The compilers of this volume come from a mixture of backgrounds. Robert M. W. Dixon is Director of the Research Centre for Linguistic Typology at the Australian National University. He has done original field research on the indigenous languages of Australia, Fiji, and Amazonia, besides writing A New Approach to English Grammar: On Semantic Principles (Clarendon Press, 1991). The late John Godrich was in the Merchant Navy and then worked as a clerk at Swansea Docks. Howard Rye, who like Dixon is an Oxford graduate, is an independent scholar of jazz and blues. He is principal researcher for<...