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Review of “The Handbook of Morphology” by Andrew Spencer and Arnold M.

Zwicky (eds)

Article  in  Studies in Language · January 2001

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178 Book Reviews

Spencer, Andrew; and Zwicky, Arnold M. (eds), The handbook of

Morphology. [Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics]. Oxford: Black-
well, 1998. Pp. xvi, 815
Reviewed by Ana R. Luís (University of Coimbra)

In the introduction, the editors undertake the steep assignment of weaving

together the different perspectives and approaches contained in this weighty
handbook. In doing so, they are to be congratulated on putting together an
authoritative work which reflects a clear concern for extensive coverage as well as
internal coherence. The volume comprises 32 essays written by 38 leading scholars
who collectively show that morphology has evolved into a stimulating and
debatable area of linguistic research. The papers are individually of high quality
and cover an impressive range of topics. Overlaps in subject matter are bound
to exist, but they are efficiently dealt with through frequent cross-referencing.
One major strength of the book is that it provides ‘Morphological Sketches of
Individual Languages’. These are contained in a 300-page chapter, which as the
 Book Reviews 179

title suggests, offers detailed descriptions of typologically interesting phenomena

and constitutes an exceptionally valuable source of cross-linguistic data.
Within a limited space, it is clearly impossible to do justice to the book’s
richness of approaches and perspectives. To convey an idea of the comprehen-
siveness of this handbook, a short summary of the main issues discussed in each
one of the articles will be provided. The volume is divided into five thematic
parts. Part I examines morphological ‘Phenomena’, and discusses some of the
descriptive and theoretical issues they raise. The first article, by G. Stump, lays
out the essence of inflection. Starting with the somewhat controversial distinc-
tion between inflection and derivation it offers a clear overview of the funda-
mental issues of inflectional morphology and, as such, addresses many of the
questions raised elsewhere in this volume. His paper looks at the functions of
inflection, surveys the effect of morphosyntactic categories on clauses, and
exemplifies different types of inflectional exponents. Stumps’s final evaluation
of competing models of inflection clearly illustrates the ongoing debate between
morpheme-based and word-based views of word structure. The next article, by
R. Beard, offers a thought-provoking analysis of the theoretical status of
derivation. It provides supportive evidence against a phrase structure account
of affixation, challenging the appropriateness of treating affixes as heads and
proposing instead the traditional view that the morphological head of a word is
its root or stem. By showing that derivation is not always a linear concatenation
of affixes, Beard ultimately proposes a model which separates morpholexical
meaning from its phonological realisation (cf Beard 1995).
In ‘Compounding’, N. Fabb describes the grammatical (semantic, morpho-
logical, phonological and syntactic) features of different types of compounds.
Based on the assumption that some compounds resemble words whereas other
compounds resemble phrasal combinations, the author is concerned with the
extent to which compound structure is visible to principles of grammar. D.
Gerdts then sets out to analyse the morphosyntactic nature of incorporation. By
examining cases where a nominal stem combines with a verbal stem, her main
goal is to show that particular word forms may satisfy both a predicate function
and an argument function; similar types of complex predicates are argued to be
produced by lexical suffixes and denominal verbs. A. Halpern turns to clitics
and discusses their various distributional properties. His paper focuses essen-
tially on verbal clitics (e.g. Romance pronominals) second position clitics (e.g.
Tagalog discourse particles) and a mixed group of other syntactic clitics (e.g.
Polish past tense markers) which collectively illustrate the heterogeneous nature
of this category.

© 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company

All rights reserved
180 Book Reviews

In ‘Morphophonological Operations’, A. Spencer investigates the morpho-

logical function of root and stem allomorphy. The important claim is made that
certain morphophonological alternations (e.g. consonant-mutation and
apophony, amongst others) are not simply the phonological by-product of
morphological operations. Instead, different root or stem forms of a word are
argued to realise specific morphological properties or signal morphological
relations within a given paradigm. Drawing on a wide range of non-concat-
enative phenomena, Spencer ultimately argues in favour of a processual (vs.
affixational) view of morphology. Within some of the conceptual space, A.
Carstairs-McCarthy elaborates on the effect of phonological constraints on
morphological rules, arguing that a) certain morphological processes may only
apply to bases with specific phonological properties and b) phonological
requirements may ultimately determine the existence of empty cells in inflec-
tional and derivational paradigms. Some of Cartstairs-McCarthy’s examples
include the English comparative suffix -er, which applies predominantly to
monosyllabic bases, and the English derivational suffix -en, which is restricted
to bases ending in obstruents.
Part II explores the many different facets of the relationship between
‘Morphology and Grammar’. This section opens with a paper by H. Borer who
offers a tightly-focussed discussion of the interaction of morphology with syntax.
The author elaborates on two main contrasting research traditions, namely the
lexicalist and the syntactic, and analyses the fundamental problems associated
with the formal reduction of morphological structure to syntactic principles. G.
Corbett then focuses on the effect of morphological restrictions on agreement
and explains how the realisation of agreement features on words may be deter-
mined by factors such as the types of exponents used in a given language and
the number of agreement slots available for a given word. In ‘Morphology and
Argument-Structure”, L. Sadler & A. Spencer investigate the distinction
between morpholexical (i.e. meaning-changing) and morphosyntactic (i.e.
meaning-preserving) operations, and the extent to which these operations are
mediated by morphology. At a different level of lexical representation, namely
that of lexical conceptual structure (LCS), B. Levin & M. Hovav focus on lexical
semantics and explain how morphological expressions signal lexical relatedness.
In the next paper, M. Aronoff & F. Anshen find justification for the interdepen-
dent and complementary relationship between the lexicon and morphology, by
characterising the typical lexical and morphological properties of words (cf.
Aronoff 1976). Finally F. Kiefer relates morphological form to pragmatics.
Cross-linguistic evidence is provided to support the claim that inflectional and

