This book is a publication of a dissertation dedicated to a synchronic analysis of Gothic syntax with concentration on pronouns, double object constructions, reflexive pronouns, topicalization, and discourse particles, which is reflected in the titles of three subsequent chapters. Ferraresi conducts her research primarily within the framework of generative grammar. However, the author claims that this approach has its limitations and has to be supplemented with findings of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics (pp.1, 27). The purpose of this study, repeatedly declared throughout the chapters (pp. 1, 5, 17, 19, 20, 29, etc.), is to ana-lyze various syntactic phenomena (for example, pronouns) at the left periphery of the clause and to identify which syntactic properties are common in Indo-European languages in general, which are characteristic of Germanic languages, and which belong to Gothic alone.

Ferraresi's choice of Gothicthe earliest Germanic language with a written traditionas the corpus of study is praiseworthy, since the majority of studies in generative syntax are carried out employing data taken from modern Indo-European languages. The author openly supports the group of researchers who argue for the coherent, idiomatic nature of Gothic syntax and repeatedly states that Gothic grammar (its syntactic system, in particular) should be treated as a genuine one, independent of Greek, despite its limited corpus and the translated nature of the text source (pp. 1, 3, 5, 9, 27, 30). It is not clear why the author de-cides to use the Greek text compiled by Streitberg (p. 5) for the comparative part of the research, even though she herself comments on weaknesses of this version (p. 2). However, Ferarresi also consults the critical edition of the Greek New Testament by Nestle & Aland (Reference Nestle and Aland2001), avoiding in this manner any possible deficiency. At the same time, the Nestle & Aland edition should have been made the primary consulting source for the Greek New Testament, especially considering that it is this version that provides passages which prove to be more beneficial for the author's argumentation (such is the case with the examples 19b on p. 38, 21a on p. 40, and some others).

A comprehensive introductory chapter (pp. 1–28) presents a detailed overview of the history of the Gothic corpus and various approaches to Gothic syntax, making this book accessible even to those scholars who are new to the subjects of Gothic syntax and generative syntax. Even general linguistic terms like parametric change (p. 15) and topicalization (p. 20) are given brief definitions. A list of abbreviations (pp. vii–viii) and index (pp. 189–190) also add to the clarity of narration, although it is not clear why the author chose not to follow alphabetical order in the list of abbreviations. The extensive list of references (pp. 177–188) serves as a valuable source for the discussion of various syntactic particulars of the left periphery of the clause not only in Gothic and other Germanic languages, but also in Indo-European languages in general.

Ferarresi's effort to give an all-inclusive report of the matter is exemplary. Detailed and articulate accounts of earlier and recent findings on the subject in language acquisition, neurolinguistics, historical linguistics, and generative theory set up a multifaceted view of linguistic variation and change, state advantages and shortcomings of various theoretical approaches and clearly explain how methods of generative grammar could and should be applied in the study of dead languages as well as how they should be supplemented (§1.3).

Ferraresi noticeably disfavors those theories of linguistic change that are based on a frequency factor of a certain component or reanalysis (pp. 15–18) and supports those that incorporate correlations between various levels of language and use crosslinguistic knowledge (pp. 19, 25). Thus, it is not surprising that the author adopts the model proposed by Rizzi (Reference Rizzi and Haegeman1997), who precisely uses the interplay of semantics, pragmatics, and syntax to explain syntactic phenomena. In the overview of Rizzi's work Ferraresi mentions possible pitfalls in the use of the terms “topic” and “focus.” However, she does not give a thorough presentation of these concepts, which would enhance the discussion, since these notions are at the core of the theory proposed by her.

The following three chapters that constitute the main part of this publication are organized in approximately the same manner. They begin with a short outline of steps that the author takes while analyzing the data. In each case, the author clearly states exactly what she is trying to achieve and her approach to that end. In this effective manner, Ferraresi sets up the framework within which she operates and successfully prepares the reader for the discussion to follow. Subsequently, the author presents the discussion of theories that are significant to the current subject of the research. The following subchapters offer an investigation of the data relevant for the discussed topic. Short conclusions complete each chapter.

In chapter 2, Ferraresi argues that the distribution of Gothic personal pronouns supports the division of pronouns into clitic, weak, and strong as proposed by Cardinaletti & Starke (Reference Cardinaletti, Stark and van Riemsdjik1999). Following the model pro-posed by Rizzi (Reference Rizzi and Haegeman1997), she suggests two new positions in the left periphery of the Gothic clause utilizing concepts of topic and focus: the position Top, which hosts topicalized items and the position Foc, which is occupied by focalized elements. Ferraresi proposes that clitic, weak, and strong pronouns occupy different positions: weak pronouns reside in a specifier position [Spec, Fin], clitic pronouns are cliticized to the left of the finite verb, and strong pronouns are hosted by the Topic position. Special attention is given to the neuter personal pronoun ita, which is considered a clitic. Gothic double object constructions are also discussed in detail and compared to examples from other Germanic languages. Ferraresi argues that Gothic does not follow the modern Germanic languages in its treatment of the double object constructions, since it has no alternations in the positions of these nominal constructions. The author suggests that there is no movement in such phrases, but rather that they are base-generated. Throughout the chapter, Gothic examples are compared to passages from other Indo-European (primarily Germanic) languages; thus, a comparative method is successfully utilized to show which syntactic features are shared by a number of languages and which are unique to Gothic.

The presentation of examples would be improved and they would be somewhat easier to understand if glosses of example phrases and sentences were aligned word-for-word (pp. 33, 34, 36, 95), and in some cases maybe even morpheme-for-morpheme (pp. 73, 110). This kind of arrangement would prove to be especially helpful in those instances where examples are somewhat long and/or involve passages from a variety of languages (pp. 36, 44, 91, 122).

