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...

This book presents a unique approach to the semantics of verbs. It develops and specifies a decompositional representation framework for verbal semantics that is based on the Unified Modeling Language (UML), the graphical lingua franca for the design and modeling of object-oriented systems in computer science. The new framework combines formal precision with conceptual flexibility and allows the representation of very complicated details of verbal meaning, using a mixture of graphical elements as well as linearized constructs. Thereby, it offers a solution for different semantic...