This is the first volume of a work envisioned to consist of six volumes, providing a complete overview of the unified approach to basic problems of linguistics, as developed by Hans-Heinrich Lieb. This first volume contains a detailed overview of Integrational Linguistics, and outlines a major fragment of a theory of language systems. The further volumes will discuss: II. A theory of grammars; III. Language universals and language contrast; IV. Syntax and semantics; V. Morphology and morphosemantics; VI. Lexical semantics.

This volume, which has partly grown from a Round Table at the XIVth International Congress of Linguists, argues for a large amount of underlying unity in outlook among different frameworks in present-day linguistics: the contemporary Prague School; the Noematic approach; the UNITYP model; Integrational Linguistics; Natural Morphology; much recent work in phonology; and Popperian Interactionism as applied, in particular, to historical linguistics.

language Teaching demonstrates the relevance of an integrational linguistic perspective to a practical, real-world need, namely the learning of languages. Integrational linguistics’ shunning of both realist and structuralist theories of language, its commitment to an unwavering attention to the perspective of the language user, and its adherence to a semiology in which signs are the situated products of interactants interpretive behaviour, mean that it radically reconceptualizes language learning and language teaching.