The Handbook of Morphology (Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics)

"This impressive volume is the first handbook of morphology. It's pioneering status is confirmed by an unprecedented range of topics, not to be found in any existing monograph in the domain of morphology ... I do not know any other book which offers such easy access to all the basics of modern morphology and to such a wide variety of topics." W.U. Dressler, University of Vienna

"Strongly theoretic, the handbook is none the less pleasingly rich in carefully explored data, and fits in well with the other volumes in the series of Blackwell Handbooks in Linguistics" Forum for Modern Language Skills, Vol 39, 2003

Review : By verafides "Lazy Eye
You know why nobody has ever reviewed this book on Amazon? Because shoppers interested in a gigantic collection of academic papers on morphological theory are already AWARE of what it is, and don't need to be told about it. And anyone else will never, in fact, look at this review. So it's entirely a bizarre anachronism - a review that nobody will read, that has nothing useful to say.

This is, of course, a wonderful compilation of papers on morphology. It's chocked full of data (and yes, Mr. Zwicky, I'm consciously using 'chocked'), and tons of careful analysis. Most of the papers are theory-neutral, or nearly theory-neutral, and thus it is actually a nice general reference piece, since it won't become outdated. I think this was the general goal that the editors were shooting for, and they met it fabulously. When I want to know how different languages do something, for example Noun Incorporation, I can open up this book and have piles of lovely examples with intelligent commentary. Morphology being the mess that it is, there's not as much really clear organization as I'd like (lots of "Some languages do this, but others kind of do that, and then there's this thing - that we don't know WHAT...to do with") - but that's more to do with the state of morphology than the state of this book. The syntax, phonology, and semantics books in this series are all beautifully organized, and, paradoxically, much more apt to go out of date.

But you probably already know this. If you didn't, you wouldn't be looking at this book - you'd be off digging up a used copy of "M is for Mush-For-Brains" by Sue Grafton-Higgins Clark. And then you wouldn't have any clue what I'm talking about, and probably too busy being led astray by William Safire or Richard Lederer to bother trying to find out.

This is only one book in the series - it is a behemoth, though, so get a cupcake for the mailman when he delivers it to you.