It is difficult to know quite how to respond to the request to contribute a chapter to a volume that is being published in one's own honour. Should one try to comment in detail on the other contributions? Should one attempt, instead, to provide a more general statement on how one stands now on the issues about which one has written in the past and which are still, or have recently become, prominent in the literature? I have opted for the second of these two possible responses. I will, however, comment selectively, and in some cases very briefly, on relevant points made by the other contributors.

First I must thank those of my colleagues - several of them former students of mine, all of them by now friends of long standing - who have done me the honour of contributing to this volume. I am especially indebted to Frank Palmer for agreeing to act as editor: he was already well established as a leading member of the so-called London School, based at the School of Oriental and African Studies, when I went there as Lecturer in Comparative Linguistics in 1957, and he has continued to be active in research and publication ever since. I will refer to two of his more general, introductory, works presently, when I set the scene for the discussion of grammar and meaning which follows.