© 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company

All rights reserved
 Book Reviews 181

derivational exponents may have stylistic and illocutionary functions.

Part III, on ‘Theoretical Issues’, examines in closer detail the underlying
assumptions of current methodological approaches. J. McCarthy & A. Prince
elaborate on the application of optimality theory to prosodic morphology (cf.
Prince & Smolensky 1993). The authors discuss the main goals of an optimality-
theoretic approach to reduplication and infixation, and argue convincingly that
the effect of prosodic structure on morphological processes may be character-
ised in terms of the ranking of interacting constraints. Departing from optimal-
ity-theoretic issues, J. Toman offers a critical analysis of word syntax and
speculates on which syntactic principles exactly may be used in morphology.
Phrase structure principles like ‘headedness’ and ‘binary-branching’ are argued
to support the similarity between words and phrases, although syntactic
movement operations involving case and theta-role assignment are shown to
encounter both empirical as well as theoretical problems when applied to word-
level phenomena.
From a quite different perspective, A. Carstrairs-McCarthy’s contribution
shows that word structure is determined by purely morphological principles
and rules. This paper offers a clear summary of the main concerns of a ‘para-
digm-oriented approach’ to inflection and asserts the importance of paradig-
matic structure for morphological theory (cf. Aronoff 1994). In doing so,
Carstairs-McCarthy discusses (a) how morphosyntactic properties interact
within a given word class, (b) what defines the number of cells in a paradigm,
(c) what determines slot competition in a given language (cf. Stump 1992) and
(d) how inflection classes are organised within a language and grammatically
assigned to lexemes. In the final paper of this section, R. Sproat turns to
structural mismatches and covers a detailed discussion of Sadock’s (1991) and
Sproat’s (1998) mapping approaches. Conflicting assumptions about the
autonomy of morphology are argued to justify diverging accounts of clitici-
zation and incorporation.
Part IV looks at ‘Morphology in a Wider Setting’. Under this rubric, current
research on word structure is set within the context of diachronic linguistics,
language acquisition and psycholinguistics. The first article, by B. Joseph, deals
with the evolution of morphological systems and shows how linguists from a
variety of persuasions, i.e. cognitive (cf. Heine et al. 1991), functional/semiotic
(cf. Antilla 1977) and generative (cf. Anderson 1988), explain the main forces
that trigger morphological change. In general, Joseph finds that diachronic
phenomena cannot be predicted by a general theory of morphological change,
suggesting that most, if not all accounts of morphological change are bound to

© 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company

All rights reserved
182 Book Reviews

be retrospective only. In a different vein, E. Clark’s article on language acquisi-

tion investigates how children learn inflectional morphology and word forma-
tion processes in typologically different languages. Irrespective of the language
type, the sequence of acquisition is argued to depend largely on the complexity
of the meaning to be expressed and the complexity of the form used.
From a psycholinguistic point of view, W. Badecker & A. Carmazza focus
on acquired language impairments and explore the effect of aphasia on the
comprehension of morphologically complex words. One of the issues addressed
concerns the extent to which language deficits provide evidence for the mor-
phological distinction between derivation and inflection. J. McQueen & A.
Cutler then turn to word recognition. This paper offers an overview of different
models for the representation of morphological relationships and attempts to
answer the question of whether morphologically complex words are decom-
posed into their parts or stored as undecomposed units in the mental lexicon.
Finally, in ‘Morphology and Language Production, J. Stemberger addresses the
debate between connectionist models and rule-based models. From a connect-
ionist perspective one of the main goals is to challenge the importance of
morphological rules in current accounts of inflectional morphology.
As stated at the outset, Part V, entitled ‘Morphological Sketches of Individual
Languages’, contains ten data-oriented essays and describes some of the structur-
al properties of various different languages. Each essay situates the language with
respect to its language group and its geographical context. A. Kibrik deals with
the rich nominal and verbal paradigms in Archi (Caucasian Daghestanian),
showing how millions of verb forms are derived by surprisingly regular inflec-
tional rules. Verbal morphology is also the focus of S. Mchombo’s detailed
overview of the argument-structure-changing suffixes in Chichewa (Bantu),
which are shown to include causative, applicative, stative, passive, reciprocal
and reversive morphemes. I. Muravyova’s survey of Chukchee (Paleo-Siberian)
is much broader in scope offering a description of the inflectional properties of
all parts of speech of this synthetic-agglutinative language. A long sketch of
Malagasy (Austronesian) is given by E. Keenan & M. Polinsky who look at a
variety of properties ranging from locative deictics that code up to seven degrees
of distance to the complex derivational structure of verbs and nouns.
Other language sketches include the following: the verbal and nominal
morphology of Hua (Papuan) by J. Haiman; the morphorphological properties
of nominals, verbals and indeclinables in Qafar (East Cushitic), by R. Hayward;
D. Everett’s brief sketch of the inflectional and derivational morphology of Wari
(Amazonian); J. Fife & G. King’s overview of Celtic (Indo-European) with a

