The left periphery of clausal structures has been a pro-minent topic of research in generative linguistics during the last decades. Closer examination of its properties unfolds a rich array of perspectives like the status of barriers for extraction and government, the articulation of the topic focus structure, the fixation of wh-scope, the marking of clausal types, the interaction of syntactic structure with inflectional morphology as well as the determination of sentence mood and illocutionary force to mention just a few. The purpose of this book is to collect different and relevant studies in this field and to give a general overview of the various theoretical approaches concerned with morphological, syntactic and semantic properties together with the diachronic development of the left periphery. From the Contents: Introduction Horst Lohnstein & Susanne Trissler - In Front of the Prefield - Inside or Outside the Clause - Franz Josef Avis - The Syntactic Integration of Preposed Adverbial Clauses on the German Left Periphery: a Diachronic Perspective Katrin Axel - Decomposing the Left Periphery - Dialectal and Cross-linguistic Evidence Josef Bayer - Head-Movement in Minimalism and V/2 as FORCE-marking Ellen Brandner - Uniformity and variation: On the relation of wh-phrases and sentence moods in German Jan Eden - Notes on the syntax and the pragmatics of German Left Dislocation Werner Frey - Inflectional Morphology and Sentence Mood Constitution in German Horst Lohnstein & Ursula Bredel - ET, Parasitic Gaps & German Clause Structure Uli Lutz - Verb Position, Verbal Mood and the Anchoring (Potential) of Sentences Andre Meinunger - Nonstan-dard wh-uestions and Alternative Checkers in Pagotto Hans-Georg Obenauer - The Particle li and the Left Periphery of SlavicYes/No Interrogatives Kerstin Schwa-be - Binding by Verbs: Tense, Person and Mood under Attitudes Arnim von Stechow Ā Complementizer Selection and the Properties of Complement Clauses in German Angelika Wollstein