From the contents: On the changing context of Austronesian historical linguistics (George W. Grace).- Word final nasal in Malay dialects (Ajid Che Kob).- Moklen-Moken phonology: mainland or insular Southeast Asian typology? (Michael D. Larish).- The problem of the aspectual classification of Indonesian verbs (Agus Salim).- Split ergativity in the Nelemwa language (Isabelle Brill).

This is a selection of papers from the 15th International Conference on Historical Linguistics held in Melbourne 13-17 August 2001, hosted by the Linguistics Program at La Trobe University. The papers range from the general theoretical to the study of particular languages and embrace most areas of linguistics, particularly morpho-syntax.