Structuring Sense , Vol II : The Normal Course of Events . By H AGIT

In early transformational grammar, lexical items were essentially lifeless, pushed around by powerful and diverse phrase structure rules and transformations. The balance of power began to shift, though, in the late 1970s. The phrase structure rules became more generalized (Jackendoff 1977; Gazdar et al. 1985; Kaplan & Bresnan 1982; Kornai & Pullum 1990), the transformational component shrank (to nothing in some theories), and the lexicon took over as the primary locus of grammatical complexity and theoretical innovation. This trend continues, and it is a significant point of agreement across frameworks and outlooks (Chomsky 1995b; Pollard & Sag 1994; Collins 2003; Bresnan 2001; Joshi & Shabes 1997).1 In Structuring Sense, Volumes I and II, Hagit Borer proposes a reorientation of the lexicalist approaches that have dominated for the past quarter century. In B’s hands, the lexicon is once again impoverished. In fact, it is advertised as more impoverished than ever before. The open-class items (listemes)