Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 An introduction to lexical semantics from a linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective
- Part I Psycholinguistics for lexical semantics
- Part II Foundational issues in lexical semantics
- 4 Linguistic constraints on type coercion
- 5 From lexical semantics to text analysis
- 6 Lexical functions, generative lexicons and the world
- 7 Semantic features in a generic lexicon
- Part III Lexical databases
- Part IV Lexical semantics and artificial intelligence
- Part V Applications
- Part VI Computer models for lexical semantics
- Author index
- Subject index
7 - Semantic features in a generic lexicon
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Preface
- 1 An introduction to lexical semantics from a linguistic and a psycholinguistic perspective
- Part I Psycholinguistics for lexical semantics
- Part II Foundational issues in lexical semantics
- 4 Linguistic constraints on type coercion
- 5 From lexical semantics to text analysis
- 6 Lexical functions, generative lexicons and the world
- 7 Semantic features in a generic lexicon
- Part III Lexical databases
- Part IV Lexical semantics and artificial intelligence
- Part V Applications
- Part VI Computer models for lexical semantics
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
Some approaches to semantics
Various theories are nowadays used in linguistic analysis, particularly in syntax, and it does not seem reasonable to expect a reduction of their number in the near future. Nor does it seem reasonable to expect that one theory will cover them, as a kind of meta-theory. Nevertheless, all these theories have in common the need for a lexicon which would include the necessary and sufficient information for combining lexical items and extracting a representation of the meaning of such combinations.
If it is not possible to propose a canonical theory to organize the storage of the lexical information, it is necessary to adopt a “polytheoretic” conception of the lexicon. (Hellwig, Minkwitz, and Koch, 1991). A point shared by different theories concerns the need for some semantic information even for a syntactic parsing of a sentence (and a fortiori, beyond this level, for the parsing of a text).
During a first period, the semantic information required was above all concentrated on the thematic roles (Gruber, 1965; Jackendoff, 1972). These thematic roles were introduced because the grammatical functions were insufficient for discriminating between various interpretations and for describing the similarities of sentences. For instance, in:
The door opened
Charlie opened the door
the door is considered as having the same semantic function but not the same grammatical function – subject for (1) and object for (2). Gruber (1965) gives to the door in the two sentences the same thematic role of theme. A similar objective was assigned to the case-theory (Fillmore, 1968).
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- Information
- Computational Lexical Semantics , pp. 141 - 162Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995