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 com-
pletely materialized. Some have been disowned. The full adulthood of
this study of Palauan is realized in the present book. Virtually every
section of the dissertation has been rewritten, updated, or otherwise (I
hope) improved. Where the dissertation was still struggling with various
problems, the book has found solutions. The aim of the book remains,
however, to give broad coverage of Palauan, with emphasis on A' binding,
rather than to focus narrowly on a few highly specific theoretical
issues. I hope to have achieved a balance between presenting the
language clearly and nonprejudicially, and deal- ing with various of its
properties in current theoretical terms. If I have, the book should
prove to be a resource for further typological study of the phenomena it
describes.