This volume grew out of a workshop organized by us, Jóhanna Barðdal and Shobhana L. Chelliah, at the 17th International Conference of Historical Linguistics in Madison, Wisconsin (31 July–5 August 2005). Our respective research in Germanic and Tibeto-Burman morphological case marking convinced us of the integral role of pragmatics, semantics, and discourse structure in the historical de…