Sandra Chung, The design of agreement: evidence from Chamorro. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Pp. xii + 423.

Sandra Chung's leading contribution to the development of generative analyses of the morphosyntax of Austronesian languages is widely known. This book is the culmination of some two decades of research on Chamorro and is also, as the title suggests, an attempt to embed that body of research within a particular theory of agreement – one which has an explicitly syntactic flavour and which emphasizes the separation of morphology and syntax. Quite apart from the treatment of agreement itself, Chung also discusses a host of fascinating issues surrounding the analysis of Chamorro that have important ramifications for the analysis of languages that are typologically and genetically related to it, including the issue of configurationality and the nature of VSO word order. Additionally, there is extensive discussion of the treatment of wh-movement and the relationship of the Chamorro phenomenon of Wh-Agreement to the constraints on extraction observed in numerous other Austronesian languages and elsewhere. This book, along with the research program it represents, is an important addition to the literature on the less well-studied languages of the world and is obligatory reading for any syntactician with an interest in the cross-linguistic viability of syntactic theory.