The Morphology of Dutch (henceforth MoD) is a comprehensive work covering all major areas of Dutch morphology, including the interfaces with phonology and syntax. It presents a thorough description and discusses a large number of interesting theoretical questions. MoD consists of seven chapters followed by a bibliography, both subject and author indices, and a useful index of affixes. Chapter 1 is preceded by a list of tables and figures, a guide to abbreviations and symbols, and a very brief preface.

Chapter 1, entitled “Preliminaries,” offers a short introduction to some aspects of morphological theory that are crucial for understanding the following chapters. Booij adopts a lexeme-based approach to morphology, and explains the nature of morphological rules and of the lexicon within such an approach. Other sections in this chapter are devoted to productivity and to “paradigmatic word formation,” where Booij explains that “the insight that paradigmatic relations between words form the foundation of morphology is a hallmark of the Dutch tradition of morphological research” (p. 6).

Chapter 2, “The inflectional system,” begins with an introductory section devoted largely to explaining the distinction between inherent and contextual inflection, and then continues with sections on nominal, adjectival, and verbal inflection. The account of noun plurals is especially thorough. Booij points out that a formulation of the basic principle for choosing between the two main plural suffixes, -s and -en, in terms of a (violable) prosodic output condition on the plural form (“A plural noun ends in a trochee,” p. 24) is explanatory in a way that the more usual input-based formulation (“-s after an unstressed syllable, -enafter a stressed syllable,” p. 24) is not, since for the latter “it would make no difference for the complexity of the grammar if Dutch were just the other way round” (p. 25). He goes on to present a full Optimality- Theoretic account of the Dutch regular plurals, which helps explain several facts that do not follow from the basic prosodic condition itself, such as the choice of -s over -(e)n in nouns that already end in a schwa, and then discusses various classes of exceptions to the regular pattern. The section on adjectival inflection includes insightful discussions of the nominalizing suffix -e and the partitive adjective + s construction.

The inflection chapter concludes with a section on the distinction between inflectional and derivational morphology and the related “split morphology” hypothesis, according to which derivation and inflection belong to separate (presyntactic versus postsyntactic) modules of the grammar. Booij argues that this hypothesis must be rejected since certain types of inflection can feed derivation. He presents various kinds of evidence for a functional continuum rather than a sharp distinction between derivation and inflection. He argues, however, that the fact that uninflected stems constitute the normal input for word formation means that a clear formal distinction between derivation and inflection must nevertheless be maintained.

Chapter 3, “Derivation,” begins with a long section on “Theoretical preliminaries,” which deals with questions such as the usefulness of the notion head in derivation, input restrictions on derivational operations (including those related to the native and non-native strata of the Dutch lexicon), blocking, and the semantics of derivation. The remainder of the chapter focuses on the productive prefixes and suffixes of Dutch as well as conversion (category-changing zero derivation). An especially interesting type of conversion in Dutch involves the (no longer productive) zero-derivation of nouns from complex verbs. The gender of these nouns is predictable based on the internal morphological structure of the underlying verb: nouns derived from verbs with separable particles are non-neuter, those from verbs with inseparable prefixes are neuter. Booij regards this pattern as evidence against a zero-affixation account of conversion, since all of these nouns would presumably contain the same zero suffix, which should assign them to the same gender. He does not mention that these data are even more problematic for the headless- derivation account of conversion embraced by dual-mechanism advocates, according to which words formed by conversion, being “headless,” automatically receive default inflectional properties and gender. This is also one of several phenomena that Booij regards as counterevidence to Anderson’s hypothesis that the internal morphological structure of a complex word is invisible to later morphological computations. Booij also includes discussions of middle verbs and of intransitive use of fundamentally transitive verbs in the section on conversion on the grounds that these could be regarded as cases of zero derivation with “no change in category, but in subcategory” (p. 139).

The bulk of chapter 4, “Compounding,” is devoted to the very productive operations of nominal and adjectival compound formation. The short section on verbal compounds begins by explaining that “verbal compounding is unproductive in Dutch” (p. 161), but then goes on to discuss a number of interesting compound-like verb types in Dutch, including converted compound nouns such as voetballen ‘to play football’, and back formations such as stofzuigen ‘to vacuum-clean’ from stofzuiger ‘vacuum cleaner’. The chapter concludes with a brief section on the numeral compounds in Dutch.

