The volume consists of reprints of papers originally published between 1967 and 2009, divided into two parts, only apparently devoted to two different areas of linguistics but in fact constituting a coherent whole. The «cognitive» part is an inevitable consequence of the «contrastive» part. In the first part such terms as «congruence», «equivalence» and «tertium comparationis», as well as fundamental principles of classical, structural contrastive studies are defined and implemented in actual contrastive analyses. In addition, the first outlines of contrastive generative grammar with its limitations inherent in all generative grammars are presented. The second part capitalizes on this shortcoming and contains articles which lay foundations of cognitively based contrastive studies. It also introduces axiological semantics as being crucially important in analysing metaphors, discourse and metalanguage, as well as in contrastive studies and translation.