The majority of the fifteen chapters included in this volume are revised and expanded versions of talks originally presented at the Sixth International Columbia School Conference held at Rutgers University in October 1999. This conference was notable for attempting to bring about not only an exchange of ideas between various sign-based linguists -- Columbia School, Guillaumean, and others -- but also, and perhaps more importantly, a dialogue between sign-based linguists and representatives of Cognitive linguistics.1 Significantly, one of the plenary speakers was Ronald W. Langacker who, together with George Lakoff, founded the movement in linguistics which has come to be known as Cognitive Grammar.

This volume is the product of a Columbia School Linguistics Conference held at Rutgers University in October 1999, where the plenary speaker was Ronald W. Langacker, a founder of Cognitive Linguistics.The goal of the book is to promote two kinds of dialogue. First, dialogue between Cognitive Grammar and the particular sign-based approach to language known as the Columbia School.

While they share certain basic assumptions, the "maximalist" CG and the "minimalist" CS differ both theoretically and methodologically. Given that philosophers from Mill to Kuhn to Feyerabend have stressed the importance to any discipline of'dialogue between opposing views, the dialogue begun here cannot fail to bear fruit. The second kind ofdialogue is that among several sign-based approaches themselves and also between them and two competitors:grammaticalization theory and generic functionalism.Topics range from phonology to discourse. Analytical problems are taken from a wide range of languages including English, German, Guarani, Hebrew, Hualapai,Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin, Polish,Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Urdu, and Yaqui.

List of contributors

Introduction

Robert S. Kirsner

Part I: Cognitive Grammar

1. Form, meaning, and behavior

Ronald W. Langacker

2. Cataphoric pronouns as mental space designators

Michael B. Smith

Part II: Theoretical issues in classical sign-based linguistics

3. Monosemy, homonymy and polysemy

Wallis Reid

4. On the relationship between form and grammatical

meaning in the linguistic sign

Mark J. Elson

5. Revisiting the gap between meaning and message

Joseph Davis

Part III: Analyses on the level of the classic linguistic sign

6. The givenness of background

Zhuo ling

7. The relevance of relevance in linguistic analysis

Bob de longe

8. A sign-based analysis of English pronouns in conjoined expressions

Nancy Stern

9. Semantic oppositions in the Hebrew verb system

 Noah Oron and Yishai Tobin

10. Grammaticization of'to'and'away'

 Kumiko Ichihashi-Nakayama

Part IV" Below and above the level of the sign

11. Interaction of physiology and communication in the make-up

and distribution of stops in Lucknow Urdu

Shabana Hameed

12. Between phonology and lexicon

Yishai Tobin

13. Length of the extra-information phrase as a predictor of word order

Ricardo Otheguy, Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller, and Eulalia Canals

14. Word-order variation in spoken Spanish in constructions

with a verb, a direct object, and an adverb

Francisco Ocampo

15. Estrategias discursivas como parametros para el analisis lingtiistico

Angelita Martinez

Index of names

Index of subjects