Abstract

In recent cognitive science as well as in linguistic semantics meanings of words, phrases, or texts are conceived as concepts or systems of concepts. In cognitivistapproaches and advanced approaches of linguistic semantics concepts are conceived as cognitive structures (or, more precisely, epistemic structures or structures of – meaning-relevant – knowledge). For these structures the model of »frames« has been simultaneously invented by cognitivists (like Marvin Minsky)and linguists (like Charles J. Fillmore). On this background the paper discusses some aspects of a linguistically suffi cient theory of concepts and concept-analysis, argues for a certain kind of frame-analysis, and demonstrates the advantages as well as some shortcomings of a frame-semantic analysis of epistemically complex concepts exemplifi ed by legal concepts from German statutory law. The considerations in this paper are seen as part of the general aim of what is calledby the author an » epistemically oriented semantics«, i. e. a semantics and/or analysis of concepts that (contrary to mainstream-approaches of semantics andconcepts in linguistics, logic, and philosophy) accounts for the understandingrelevant knowledge in its entirety.