The volume contains two papers that center around the coding of semantic relations by syntactic relations and the grammatical reflection of the arrangement of participants in a situation, called participation.

Lehmann and Shin take the onomasiological perspective and treat the linguistic representation of diverse instrumental and comitative relations as expressed in a number of languages (English, German, Hmong, Japanese, Kambera, Kayardild, Khmer, Kolyma Yukaghir, Korean, Lezgian, Mandarin Chinese, Thai, Turkish, Vietnamese, Yidin and Yucatec Maya). They present a comprehensive framework for the typological investigation of the functional domain of concomitance, distinguishing between a number of more specific participant relations, viz. PARTNER, COMPANION, VEHICLE, TOOL, MATERIAL, MANNER, and CIRCUMSTANCE.

Taking the semasiological perspective instead, Lehmann and Verhoeven focus on the accommodation of peripheral participants in incorporative structures. They contrast noun incorporation in Yucatec Maya with the same process in several other languages (Nahuatl, Guaraní, Mayali and Samoan), which also use noun incorporation as a device to change the participant structure.

Table of contents: CHRISTIAN LEHMANN: Preface CHRISTIAN LEHMANN & YONG-MIN SHIN: The functional domain of concomitance. A typological study of instrumental and comitative relations CHRISTIAN LEHMANN & ELISABETH VERHOEVEN: Noun incorporation and participation. A typological study on participant association with particular reference to Yucatec Maya