This volume contains selected papers concerning syntax and morphology originally presented at the 14th meeting of the International Conference on English Historical Linguistics (ICEHL) held in Bergamo on 21–25 August 2006. The area covered by this volume — morphology and syntax — is traditionally a central one for many scholars working in the field of diachronic linguistics. Its continued importance is shown by the continued production of numerous important monographs and studies, as the bibliographical references in the papers of this volume attest. Studies in the
field of syntax and morphology have also become wider and richer with the contribution of many recent methodological innovations – from grammaticalisation studies to textual perspectives, from pragmatics to a sociolinguistic approach – which have influenced both synchronic and diachronic studies.

Andrew Carstairs-McCarthy discusses current issues in morphology within linguistic theory, giving fair coverage to all approaches which have been influential over the last twenty years. He concentrates not only on the generative linguistic mainstream, discussing the lexicalist morphology initiated by Chomsky and the syntactically oriented approaches that have developed in the `80s, but also on approaches that are less fashionable or relatively unknown to English-speaking linguists.