The papers in this volume all deal with the movement of verbs to various functional categories, pursuing a line of research which has been of widespread interest in recent years. They were originally presented at a workshop on verb movement held at the University of Maryland in October 1991. Each paper was subjected to a prepared commentary and then to open discussion. The coherence of the conference theme and the liveliness of the participants made for extraordinarily productive discussion. Now we present the product of that discussion, and we introduce it by identifying some overarching themes and issues.

The conference was the culmination of a three year research project funded by the National Science Foundation (Project BNS 8812408), and we are grateful to the NSF for supporting the research and the workshop in particular. We also thank the Graduate Research Board at the University of Maryland for its support of the workshop, and Peggy Antonisse for making things work.

More immediately we thank Keiko Muromatsu and Ania Pelc for help in preparing the volume that you are now holding, Julie Perrotta for her technical wizardry, and Judith Ayling and the staff at Cambridge University Press for their enthusiasm, support and assistance. Because of the help of these people and the responsiveness of the contributors, we are going to press within eighteen months of the time of the workshop.