A Festschrift for John Lyons is long overdue. He is, without question, one of the most outstanding and internationally famed linguists of the present time, with a distinguished career as Lecturer in the Universities of London and Cambridge, as Professor in the Universities of Edinburgh and of Sussex and now as Master of Trinity Hall Cambridge. He has lectured widely and has published (and is still publishing) many important books and articles. He has deservedly received many honours and awards, including five honorary doctorates and, most significantly, a knighthood ‘for services to the study of linguistics’. As yet, however, no volume has been published in his honour. That omission is now to be rectified.

There are, I believe, two requirements of a good Festschrift. The first is that it should have a clearly recognisable theme, and one, moreover, that is associated with the person in whose honour it is published. The second is that the contributions should be made by scholars who have been closely connected as colleagues, students or friends. I have, I hope, as editor, succeeded in satisfying both of these requirements. The choice of the theme was easy enough. John Lyons has worked mainly in the field of semantics, and is probably best known for his magnificent two-volume Semantics (1977), which is, I believe, the most comprehensive scholarly work on a single topic in linguistics that has ever been published.