While cognitive linguistics has become established as a comprehensive research paradigm over
the last three decades it has so far hardly contributed to investigations into processes of
lexical creation as traditionally captured in research on word formation. In light of this the
volume at hand is the first one to take a step ahead towards illuminating diverse aspects of
word formation from cognitive perspectives. The book combines contributions to the 2nd
International Cognitive Linguistics Conference of the German Cognitive Linguistics Association
with a selection of invited papers by scholars working on issues of word formation and
cognitive linguistics.This selection is guided by pluralism in both methodology and topics.
Thus some contributions are of a primarily theoretical nature discussing for example
recombinance as a model of word formation and a taxonomy of word formation processes as
construction types. Several articles address interface issues such as word formation and
phrasal constructions word formation and inflection as well as phonology and word formational
patterns. The majority of the studies focuses on individual types of word formation
(compounding affixation and conversion) and they contribute to reframing our understanding
of these processes. With a focus on mostly Germanic languages (Afrikaans Dutch English
German Luxembourgish and Norwegian) data-driven analyses include corpus linguistic
investigations elicited data psycholinguistic experiments and computational linguistic
applications. A few contributions follow a mainly introspective path of reasoning based on the
discussion of selected examples as in the analysis of creative compounds. Overall the volume
provides a rich array of topics emerging under the umbrella of cognitive linguistic thought and
established patterns and processes of word formation. The various studies add to a yet marginal
body of research in cognitive word formationand thus advance our awareness about the benefits
of applying cognitive linguistic thoughts for investigating processes of lexical creation.
