Language

The book’s proposal is conceptually straightforward: syntax manipulates heads, not words, and morphology forms morphemes, not words. Words are not the product of grammar but are perceived as units due to consistent adjacency and cooccurrence of the two or more morphemes they are made from. Focusing on verbal morphology, Julien argues that ordering among morphemes can indeed be tightly connected—although not completely reduced—to syntax. As she assumes Richard Kayne’s linear correspondence axiom, all languages are consequently underlyingly head-initial, all suffixes are the result of head-movement to their left, and all prefixes are just elements remaining unmoved in their base position.

Although the book is well-written and contains meticulous and thorough argumentation, it is far from extraordinary: generative linguists are known to make bold hypotheses about the universals of language as the phenotype of the human language faculty’s workings. What does make J’s discussion compelling—whether one agrees with her claims or not—is that she grounds her arguments not in the customary repertory of Germanic and Romance, but in a survey of 530 languages, out of which some 180 are actually exemplified and discussed in varying degrees of detail in the text. The point here is certainly not to question the merit of detailed and in-depth studies of single or related languages in our understanding of universal grammar: this ought to be evident. Nevertheless, J’s work reflects Frederick Newmeyer’s suggestion in Language form and language function (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998) that, when grammarians make claims about universal grammar principles and the limits of parametric variation, they ought to have a large-scale survey (comparable to that of J’s) at their disposal in order to check their predictions and explain away any apparent counterexamples. Like Mark C. Baker (e.g. The polysynthesis parameter, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996) before her, J brings to typology the rigor and explanatory advantages of a coherent theory of grammar—the discussion of functional-typological accounts of verbal affix ordering (281–92) is quite revealing in this respect. Moreover, J looks into her vast material in considerable detail, and this makes her work of vital importance. To briefly illustrate, we read that Scandinavian and English verbal morphology actually seems to contradict her generalization that X-affix orders involve head movement of X to the left of the affix (263–73), even though data from numerous other languages [End Page 1009] overwhelmingly support this claim (293). Imagine, then, the flawed character of an inquiry into the universals of verbal morphology that would exclusively examine Germanic. Hence, J’s book represents the best of both worlds: a broad empirical basis to verify precise and independently motivated claims about the human language faculty, making it indispensable for those interested in the nature of universal grammar and the syntax-morphology interaction, specifically.