Hopper Paul J. (ed.) Tense-aspect: between semantics and pragmatics

Amsterdam-Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company, 1982. — x; 353 p. — (Typological Studies in Language (TSL), Volume I. Containing the contributions to a Symposium on Tense and Aspect, held at UCLA, May 1979). — ISBN: 90-272-2861-2 (Pp) — ISBN: 90-272-2865-5 (Hb)The appearance of this first volume of our series, Typological Studies in Language, is indeed cause for celebration. The series does not represent a departure but rather a consolidation under one publishing roof of a tradition started by Charles Li (Word Order and Word Order Change, 1975, Subject and Topic, 1976, Mechanisms for Syntactic Change, 1977) and continued by others (Discourse and Syntax, 1979, edited by me). While the editor and contributors may vary, the spirit of this tradition remains the same: It leans toward substantive rather than formal linguistics, an interest in language universals of both function and typology, a commitment to a broadly defined data-base drawing heavily from cross-linguistic, diachronic, developmental and discourse-pragmatic data. The first volume presented here, edited by Paul Hopper, is not only a beginning but a link in a growing chain. It is a fine link for which Paul should be congratulated.