The present volume is the product of five years of collaborative research carried out from the beginning of 1990 to the end of 1994 by the members of the Constituent Order group of the European Science Foundation Programme in Language Typology (Eurotyp). Thanks to the diversity of theoretical background of the members of the group, the volume is unique in offering not only a rich array of data, but also a variety of perspectives on the issue of constituent order variation and of the role and nature of language typology. Part 1 of the volume fills in an evident gap in the linguistic literature by presenting descriptive word order surveys of eight groups of European languages (Celtic, Romance, Germanic, Slavic, Modern Greek, Uralic, Kartvelian and Daghestanian) which should provide convenient point of departure for any subsequent word order investigations of the languages of Europe. The papers comprising part two of the volume feature analyses of the word order properties of the languages of Europe from the point of view of the well known Greenbergian word order variables, the principles and parameters of Chomskyan generative grammar and processing ease. The volume concludes with an appendix listing the values of 12 word order variables in all the languages of Europe.