This book brings together the contributions of individual language scholars, linguists, anthropologists, psychologists, and neurophysicians. Each chapter focuses on the human cognitive processes involved in language activity and the impact of language diversity on them. The basic issue is how to correlate language diversity with the universality of the language faculty. Part 1 of the book, "Semantic Variations and Invariance: Cognitive Issues," includes a selection of papers dealing with the questions of semantic variance and invariance across languages, and the cognitive issues raised by these questions. Part 2, "Conceptualization and Representations of Space Across Languages," gathers illustrations from languages as diverse as Maya, Oceanic languages, and Ancient Greek. Part 3,"Language Activity: From Linguistics to Cognitive Processes," brings together papers that are more specifically devoted to language activity and connections between linguistic operations and cognitive processes. Notes and references are included at the end of each chapter. Subject, author, and language indexes are also included. (Author/KFT)