1. Summary

Chapter 1, Introduction (by the volume’s editors), introduces the topological model of German word order, a language-specific model, which is likely to be unfamiliar to syntacticians who have not been immersed in traditional approaches to German grammar. It then gives a basic introduction to the generative approach that will be assumed in the remainder of the book. For non-Germanists, there is also a brief overview of the external history of German that defines the periods Old High German (OHG) and Middle High German (MHG), and mentions some representative authors and texts from each period. The book is divided into three main parts: Part I covers the left periphery, part II the middle field, and part III the right periphery including verbal complexes. In the interest of space, I more thoroughly discuss part I and only briefly summarize the topics in parts II and III.

Chapter 2 (by Svetlana Petrova) serves as an introduction to part I and briefly outlines the issues in the left periphery—the development of verb-second and verb-initial clauses, adverbial connectors, and other elements in the clause-initial position.

The verb-second phenomenon in OHG is the focus of chapter 3 (by Katrin Axel-Tober). Axel-Tober compares the evidence for verb-second in OHG to that in Old English (Kiparsky Reference Kiparsky1995) and Gothic (Eythórsson Reference Eythórsson1995). While the presence of stylistic fronting is robust evidence that OHG has developed genuine verb-second, verb-second is not yet obligatory in OHG, which results in some verb-initial declaratives.

Verb-initial declarative clauses in OHG and beyond are examined more closely in chapter 4, by Svetlana Petrova. Verb-first occurs in all early Germanic languages, which leads Petrova to conclude that OHG inherited this construction from an earlier stage. Verb-first was primarily used as an introductory strategy at the beginning of a new episode, but it could also foreground an unexpected event. An alternative to verb-first was the so-called thô-V2 construction, in which the frame-setting adverb thô ‘then’ is immediately followed by the verb; the construction had similar semantics to verb-first constructions, but it preserved verb-second syntax. Although less frequently, verb-first continues to be used in Modern German in similar conditions, for example, at the beginning of short narrations such as jokes.

Chapter 5 (by Augustin Speyer and Helmut Weiß) investigates the prefield (German Vorfeld), that is, the clause-initial position immediately preceding verb-second. Speyer & Weiß find that occupation of the prefield was inconsistent in OHG: Sometimes the position was filled by more than one constituent, resulting in verb-third. Thereafter, properties of the prefield become more consistent, with a preference for scene-setting elements over contrastive or topicalized constituents.

Another type of word that frequently appears in the prefield are adverbial connectives such as allerdings ‘however’ and danach ‘after that’, which are treated by Gisella Ferraresi in chapter 6. Most of these emerged in the Early New High German period, with the notable exception of aber ‘but’. Originally an adverb meaning ‘again/back’ in OHG, aber gradually took on adversative semantics and in Modern German can be used adverbially or as a coordinating conjunction. Similarly, allerdings has grammaticalized from adverb to adverbial connective, but unlike aber it has not yet reached the final, conjunction stage.

Part II discusses the middle field (German Mittelfeld), the region of the clause between the finite, second-position verb and the nonfinite, clause-final verb. After a brief introduction in chapter 7, chapter 8 (by Helmut Weiß) treats pronouns and other light words that occur just after the finite verb in the so-called Wackernagel position. In chapter 9, Speyer discusses the serialization of nonpronominal noun phrases, arguing that the relative order of arguments was fixed until the rise of scrambling around the year 1500. The history of negation is taken up by Anne Breitbarth and Agnes Jäger in chapter 10; unlike most other chapters, this one covers Low German in addition to High German.

Part III of the book is devoted to the right periphery of the clause. In chapter 12, Eric Fuß discusses the diagnostics for determining whether a language with variable placement of the object is OV or VO. Chapter 13 (Petrova & Weiß) then takes a closer look at OV versus VO in OHG complement clauses and reviews several theories on how those orders might be derived. Building on one of those theories, chapter 14 (Hinterhölzl & Petrova) argues that the OV/VO alternation can be accounted for by information structure: Objects representing new infor-mation appear post-verbally, in the universal base position for objects (VO), while the OV order is derived by moving presupposed or contrastively focused phrases into a functional projection in the middle field. Moving beyond the basic architecture of the clause, chapter 15 (Speyer) treats the rise of periphrastic verb forms, chapter 16 (Jäger) discusses the IPP-construction, and chapter 17 (Speyer) covers the ACI construction.

2. Evaluation

This volume represents an extremely valuable contribution to the field of German historical linguistics on the one hand, and to diachronic generative syntax on the other. For the first time, all of the major issues concerning the diachrony of German clause structure are brought together in one work. Moreover, these issues are all presented in the framework of generative grammar, which gives the volume a theoretical cohesion. There is a good mix of summaries of older research, repre-senting the Stand der Forschung (for example, chapter 3 is condensed from Axel’s Reference Axel2007 monograph), and new research that is being published for the first time (for example, Speyer’s work on the serialization of noun phrases). As it is written in English, scholars who work on the diachronic syntax of languages other than German will find it easy to compare the developments in German with those in other languages. However, full appreciation of the book will probably require that the reader is already proficient in generative syntax, as concepts such as movement are simply assumed rather than explained.

As a result, this book will be of most use to syntacticians who want to learn about syntactic change in German from a theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, I can imagine this book being used as the textbook in a graduate seminar on historical Germanic syntax, following a crash course on the basics of theoretical syntax. Anyone beginning to do research on some aspect of the diachronic syntax of German will benefit from its expansive coverage of topics, its inclusion of the most recent research in the field, and the combined 48 pages of primary sources and biblio-graphy. This book should be considered the new standard reference work on the subject, and it belongs on the bookshelf of every established and aspiring Germanic linguist who is interested in historical syntax.