Preface

Abstract

Extract The chapters in this book form a subset of the papers given at the conference on competing motivations held on November 23–25, 2010 at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig. We are very grateful for the stimulating, friendly, and comfortable setting that the MPI provided for the meeting. Special thanks are offered to Bernard Comrie, Head of MPI's Department of Linguistics, for his hospitality and support, to Claudia Bavero, who took care of the local arrangements, and to the many volunteers who helped the conference run smoothly. We are grateful to John Davey, Editor in the Humanities and Social Sciences Department of Oxford University Press, to our in‐house Editor Julia Steer, Production Editor Kate Gilks, and our proofreader Michael Janes for their conscientious and friendly assistance, and to the two anonymous reviewers at OUP for their very thorough and insightful comments. The book has been a team effort: each contributor has provided comments on at least one chapter; we much appreciate all their work. Our special thanks go to Wolfgang U. Dressler, John A. Hawkins, and Fritz Newmeyer, who were instrumental in the formation of the basic concept of the volume.