Morphology is the study of linguistic forms, more precisely, of the inflected forms and stems of words. Consequently it is that part of grammar whose rules refer to units of at most word level. At the same time, it is also a part of the lexicon to the extent that complex stems are not formed regularly. The handbook informs the reader equally on fundamental concepts and theoretical approaches of the discipline and on morphological structures of diverse languages. Presupposing the current state of the art in morphology its goal is to represent this in a comprehensive fashion at a general level and to illustrate it with a sufficient number of examples. Priority is given to thorough explanation of established concepts and insights, complemented, if necessary, by an unbiased report on alternate problem solutions. Demonstration of contemporary trends and innovative approaches is more backgrounded.

Contributions by: Wolfgang Kesselheim