This book examines the Japanese copula, da and datta, which occurs with predicative nominals and adjectival nominals. Narahara's primary contribution is to challenge the common assumption that the Japanese copula is a tense feature carrier (p. 12). She points out in chapter 4 that copula-less sentences such as Kwoo-wa nitiyoobi “Today is Sunday” and Kita-wa kotti? “Is north in this direction?” can still be interpreted with the present time reference. She proposes that, although the morpheme ta in datta encodes the past reference, the copula form da does not encode the present tense. In chapter 10, she shows that the copula form da is systematically excluded when the speaker lacks knowledge of the truth of the sentence. For example, the copula form never appears in yes/no questions such as Kwoo-wa doyoobi *da/Ø? “Is today Saturday?” and sentences with epistemic modals such as Yuuta-wa genki *da/Ø rasii “Yuta seems to be well,” whereas it is perfectly acceptable for the copula form da to occur in normal declarative sentences such as Kwoo-wa doyoobi da “Today is Saturday.” She suggests that the copula da is a modal expressing what she calls the anti-ignorative affirmative mode, and it is the anti-ignorative mode that makes the copula incompatible with yes/no questions and sentences with epistemic modals. Finally, in chapter 11, she discusses cases where the copula form da in normal declarative sentences alternates with the zero-copula. She concludes that the zero-copula is a device to tone down utterances and is used when the speaker attempts to make the expression less assertive and authoritative. This explains why women or children tend to use the zero-copula even in normal declarative sentences.

Narahara goes far beyond the traditional analyses of the Japanese copula and sheds light on its distribution and functions. Although the primary audience of this book will be theoretical linguists, the detailed descriptions of various constructions with the copula (and the zero-copula), especially in part 4, will certainly be beneficial for teachers and learners of Japanese as well.

Her observation of these fascinating facts is intuitively right. However, some parts of her analysis are not very strong. For example, although she attributes the exclusion of the copula form da in yes/no questions and sentences with epistemic modals to lack of speaker's knowledge, she explains that the copula form da is excluded from sentences with the sentence-final particle sa (e.g., Sonna mono dono hoteru ni mo aru *da/Ø sa “You'll find things like that at any hotel”) because the addressee of such sentences is ignorant of the truth of the sentence (p. 172). If this is the case, sentences with another sentence-final particle, yo, such as Asoko sizuka da yo “That place is quiet, I tell you/believe me,” where the addressee is also assumed to be ignorant, should not allow the occurrence of the copula form da. Narahara claims that the differences come from the fact that the particle sa is an ignorative particle, whereas yo is not (p. 187). However, this part of her analysis is unfortunately stipulative and less convincing than other parts.

Another weakness of this book is that it often does not provide clear implications and directions of its arguments. If the point of each section were spelled out more clearly, and the arguments were integrated around the most important aspects of the analysis, it would be much easier to follow the flow of argumentation.

Finally, the author claims: “The Japanese copula is at the interface of syntax, morphology and pragmatics, performing a wide range of functions” (p. 12). However, analyses of such interfaces are normally understood as those that focus on the interactions of different dimensions of language, but the book does not address such issues. Therefore, it should be understood that this book's function is to explore different dimensions of the Japanese copula rather than address questions of interface.