The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics Part 73. In the past decade, Cognitive Linguistics has developed into one of the most dynamic and attractive frameworks within theoretical and descriptive linguistics The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Linguistics is a major new reference that presents a comprehensive overview of the main theoretical concepts and descriptive/theoretical models of Cognitive Linguistics, and covers its various subfields, theoretical as well as applied. | 690 GUNTER SENFT A look at some definitions of referent and act of referring does not help very much here. Following BuPmann s 1983 428 definition for instance a referent can be defined as an object or a fact in the extralinguistic reality to which noun phrases then as verbal signs refer. The act of referring can be understood on the one hand as the verbal reference to language-internal and language-external contexts and on the other hand the relation between the verbal expression name word etc. and the object in the extralinguistic reality to which the expression refers. But this definition like many others does not help me to solve the ambiguity mentioned above. Given the fact however that I do not know what is actually going on when a classifier refers to a nominal referent this ambiguity may not be altogether unwelcome. To conclude classifiers individualize nominal concepts and they have meaning. However the description of this meaning seems to be dependent i on the situation and the context in which the classifier is used ii on the nominal referent to which it refers and iii on the means and ends a speaker wants to achieve and express using a certain classifier to refer to a certain noun . Coming up with a definition of the meaning or the various meanings of a classifier is quite a difficult question. I have proposed a model for the description of the Kilivila classifier system elsewhere Senft 1991 1996 . To sum up I have mentioned and tried to illustrate some problems that at least to my mind are typical for research on systems of nominal classification in languages. I am afraid that this has proven Royen s 1929 iv point that the question of nominal classification raises a whole lot of other questions. However I think this subsection has shown that it is precisely these open questions that make systems of nominal classification so interesting especially for Cognitive Linguistics. In the last section of this chapter I will briefly elaborate on this point. 3. .
