The volume is divided into four sections: typology, syntax, discourse and phonology. Two of the typology papers study the structure and organization of category systems; the third discusses language typology and universals from the perspective of language acquisition. The eight papers in the syntax section are of three types: 'general' issues of linguistic theory/domain; specific analyses and their implications from language-particular and theoretical perspectives; and the relation of theoretical concepts and analyses to natural language processing. In the section on discourse, two contributions deal with interpersonal conflict; another discusses the selection between direct and indirect speech forms; and still another considers ways in which choices among, or variation in, some grammatical and semantic categories may be explainable on pragmatic and discourse grounds. The phonology papers are focused on two major themes: underspecification and borrowing.