Papers from a theme session at theInternational CognitiveLinguistics Association Conference in Stockholm , Sweden,

July1016, 1999.This volume has developed from a theme session on Cognitive Linguistics

and Non-Indo-European languages held at the International Cognitive

Linguistics Association Conference in Stockholm, Sweden, July 1016,

1999. The proponents of a linguistic theory that lays claim to applying

universally must demonstrate its application to the study of all spoken

languages and not just the standard Western European and other wellknown

Indo-European languages. Furthermore, it should not confine

itself to simply reformulating analyses of syntactic, morphological and

semantic phenomena that are particularly characteristic of Western languages.