This volume is a collection of papers presented at the Eighth, Ninth and Tenth TIN-meetings of the Dutch Algemene Vereniging voor Taalwetenschap. These annual Taalkunde in Nederland-conferences were held at the University of Amsterdam, 22.1. 1977, 21.1. 1978, and 20.1. 1979 (the proceedings of former TINs were published as S. Dik (ed.), Taalkunde in Nederland 1971, Universiteit van Amsterdam, 1972; A. Kraak (ed.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1972-1973, Van Gorcum, Assen, 1975; and W. Zonneveld (ed.), Linguistics in the Netherlands 1974-1976, Foris Publications, Dordrecht, 1978).

The papers included below are a reflection of the fact that, in spite of what recent claims to the contrary urge one to believe, current research in the Dutch linguistic community is neither uniquely represented nor dominated by the transformational-generative paradigm. They do, however, mirror the fact that potentially useful work is done in the Dutch language area by many linguists of this persuasion and various others, in subfields such as communication theory, language acquisition, morphology, philosophical linguistics, phonetics, both synchronic and diachronic phonology and syntax, semantics, and sociolinguistics. The conspicuous bulk of this volume is, on the one hand, a result of the fact that its date of publication is meant to catch up in one step with the numerical progress of the TIN-meetings but on the other it also reflects the liveliness of the research done by the members of the AVT, and reported on at TIN. So as to preserve some sense of proportion, contributions had to be subjected to a sizelimit for the first time (this with the exception of B. Rigter's paper, which is part of a forthcoming multi-article Ph. D. dissertation). Given this situation, plans are now being developed to continue publication of TIN-lectures at an annual basis, at least for the next few years, beginning with TIN 1980. In the meantime, the 34 contributors of this volume have been organized into three sections according to the year of presentation at TIN, and within each section according to alphabet. Each paper retains its own