© 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company

All rights reserved
 Book Reviews 183

section on Goidelic (i.e Irish, Scots and Manx) and another section on Bry-
thonic (i.e. Welsh, Breton and Cornish); J. Simpson’s thorough description of
word formation processes in Warumungu (Australian, Pama Nyungan), and
also K. Rice’s essay on Slave (Northern Athapaskan); although more theoretical,
Rice offers a very stimulating overview of various uncommon properties such
as the ordering of derivations outside inflection and the occurence of two
subject positions on the verb. A table summarising the main morphological
phenomena addressed in each one of the sketches is provided by the editors in
the introduction and may guide the reader through all of this empirical data.
Because of its high quality and excellent coverage, this volume necessarily
invites comparison with other authoritative books in the field, most specially
with Spencer (1991), which offers a similarly comprehensive and robust over-
view of morphology within generative grammar. Not surprisingly, however, this
handbook addresses more recent frameworks namely Hale & Marantz (1993)
and Prince & Smolensky (1993), and contains essays on acquired language
impairments, word recognition and language processing which reflect the
growing interest that morphology has more recently attracted in language
acquisition and psycholinguistics. Thus, any gaps the reader might find in this
volume (e.g. lexical phonology is only slightly touched upon and computational
morphology is not mentioned at all) are quite insignificant in view of the wealth
of information offered on so many other aspects of morphology.
To sum up then, this is a rich volume in terms of the morphological phe-
nomena addressed and the diversity of languages covered. To those interested
in cross-linguistic variation, it offers a wealth of data from a wide range of
typologically different languages. As a state-of-the art survey, the perspectives
and approaches contained in this work will undoubtedly occupy much of
linguistic theorising in the years to come.

References

Anderson, S. 1988. “Morphological change”. In: Newmeyer, F. J. (ed.) 1988. Linguistics: The
Cambridge survey, vol. 1: Linguistic theory: foundation, 32–62.
Antilla, R. 1997. Analogy. The Hague: Mouton.
Aronoff, M. 1976. Word fornation in generative grammar. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Aronoff, M. 1994. Morphology by itself. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Beard, R 1995. Lexeme-morpheme base morphology. Albany: State University of New York
Press.

© 2001. John Benjamins Publishing Company

All rights reserved
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184 Book Reviews

Halle, M.; and Marantz, A. 1993 “Distributed morphology and the pieces of inflection”. In:
Hale K.; and Keyser, S. J. (eds) 1993. The view from building 20: Essays in linguistics in
honour of Sylvain Bromberger, 111–76. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Heine, B.; Claudi, U.; and Huennemeyer, F. 1991. “From cognition to grammar — evidence
from African languages”. In: Traugott, E. C.; and Heine B. (eds) 1991. Approaches to
grammaticalization, vol. 1: Focus on theoretical and methodological issues, 49–87.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Prince, A.; and Smolensky, P. 1993. “Optimality theory: constraint interaction in generative
grammar”. MS Rutgers University of Colorado, Boulder.
Sadock, J. 1991. Autolexical syntax: a theory of parallel grammatical representations. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Spencer, A. 1991. Morphological theory: an introduction to word structure in generative
grammar. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers.
Sproat, R. 1988. “Bracketing paradoxes, cliticization and other topics: the mapping between
syntactic and phonological structure”. In: Everaert, M; Evers, A.; Huybregts. R; and
Trommelen, M. (eds) 1988. Morphology and modularity, 339–60. Dordrecht: Foris.
Stump, G. 1992. “On the theoretical status of position class restrictions on inflectional
affixes”. In: Booij, G.; and van Marle, J. (eds) 1992. Yearbook of morphology 1991,
211–41. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Reviewer’s Address
Ana A. R. Luís
Faculdade de Letras
Universidade de Coimbra
Portugal
aluis@cygnus.ci.uc.pt

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