BOOK REVIEWS

　　The handbook of English linguistics. Ed. by BASAARTS andAPRILMCMAHON. (Blackwell handbooks in linguistics.) Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2006. Pp. xviii, 806. ISBN 1405187875. $49.95. Reviewed by ELIZABETH CLOSS TRAUGOTT, Stanford University As the editors, Bas Aarts and April McMahon, point out in their introduction, while 'English language' and 'English language and linguistics' are administrative terms in Europe (less so in the US), 'English linguistics' is a widely practiced field of research. It is a highly influential, and often essential, component of general theoretical discussion because much linguistic work has been done on English. This insight-giving and often thought-provoking handbook was compiled with an eye to representing research on English linguistics that is currently productive and of wider theoretical significance. While they have cast their net wide, the editors decided for reasons of length to give only limited coverage to variation, including work on World Englishes. Not included are several areas of current interest, such as first and second language acquisition, applied linguistics, parsing, and neurolinguistics. The editors say they excluded historical research because of the existence of van Kemenade and Los's (2006) Handbook of the history of English; however, there are two historical chapters (by Christian Mair and Geoffrey Leech and by Donka Minkova and Robert Stockwell) and change is discussed at some length in many papers. The volume is devoted primarily to aspects of present-day English syntax, phonology, and semantics, and to methodological issues arising in various domains of work, such as crosslinguistic typology, and especially use of corpora. The volume is theoretically eclectic, representing both 'formal' and 'functional' approaches. It consists of thirty-two papers organized in five parts: 'Methodology', 'Syntax', 'Phonetics and phonology', 'Lexis and morphology', and 'Variation, discourse, stylistics, and usage'. Part 1, 'Methodology', starts with KERSTI BO RJARS on 'Description and theory'. She distinguishes theory, architecture, and description, especially as represented by minimalism (characterized as a 'theory'), lexical-functional grammar (an 'architecture'), and optimality theory (a 'meta-theory'), and discusses the problem of determining within each approach what counts as explanatory adequacy. Bo rjars demonstrates that a distinction between theory and description is not easily made and advocates for literacy in the various models. This is a paper that every graduate student should read: an important moderator between extremist views. TONY MCENERY and COSTAS GABRIELATOS discuss 'English corpus linguistics' and the way it has impacted research and reference works. ANDREW LINN briefly sketches the history of 'English grammar writing'. CHARLES F. MEYER and GERALD NELSON focus on 'Data collection', and complement McEnery and Gabrielatos by providing extensive examples and zeroing in on problems of representativeness in compiling corpora. Part 2, 'Syntax', is the longest, with ten papers. In keeping with the purpose of the volume as a whole, BAS AARTS and LILIANE HAEGEMAN discuss 'English word classes and phrases' from several theoretical perspectives. Word classes are characterized as 'abstractions over sets of words displaying some common property or properties' (117), and sample problems attendant on deriving those abstractions are discussed, for example, classifying a and the as adjectives, articles, or determinatives. Another problem addressed is accounting for the gradience of categories. In his chapter on 'Verbs and their satellites' D. J. ALLERTON emphasizes the richness and diversity of verbs when considered from the perspective of their valency (argument structure), tense, aspect, and cooccurrence with adverbials. The central claim is that syntactically verbs in English determine the number and kind of their coconstituents and semantically give a label to eventualities they represent (152). Hence the verb 'shapes the syntactic structure of the clause in which it appears' (146). The syntax-semantics interface is further discussed in PETER COLLINS's chapter on 'Clause types'. 