Reviewed by Mark J. Elson, University of Virginia

This book by Maria Irene Moyna comprises an introduction followed by nine chapters of which the first three treat preliminaries, the next five introduce and discuss data, and the last contextualizes the data historically. References, an appendix, subject index, and word index, conclude the book.

There is much to praise in this book. It is a comprehensive survey of its subject in clear, easily accessible terms. Each analytic chapter focuses on a different non-head,  and each is subdivided according to the head constituent and discussed in terms of synchrony (e.g. constituents, compound meaning) and diachrony (e.g. frequency and productivity, evolution of meaning, orthographic representation). The appendix, containing a dataset of the compounds found in the lexicographical sources, adds greatly to the value of the book as a reference. The relationship of constituents is exemplified and clarified in terms of X-bar syntax, not the traditional phrase structure that often characterizes older studies of compounds.

Some may question the author’s view (23) that she has gone beyond description and synthesis by presenting a theory of compounds. The focus of the theory she proposes takes it point of departure (15) in her attempt to predict the morphological constituents which may enter into composition, and the related observation that the well-established opposition, lexical versus functional, is not fully predictive in this regard. This leads to the lexical/functional feature hypothesis (23), which bears the assumption of two binary primitives, L (lexical) and F (functional), yielding four designations ([+L,+F], [+L,-F], [-L,+F], and [-L,-F]). Only items designated [+L] units can participate in composition. The first three designations add little to our present knowledge. They add an intermediate level (i.e. [+L,+F]) between lexical and functional  meaning, incorporating the view that the boundary between them is not discrete, but gradient, with languages differing in the details of its location.

In contrast, the remaining designation, [-L,-F], defines a new type of constituent, one which is neither lexical nor functional. It is not clear, however, that those constituents which M claims it subsumes are defensible as such. Case constituents, for example, have semantic content, at least according to Roman Jakobson, whose contributions to our understanding of grammatical meaning are regrettably not included in the references. Semantic content can also be argued for inflectional constituents expressing person/number. This is especially obvious in languages like Spanish in which personal pronouns are normally absent, leaving the constituents in question to convey their contribution to the message, at least in surface structures. M prefers to view such constituents as ‘un-interpretable functional units’ (23), but her use of ‘functional’ in this designation seems odd in view of the designation [-F]. Since M did not argue the existence of [-L,-F], but found herself confronted with it as a result of the prior assumption of [L] and [F] as binary primitives, one wonders the extent to which [-L,-F] implies a class that calls for membership rather than a label designating a naturally definable constituent set.

These comments aside, especially in view of the fact that the feature framework proposed by M has little effect on the presentation and discussion of the corpus, the exposition is lucid and detailed, rendering the result not merely a description and, for those who find the feature framework convincing, source of theory, but a significant reference.