The integration of traditional and modern linguistics as well as diachrony and synchrony is the hallmark of an influential trend in contemporary research on language. It is documented in the present collection of 21 new papers on the history and structure of the sounds and other (sub-) systems of human languages, sharing the common reference point of Theo Vennemann, a leading figure in the above-mentioned trend, whom the authors want to honor with this Festschrift.

Current progress in linguistic theorizing is more and more informed by cross-linguistic (including cross-modal) investigation. Comparison of languages relies crucially on the concepts that can be coded with similar effort in all languages. These concepts are part of every language user's ontology, the network of cross-connected conceptualizations the mind uses in coping with the world. Assuming that language comparability is rooted in the comparability of user ontologies, the idea of the present volume is to further instigate progress in linguistics by looking behind the interface with the conceptual-intentional system and asking a still underexplored question: How are ontological structures reflected in intra- and cross-linguistic regularities? This question defines the research program of ontology based linguistics or ontolinguistics. Recent advances in the theory of language have been characterized by an emphasis on external explanatory adequacy and thus on relating language to other phenomena. The research program introduced in this volume adds a decisively distinct and fresh aspect to this emerging new contextualization of the field by bringing together insights from different areas, mainly linguistics, but also neuroscience, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. In providing these disciplines with a new common task, the exploration of the impact of ontological structures on linguistic regularities, the ontolinguistic approach promises to develop into a vital branch of cognitive science. Documenting the beginnings, the book aims to instigate future interdisciplinary research in this area. It will be of interest to researchers in linguistics, artificial intelligence, philosophy, and cognitive science in general.

When something is in focus, light falls on it from different angles. The lexicon can be viewed from different sides. Six views are represented in this volume: a cognitivist view of vagueness and lexicalization, a psycholinguistic view of lexical

More and more linguists acknowledge the cardinal importance of good descriptive grammar, especially when it satisfies the criterion of comparability across languages. Pioneering in this respect was the Lingua Descriptive Studies questionnaire devised by Comrie and Smith (1977). The first four articles in this volume outline a general structural framework for descriptive grammars based on a systematic elaboration of this approach. The second group of articles discuss problems of grammatical description involved in selected areas such as topicalization in sentences, noun-verb distinction, semantic roles and verb complexes with respect to their general comparability.