While the decline of the imperfect subjunctive in modern French is by no means a new notion in French language studies, this volume frames the debate within the context of grammaticalisation and internally motivated linguistic change.

Kragh's monograph assesses the claim that imperfect subjunctive forms have largely been supplanted in written French by the present subjunctive (specifically in subordinate clauses governed by a past tense verb in the main clause), thereby depriving the subjunctive of temporal marking. It is, however, novel to address this claim via the parameters of grammaticalisation, which, in traditional terms, typically extends to lexical items that can undergo desemantisation and take on new grammatical functions. Employing a multifaceted approach that considers relatively recent contributions to the field (particularly Lehmann, Reference Lehmann1995; Andersen, Reference Andersen and Andersen2001; and Detges and Waltereit, Reference Detges and Waltereit2002), Kragh makes use of an expanded definition of grammaticalisation in order to argue for a reorganisation of grammatical functions in French. Her hypothesis comprises two parts: (a) that the replacement of the imperfect subjunctive depends largely on the textual register (i.e. style), and (b) that certain syntactic and semantic parameters play a part in this simplification.

The study first considers other seminal works on the decline of the imperfect subjunctive. In Chapter 3, the argument is presented for the need to examine this change, not within the scope of modality (Chapter 4), but rather of temporality (Chapter 5). The subsequent Chapters 6 to 8 comprise the theoretical interpretations and introductory analyses of the corpora. As the phenomenon under study progresses variably depending on the register, an analysis of different styles is necessary. Two corpora are compiled that comprise both a narrative and discursive register, and parallels can be drawn here with Havu (Reference Havu1996), who sees each of these as the two main stylistic registers of modern French. Kragh distinguishes between academic texts and discourse (normative use of French in different periods) and non-conventional texts and discourse (non-normative use of French). Much of the data that lends itself to quantitative analysis in the study is taken from the online database Frantext; however, due to a number of analytical restrictions on verbs, the author supplements both corpora with a number of non-electronic texts.

Chapter 8 introduces the reader to some considerations concerning the final chapters, where ‘markedness’ (Andersen, Reference Andersen and Andersen2001) is invoked to account for the decline of the imperfect subjunctive as an internally motivated change. While a change can be internally motivated (unmarked) or externally motivated (marked), Andersen holds that this distinction influences the way the change spreads. In the case of an internally motivated change, the unmarked element would gradually pervade the marked category, over time supplanting it completely. In the context of the subjunctive, Kragh suggests that this effectively reduces a paradigm that distinguishes temporality, to one that does not.

Chapters 9 to 11 present the results of Kragh's extensive empirical analysis. Chapter 9 comprises a diachronic analysis of the evolution of both the imperfect and present subjunctive forms within the four styles, where the data demonstrate – perhaps unsurprisingly – that the present subjunctive predominates in all but the academic text register. Chapter 10 then explores the effects of different semantic and syntactic factors on the maintenance of the temporal distinction; it does so by scrutinising in particular various types of subordinate clauses. The findings indicate that purpose clauses and clauses indicating temporality tend to favour the present subjunctive, while the concessive clauses in the subjunctive require a distinction between the two tenses. Chapter 11 examines the semantic and morphological factors linked to the form of the subjunctive itself, and its relative use. From this a hierarchy emerges, demonstrating that the maintenance of imperfect subjunctive forms is most strongly dependent on the register to which a text belongs, and least dependent on the semantic parameters of the verb preceding the subordinate clause. Kragh reports some interesting findings, namely that the third person singular imperfect subjunctive forms are by far the most recurrent; these forms tend to correlate with the frequency of certain verbs, in particular the auxiliaries. Further, Kragh concedes that style is an important factor in the distribution of the occurrences where the imperfect subjunctive is not used; the change appears to be significantly advanced in the registers of non-normative narrative and discourse. Kragh's concluding chapter suggests that the traditional paradigm of four subjunctive tenses is no longer present in the corpora under investigation. As such, an alternative, reduced, subjunctive paradigm is devised, but one which is arguably more complex, owing to an interplay between various syntactic, semantic, lexical and stylistic factors.

Overall, given the theoretical grounding of the change within the scope of grammaticalisation, this monograph is of considerable interest to researchers in the field. However, the focus on standardised written French at the expense of any examination of regional or non-Hexagonal varieties is perhaps disappointing.