This books presents an entirely new approach in cross-linguistic research. =Aiming at a typological comparison of the interaction between lexicon and g= rammar in English and two varieties of Arabic (Standard and Egyptian Arabic= ), the authors proceed from fine-grained analyses of single lexical familie= s rather than lexical fields or grammatical categories. Using the family of= English gold and the corresponding Arabic families dahab and dahab as an e= xemplary case study, they compare lexical-semantic, morphosyntactic, and di= scourse-pragmatic properties of the microstructure of these families in a v= ery detailed fashion. As amply demonstrated throughout this book, the micro= structural method enables the linguist to capture subtle hidden properties = revealing evidence for fundamental cross-linguistic differences that cannot= be arrived at on the basis of coarse-grained macrostructural typologies. T= he microstructural approach is crucially associated with a corpus-based met= hod of data acquisition and a multidimensional framework of representation.= =20Leila Behrens is specialized in semantics (e.g. ambiguity, genericity), lex= icon-grammar interaction, and questions of representation in a cross-lingui= stic research context. Hans-J=FCrgen Sasse is a typologist with particular = interest in linguistic categorization. He is specialized in Afroasiatic lan= guages, including Arabic. http://www.lincom-europa.comLINCOM EUROPA, Freibadstr. 3, D-81543 Muenchen, Germany;=20FAX +49 89 62269404; =20 http://www.lincom-europa.comLINCOM.EUROPA@t-online.de.