Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book offers a comprehensive answer to the former question, while the next four provide important elements of an answer to the latter. It interprets this possibility as creating constraints on semantic representation, and the range of linguistic phenomena that they purport to be able to elucidate by thus interpreting it is quite remarkable. The book deals with questions that are less central from the point of view just indicated but are just as interesting in their own right. It exemplifies realizations of further possibilities in linguistics, and in psychology. The book focuses on no less serious problems arising from specific analytical proposals that have taken to be representative instances of the prototype approach at its best. It reflects divergent research interests, but they are united in their refusal to take for granted basic assumptions of linguistic analysis, as it is standardly practised.