This monograph studies cognitive operations on cognitive models across levels and domains of meaning construction. It explores in what way the same set of cognitive operations, either in isolation or in combination, account for meaning representation whether obtained on the basis of inferential activity or through constructional composition.

As a consequence, it makes explicit links between constructional and figurative meaning. The pervasiveness of cognitive operations is explored across the levels of meaning construction (argument, implicational, illocutionary, and discourse structure) distinguished by the Lexical Constructional Model.

This model is a usage-based approach to language that reconciles insights from functional and cognitive linguistics and offers a unified account of the principles and constraints that regulate both inferential activity and the constructional composition of meaning. This book is of value to scholars with an interest in linguistic evidence of cognitive activity in meaning construction. The contents relate to the fields of Cognitive Grammar, Cognitive Semantics, Construction Grammar, Functional Linguistics, and Inferential Pragmatics.