Book excerpt: This volume combines papers selected for their affinity with work on discourse analysis and language typology. The methodological platform is the authors' conviction that all linguistic work needs to be empirical in the sense that (1) generalizations are to be made on the basis of spoken texts in larger contexts, (2) generalizations are correct only as long as pertinent linguistic material does not contradict them, and (3) that linguistic categories and rules are of a temporal nature. In this sense, the contributions represent 'functional typological' comparison, often of languages not frequently investigated. The papers are arranged in 5 groups: Transitivity and voice; Clausal modality; Typology and discourse categories; Language and Culture; Functionality.