Working within the framework of Cardinaletti & Starke's classification of pronouns and utilizing Rizzi's syntactic model, Ferraresi proposes that reflexive pronouns that follow the finite verb should be considered as clitics, and the argumental sik that precedes the finite verb should be viewed as a weak pronoun and placed in the specifier position [Spec, Fin]. The complex reflexive sik silban is a strong pronoun and is hosted by the Topic position.

Following one of the most recent theoretic traditions in Germanic linguistics, Ferraresi divides Gothic reflexive pronouns, discussed in chapter 3, into three classestrue reflexive, inherent, and middle pronouns. The division is made not only on the basis of the syntactic positions that these pronouns take, but also on their semantic peculiari-ties and their ability/inability to undergo Long Distance Reflexivization.

While considering the Gothic anaphoric system, Ferraresi presents a table of Gothic reflexive verbs that translate Biblical Greek combinations of an active verb with a reflexive pronoun (pp. 87–88) and a table of Gothic reflexive verbs that translate the Biblical Greek mediopassive (pp. 89–90). Unfortunately, these tables contain only Gothic data and do not offer any Greek forms for comparison. However, the discussion of Long Distance Reflexivization in Gothic is furnished with numerous parallels of similar syntactic structures in other Germanic languages, once again proving relevant linguistic independence of the Gothic corpus from the Greek original.

A large portion of chapter 3 is devoted to constructions that express the middle meaning in Gothic. Through a detailed examination of the Gothic corpus and a scrupulous comparison of these data to other Ger-manic languages, Ferraresi argues that after the disappearance of the original mediopassive morphology in Gothic the argumental reflexive pronouns are reanalyzed as a part of verbal morphology (VoiceP). Moreover, the author suggests that this situation, in turn, influences the position of the class of -na-verbs. They are analyzed as ergative, semantically close to the middle meaning. Such development gives rise to the periphrastic passive, which becomes both semantically and functionally superior.

The last chapter is devoted to discourse particles. Ferraresi points out the ambiguity of the terminology that is used to mark this category and presents a detailed description of the linguistic elements she refers to as particles (pp. 128–129). The author successfully argues that Gothic dis-course particles have a well-established set of distinguished syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic characteristics. Having examined those Gothic discourse particles that appear at the leftmost periphery of the sentence structure and having paid special attention to their syntactic and prag-matic features, Ferraresi posits that Gothic has two types of dislocation: topicalization and clitic left dislocation (CLLD). As effectively demonstrated, other Indo-European languages share both preposing strategies with Gothic. Through an abundance of examples the author shows that particles affected by topicalization take a sentence-internal position, while particles under clitic left dislocation are hosted by a sentence-external position (p. 133). Remaining true to the original claim of a necessary integration of syntactic and semantic/pragmatic theoretical grounds for the study of phrases, Ferraresi demonstrates that the two dislocations have evidence for different pragmatic functions, namely, contrast vs. thematization. In her attempt to show particles as a syntactic and pragmatic phenomenon, Ferraresi follows the classification of Kroon (Reference Kroon1998) and offers comprehensive accounts of Gothic particles of two types: those that take the first position and are responsible for the organization of the text (that is, iba/ibai, an, and -u) and those that take the second position and take care of the interaction management (that is, i, -uh, an, nu, and auk). For each of the discussed particles Ferraresi proposes an exact syntactic position and a precise pragmatic function, which are later summarized in section 4.5.3.

Even though this book lacks a chapter devoted to an overall summary and conclusions, this deficiency is easily compensated for by the author's repeated and articulate remarks on the methods and goals of the study and the eloquent summaries and conclusions presented at the end, and even in the middle, of each chapter (pp. 97, 141). A general summary of features unique for Gothic, as well as those that this language shares with other Germanic languages, would be desirable, since the identification of these properties is one of the goals of the present study and so many of them are illustrated throughout the discussion (pp. 63, 83, 133, 138, etc.).

The publication has several minor editing errors, including the following: an inconsistency in the numbering of examples on the bottom of p. 21, where the reference should be to examples 9 and 10 instead of 4 and 5; in ammei ik sijau andwairs (Gal 4:18) should read in ammei ik sijau andwairs at izwis (p. 39); “but to the rest I sayr” should read “but to the rest I say” (p. 41); “the verb frjion” should read “the verb frijon” (p. 88); “described in Burzio” should read “described in Burzio (1986)”; “AVB” and “BV” (p. 114) are not included in the list of abbreviation and not explained anywhere in the main text of the publication; example 1 on p. 127 is missing glosses; and “shown in Klein's publication” should read “shown in Klein's publication (1994)” (p. 127).

However, unquestionably none of these errors diminish the signifi-cance of this volume. Ferraresi's publication is a valuable contribution to the investigation of syntactic specifics of elements at the left periphery of the clause and to the study of Gothic in general. Ferraresi's effort not to limit herself to the framework of a formal syntactic theory alone but to incorporate recent achievements of pragmatics and cognitive linguistics is commendable. The fact that such a method produces obvious tangible results should inspire other linguists to follow this excellent example. The publication provides a testament to the coherent nature of the Gothic corpus and draws many parallels between Gothic syntactic structures and similar phrases in other Indo-European languages (Germanic in par-ticular). All these accomplishments of Ferraresi's investigation in conjunction with an exemplary clarity of presentation make it a must-read volume for anyone who is interested in specifics not only of Gothic and Germanic, but also of Indo-European syntax.