The concepts of 'prototype' and 'frame' are introduced. They are linked together in the definition of a frame: a frame is any system of linguistic choices associated with prototypical instances of scenes (where a 'scene' can be any coherent segment of human experience). The two concepts, linked together in that way, can help us account for very divergent linguistic phenomena, e.g. the production and comprehension of discourse, a child's acquisition of word meaning, the meaning of a lexical item (where they enable us to leave a checklist theory of meaning behind), etc.