Iyeiri aims to give a descriptive account of the development of Middle English negation, where the term “descriptive” clearly means that the various occurrences of negative elements and combinations of them are tracked by their relative frequencies over time. There is little or no attempt to come to an interpretation of why the historical development should be the way it is, although the facts themselves are organized in such a way that this study could fruitfully form the basis for pursuing such more theoretical questions. Iyeiri's study is clearly inspired by the work of George Jack, who initially supervised the graduate work leading to this book, and to whose memory the book is dedicated.

Chapter 1 gives a survey of the literature on negation in the history of English, and an overview of the textual sources used for the study.

Chapter 2 takes Jespersen's cycle as its starting point and tracks the relative frequency per text of negation by ne alone, by a combination of ne + not, and of negation by single not. Much space is devoted here to the observation that, while according to Jespersen's cycle, negation by ne + not should be a separate stage in its own right, there is no historically attested stage (no one text) where this forms the dominant pattern of negation.

Chapter 3 is on variations on the standard patterns of negation as in the previous chapter. These include some very interesting patterns, occurring with varying degrees of robustness. One pattern reported is that the negative element ne sometimes occurs separated from the finite verb. The interesting thing about this pattern is that the negative element is often doubled, and the first ne behaves like a reinforcing negator, following a pronominal subject (see also van Kemenade 2000). This pattern occurs with some frequency in the Northern Cursor Mundi. It would be interesting to consider it in more detail and in a wider context: Los (2000) observes that infinitival to in Cursor Mundi shows a similar doubling pattern. Further patterns include a quite robust one where negative not follows a finite verb + a pronominal object, as analyzed in Roberts 1996, and one in which not precedes the finite verb. Iyeiri equates this latter pattern with the present-day English restrictions on negation. This is probably incorrect—it can be shown that the distribution of not in this pattern is different from that of present-day English (van Kemenade forthcoming).

Chapter 4, “Negative constructions and the nature of the finite verb,” provides quantitative data on the frequency of ne as the single negative marker with the verbs witen, will, be, and have. These verbs are more often found with ne alone than others. Ne as sole negator also tends to be more frequent with other auxiliaries than with lexical verbs. This chapter also gives figures on contraction of ne and certain types of finite verb. Few texts exhibit both contracted and uncontracted ne forms: They either contract or do not contract, making it difficult to identify what factors trigger contraction.

Chapter 5, “Negative constructions and syntactic conditions,” investigates negatives used in a variety of clauses: interrogative and conditional clauses, that-clauses dependent on a negative clause, and on verbs that are inherently negative like douten ‘to doubt’ and forbeden ‘forbid’. Also included are imperative and optative clauses, and the expletive negation after conjunctions like before, unless, and lest. The findings confirm earlier studies in that ne as sole negator is found in nonassertive contexts that do not require emphatic marking of the negation. Some important observations are the following: When the conjunction ne ‘nor’ precedes the finite verb in a negative clause, the negator ne is hardly ever present, which, according to Iyeiri, avoids the sequence ne ne. Ne as single negator is rare with subject-verb inversion (after a nonsubject first constituent). This is strikingly different from the situation in questions, which in contrast have an extended use of ne as sole negator. Jack (1978:307) interprets this difference as the search for a formal distinction between declaratives and interrogatives; Iyeiri suggests that rhythm may play a role, but this would seem to fail to account for the observed difference between inversion after nonsubjects and question elements. The situation in Middle English is in fact a natural continuation of that in Old English, where the absolutely predominant pattern of negation in main clauses is clause-initial ne + finite verb. Nonsubjects preceding the negated finite verb in main clauses are quite restricted, and even subjects are not very frequent in that position (Traugott 1992:268; for an analysis of this phenomenon, see van Kemenade 2000).

Chapter 6, “Multiple negation,” presents figures on the decrease of multiple negation in the Middle English period. The decline of ne is an important factor here, but the use of and and or instead of the older ne/nor conjunctions is also relevant, as well as the rise of any and ever. Latin influence, often cited as the cause of the decline, is less likely to have played a part in Middle English in view of Iyeiri's finding that multiple negation is more frequent in formal than in informal Middle English texts.

Chapter 7 is on negative contraction (meaning here: contraction of the negative clitic ne with the finite verb, as in Nis for *Ne is ‘not-is’). The reason for the considerable overlap between chapter 4 and this chapter is unclear. The chapter describes the considerable variation in space and time of negative contraction.

Chapter 8 presents a summary of the findings.

There is a good deal of hard work on basic data in this book and the facts are meticulously recorded. They should be of great help to anybody interested in negation, and the history of English negation in particular, but the scope of the book is limited in that I have not found a single attempt at systematic interpretation of the data. Of course, any scholar must make his or her own choices with respect to an analytical framework and balance it against descriptive coverage, but the very absence of any analytical framework in this book tends to pall as the reader finds yet another series of tables and graphs. Even a very basic analytical distinction between various types of negative elements could have given the book a considerable extra dimension, precisely because the facts are so interesting. For instance, in chapter 2, negative elements are divided into two groups, a group A comprising ne and nor, and a group B comprising not, neither, never, and no. Iyeiri goes on to observe that members of group B cannot be easily combined in one sentence, whereas they are freely combined with group A. This begs the question why that should be the case, and this question is nowhere addressed in the book. A basic distinction between negative prefix ne and negative conjunction nor on the one hand (group A), and negative adverbs on the other (group B), which is in line with uncontroversial assumptions in the literature, accounts in some measure for this basic observation. Moreover, it shows how important and exciting the small number of examples in chapters 4 and 7 is in which ne is doubled and can occur separated from the finite verb. This is only one example where an opportunity seems to have been missed. It is the absence of any analysis in the book that makes it hard going, although I recommend it heartily for the facts it presents.