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 of dialogue 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. (Publisher Book Description) Introduction Robert S. Kirsner I. Cognitive Grammar Form, meaning, and behavior: The Cognitive Grammar analysis of double subject constructions Ronald W. Langacker Michael B. Smith II. Theoretical issues in classical sign-based linguistics Monosemy, homonymy and polysemy Wallis Reid On the relationship between form and grammatical meaning in the linguistic sign Mark J. Elson Revisiting the gap between meaning and message Joseph Davis III. Analyses on the level of the classic linguistic sign Zhuo Jing-Schmidt Bob de Jonge A sign-based analysis of English pronouns in conjoined expressions Nancy Stern Semantic oppositions in the Hebrew verb system Noah Oron and Yishai Tobin Kumiko Ichihashi-Nakayama IV. Below and above the level of the sign Interaction of physiology and communication in the make-up and distribution of stops in Lucknow Urdu Shabana Hameed Yishai Tobin Ricardo Otheguy, Betsy Rodríguez-Bachiller and Eulalia Canals Word-order variation in spoken Spanish in constructions with a verb, a direct object, and an adverb: The interaction of syntactic, cognitive, pragmatic, and prosodic features Francisco Ocampo Estrategias discursivas como parámetros para el análisis lingüístico Angelita MartinezI