Roger Martin, David Michaels Juan Uriagereka (eds.)

This book contains 10 essays written in honor of Howard Lasnik, as well as an introduction by two of the editors, a list of Lasnik's publications, a list of dissertations supervised by Lasnik, and an index. The dust jacket describes the contents asàn up-to-date overview of research in the minimalist program of linguistic theory'. As such, this review considers the book as a window onto current minimalist research. 1 The quality of the writing in this book varies enormously, from Chomsky's self-described``rst part of an unnnished manuscript' (89) which reads as (brilliant) stream-of-consciousness, through Willim's thorough but dense and hard to follow overview of kinds of evidence for DP, to some very clear papers, such as those by Bo skovi c, Demirdache & Uribe-Etxebarria, and Takahashi. The introduction by Martin & Uriagereka is also generally clear, but not obviously about linguistics. In the course of trying to prove the scientiic legitimacy of the Minimalist Program, Martin & Uriagereka make reference to physics (including magnetism, thermodynamics and uid dynamics), chemistry, and biology (including anatomy and evolution). No reference is made, however, to psychology, psycholinguistics, or neurolinguistics. In general, the presentation would have been made clearer if the papers had more structure (sections and subsections) and authors provided more tree diagrams. Finally, using footnotes instead of endnotes would have enhanced readability. In his chapter, Chomsky lays out what he calls thèstrongest minimalist thesis': (1) Language is an optimal solution to legibility conditions. (96) Chomsky presents this thesis as something that would be surprising, and therefore interesting, if true. And indeed, it does seem highly implausible. (For an extended discussion of its implausibility, see Johnson & Lappin 1999.) However, science often proceeds by researchers pushing implausible ideas to their limits, either proving them true or learning more about the domain of inquiry in the process of proving them false. We are a long way from seeing the minimalist thesis proven true, but in the meantime, we can ask whether we are nding out interesting things about the domain of inquiry. In this light, let us examine the questions that are asked in the other chapters of this book. Barss (Chapter 1) investigates which interpretation mechanisms are needed for wh in situ: LF movement to scope position, existential choice functions, or both? Bo skovi c (Chapter 2) asks how we can account for the distribution of wh movement across question types and across languages, …