This volume brings together 17 papers resulting from the third conference on Conceptual Structure, Discourse and Language (CSDL 3), held at the University of Colorado at Boulder in May 1997. Since the first CSDL conference held in San Diego in 1994, the CSDL series has created a spirited forum for exchange between practitioners of cognitive and functional linguistics. The papers in this volume focus on the motivations for linguistic patterning in human social and cognitive experience, and on the dynamic properties of language construal, use, and development. The papers collected here are a rich sampling of the complex data, innovative methods and fresh research questions undertaken by scholars in the cognitive-functional traditions. Among the main research avenues represented in this volume are grammaticalization, child language learning, categorization, conversational practice, and linguistic knowledge representation.