Models of lexical meaning

Abstract

While we might say that the first stages of lexical semantics originated already in the first decades of the 19th century, its orientation during the first 100 years was historical and its main concern was diachronic lexical change (Geeraerts 2010). Lexical semantics as we see it today is concerned with modelling the meaning of lexical items. Its leading questions are how forms and meanings combine, what they mean, how they are used, and of course also how they change. These aspects are challenging, since language is dynamic and word meanings are not easily placed in neat little boxes. Meaning definition, description and explanation are hard nuts for all semanticists, irrespective of theoretical affiliation and scientific priorities. If the priority is to describe the empirical domain of meanings in real language in a sufficiently fine-grained way, to be able to explain the mappings of concepts to forms, to account for how meanings of lexical items are learnt and how meanings change, then a methodology must be selected that meets those requirements. If, on the other hand, concerns of economy and explicit formalization take priority over the need to consider language use in all its guises, then another type of methodology is called for. In other words, our research questions, our scope and priorities govern our methods.