with a ‘further reading’ section and a general index.

Although the volume focuses on the first edition, what is perhaps missing is a chapter sketching the OED’s development over the last century and the possibilities offered by its advancement into the electronic age. The fact that the dictionary is available both on CD-ROM and as an online publication, with revised entries from the envisaged third edition and additions of new words being published every quarter, has revolutionized the way scholars use it to search and retrieve information, and has made it an even more powerful research tool for linguistic inquiry, especially for studies in morphology, lexical and historical semantics, and etymology.

In sum, this collection gives some fascinating insights into the making of the OED and is an essential reading for lexicographers and students of English (historical) linguistics.

The morphosyntax of complement-head sequences: Clause structure and word order patterns in Kwa. By Enoch Oladé Aboh. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Pp. xi, 375. ISBN 019515990X. $60.50.

Reviewed by Silvia Kouwenberg, University of the West Indies, Jamaica

Niger-Congo displays word order patterns ranging from strictly VO to mixed VO/OV to strictly OV. The mixed pattern was made the subject of rigorous theoretical inquiry in Hilda Koopman’s 1984 study The syntax of verbs, which had wide-ranging implications for the then-prevalent views of synchronic word-order patterns and their historical status in Niger-Congo. It seemed then that Koopman’s work opened up an exciting and fruitful area of research, but few major studies followed it, and several of those seem to have been condemned to the status of unpublished Ph.D. dissertations. It is fortunate, therefore, that Aboh’s 1998 dissertation made it to publication.

Like the Kru languages of Koopman’s work, the Gbe languages that A studies display both VO- and OV-type word order. A takes the view that this variation is the surface manifestation of an underlying head-initial order, the surface order being derived via leftward movement (or lack thereof). The main thrust of this work is in its arguments for an articulated functional structure in both the nominal and the (extended) verbal domains of Gbe. In separate chapters, A provides an outline of the grammar of Gbe (with a focus on word-order variation and arguments in favor of the antisymmetry hypothesis), and then discusses the syntax of noun phrases (arguing for the split-D hypothesis) and of pronouns (where A argues that ‘strong’ pronouns have the status of lexical DPs); preverbal tense, aspect, and mood markers (where articulated IP and CP structures are proposed); object shift and verb movement (where A presents his analysis of surface OV orders); focus and wh-constructions; and argument topics and yes-no questions.

Of particular interest is A’s treatment of what has traditionally been thought of as word order resulting from V-to-I movement, or, where the split-IP hypothesis is adopted, to T°. Contra prevailing opinion, he maintains that T° is inaccessible for verb movement in Gungbe. Instead, the interaction between object shift and verb movement to Asp° causes the variation. Verb movement is claimed to apply whenever an aspect head is not morphologically realized. This solution runs up against the problem that the minimalist program—the framework adopted by A—makes movement dependent on morphology. A argues therefore that bundles of strong features in Asp° that the verb must check cause verb raising. His analysis has the advantage of being able to account for the placement of intervening material relative to the verb.

Although Gungbe, of which A is a native speaker, is the focus language, A also considers other languages within the Gbe cluster, including Fongbe, Gengbe, and Ewegbe. An unfortunate omission is the lack of discussion of the fieldwork methodology. By and large, the examples are clearly elicited rather than spontaneously produced, and one might have expected a discussion of the elicitation method as well as the kind of information that identifies the place of the informants within their society.

This work is an important contribution to the study of the syntax of the Gbe languages, and, by extension, other Kwa languages—hence the somewhat overly inclusive denotation in the title. Written within a minimalist framework, A argues his positions with care and illustrates with abundant data—two virtues that should make this study of interest and use also for nonminimalist readers.