In this introductory chapter the authors argue that a sufficiently clear conception of grammar, on the one hand, and of figuration, on the other, is needed to make a case for the interaction between the two. The authors focus in particular on the question of how figurative thought might influence grammar. They start out with a brief overview of the architecture of various cognitive linguistic theories, contrasting them with their main competitor, generative grammar, from and against which most of them historically emerged. The authors develop a theoretical reference frame for analyzing the relation between figuration and grammar, which is then applied to show how the distributional properties of grammatical elements are motivated by metonymy and metaphor. After a synopsis of the contributions to the volume the chapter closes with some suggestions for future research. In particular, the authors stress the importance of figurative thought in the evolution of grammatical categories and its relevance to typological studies. (Klaus-Uwe Panther and Linda L. Thornburg)