Lists: description, delimitation, definition. A foreword

According to Umberto Eco, lists respond to two primitive needs of human beings: liberating themselves from the limits of finitude so as to both embrace infinity conceptually, and express it semiotically. One might infer that, given their fundamental cognitive and semiotic function, lists play a major role in language, which is indeed the case. Unfortunately, such a primordial role of lists in language is not sufficiently mirrored by an adequate description and theorization of lists in linguistics. The papers gathered in this Special Issue of the "Italian Journal of Linguistics" (30.1, 2018) show that lists allow to fill gaps: in categorization, in lexical fields, in lexical knowledge, in lexical acquisition, in lexical production. As such, lists can be regarded as a device operating at the intersection between system and discourse, which allows for embedding the infinity of cognitive and semiotic potential in the finitude of linguistic production. This crucial cognitive and semiotic role is mirrored by a relatively stable – albeit flexible – formal structure that allows a list to be recognized as such, independently of its manifestation at the morphological, syntactic or discourse level.