Lexical semantics

The nature of lexical semantics has changed markedly in the twenty-to-thirty years since classic texts like Lyons (1977) and Cruse (1986) were published. Such texts were written at a time when Structuralist lexical semantics essentially carried on separately from major [Generative] theories of grammar. During and since the 1980s, however, theories of grammar have become much more lexically-driven, necessitating much deeper attention to issues of lexical meaning. Unfortunately, there is a tendency in lexical semantics courses and in semantics textbooks to present lexical semantics essentially as it was 30 years ago, with the focus limited to polysemy/homonymy and the ‘nym’ relations (synonym, antonym, etc.). This guide examines ways to construct a modern classroom approach to lexical semantics, with a broader definition of the field.

Teaching lexical semantics

Lexical semantics could be defined as the ‘study of word meaning’, but in practice it is often more specifically concerned with the study of lexical (i.e. content) word meaning, as opposed to the meanings of grammatical (or function) words. This means that lexical semanticists are most interested in the open classes of noun, verb and adjective and with more ‘contentful’ members of the adverb and preposition classes (for instance over but not of). Lexical semantics is thus mostly exempt from considering issues that arise from the use of grammatical words, such as definiteness and modality.
But while lexical semantics focuses on content words, such words cannot be studied in an agrammatical vacuum. Some lexical properties, like Aktionsart (lexical aspect) have effects throughout the sentence. So, for instance, a difference between the verbs spot and see can be described in terms of aspectual properties of the verbs: spot describes a punctual event, while see does not. This in turn affects which tense and aspect markers can be present in the same clause and how such markers are interpreted. So, I saw the bird all day long can describe a continuous seeing event, while I spotted the bird all day long must be interpreted as repeated instances of spotting events. Because of the effects of the verbs’ semantics on other elements in the sentence, Aktionsart (and other topics, like thematic role assignment) is often presented as ‘semantics’ in textbooks, rather than as ‘lexical semantics’. This can create problems both for students’ understanding of lexical semantics and for instructors’ planning of a lexical semantics course that complements a general semantics course. The approach taken below is to offer a broad range of lexical semantic topics.

Teachable issues in lexical semantics

General Topic	Basic issues to discuss and useful resources	Taking it further
What is a lexicon?	key terms: lexicon, mental lexicon, lexis, lexeme/lexical item, lexical entry lexicon/grammar (idiosyncrasy of lexical information)	Does the lexicon include only arbitrary information? (Bybee 1998)
What is a word?	definitions of word/lexeme (Trask 2003b) word classes (Internet Grammar of English; Trask 2003a)	Is word class semantically determined? (Givón 1984, Wierzbicka 1988)
What is meaning?	aspects of meaning: denotation, connotation, social meaning (Leech 1981, Allan 2002) semantics/pragmatics sense/reference ambiguity/vagueness, polysemy/homonymy	treatments of polysemy (Ravin & Leacock (eds.) 2000, esp. introduction, and chapters by Cruse, Fillmore and Atkins) is there a continuum of form-meaning variance? (Tuggy 1993)
Meaning components: basics	‘Classical’ theory of meaning (covered well in most semantics texts) Problems with classical theory (e.g. prototype effects) (Taylor 2003)	Selectional restrictions, projection, redundancy rules (Katz & Fodor 1963)
Alternatives to ‘Classical Theory’	Some selection of the following (covered briefly in Löbner 2002, Saeed 2003—more specific textbooks listed below): modern componential approaches, e.g.: Conceptual Semantics (Jackendoff 2002), Natural Semantic Metalanguage (Goddard 1998) ‘schematic’ approaches from Cognitive Linguistics (Croft and Cruse 2004; Evans and Green 2006)	Primary theory sources: Conceptual Semantics: Jackendoff 1983, 1990, 2002 Generative Lexicon: Pustejovsky 1995 Natural Semantic Metalanguage: Wierzbicka 1996 Cognitive Semantics: Talmy 2000 Frame Semantics: see FrameNet site
Semantic relations	synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, (meronymy, others) (Cruse 2000b) semantic fields (Lehrer 1974) Classical theory approach relation to propositional relations (entailment, contradiction)	How are these relations represented in the lexicon? (Murphy 2003, forthcoming.) Are the relations semantic or also lexical? (Murphy 2003, forthcoming.)
Topics in verb meaning	Ontological categories: event, state (Frawley 1992) Aspectual classes/Aktionsarten (Hofmann 1993; some basic coverage in Saeed 2003)	Levin (1993) classes Typology of motion verbs (Talmy 1985)
Topics in noun meaning	[basic issues generally raised under topics 4/5]	Countability (Jackendoff 1991) Nouns and names (Allan 2002)
Topics in adjective meaning		Gradable meaning (Bierwisch & Lang 1989) Markedness, opposition (Lehrer 1985) Variability of adjective meaning (Pustejovsky 1995)