This is an exceptional book, animated by its exploration of ideas in T.G. Bever's foundational paper "The Cognitive Basis of Linguistic Structures". It's a grand design that stirs the echoes of four decades of intense debate in the sciences of language. The contributors are highly accomplished scientists, and we are thus treated to an authoritative as well as a lively and stimulating range of views on ways in which human cognition shapes and is shaped by our linguistic capacity. Merrill Garrett, University of Arizona