Ton van der Wouden has previously held research positions in computational linguistics, computational lexicography and theoretical linguistics and has published in these fields. He has recently been a visiting scholar at Yale University and is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Groningen.

• Preface Part I Collocations 1 Introduction to Part I 2 First orientation 3 Lexical items 4 The nature of collocational restrictions 5 Combinability 6 The idiosyncrasy of collocations 7 Summary and concluding remarks Part II Polarity items 1 Introduction to Part II 3 What is a negative context? 4 Degrees of negativity 5 Negations and polarity items: towards a classification 6 Negative contexts and downward monotonicity 7 Some remarks on scope 8 Conclusion: polarity items Part III Multiple negations 1 Introduction to Part III 2 Negative concord 3 Weakening of negation: litotes 4 Denial 5 Emphatic negation 6 Conclusion