The next two chapters are devoted to the interfaces of morphology with phonology (chapter 5) and with syntax (chapter 6). Chapter 5 deals with three topics: the relation between morphology and prosody, allomorphy, and phonological constraints on word formation such as phonological conditions on the choice between competing affixes, a topic that was already discussed at considerable length in chapter 2 and is here extended to apply to derivational morphology. Again, Booij shows that the choice between competing affixes is best understood primarily in terms of output constraints on the shape of the derived word, although he acknowledges that phonological constraints on the bases do play a role in some cases (p. 184).

The largest section in chapter 6 deals with separable complex verbs. The other main topic covered is the relation between morphological derivation and syntactic valency, as, for example, when the addition of a prefix such as ver- or be- turns an intransitive verb into a transitive one.

The three-page final chapter, “Conclusions: The architecture of the grammar,” is a very useful summary of what Booij regards as the key theoretical points of MoD.

I find much to praise and little to criticize in MoD. One of the features that impresses me most about the book is the generally very successful integration of synchrony and diachrony in the accounts of several phenomena. Because my own specialization is in historical Germanic, however, I do find a few details in the diachronic accounts that might benefit from clarification or reconsideration.

In discussing the historical origins of the two primary Dutch noun plural suffixes, -s and -en, Booij states the following:

This account is misleading on a couple of minor points. First, Booij seems to be equating West Germanic with Ingvaeonic (North Sea Germanic) but Dutch and High German, where the -s ending was historically lost, are just as much a part of West Germanic. Second, there is nothing “continental” about the -en ending, which plays a major role in all of the older Germanic languages, including Old English and the other Ingvaeonic dialects. Finally, contrary to what Booij seems to be implying, there is no historical connection between -en and the other German plural suffixes with schwa. None of this, however, invalidates the substance of Booij’s main diachronic point here, namely that the coexistence of -en and -s in present-day standard Dutch is a result of a mixture of features from different dialects and the current prosodically determined “division of labor between the two suffixes” has only taken shape quite recently.

Booij attributes the alternation between short /a/ in the singular and long /ā/ in the plural of certain strong verbs to “open syllable lengthening which is due to Prokosch’s law” (p. 59). In fact, however, this is a reflex of an ancient ablaut alternation. Most of the classes of strong verbs originally had an ablaut alternation between the singular and the plural in the preterite indicative. In the verbs of classes IV and V, the alternation was between Indo-European (short) o and (lengthened grade) ē. After o> a in Germanic and ē > ā in West Germanic, this came to look like a purely quantitative alternation. Open syllable lengthening is only relevant here in the indirect sense that the survival of this old alternation in present-day Dutch may well have much to do with its coincidental resemblance to the much younger alternations that resulted from open syllable lengthening elsewhere in the language.

Booij claims that the r in verloor/verloren, past tense of verliezen, is “the reflex of rhotacization of an intervocalic /z/” (p. 177). However, West Germanic rhotacization, unlike the Latin development involving similar phenomena, actually has nothing to do with intervocalic position, as we can see from the fact that it does not occur in the infinitive verliezen. Instead, West Germanic rhotacization was triggered by Verner’s Law, a change that led to a voicing alternation for all Germanic fricatives depending on the position of the Indo-European accent in the word. This is also the source of the Ø∼g alternation (where Ø < h < x) in slaan-sloeg/geslagen, which Booij does not discuss.

In discussing the dual-mechanism theory of morphological processing, Booij argues that “storage of frequent regular forms is also something we have to allow for in order to be able to explain that the effects of once regular phonological rules can survive after the loss of such rules” (p. 10, note 6). If this were true, it would be very problematic for the dual-mechanism theory, but the diachronic mechanism by which a once regular rule becomes irregular is generally assumed to involve the transmission of a language to new learners. A given speaker/learner either interprets a rule as regular, in which case s/he has no need for lexical storage, or s/he reinterprets the once regular pattern as an irregularity and stores the inflected forms in the lexicon. Since learners have no direct access to other speakers’ mental grammars or lexicons, nothing is gained by positing an intermediate stage at which speakers store the inflected forms in their lexicon even though they still interpret the pattern as regular.

In his discussion of separable and inseparable complex verbs (SCVs and ICVs), Booij proposes a historical account of the elements that occur as both separable particles and inseparable prefixes in Modern Dutch, which include aan, achter, door, mis, om, onder, vol, voor, and weer. He claims that the inseparable prefixes are more grammaticalized than the separable particles in terms of both their fusion to the verb stem and their semantics. He then presents evidence of cases where SCVs attested in an earlier stage of Dutch correspond to ICVs in the present-day language, and argues that these show that the particle-to-prefix development is a case of grammaticalization that has been occurring in Middle and Modern Dutch, corresponding to the second step in the cline: “word > part of SCV > prefix” (p. 218). A full critique of this account, the key points of which have now been repeated in several publications (see, for example, Booij 2001, Blom and Booij 2003, Blom 2004), would go beyond the scope of this review, but I would like to raise a couple of questions about its historical plausibility.