'Coordination and subordination' is, however, treated in a strictly 874 BOOK REVIEWS 875 syntactic way by RODNEY HUDDLESTON and GEOFFREY K. PULLUM. This is one of the few chapters in which alternative perspectives are not discussed at length, as represented in Haiman & Thompson 1988. Therefore arguments that sentence-initial I know and I think may be adverbials, and in any event not main clauses, are not mentioned. LAURA A. MICHAELIS presents a closely and densely argued case that 'Tense in English' is fundamentally stativizing. Perfect, progressive, and the modal (will) future are also construed as stativizers. Nevertheless, tense and aspect have different functions: tense 'locates reference time, while aspect determines the manner in which the denoted situation relates to reference time' (240). ROBERT I. BINNICK outlines several theories of 'Aspect and aspectuality' and usefully contextualizes Michaelis's analysis of tense in the 'phasic' approach to aspect. This approach does not distinguish between situation (Aktionsart) and viewpoint (grammatical) aspect on the grounds that both concern the temporal structure of eventualities, except insofar as viewpoint aspect can coerce or type-shift mismatched types of expression. ILSE DEPRAETERE and SUSAN REED lay out a number of classifications of mood and modality, summarizing those on modality in excellent tables. These papers are essentially about the semantics-syntax interface rather than about syntax strictly construed. They are followed by BETTY J. BIRNER and GREGORY WARD's discussion of the syntax-pragmatics interface in 'Information structure'. Their exposition of 'open proposition' is exceptionally clear. In addition to covering such essential topics as 'discourse-old' and 'discourse- new', inversion, pre- and postposing, and proposing constraints on noncanonical order, they provide an information-structure account of various special constructions such as the epistemic would construction in That would be our pile of stuff on the left (301). Changes in aspect, modality, and passive are among the topics covered in CHRISTIAN MAIR and GEOFFREY LEECH's discussion of 'Current changes in English syntax'. Others include elaborations of the noun phrase by the use of adjectives and noun-noun sequences. Comparing British and American corpora from the second half of the twentieth century, the authors challenge simplistic hypotheses that one form ousts another, for example, that 'semi-modals are increasing at the expense of the core modals' (327), by pointing out that semimodals are in aggregate far less frequent than modals. The section ends with ADELE E. GOLDBERG and DEVIN CASENHISER's presentation of a constructiongrammar approach to 'English constructions'. They argue that 'independent specifications of the main verb' (347) do not generally determine the form of the construction (smile does not have a three-argument sense, although it can occur in such attested locutions as She smiled herself an upgrade, 348); such usages can be accounted for by showing the set of argument structures with which a verb can be combined. Part 3 on 'Phonetics and phonology' also covers aspects of morphophonology. In 'English phonetics', MICHAEL K. C. MACMAHON outlines articulatory and acoustic phonetics. RICARDO BERMU DEZ-OTERO and APRIL MCMAHON present an optimality-theoretic approach to 'English phonology and morphology' and sift elegantly through debates on the division of labor between phonology, morphology, and lexicon. MICHAEL HAMMOND presents syllable and foot structure in 'Prosodic phonology', and FRANCIS NOLAN discusses 'Intonation' with focus on information structure and differences among dialects and languages. Part 4 on 'Lexis and morphology' starts with 'English words' by DONKAMINKOVA and ROBERT STOCKWELL, who give extensive details of the development of vocabulary size from Old English with respect to type and token and to borrowing. LAURIE BAUER focuses on 'Compounds and minor word-formation types'. The latter include clippings, blends, and echo words. JAMES P. BLEVINS works painstakingly through analyses of inflection and more briefly through derivation, ending with discussion of productivity and analogy. INGO PLAG discusses theoretical and methodological issues in 'Productivity', including whether it is inherent or epiphenomenal, and differences between quantitative and qualitative analyses. KATE KEARNS takes a psycholinguistic approach to 'Lexical semantics' and provides a distillation of differences between homonymy, polysemy, and underspecification. The section ends with JULIE COLEMAN's discussion of 'Lexicography' and dictionary research. 