Over a quarter of a century, cartographic studies have highlighted the complexity and richness of syntactic representations. A common goal all cartographic studies share is ‘to draw maps as precise and detailed as possible of syntactic configurations’ (Cinque & Rizzi Reference Cinque and Rizzi2008: 1).
The book is organized into 12 papers, each focusing on theoretical and descriptive issues of specific aspects of syntactic cartography. It begins with the editors’ introduction on the general background, motives, and significance of the collection. The ensuing 12 chapters are centered on three themes. Specifically, it concentrates on splitting the Complementizer Phrase (CP), Inflection Phrase (IP), and Verb Phrase (VP) zones into more articulated hierarchical sequences of functional projections. Accordingly, the chapters can be divided into three groups: Chapters 2–6, 8, 9, 11, and 12 focus on the CP left periphery; Chapters 7 and 13 investigate the IP zone; and Chapter 10 addresses the cartography of the VP zone.
Regarding empirical coverage, the chapters are roughly divided into two parts. Part I (Chapters 2–8) is devoted to studies on Romance, Germanic, Semitic, and Japanese. Part II (Chapters 9–13) mainly focuses on cartographic studies in Chinese. In addition, this book brings together a team of leading scholars from around the world, including Ur Shlonsky, Liliane Haegeman, C.-T. James Huang, and Fuzhen Si.
Most chapters (Chapters 2–6, 8, 9, 11, 12) in the book belong to the first group, which deals with the left periphery, mainly resorting to the split-CP hypothesis (Rizzi Reference Rizzi and Haegeman1997). Layers such as Force Phrase (ForceP) and Focus Phrase (FocusP) are crucial in explaining various phenomena. In particular, both Chapters 2 and 3 achieve minimality in a two-part process. Chapter 2, ‘Cartography and selection in subjunctives and interrogatives’, addresses the issue of the subjunctive mood and interrogatives in French and Hebrew. Shlonsky argues that the apparent ‘non-local’ selection combines two components: a strictly local selection of a feature on the head of Force Phrase (Force0) and the relation between the Force0 and the material lower in the left periphery. The agreement is local but to a lesser extent because it is constrained only by Relative Minimality and the Phase Impenetrability Condition. Chapter 3, ‘The syntax and information-structural semantics of negative inversion in English and their implications for the theory of focus’, discusses Negative Inversion (NI) in English. Honda points out several empirical and conceptual problems and then develops a revised vision by adopting Cruschina’s (Reference Cruschina2011) two-layer focus hypothesis. He argues that NI in English targets the Information Focus phrase (IFocP), the lower left-peripheral focal position, and satisfies the IFOCUS criterion. Therefore, the fronted IFOCUS element and the rest of the sentence are interpreted as a unified assertion.
Chapter 4, ‘Invariant die and adverbial resumption in the Ghent dialect’, also applies the split-CP hypothesis by addressing the ForceP layer in investigating the distribution of resumptive constituents in Standard Dutch and the Ghent dialect. To account for the apparent the Verb in the third position (V3) pattern of die in the Ghent dialect, De Clercq & Haegeman argue that different categorial statuses differentiate the two resumptive elements dan and die: dan is phrasal. It moves to the specifier position of Force Phrase (SpecForce), satisfying the Force V2 constraint. In contrast, die in the Ghent dialect is a head that spells out Force. Because die blocks the movement of the verb to Force, the verb is finally located in Fin, representing a variant on Force-V2 patterns.
Chapter 5, ‘Uncovering the left periphery of Etruscan: Some theoretical insights’, is particularly interesting due to Samo & Canuti’s discussion of an understudied language, namely, Etruscan, and its pragmatic/semantic effects in the clausal structure and the complementizer system. The fragmentary data show that the non-canonical order in Etruscan can be explained in terms of the criterial approach of scope-discourse semantics.
