The papers in this volume investigate the general question of what constitutes an explanation of diachronic change, and illustrate their proposals in the context of various specific problems in historical linguistics.

1. Preface (by Davis, Garry W.); 2. Event structure accounting for the emerging periphrastic tenses and the passive voice in German (by Abraham, Werner); 3. Historical explanation and historical linguistics (by Anttila, Raimo); 4. Elements of resistance in contact-induced language change (by Clements, J. Clancy); 5. Articulatory variability, categorical perception, and the inevitability of sound change (by Faber, Alice); 6. On the historical development of marked forms (by Forner, Monika); 7. On misusing similarity (by Hamp, Eric P.); 8. Reconstruction and syntactic typology: A plea for a different approach (by Hock, Hans Henrich); 9. Diachronic explanation: putting speakers back into the picture (by Joseph, Brian D.); 10. Grammatical prototypes and competing motivations in a theory of linguistic change (by Kemmer, Suzanne); 11. Understanding standards (by Klein-Andreu, Flora); 12. Rules and analogy (by Moder, Carol Lynn); 13. The development of perfect reduplication in Indo-European (by Niepokuj, Mary K.); 14. A look at the data for a global etymology: *tik 'finger' (by Salmons, Joseph C.); 15. Author index; 16. Subject index; 17. Language index