Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Section 1: (Limits of) Semantic and syntactic gradience -- The cognitive complexity of auxiliary selection: from processing to grammaticality judgements -- Perfective auxiliation with reflexives in Medieval Romance: syntactic vs. semantic gradients -- Auxiliary selection with intransitive and reflexive verbs: the limits of gradience and scalarity, followed by a proposal -- Section 2: Between constructional variation and auxiliary selection -- On the irrealis effect on auxiliary selection -- The HAVE/BE alternation in Scandinavian - perfects, resultatives and unaccusative structure -- A constructional approach to auxiliary selection: evidence from existential constructions -- Periphrasis as a precursor of analytic inflection: auxiliation in the (pre-)history of German -- Section 3: Mechanisms of Gradual Change: BE > HAVE and HAVE > BE -- BE or HAVE in Contemporary Standard French - residua of semantic motivation -- The auxiliary selection of French monter 'move upward' from the 16th to the 20th century -- Entrenchment and discourse traditions in Spanish auxiliary selection -- Auxiliary selection in closely related languages: the case of German and Dutch -- General index -- Language index