Some common phenomena in English and Japanese are also investigated. Chapter 6, ‘Subject drop in how come questions in English’, focuses on the usage of oral English. Endo aims to explore the reason why how come questions can display subject drop, just like the null subject phenomenon in Diary English. He suggests two approaches: the licensing approach and the truncation approach. A cartographic analysis is then developed to capture the similar phenomenon of null subject Case particles in Japanese. Chapter 8, ‘Another argument for the differences among wa-marked phrases’, is a two-peripheral analysis of the interpretative differences between wa-marked phrases in Japanese. Nakamura argues that in the sentence left periphery, wa-marked phrases denote Thematic Topic or Contrastive Topic; within the verb Phrase (vP) domain, the focally stressed wa-marked phrase signals Contrastive Focus.
The next few chapters are devoted to studies of Mandarin Chinese. In Chapter 9, ‘Quantificational binding without surface c-command in Mandarin Chinese’, Huang & Lin address the issue of pronominal binding by a quantificational NP. They argue that quantificational binding is an Logical Form (LF) phenomenon constrained by LF mechanisms, which is also responsible for the high scope taking of quantificational NPs. Although the paper does not explicitly claim itself to be ‘cartographic research’, it focuses on the syntax-semantics interface, an issue of great significance for cartographic studies.
Chinese dialects provide cross-linguistic evidence for the analyticity of Chinese. Chapter 11, ‘Attitudinal applicative in action’, investigates the applicative pronoun hoo in Taiwan Southern Min (TSM). Lau & Tsai argue that it is neither a referential element nor a part of the argument structure of the verb; instead, it has a root in an affected argument and then develops a speaker-oriented construal. The phenomenon is not specific to TSM; cross-linguistic evidence can be widely observed in Vietnamese, Finnish, West Flemish, and Dominican Spanish. This may enhance the understanding of the split affectivity in Chinese dialects. Chapter 12, ‘Multiple counterparts of Mandarin qu (go) in Teochew and their cartographic distributions: A new perspective into its multiple syntactic functions and grammaticalization process’, mainly discusses Teochew, a variety of Southern Min. Its counterpart of Mandarin qu ‘go’ has three different phonological realizations and belongs to the VP, TP, and CP domains, respectively. Some cross-linguistic evidence between Teochew, Old Chinese, Mandarin Chinese, and English is also provided.
While most of the volume addresses the split CP, two chapters offer an analysis of a split IP. Chapter 7, ‘Causativity alternation in the lower field’, deals with the nature of anticausative verbs based on the data from Standard Arabic. Naji explains the asymmetry of agent and causer subjects by their different syntactic positions into the structure of IP. Chapter 13, ‘On the syntactic representation of Chinese you (有) in “you + VP” construction’, aims to draw the syntactic maps of you ‘have’ in the you+VP construction in Chinese and proposes a cartographic analysis of its occurrences. It is argued that Chinese you only has the perfective feature and the (empathic) affirmative feature.
Finally, inspired by the concept of splitting CP where the C layer is split into Topic and Focus, and Topic and Focus themselves are also conceived as Topic field and Focus field (Rizzi Reference Rizzi and Haegeman1997), Chapter 10, ‘Towards a cartography of light verbs’, suggests the light verb can also be further analyzed as a light verb field. One major assumption of the Split Light Verb Hypothesis is proposed: from a cartographic point of view, the light verb v is not one head but an umbrella name for a relatively rich structural zone.
A significant contribution of the book is presenting readers with a comprehensive study of current research in the cartographic framework. Most papers will be of interest primarily to those engaged in current theoretical debates, and individual papers will find an audience with researchers investigating topic and focus constructions and the syntax-semantics interface, among other areas. It not only serves as an invaluable guidebook for anyone interested in syntactic cartography but also a window to understanding the most recent developments in the generative enterprise.
Overall, Current Issues in Syntactic Cartography: A crosslinguistic perspective is an excellent work that will surely reward its readers. I highly recommend the book to any linguists with a research interest in generative syntax, who will undoubtedly find unfamiliar data and new theories to be challenged and surprised by.
