Although focusing on different linguistic phenomena from different theoreatical perspectives, this volume centres on how linguistic analysis of an older language may depend crucially on variable properties of the textual data themselves.

1. THEORETICAL OVERVIEW; 2. On Textual Parameters and Older Languages (by Herring, Susan C.); 3. Methodologies and Ideologies in Historical Linguistics: On working with older languages (by Fleischman, Suzanne); 4. TEXT TYPE; 5. The Pragmatic Functions of the Old French Particles AINZ, APRES, DONC, LORS, OR, PUIS, and SI (by Reenen, Pieter van); 6. Discourse Organization and Anaphora in Latin (by Bolkestein, A. Machtelt); 7. The Importance of Discourse Types in Grammaticalization: The case of anon (by Brinton, Laurel J.); 8. POETICALITY; 9. Genre, Discourse, and Syntax in Early Indo-European, with Emphasis on Sanskrit (by Hock, Hans Henrich); 10. Poeticality and Word Order in Old Tamil (by Herring, Susan C.); 11. Suppressed Assertion and the Functions of the Final-Attributive in Prose and Poetry of Heian Japanese (by Iwasaki, Shoichi); 12. ORALITY; 13. Robert Keayne's Notebooks: A verbatim record of spoken English in early Boston? (by Kyto, Merja); 14. Textual Authenticity: Evidence from Medieval Greek (by Joseph, Brian D.); 15. Parameters Underlying Punctuation in Older Russian Texts (by Gvozdanovic, Jadranka); 16. DIALECT; 17. The Middle English Verb-Second Constraint: A case study in language contact and language change (by Kroch, Anthony S.); 18. A la Recherche du Word Order Not Quite Perdu (by Gregersen, Frans); 19. Index of Languages; 20. Index of Subjects