Current progress in linguistic theorizing is more and more informed by cross-linguistic investigation. Comparison of languages relies crucially on those concepts which are essentially the same across human minds, cultures, and languages, and which therefore can be activated through the use of any human language. These instances of mental universals join other less common concepts to constitute a complex structure in our minds, a network of cross-connected conceptualizations of the phenomena that make up our world. Following more and more widespread usage we call such a system of conceptualizations an 'ontology', and we submit that the most reliable basis for any cross-linguistic research lies in the common core of the different individual human ontologies. This is the basic tenet of all approaches that can properly be called ontology-based linguistics or 'ontolinguistics' for short.

Two important themes form the grounding for the discussion in this chapter. First, there is great value in conducting semantic analysis, as far as possible, in such a way as to reflect the cognitive reality of ordinary speakers. This makes it easier to model the intuitions of native speakers and to simulate their inferencing processes, and it facilitates human-computer interactions via querying processes, and the like. Second, there is concern over to what extent it will be possible to.achieve comparability, and, more ambitiously, interoperability, between different systems of semantic description. For both reasons, it is highly desirable if semantic analyses can be conducted in terms of intuitive representations, be it in simple ordinary language or by way of other intuitively accessible representations.

The English word 'ontology', together with its counterparts in many languages, has made a breathtaking career during the last decades especially in information science, but also in other disciplines. Since its definition s vary considerably within and especially across disciplines, and since this volume, although clearly focused on linguistic matters, is conceived as tying together several disciplines, it seems appropriate to provide a short survey of these uses in order to make the different contributions and their interconnections more accessible for those readers who are not familiar with all the fields that arc represented between the covers of this book (presumably the majority).

The paper presents a new way of accounting for a diagrammatic notation based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML). We will introduce the new framework by outlining some modeling elements and indicating major differences to the UML. An extended example will be discussed in more detail. We will then focus on the cognitive background of the framework, and in particular address the question why the usage of graphical elements within a linguistic modeling language proves to be very fruitful. Finally, we will briefly indicate the potential of the newframework and its applicability.

To date, rigorous approaches to the representation of verbal semantics, and lexical semantics in general, have not put much effort into achieving cognitive adequacy for their frameworks. This book sets out to take a major step in this direction. It develops a representational framework for verbal semantics that is formal and intuitive at the same time. This means in effect proposing a framework that is in principle computer processable on the one hand, and yet on the other hand whose representations reflect the wealth and flexibility of natural language in an intuitively plausible way and in accordance with our current knowledge about natural language. A new decompositional framework for the modeling and description of verbal semantics is proposed, the Unified Eventity Representation (UER). The development of the framework is based on results from linguistics, psychology, and computer science. In particular, the UER framework adopts and adapts the current lingua franca for the design of object-orientated systems in computer science, the Unified Modeling Language (UML). In contrast to other formal approaches to lexical semantics, it is neither logical nor functional in nature, but uses a third paradigm found in programming languages: object-orientation is introduced as a new paradigm to linguistic semantics. Thereby, a new route to the formal treatment of verbal semantics is opened up.

This volume presents a rich diversity of views from researchers in cognitive science and associated disciplines - archaeology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology - on the nature, function and evolution of "mental" or "cognitive" states. A quick glance at the titles of the contributions and/or the disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors might lead one to suspect little commonality in theoretical interests. However, this would be a mistake. Although the contributions differ markedly in approach and methodology, common questions about mind and cognition unite them.

This volume is the second of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories, whereas the first volume is concerned with evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature. The contributions to this volume address the question what insights conceptual categorisation can give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and thus of mental states. Topics and linguistic phenomena investigated under this view include narratives and story telling, language development, figurative language, questions of linguistic categorisation, linguistic relativity, and more generally the linguistic coding of mental states (such as perceptions and attitudes). The volume comprises contributions from psychologists and linguists who explore the interaction between language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, versions of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.

This paper presents the possible coding alternatives and the factual realizations of a complex event concept. We assume that any concept is built on a perceptional and functional basis and ask in what ways different languages encode such a concept, i.e., how the surface realizations of such a concept differ from one another. The concept under consideration in this paper, henceforth termed 'FETCH', is the concept realized in British English 'fetch' and Croatian 'dohvatiti'. After characterizing the event structure of 'FETCH' at the beginning, a discussion of potential coding alternatives in terms ofconceptual vs. lexical chunking follows. We then compare the cross-linguistic encoding of 'FETCH' in a sample of 29 languages and show how the different surface realizations demonstrate differentinstantiations of potential conceptual and lexical chunking. Moreover, we discuss whether the event concept 'FETCH' itself is universal. Finally, we test current theories on event structures, with a focus on the often assumed binary construction scheme.

This volume is the first of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature, whereas the second volume is concerned with the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories. Questions that are addressed in this volume include: (i) how early did cognitive states of a sort rich enough to support communication and planning appear in the evolutionary history of hominids?; (ii) is it possible to infer the existence of sophisticated cognitive states from evidence of tool use?; (iii) how do mental states represent situations or events or actions?; (iv) how can we theoretically model mental states?; (v) how can we simulate mental states and their functions?; and (vi) what insights can conceptual categorisation - both linguistic and non-linguistic - give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and hence of mental states? The volume contains contributions from psychologists, linguists, artificial intelligence researchers, neuroscientists, archaeologists and philosophers, bringing together scholars from the diverse fields of cognitive science, or more specifically, the study of language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, most of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.

On the basis of a cognitive linguistics approach, namely that linguistic semantics corresponds to conceptual structures and that semantic representations should therefore reflect conceptual configurations, this paper discusses the adequate representation of conceptual relations that can be found in the semantic structure of verbs. As representational framework, a unique modelling language for linguistic semantics – the Unified Eventity Representation (UER) – is deployed. The UER is unprecedented in that it is based on the object-oriented and graphical Unified Modeling Language (UML) from computer science. We describe prominent characteristics of the UER, outline the types of conceptual relations and how they are represented in the UER, and conclude with an assessment of the modelling power of the UER with respect to the representation of conceptual relations.