Raoul Zamponi works primarily on little-known, extinct languages and is currently a research associate at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena. He has previously held positions at the University of Siena and as principal investigator on a range of linguistic projects in Italy, Germany and the USA. Bernard Comrie is Distinguished Faculty Professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He was formerly Director of the Department of Linguistics at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig. His main interests are language universals and typology, historical linguistics, linguistic fieldwork, and languages of New Guinea, the North Caucasus, and the Andaman Islands. He is Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy and a recipient of the Academy’s Neil & Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics.