Virtually all the papers in these volumes originated in presentations at
the Fourth Groniogen Round Table, held in July 1980. That conference,
organ- ized by the Institute for General linguistics of Groniogen
University was the fourth in an irregular series of meetings devoted to
issues of topical interest to linguists. Its predecessor, the Third
Round Table, was held in June 1976, and dealt with the semantics of
natural language. A selection of the papers was published as Syntax and
Semantics 10, Selections from the Third Groningen Round Table, ed. by F.
Heny and H. Schnelle, Academic Press, 1979. This fourth meeting was more
narrowly focussed. The original intention was to examine the hypothesis
of Akmajian, Steele and Wasow in their paper 'The Category AUX in
Universal Grammar', Linguistic Inquiry 10, 1-64. Ultimately the topic
was broadened considerably to encompass not only the syntax, semantics
and morphology of auxiliaries and related elements, but to tackle the
problem (implicit in the original work of Akmajian, Steele and Wasow) of
justifying the selection of categories- for the analysis of natural
language. In the summer of 1979, a workshop and short, informal
conference were held at the University of Salzburg, in preparation for
the Round Table. These were organized in conjunction with the Summer
Institute of the linguistiC Society of America. The cooperation of the
LSA and of the University of Salzburg, and in particular of the Director
of that Institute, Professor Gaberen Drachman, is hereby gratefully
acknowledged.