Studies in Language 33:4 (2009), 1019–1025. doi 10.1075/sl.33.4.11zun issn 0378–4177 / e-issn 1569–9978 © John Benjamins Publishing Company Malchukov, Andrej, and Andrew Spencer (eds.) 2009. Te Oxford Handbook of Case. Oxford: Oxford University Press. xxviii + 928 pp. (ISBN 978 0 19 920647 6) Reviewed by Fernando Zúñiga (University of Zurich) Tis volume, a welcome addition to the list of publications appeared in the Ox- ford Handbooks in Linguistics series, consists of an introduction and 57 papers written by 62 diferent authors ranging from junior to senior and from formalist to functionalist. Since a short review cannot possibly do justice to such an article collection, I will limit myself to outlining the contents of the book with occasional comments on particular aspects of the individual contributions or whole sections. I will then summarize the reasons that lead me to regard the volume under review as an excellent reference work that comprises helpful introductory articles and many valuable contributions. Synopsis Part I, “Teoretical approaches to case”, gives an overview of the history of both older (Blake) and recent accounts (Butt) of case. It also introduces the role played by case in GB/minimalism (Bobaljik & Wurmbrand), Lexical-Functional Gram- mar (Butt), Optimality Teory (De Hoop), Role and Reference Grammar (Van Valin), Localist Case Grammar (J. Anderson), Cognitive Grammar (Luraghi), and formal semantics (De Hoop & Zwarts). Te two fnal papers of this part deal with the Polish dative case in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage framework (Wierz- bicka) and with the theory of case assignment and marking called Case Tier (Mal- ing). Anderson’s contribution includes a historical overview that bridges the gap between the periods covered by Blake and the traditions surveyed by Butt. Some of these chapters might also be read as useful albeit admittedly biased introductions to particular frameworks, like Butt’s and Van Valin’s. Part II, “Morphology of case”, addresses case as a morphological phenomenon. Spencer’s overview article proposes to distinguish between morphological and syntactic case based on well-known mismatches between the two. In addition, he briefy addresses a number of conceptual and analytical challenges faced by theo- ries of case, like the treatment of non-core cases, vestigial cases (“outliers”), case on pronouns and/or clitics only, non-dedicated (“autonomous”/“virtual”) cases, seg-