This volume deals with the theoretical, contrastive and lexicographical aspects of discourse particles, predominantly in German and English. The collection of papers maybe of interest to theoretical and contrastive linguists, language teachers and lexicographers.

1. Foreword; 2. Introduction; 3. Identical values in conflicting roles: The use of German ausgerechnet, eben, genau and gerade as focus particles; 4. Focusing and background operators (by Stechow, Arnim von); 5. Schon - erst - noch: An integrated analysis (by Lobner, Sebastian); 6. On the semantics of modal particles (by Jacobs, Joachim); 7. 'Wir sind ja doch alte bekannte'. The use of German ja and doch als modal particles (by Lindner, Katrin); 8. Discourse particles in German: How does their illocutive force come about? (by Abraham, Werner); 9. German particles in modular grammar: Neurolinguistic evidence (by Bayer, Josef); 10. The treatment of function words in a new billingual German-English dictionary (by Konig, Ekkehard); 11. Index of names; 12. Subject index; 13. Index of particles and related lexemes