Editor for this issue: Kevin Burrows
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I am looking for (counter-)parallels of cases in which sound change leads to the elimination of a grammatical category, as in the widely cited loss of the Latin case system in Romance nouns. I am particularly interested in examples where it turns out that the relevant sound changes do not actually seem to fully explain the loss of the grammatical categories, as seems to be the case for both the Latin future and the Latin passive, despite earlier claims. I am not only interested in examples from languages with extensive documentation but also in cases involving solid reconstructions that show that the sound changes of language X ''shouldn't'' have led to the complete elimination of a given grammatical category (whether it was later replaced or not) but that language nonetheless lacks the inherited version of the category. Naturally, I would especially appreciate any information on other factors known or believed to have contributed to the loss of such categories.