Research into the “grammar of language death” is often biased toward formal processes (e.g. paradigmatic levelling). In this study the author changes the perspective and shows that the relative susceptibility of linguistic elements to loss, change and innovation in language death circumstances can be dependent on meaning and thus organized along semantic notions rather than along structure.

This monograph is a corpus-based description of the modal system of epistolary Old Babylonian, one of the best attested Akkadian dialects, using the European structural method. The study strives to match a concrete exponent (i.e., an array of formal features, morphological and syntactic) with a semantic value, in using syntactic criteria. The book treats: 1. the asseverative paradigm (used for insistence, concession and oath), explaining the syntactic mechanism behind these forms; 2. the various precative-based paradigms in various syntactic conditions: the directive group, the wish group and the interrogative group; 3. the same forms occurring in special syntactic patterns-the sequential precative and the concessive-conditional precative; 4. the paratactic conditional; and 5. the modal nominal syntagm sa para: sim. Together with this description, some additional problems are addressed for which solutions are developed: the focus system of Old Babylonian; the general linguistic issue of "emphatic assertion" (using an English corpus); and a way to describe the syntactic nature of paratactic conditional structures.

The handbook is intended to present a well balanced general view of the current state of Slavic linguistics and the Slavic languages with regard to their synchronic and diachronic description. In contrast to previous undertakings of a similar nature, this handbook is not intended to be a grammar with chapters on individual languages. Its length, the extensive scope of its subject matter, the systematic approach and the method of description which reflect the current state of Slavic Linguistics set this handbook apart from others.