Reviewed by Stephen Laker, Kyushu University, Japan

This is a collection of eighteen articles on Modern West Frisian, a minority language spoken by about 450,000 in the province of Fryslân in the north of the Netherlands. The articles were originally published between 1986–2001 by Germen de Haan, former professor of Frisian Language and Culture at the University of Groningen, for the most part in difficult to access publications in either Dutch or Frisian. This volume succeeds in bringing them into wider circulation.

Following an introductory article on the general directions of research on Frisian (11–24), two articles consider Frisian’s periodization and historical syntax (25–62), seven articles treat its syntax within the generative framework (63–232), five articles consider the influence of Dutch on contemporary Frisian (233–315), and three articles concern phonological topics: nasalization, syllable structure, and schwa-deletion (317–56).

The main research interest of the author, as reflected in the number of papers in this volume, is syntax. Frisian displays a number of syntactic features similar to Dutch, German, and related languages whose differences allow for profitable study from typological and general linguistic perspectives. The main focus of de Haan’s research is on the syntax of verbs. In this volume, he considers the verb-second rule, embedded root phenomena, Frisian infinitive constructions (Frisian has two infinitives, in –e and –en), and the ordering of the verbal complex. In addition, he includes an article on complementizer agreement in Frisian, which is restricted to the second person singular.

Of particular note are the five articles on Dutch influence on Frisian. ‘Dutchification’ has increased since the end of World War II, a period in which Frisians were all raised as bilinguals, and the topic is very much alive in Frisian society. For instance, it is not uncommon for older speakers to complain that some presenters on Frisian national television speak a variety not far removed from Dutch with a Frisian accent. The central question for de Haan is how Dutch morphology and syntax are entering Frisian.

de Haan looks at a number of proposed Dutch influences on Frisian (his first article of 1990 considers only aspects of verbal morphology, the formation of diminutives, and word order in the verbal complex, but this database increases in later articles). His general conclusion, backed up with statistical evidence, is that Frisian is indeed becoming more Dutch-like. This leads de Haan to wonder how contact induced change can be handled within generative grammar, and while his thoughts on the matter are insightful, they sometimes lack empirical rigor: e.g. he writes that ‘there is no principled basis for ordering grammatical domains in a kind of stability hierarchy with respect to interference’ (295), yet research by Yaron Matras has since provided solid empirical support for such an hierarchical approach. Nonetheless, de Haan offers many interesting perspectives on the ongoing process of Dutchification, and his articles show notable changes in approach and attitude over time.

Overall, this is a useful addition to research on West Frisian syntax, language change, and phonology. A supplementary volume with research published after 2001 is desirable.