In the “Old” period of the West Germanic languages (roughly 700– 1100 A.D.), the cognates of Modern Dutch achter, door, over, om, onder, and weer were used much more often as inseparable prefixes than as separable particles. The modern SCVs (and English particle verbs) arose in a later round of grammaticalization, of which we see only the beginnings in the Old period (Brinton 1988, Harrison 1891). Most of the specific ICVs that Booij lists as innovations of Middle or Modern Dutch are attested many centuries earlier, often with exactly the same semantic and syntactic properties, in one or more of the older West Germanic languages. Thus, Dutch omringen corresponds exactly to the frequent Old English ICV ymbhringan and Old High German (8th century) umbihringen ‘surround’ (OED; Pfeifer 1993), Dutch overbruggan ‘to bridge’ to OE oferbrycgian, MHG überbrücken; overvallen to OE oferfeollan, MHG übervallen ‘attack’; voorkomen ‘to prevent’ to OE forecuman (OED; Lexer). The preverb æfter does not occur often as an inseparable prefix with most OE verbs, but the very common ICV æfterfylgean (= Dutch achtervolgen‘to run after’) is a notable exception (Harrison 1891:15). Similarly, Dutch overkomen ‘to happen to’ (Blom and Booij 2003:82) corresponds to the early Old English ICV ofercumanand 8th century OHG ubarqueman, and exact counterparts of Dutch overzien ‘to survey’ occur as ICVs in all three branches of “Old” West Germanic: OE oferséon; OHG ubarsehan; OS ovarsehan (OED; Cordes 1973:70).

Furthermore, as Kemenade and Los (2003) point out, the particle > prefix development is only likely to occur “if the morphosyntax of the language allows it” (p. 90). Conditions were right in the early Germanic period, when verbs generally still occurred in final position in all clause types, but the rise of V2-movement, resulting in frequent separation of the verb from its particle in main clauses, means that a repeat of the “development from SCV to ICV […] would not be likely for the continental West Germanic dialects” (p. 99).

The historical Germanic evidence thus suggests a diachrony for the SCVs and ICVs of Dutch that is quite different from that proposed by Booij. The modern Dutch ICVs are an inheritance from early West Germanic and represent an older layer of the language than the SCVs. Since omringen, overbruggan, overvallen, æfterfylgean, overkomen, and overzien can all be confidently traced directly back to early West Germanic ICVs, the SCV forms of these words that are attested in Middle Dutch represent, if anything, changes from ICV to SCV (and then back again). It is much more likely, however, that these old Germanic ICVs simply showed some variation in Middle Dutch times, and surviving texts (or at least those that have been examined so far) happen to preserve only SCV tokens.

I found about two dozen minor typographical errors, few of which created any difficulty for comprehension. Several of the errors consist of missing hyphens at the ends of lines. Other apparent editing errors include page 185, where Booij repeats exactly the same point (“Alternatively, we may assume that there is no stem truncation […]”) in the main text and in note 7 (with different wording).

Several of Booij’s English glosses are likely to cause some confusion for readers who do not know Dutch. He glosses defterig as ‘solemnish’ and zuinerig as ‘thriftyish’ (p. 134). These words are not in any dictionary, and as a native speaker I have no clear intuitions as to what they would mean if they were English words. In example 63 on the same page, Booij gives the glosses ‘rather fresh’, ‘rather common’, etc. (without -ly) under the “adverb” column. Similarly, the glosses in 34 on p. 155 should all have superlative endings (‘very nicest’, etc.). He glosses domweg as ‘simply’ rather than ‘stupidly’ (p. 134), and commits one classic false-friend error in glossing voorbehoedsmiddel as ‘preservative’ rather than as ‘contraceptive’ (p. 146). A few other glosses use such uncommon or ambiguous words or expressions that many readers are likely to misinterpret them. The verb biggen, for example, which means ‘to give birth to piglets’ is glossed as ‘to pig’ (p. 136).

None of the problems mentioned in this review amounts to much, however, compared to the many impressive virtues of MoD. It is comprehensive, well organized, and extremely well written. In addition to its obvious usefulness for anyone interested in Dutch, I think this book deserves serious consideration as a text for general introductory morphology courses. The explanations of theoretical concepts are models of clarity, and the range of topics covered is ideal for an introductory course.