This collection of essays focuses on German and its closest linguistic relatives, English and the Scandinavian languages. It highlights particular issues of German and compares them with similar, and yet distinct, properties in other Germanic and European languages.

1. Contributors' addresses; 2. Introduction (by Abraham, Werner); 3. German clause structure under discourse functional weight: Focus and antifocus (by Abraham, Werner); 4. On the co-occurrence of expletives and definite subjects in Germanic (by Boeckx, Cedric); 5. Reconsidering identificational focus (by Cohan, Jocelyn); 6. Decomposing existence: Evidence from Germanic (by Czinglar, Christine); 7. Polarity items in English and Danish (by Jensen, Britta); 8. The argument-time structure of recipient constructions in German (by Klein, Wolfgang); 9. Scrambling and reference in German (by Lenerz, Juergen); 10. Attributive adjectives in Germanic and Romance (by Mallen, Enrique); 11. Die Negationsklammer im Afrikaans: Mehrfachnegation aus formaler und funktionaler Sicht (by Molnarfi, Laszlo); 12. On the syntax and semantics of verb-complement constructions that involve 'creation': A comparative study in Greek and German (by Sioupi, Athina); 13. Wh-expletives and partial wh -movement: Two non-existing concepts? (by Sternefeld, Wolfgang); 14. Phases in the derivation of elliptical coordinate constructions in Germanic (by Velde, John R. te); 15. Index