Abstract

1. Overview

Constructions of Intersubjectivity (CoI) is an important addition to the growing body of work on ‘cognitive’ and construction-based grammars, which CoI links to evolutionary issues in interesting ways. CoI also touches upon a number of fundamental (indeed philosophical) issues in the study of linguistic communication, meaning, and human cognition; it should be applauded for the explicitness with which it does so, using language as a ‘window on the mind’ (p. 210). A concrete vision of the evolution of language is endorsed, arising against the background of analyses of a number of seemingly disparate and scattered linguistic data. The book thus forms an excellent starting point to engage with foundational assumptions entering into the theoretical framework adopted. We will here equally embed our comments within a theoretical discussion at the level of frameworks.