Review of 'Mixed categories: The morphosyntax of noun modification'

Abstract

A scientific theory is judged by its ability to provide a principled explanation of less straightforward facts that lie at the margins of the data normally discussed and captured by other theories. To the extent that those data naturally follow from the new proposal, that theory is successfull in defining a new paradigm. Mixed Categories, by Irina Nikolaeva and Andrew Spencer, is an excellent example of how to deliver a maximally explicit morphological theory in a way that complies with these scientific desiderata. As always, one can agree or disagree with some of the assumptions made, but there is no doubt that this book makes a significant contribution to our understanding of grammatical categories and the relation between lexical and syntactic representations. In this respect, the title of the book might be a bit misleading in that it suggests that the book is devoted to a particular empirical phenonenon. That is not the case, even if the empirical phenomenon that names the book is discussed in depth and analysed in a broad range of manifestations. This monograph goes far beyond the specific empirical domain that names it, as it defines in a maximally explicit way a full-fledged theory about the lexicon that adresses some of the foundational questions in morphology, from the divide between inflection and derivation to the integration of lexical information with syntactic structures. But before we discuss Nikolaeva and Spencer's (henceforth, N&S) contribution to these foundational issues, let us do justice to the phenomenon that the authors chose as title of the book by presenting their specific analysis. N&S follow Spencer (2013) in defining 'mixed category' as "lexical types that have not only some properties of the morphology, syntax,or semantics of one category, but also some properties of the morphology, syntax, or semantics of another category" (p. 22). This categorial mixing is widely illustrated in the book, with examples that frequently have been obtained by the authors themselves, from a broad variety of languages. The Upper Sorbian possessive adjective bratowe (1, Corbett 1987) is a good example of mixed category in the nominal domain (p. 97).