Heine (African studies, U. of Cologne) and Kuteva (English linguistics, U. of Dnsseldorf) base this reference text on research conducted between 1991 and 2000 at the U. of Cologne and at Stanford U. The text includes information on how and why different grammatical meanings can be related to one another in a principled way, how to deal with polysemy and heterosemy, and why certain linguistic forms have simultaneous lexical and grammatical functions. Over 400 processes relating to the evolution of grammatical categories are discussed, using data from about 500 different languages. Intended primarily for linguists, but possibly of interest to anthropologists, sociologists, and psychologists. No subject index. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)