The volume assembles eleven articles presenting a linguistic approach to the grammar of German, English and the diachronic forerunners of English. Common to all is a theoretical discussion against the background of Chomskyan minimalism (1993) and more recent developments of it (Kayne 1993, Chomsky 1995), all of which make language typology comparisons an interesting proposition. Some of the articles are critical of certain aspects of these theoretical approaches. For all their claims to descriptive universality, it transpires that they fail to address a number of features specific to German.

1. BACKGROUND This volume is one of three which emerged from the Conference on Knowledge and Language, held from May 21-May 25, 1989, at the occasion of the 37 5th anniversary of the University of Groningen. Studying the relation between knowledge and language, one may distinguish two different lines of inquiry, one focussing on language as a body of knowledge, the other on language as a vehicle of knowledge. Approaching language as a body of knowledge one faces questions concerning its structure, and the relation with other types of knowledge. One will ask, then, how language is acquired and...