The volume presents an up-to-date collection of methodologically sensitive contributions
providing mainly enthusiastic at times also critical support for the cognitive-linguistic
enterprise. The book is important for the advancement of cognitive linguistics because the
contributions demonstrate the seriousness of its ambitions to develop into a set of testable
linguistic approaches. For the same reason the volume is a contribution to our understanding
of language in general since it puts a promising modern approach on firmer ground. Assets of
the book include the wide range of linguistic phenomena studied (individual concepts
fundamental semantic problems like vagueness and polysemy grammatical issues incl. gender and
tense collocations constructions and speech acts) and the scope of applied perspectives
including lexicographical computational developmental and critical discourse ones. The
languages investigated are English German Dutch Polish and Italian.Common to the
contributions is the desire to bring together observed patterns of linguistic usage with
concepts and models established in cognitive linguistics. In addition all contributions have
an empirical basis and emphasize the need to rely on a sound methodology. The linguistic
phenomena investigated span the range from the lexico-conceptual and collocational level to
constructions grammatical categories and functions.Two complementary perspectives of language
and cognition are represented in the volume: In one group the established methods of
psycholinguistic experimentation quantitative corpus analysis and computational simulation are
exploited to demonstrate the viability and to increase the plausibility of cognitive-linguistic
thinking. The second group tests well-known cognitive-linguistic approaches like Conceptual
Metaphor Theory the Theory of Idealized Cognitive Models and Construction Grammar against
authentic data demonstrating their applicability and explanatory potential. Both groups include
contributions reaching beyond the scope of traditional cognitive-linguistic topics e.g. by
taking a critical stance of reductionist cognitive thinking.The volume is of interest to
cognitive linguists psycholinguists theoretical linguists lexicologists and lexicographers.
