Table of Contents
List of Figures x
Preface xi
Introduction xiii
1 Historical-philological Semantics 1
1.1 The birth of lexical semantics 2
1.1.1 Speculative etymology 2
1.1.2 The rhetorical tradition 5
1.1.3 Lexicography 7
1.2 The nature of meaning 9
1.2.1 Bréal on meaning and mind 10
1.2.2 Paul on context and usage 14
1.2.3 Variant voices 16
1.3 Classifications of semantic change 25
1.3.1 Main types of change 26
1.3.2 Lower-level patterns 31
1.3.3 Classificatory complexities 35
1.4 Beyond historical-philological semantics 42
Further sources for Chapter 1 45
2 Structuralist Semantics 47
2.1 The structuralist conception of meaning 48
2.1.1 Arguing against historical-philological semantics 49
2.1.2 Types of structuralist semantics 52
2.2 Lexical field theory 53
2.2.1 Trier's concept of lexical fields 53
2.2.2 Lexical fields and syntagmatic relations 57
2.2.3 Lexical fields and formal relations 60
2.2.4 The discreteness of lexical fields 65
2.3 Componential analysis 70
2.3.1 Componential analysis in American ethnosemantics 71
2.3.2 Componential analysis in European structuralist semantics 74
2.4 Relational semantics 80
2.4.1 Major sense relations 82
2.4.2 Theoretical issues 88
2.5 Beyond structuralist semantics 91
Further sources for Chapter 2 98
3 Generativist Semantics 101
3.1 Katzian semantics 102
3.1.1 Formal dictionary entries 102
3.1.2 The emulation of structuralist semantics 104
3.2 Tensions in generativist semantics 106
3.2.1 Minimal or maximal semantics? 106
3.2.2 Decompositional or axiomatic semantics? 113
3.3 Beyond generativist semantics 117
Further sources for Chapter 3 122
4 Neostructuralist Semantics 124
4.1 Elaborating the decompositional approach 126
4.1.1 Natural Semantic Metalanguage 127
4.1.2 Conceptual Semantics 137
4.1.3 Two-Level Semantics 142
4.1.4 Generative Lexicon 147
4.2 Elaborating the relational approach 156
4.2.1 WordNet 158
4.2.2 Lexical functions 161
4.2.3 Distributional corpus analysis 165
Further sources for Chapter 4 179
5 Cognitive Semantics 182
5.1 Prototypicality and salience 183
5.1.1 Prototypicality effects 184
5.1.2 Radial networks and polysemy 192
5.1.3 Basic levels and onomasiological salience 199
5.2 Conceptual metaphor and metonymy 203
5.2.1 Conceptual Metaphor Theory 204
5.2.2 Mental spaces and blending 210
5.2.3 Conceptual metonymy 213
5.3 Idealized Cognitive Models and frames 222
5.3.1 Idealized Cognitive Models 224
5.3.2 Frame semantics and FrameNet 225
5.4 Usage and change 229
5.4.1 Invited inference and pragmatics 230
5.4.2 Mechanisms and regularities 233
5.5 Cognitive semantics in context 239
5.5.1 Meaning in the mind 240
5.5.2 Meaning in culture and society 249
5.5.3 Meaning in text and discourse 258
Further sources for Chapter 5 267
Conclusion 273
References 288
Author Index 328
Subject Index 335