876 LANGUAGE, VOLUME 84, NUMBER 4 (2008) Part 5 on 'Variation, discourse, stylistics, and usage' is the second longest section, with seven papers. In 'Syntactic variation in English: A global perspective', BERND KORTMANN shows that many differences among varieties of English, especially British, American, Irish, and Australian, are quantificational rather than structural. Several topics in prior chapters are reprised, for example, tense, aspect, inflection, and subordination. Especially valuable are comments on the typological oddness of Standard English with respect to both the languages of Europe and nonstandard varieties. For example, typologically odd obligatory negative auxiliary don't is leveled out in nonstandard varieties toward typological regularity by re- (different?) organization of do. PAUL FOULKES tackles the multiple dimensions of variation: regional, social, and perceived, as well as the nature of mental storage in 'Phonological variation: A global perspective'. A topic recurrent throughout the volume is the focus of JIM MILLER's 'Spoken and written English'. The problem of what counts as a 'text sentence' is well covered, as are the information-structure usefulness in unscripted discourse of 'unintegrated' syntax such as left-dislocation, and problems for typology in taking scripted discourse as the norm. Similar issues, with extensive statistical support, are taken up in PAUL QUAGLIO and DOUGLAS BIBER's study of 'The grammar of conversation'. DEBORAH CAMERON explores gendered variation in 'Gender and the English language', with focus on the interpretative frames as well as stylistic choices speakers use. PETER STOCKWELL shifts the discussion to written genres in 'Language and literature: Stylistics', and introduces ways in which linguistic analysis can inform understanding of how a work can 'generate and sustain emotion' (756). The final paper is by PAM PETERS on 'English usage: Prescription and description'. She draws attention to differing practices in the US and UK: in the former prescription and anxieties about usage have a more powerful hold over the public than in the latter, where description is more highly valued. Peters ends on the promising note that linguistic methodologies can render description of the varieties of English that are developing world-wide more accurate. One of the chief values of these Blackwell Handbooks of Linguistics is the coverage of the major structural characteristics in question and of debates surrounding their analysis. Most papers in the volume meet this criterion admirably and offer both beginning and advanced researchers a number of issues to pursue. Exceptions to detailed presentation of debates are Huddleston and Pullum's and MacMahon's papers. Chapters have a range of useful end materials; in many cases there are 'further readings', and some chapters provide biographical dates for grammarians (Linn), and information on corpora (McEnery and Gabrielatos), online dictionaries (Coleman), and relevant journals (Stockwell). With respect to organization, few readers will probably read from the beginning to the end of any handbook, or even of a section within it. Sections are welcome, but pose problems of organization. In Part 1 the papers by McEnery and Gabrielatos and by Meyer and Nelson go together, and splitting them with Linn's paper on grammar writing is a distraction. In Part 2, the strongly syntactic orientation of Huddleston and Pullum's paper suggests it might have been better placed earlier. Giving work on aspects of variation and style a separate section validates variationist approaches, but makes it entirely possible for readers to miss important cautions such as the point that 'standard' English is typologically odd, and that theoretical generalizations based on it may therefore be misleading. Cross-referencing is spotty and much needed in several cases where different analyses are proposed for the same or similar structures. It would be particularly helpful in drawing attention to the profound differences between Collins's approach, who argues that the (main) verb determines syntax, and that of Michaelis and Binnick, who argue for coercion of type-shifting of verbs by tense and aspect, or of Goldberg and Casenhiser on constructions. An index of authors is greatly missed. It should be obligatory in any handbook. Despite these relatively minor problems, The handbook of English linguistics is a major step in bringing together many recent advances in theoretical linguistics with empirical evidence from the structures of one language. BOOK REVIEWS 877 REFERENCES HAIMAN, JOHN, and SANDRA A. THOMPSON. 1988. Clause combining in grammar and discourse. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. VAN KEMENADE, ANS, and BETTELOU LOS (eds.) 2006. The handbook of the history of English. Oxford: Blackwell. Department of Linguistics Stanford University Stanford, CA 94305-2150 [traugott@stanford.edu]