Reviewed by Maria del Puy Ciriza, University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

In this semantic and syntactic study of intensifiers and reflexive forms in Germanic languages, Volker Gast explains why self-forms can be employed both as intensifiers (e.g. The president himself made the decision) and as reflexives (e.g. John criticized himself). Additionally, G demonstrates how both intensifying and reflexive self-forms can be analyzed through the identity function (ID).

In Ch. 1, after reviewing previous diachronic and synchronic analyses that have attempted to explain the relationship between intensifiers and reflexives, G summarizes the importance of the ID in encoding reflexivity and intensification. He argues that the ID allows for the analysis self as an intensifier when interacting with information structure but as a reflexive when interacting with binding.

Chs. 2–6 focus on intensifiers. In Ch. 2, ‘The distribution and morphology of head-adjacent self’, G describes the basic distributional coordinates of head-adjacent intensifiers in Germanic languages. He observes that in some Germanic languages the most common position of the intensifier is right-adjoined, whereas in other Germanic languages the intensifier may also be preposed or left-adjoined. After illustrating various combinatorial properties of head-adjacent self in different Germanic languages, G concludes that its only restriction is in the propositional background. In Ch. 3, ‘Head-adjacent intensifiers as expressions of an identity function’, G demonstrates that head-adjacent intensifiers can denote the ID.

In Ch. 4, ‘The syntax of head-distant intensifiers’, G parses the distributional differences between inclusive and exclusive self constructions, observing that although exclusive self is contained in the verb phrase, inclusive self occupies a higher position. Ch. 5 discusses the ‘Combinatorial properties of head-distant intensifiers’. G summarizes previous research that calls for a number of semantic and pragmatic distributional restrictions on head-distant intensifiers and shows that these restrictions represent tendencies but not rules. Furthermore, he concludes that the only restrictions on head-distant self involve information structure. In Ch. 6, ‘The interpretation of head distant intensifiers’, G demonstrates that the previously provided syntactic representations (from Ch. 4) can account for these semantic differentiations.

The final two chapters turn to the reflexive function of self. In Ch. 7, ‘Reflexivity and the identity function’, G presents a typology of reflexives as well as two of the most influential theories that account for the distribution of pronouns: Noam Chomsky’s classic binding theory and Paul Kiparsky’s (Disjoint reference and the typology of pronouns. In More than words, ed. by Ingrid Kaufmann and Barbara Stiebels. Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2002) optimality-theory account. G modifies Kiparsky’s model and proposes two types of predicates with respect to reflexivity: typically self-directed predicates (e.g. to wash) and typically other-directed predicates (e.g. to hate). In Ch. 8, ‘The grammar of reflexivity in Germanic languages’, G classifies Germanic languages along two major dimensions: (i) languages that have simplex (SE)-anaphors versus languages that do not and (ii) languages with a high ranking of the other directed binding constraint versus languages in which this constraint ranks lower than the economy constraint.

This book provides a thorough analysis of intensifiers in Germanic languages, which combines analytical methods from syntax and semantics.