Spoken German shows a characteristic degradation of preterit forms. This study provides a comprehensive documentation of this disappearance of the preterit in time and space. It describes the loss of the preterit as a principled process of displacement and develops a new integrated picture to resolve the contradictory state of the theoretical research from the past 130 years.

Hanna Fischer, Forschungszentrum Deutscher Sprachatlas/University of Marburg, Germany.

The series Studia Linguistica Germanica, founded in 1968 by Ludwig Erich Schmitt and Stefan Sonderegger, is one of the standard publication organs for German Linguistics. The series aims to cover the whole spectrum of the subject, while concentrating on questions relating to language history and the history of linguistic ideas. It includes works on the historical grammar and semantics of German, on the relationship of language and culture, on the history of language theory, on dialectology, on lexicology / lexicography, text linguisticsand on the location of German in the European linguistic context.