摘要：Methodological considerations of semantic mapping play an important role in the papers of this issue. De Haan (2010) argues for a bottom-up approach in building semantic maps. In his view, domains (like ¨Dmodality¡¬ versus ¨Devidentiality¡¬) cannot and should not be distinguished until a map has been constructed that is based on a study of the meanings of individual morphemes. That might be a useful way to avoid semantic discussions about .where' an item belongs, but some critical notes are in order about the way such a bottom-up approach might be done without top-down considerations.1In a bottom-up approach, the data underdetermine the map, as shown in the case of Dutch moeten. The three meanings of moeten allow four possible maps. De Haan chooses one possible map, without further argumentation, but the question arises on what basis the lines are drawn in such a situation, if we do not want to use top-down semantic information about the similarity between meanings and the domains they belong to. A purely bottom-up procedure is not possible then
