Lexical Meaning

by M. Lynne Murphy

• ISBN13: 9780521677646
• ISBN10: 0521677645
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-11-29
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

"The ideal introduction for students of semantics, Lexical Meaning fills the gap left by more general semantics textbooks, providing the teacher and the student with insights into word meaning beyond the traditional overviews of lexical relations. The book explores the relationship between word meanings and syntax and semantics more generally. It provides a balanced overview of the main theoretical approaches, along with a lucid explanation of their relative strengths and weaknesses. After covering the main topics in lexical meaning, such as polysemy and sense relations, the textbook surveys the types of meanings represented by different word classes. It explains abstract concepts in clear language, using a wide range of examples, and includes linguistic puzzles in each chapter to encourage the student to practise using the concepts. 'Adopt-a-Word' exercises give students the chance to research a particular word, building a portfolio of specialist work on a single word"--

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. xii
Preface: using this book	p. xiii
Acknowledgments	p. xvi
Typographical conventions	p. xvii
Meaning and the lexicon	p. 1
The lexicon - some preliminaries	p. 3
Overview	p. 3
What is a lexicon?	p. 3
What is a word?	p. 11
How to research words and their meanings	p. 18
Structure of this book	p. 24
Further reading	p. 24
Answers to puzzles	p. 25
Exercises	p. 27
What do we mean by meaning?	p. 29
Overview	p. 29
The boundaries of lexical semantics	p. 29
The nature of denotative meaning	p. 34
Are senses ôimages in the mindö?	p. 37
Meaning and concepts	p. 38
Summary and conclusions	p. 39
Further reading	p. 39
Answers to puzzles	p. 40
Exercises	p. 41
Components and prototypes	p. 43
Overview	p. 43
Senses as definitions: Classical Theory	p. 43
An early componential approach - Katz	p. 49
Against the classical approach: prototypes	p. 51
Summary	p. 54
Further reading	p. 55
Answers to puzzles	p. 55
Exercises	p. 55
Modern componential approaches - and some alternatives	p. 58
Overview and questions	p. 58
Jackendoff: Conceptual Semantics	p. 59
Pustejovsky: the Generative Lexicon	p. 66
Wierzbicka: Natural Semantic Metalanguage	p. 69
Alternatives to componential approaches	p. 73
Summary and conclusion	p. 76
Further reading	p. 77
Answers to puzzles	p. 77
Exercises	p. 78
Relations among words and senses	p. 81
Meaning variation: polysemy, homonymy, and vagueness	p. 83
Overview	p. 83
Polysemy, homonymy, vagueness	p. 83
Meaning variation and language change	p. 94
Approaches to polysemy	p. 98
Summary and conclusion	p. 104
Further reading	p. 104
Answers to puzzles	p. 105
Exercises	p. 106
Lexical and semantic relations	p. 108
Overview	p. 108
Paradigmatic relations: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy	p. 108
Two approaches to relations and the lexicon	p. 123
Summary and conclusion	p. 129
Further reading	p. 129
Answers to puzzles	p. 129
Exercises	p. 131
Word classes and semantic types	p. 133
Ontological categories and word classes	p. 135
Overview	p. 135
Ontological categories and semantic types	p. 135
Word class prototypes	p. 139
Ontological categories and lexical semantics: some conclusions	p. 144
Further reading	p. 145
Answers to puzzles	p. 145
Exercises	p. 146
Nouns and countability	p. 148
Overview	p. 148
Thinking about nouns and things	p. 148
Nouns and number: grammar and semantics	p. 151
Variation in countability: the Conceptual Semantics approach	p. 155
Mass nouns as plurals	p. 160
Cultural habits and countability: the NSM approach	p. 162
Summary and conclusions	p. 168
Further reading	p. 168
Answers to puzzles	p. 169
Exercises	p. 170
Predication: verbs, Events, and States	p. 172
Overview	p. 172
The semantics of verbs	p. 172
States and Events	p. 179
Motion verbs	p. 180
Non-verb predicates	p. 190
Summary and conclusion	p. 195
Further reading	p. 196
Answers to puzzles	p. 196
Exercises	p. 199
Verbs and time	p. 201
Overview	p. 201
Tense, aspect, and Aktionsart	p. 201
Aktionsart categories	p. 203
Vendler classes	p. 210
Boundedness and telicity	p. 211
Semantic relations among verbs	p. 214
Summary and conclusion	p. 217
Further reading	p. 217
Answers to puzzles	p. 218
Exercises	p. 219
Adjectives and properties	p. 222
Overview	p. 222
Adjectives and the nouns they modify	p. 222
Absolute adjectives	p. 224
Gradable adjectives and semantic scales	p. 227
Properties of scales and types of scalar adjectives	p. 230
Summary and conclusion	p. 239
Further reading	p. 239
Answers to puzzles	p. 240
Exercises	p. 242
References	p. 243
Index	p. 250
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