'This Handbook provides a state-of-the-art survey of achievements and developments in the field of linguistic typology, covering the history of typology, phonological, morphological and syntactic typology, the relation of typology to historical linguistics, areal typology, sociolinguistic typology, and typological studies of sign languages. It takes account of all substantial typological studies published so far and adds a wealth of new data and analyses, based on the rich experience of the editors themselves and the expertise of a number of scholars of high competence in their respective fields.' Lars Johanson, Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz, Germany