On Inflection

Steinkruger and Krifka dedicate this volume to the late German linguistic morphologist, Wolfgang Ulrich Wurzel. They open with a summary of Wurzel's life and work, including his influence on the field of linguistics. Many of the articles printed here contain references to this influence. The topics cover a variety of languages. Some address the subject of the transformation of languages such as from old to modern French or Old High German to modern. Others compare the same grammatical form through different languages. There is a focus on the syntactical mutations of the German pronoun wer and studies that question the supposed lack of connection between gendered nouns and gender bias. All but one of the articles, on a Creole language of the Philippines, discuss Indo-European based languages. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Patrick O. Steinkruger, Berlin, Germany; Manfred Krifka, Humboldt Universitat Berlin, Germany.