Ljubica Leone, Composite predicates in Late Modern English (Routledge Focus on Linguistics). London: Routledge, 2024. Pp. vi + 84. ISBN 9781032524887.

Composite Predicates in Late Modern English by Ljubica Leone aims at providing an overview of the diachronic evolution of composite predicates (CPs) in the English language between 1750 and 1850.The diachronic approach to CPs and the focus on the Late Modern English (LModE) period are highlighted in the introduction as the main strengths of this study, together with the use of the selfcompiled Late Modern English-Old Bailey Corpus (LModE-OBC) as core data source.This corpus contains records of authentic speech events produced at the Old Bailey, the Central Criminal Court in London, which predate the invention of audiorecording technology.Leone's goals are ambitious but well justified.The author draws comparisons and signals points of divergence between her contribution and earlier research, effectively establishing the niche of her research.By targeting CPs, her approach intends to contribute to ongoing debates about the interface between morphosyntax, lexicology and semantics from the perspective of historical linguistics in a period in which CPs have received scarce scholarly attention.In a mostly carefully written piece of work, though also with numerous typographical errors and instances of unexpected editorial oversight, Leone's study combines corpus analysis and theory to fill a general gap in the literature, thus complementing previous research by the author herself on the development of other multi-word structures like phrasal verbs, prepositional verbs and phrasal prepositional verbs (see Leone 2023).Composite Predicates in Late Modern English consists of 84 pages, including references, an appendix and an index.Rather short in comparison to other publications in the same series, the volume is divided into six chapters.Besides the introductory chapter (chapter 1), the literature review (chapter 2) and the conclusion (chapter 6), the three central chapters 3-5 address CPs from different perspectives based on corpus evidence.In what follows, this review offers an insight into the book's central arguments, methodology and contribution to the broader field of historical linguistics, while at the same time it raises critical questions regarding certain aspects which could have led to substantial improvement.