I-IV -- Preface -- Contributors -- Introduction: The comparative method -- 1. American Indian Languages -- Summary report: American Indian languages and principles of language change -- The role of typology in American Indian historical linguistics -- Morphosyntax and problems of reconstruction in Yuman and Hokan -- Tlingit: A portmanteau language family? -- Algonquian linguistic change and reconstruction -- Mayan languages and linguistic change -- 2. Austronesian Languages -- Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction methodology in the Austronesian language family -- The "aberrant" (vs. "exemplary") Melanesian languages -- The Austronesian monosyllabic root, radical or phonestheme -- Ergativity east and west -- Homomeric lexical classification -- Patterns of sound change in the Austronesian languages -- 3. Indo-European Languages -- Summary report of the Indo-European panel -- Phonology and morphology at the crossroads -- Etymologies, equations, and comparanda: Types and values, and criteria for judgment -- The historical grammar of Greek: A case study in the results of comparative linguistics -- A survey of the comparative phonology of the so-called "Nostratic" languages -- A few issues of contemporary Indo-European linguistics -- Is the "comparative" method general or family-specific? -- The homomeric argument for a Slavo-Germanic subgroup of Indo-European -- 4. Australian Languages -- Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Australian language family -- Verbal inflection and macro-subgroupings of Australian languages: The search for conjugation markers in non-Pama-Nyungan -- Social parameters of linguistic change in an unstratified Aboriginal society -- The significance of pronouns in the history of Australian languages -- Prenasalization in Pama-Nyungan -- 5. Altaic Languages -- Summary report of the Altaic panel -- Morphological clues to the relationships of Japanese and Korean -- A rule of medial *-r- loss in pre-Old Japanese -- Japanese and what other Altaic languages? -- 6. Afro-Asiatic Languages -- Summary report: Linguistic change and reconstruction in the Afro-Asiatic languages -- Dialectal variation in Proto-Afroasiatic -- Re-employment of grammatical morphemes in Chadic: Implications for language history -- Interpretation of orthographic forms -- The role of Egyptian within Afroasiatic (/Lislakh) -- A survey of Omotic grammemes -- The regularity of sound change: A Semitistic perspective -- Subject index -- Language index -- Author index -- 753-754