This book represents the culmination of an extended period of field work on the Palauan language, carried out while I was a graduate student at the University of California at San Diego. The book was born as a short term paper written in 1982; from a forgettable infancy, that paper grew and grew, reaching the age of majority in my dissertation at the end of 1985. Some of its offspring have gone off on their own, as indepen dent papers, as course materials, or as thoughts that have not yet ...