This volume includes papers from two bilingualism and multilingualism colloquia held at the Research Center on Multilingualism at the University of Hamburg. All of the papers discuss the interface of diverse areas of linguistics that are usually discussed and debated independently. As Lleó mentions in the foreword, although these phenomena are indeed interesting when studied separately, the results are even more fascinating when the interactions between the subgroups are examined.

The volume contains 10 chapters, each with an individual reference section. A table of contents and a foreword by Lleó precede the chapters, and an alphabetized index concludes the volume. Each chapter tackles specific areas of interaction or interface: In “The Prosody of Early Two-Word Utterances by German and Spanish Monolingual and Bilingual Children,” Lleó and Rakow discuss the interface of prosody and syntax, whereas the interaction of phonology and syntax is the focus of “Fundamental Frequency in Mandarin and English: Comparing First and Second-Language Speakers” by Visceglia and Fodor. Rieckborn, in “The Development of Forms and Functions in the Acquisition of Tense and Aspect in German-French Bilingual Children,” links the areas of syntax, morphology, semantics, and pragmatics. Rothweiler analyzes the relationship between SLA and syntax in “The Acquisition of V2 and Subordinate Clauses in Early Successive Acquisition of German,” and Hulk and Cornips, in “Between 2L1- and Child L2 Acquisition: An Experimental Study of Bilingual Dutch,” study the interface among syntax, morphology, and the lexicon. In “The Emergence of Article Forms and Functions in the Language Acquisition of a German-Italian Bilingual Child,” Kupisch examines the interface among morphology, syntax, semantics, and pragmatics, and Haznedar studies the interaction of morphology and syntax in “Persistent Problems with Case Morphology in L2 Acquisition.” The interface between semantics and syntax is the focus of “Personal Reference in Japanese” by Felix, whereas “Sign Languages: Representation, Processing, and Interface Conditions” by Leuninger is about the interface of morphological and phonological processes and is the only chapter that does not include syntax in the interaction analysis. Backus, in “Limits to Modularity: The ‘Insertion’ of Complex ‘Lexical’ Constructions in Codeswitching,” shows the interface between syntax and the lexicon and between the lexicon and pragmatics.

Not all chapters can be reviewed in depth, so the chapter by Backus will be used to illustrate one type of interface in multilingualism. Backus starts his chapter by briefly discussing the two types of codeswitching: insertion and alternation. Although both of these types of codeswitching are generally present in a bilingual speaker, the researcher can focus on either insertion or alternation, depending on his area of interest. If a syntactic analysis were the goal, the researcher would choose to focus on the insertion data, basing the analysis on a matrix of the dominant language. The focal point would be the insertion of elements from the nonmatrix language to analyze whether the syntactic rules of the governing language were used for the insertion. If the researcher were more interested in pragmatics, language alternation would be the focus, and the researcher would analyze the reason behind the switch based on the framework of the bilingual community of the speaker. Backus analyzes both the insertion and the alternation types of codeswitching of Dutch and Turkish through the analysis of constructional idioms (semifixed expressions in a language), thus creating an interface between syntax and the lexicon and between the lexicon and pragmatics.

All of the chapters in this volume are well written and provide clear and abundant examples, charts, and even illustrations to convey important information. However, because of the heavy syntactic emphasis in this volume and the slightly prohibitive price, it would be difficult to justify a recommendation of this work as a text for most university-level linguistics classes. One exception might be an upper-level syntax class focusing on the interaction of syntax with other branches of linguistics, including SLA. I would also include it as suggested reading for an advanced-level seminar class in SLA. The authors of these chapters do an outstanding job of reminding researchers that interface research is invaluable for truly understanding all aspects of linguistic theory, and I commend the authors for successfully intertwining areas of linguistics that are usually treated in isolation.