Every five years, on the occasion of the International Congress of Slavists, a volume appears that presents a comprehensive overview of current Slavic linguistic research in the Netherlands. Like its predecessors, the present collection covers a variety of topics: Bulgarian and Polish aspectology (Barentsen, Genis), Slavic historical linguistics (Kortlandt, Vermeer), pragmatics of tense usage in Old Russian (Dekker), dialect description (Houtzagers), L2 acquisition (Tribushinina & Mak), Russian foreigners’ speech imitation (Peeters & Arkema), corpus-based semantics (Fortuin & Davids) and theoretical work on negation (Keijsper, Van Helden). As can be seen from this list, the majority of the contributions in this peer-reviewed volume displays the data-oriented tradition of Dutch Slavic linguistics, but studies of a more theoretical nature are also represented.

This volume contains articles by 17 slavists from the Low Countries. Although they are all about Slavic linguistics, they cover a wide range of subjects and their theoretical implications are often not restricted to slavistics alone. Most contributions deal with Russian or Slavic in general, but South and West Slavic are also represented. The reader who knows the strong points for which Dutch slavistics is traditionally known and appreciated will not be disappointed: s/he will find papers on syntax and semantics (Fortuin, Van Helden, Honselaar, Keijsper, Tribušinina), aspectology (Barentsen, Genis), philology (Veder), historical Slavic phonology and morphology (Derksen, Kortlandt, Vermeer), dialectology (Houtzagers, Pronk), the study of sentence intonation (Odé) and papers representing crossroads between these disciplines: philology and historical linguistics (Hendriks, Schaeken), aspectology and philology (Kalsbeek). Apart from its quality in the linguistic fields enumerated here, Dutch Slavic linguistics is known for its empirical approach: the main goal is to find explanations for linguistic reality. Theory is relevant inasmuch as it helps us to find such explanations and not for its own sake. Though each and every paper in this volume exemplifies this empirical attitude, it might be especially illustrative to mention that almost all authors who studied the larger contemporary Slavic languages made extensive use of language corpus resources, part of which were collected at the University of Amsterdam.

This volume, Dutch Contributions to the Fifteenth International Congress of Slavists (Minsk, 2013) presents a comprehensive overview of current Slavic linguistic research in the Netherlands, and covers its various linguistic disciplines (both synchronic and diachronic linguistics, language acquisition, history of linguistics) and subdomains (phonology, semantics, syntax, pragmatics, text). The different chapters in this peer-reviewed volume show the strong data-oriented tradition of Dutch linguistics and focus on various topics: the use of imperative subjects in birchbark letters (Dekker), the existential construction in Russian (Fortuin), Jakovlev’s formula for designing an alphabet with an optimal number of graphemes (Van Helden), frequency effects on the acquisition of Polish and Russian nominal flexion paradigms (Janssen), Macedonian verbal aspect (Kamphuis), the concept of ‘communicatively heterogeneous texts’ in connection with three birchbark letters from medieval Rus’ (Schaeken), a philological analysis of the authorship of some Cyrillic manuscripts (Veder), a reconstruction of the evolution of the Slavic system of obstruents: the motivation of mergers and the rise of dialect differences (Vermeer), and a contrastive analysis of Russian delat’ and Dutch doen (Honselaar and Podgaevskaja). With a well-known cast of contributors, this reference work will be of interest to researchers in both Slavic and general linguistics.

This volume contains articles by 17 slavists from the Low Countries. Although they are all about Slavic linguistics, they cover a wide range of subjects and their theoretical implications are often not restricted to slavistics alone. Most contributions deal with Russian or Slavic in general, but South and West Slavic are also represented. The reader who knows the strong points for which Dutch slavistics is traditionally known and appreciated will not be disappointed: s/he will find papers on syntax and semantics (Fortuin, Van Helden, Honselaar, Keijsper, Tribušinina), aspectology (Barentsen, Genis), philology (Veder), historical Slavic phonology and morphology (Derksen, Kortlandt, Vermeer), dialectology (Houtzagers, Pronk), the study of sentence intonation (Odé) and papers representing crossroads between these disciplines: philology and historical linguistics (Hendriks, Schaeken), aspectology and philology (Kalsbeek). Apart from its quality in the linguistic fields enumerated here, Dutch Slavic linguistics is known for its empirical approach: the main goal is to find explanations for linguistic reality. Theory is relevant inasmuch as it helps us to find such explanations and not for its own sake. Though each and every paper in this volume exemplifies this empirical attitude, it might be especially illustrative to mention that almost all authors who studied the larger contemporary Slavic languages made extensive use of language corpus resources, part of which were collected at the University of Amsterdam.

From the contents: A propos de la genese du sens specifique des verbes perfectifs en Russe (Andries Breunis). - A note on Stang's law in Moscow accentology (Pepijn Hendriks). - Notes on intonation and voice in modern Russian (Cornelia E. Keijsper). - Early dialectal diversity in South Slavic II (Frederik Kortlandt). - Bad theory, wrong conclusions: M. Halle on Slavic accentuation (Frederik Kortlandt). - Description and transcription of Russian intonation (ToRI) (Cecilia Ode). - The use of the supine in lower Sorbian (Han Steenwijk)."