Lexical Meaning
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A Lexical Meaning is a semantic meaning that is associated with lexical items in a language system.
- AKA: Word Meaning, Lexical Semantics, Lexical Content, Dictionary Meaning, Word Sense.
- Context:
- It can typically encode Conceptual Content through lexical entrys in mental lexicons.
- It can typically represent Word Sense through semantic features and meaning components.
- It can typically convey Referential Content through denotative relations to external entities.
- It can typically establish Semantic Fields through lexical relations between related words.
- It can typically structure Conceptual Knowledge through lexicalized concepts in vocabulary systems.
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- It can often undergo Semantic Change through historical evolution and meaning shifts.
- It can often display Semantic Extension through metaphorical usage and analogical transfer.
- It can often exhibit Polysemy through multiple related senses within single lexical items.
- It can often facilitate Cross-Linguistic Variation through language-specific lexicalization of conceptual content.
- It can often connect Cultural Understanding through culturally-bound terms and lexicalized concepts.
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- It can range from being a Core Lexical Meaning to being a Peripheral Lexical Meaning, depending on its semantic centrality.
- It can range from being a Denotative Lexical Meaning to being a Connotative Lexical Meaning, depending on its reference directness.
- It can range from being a Universal Lexical Meaning to being a Culture-Specific Lexical Meaning, depending on its cultural boundedness.
- It can range from being a Concrete Lexical Meaning to being an Abstract Lexical Meaning, depending on its abstraction level.
- It can range from being a Simple Lexical Meaning to being a Complex Lexical Meaning, depending on its semantic composition.
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- It can support Language Comprehension through meaning activation during lexical processing.
- It can enable Translation Processes through semantic equivalence across language pairs.
- It can facilitate Semantic Memory through conceptual organization of lexical knowledge.
- It can provide Linguistic Reference through semantic content of vocabulary items.
- It can organize Semantic Networks through lexical relations and sense connections.
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- Examples:
- Content Word Meanings, such as:
- Noun Meanings, such as:
- Verb Meanings, such as:
- Adjective Meanings, such as:
- Lexical Semantic Relations, such as:
- Paradigmatic Relations, such as:
- Synonymy for semantic similarity.
- Antonymy for semantic opposition.
- Hyponymy for semantic inclusion.
- Syntagmatic Relations, such as:
- Paradigmatic Relations, such as:
- Lexical Semantic Phenomenons, such as:
- ...
- Content Word Meanings, such as:
- Counter-Examples:
- Grammatical Meaning, which indicates structural relations rather than conceptual content.
- Pragmatic Meaning, which derives from context of use rather than lexical semantics.
- Phonological Form, which concerns sound structure without semantic content.
- Morphological Structure, which relates to word formation rather than word meaning.
- Syntactic Function, which involves grammatical roles rather than semantic roles.
- Discourse Meaning, which emerges at text level beyond individual lexical items.
- See: Semantic Meaning, Lexicon, Lexical Semantics, Lexical Field, Word Sense, Semantic Feature, Lexical Item, Polysemy, Semantic Change, Lexical Relation, Semantic Network, Content Word, Lexical Word, Meaning.
References
2008
- (Crystal, 2008) ⇒ David Crystal. (2008). “A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, 6th edition." Blackwell Publishing.
- QUOTE: lexis (n.) A term used in LINGUISTIC to refer to the vocabulary of a LANGUAGE … A UNIT of vocabulary is generally referred to as a lexical item, or LEXEME. A complete inventory of the lexical items of a language constitutes that language's dictionary, or LEXICON … 'in the lexicon' as a set of lexical entries. … ... Lexis may be seen in contrast with GRAMMAR, as in the distinction between grammatical WORDS and lexical words: the former refers to words whose sole function is to signal grammatical relationships (a role which is claimed for such words as of, to and the in English); the latter refers to words which have lexical meaning, i.e. they have semantic CONTENT. Examples include lexical verbs (versus auxiliary verbs) and lexical noun phrases (versus non-lexical NPs, such as PRO). A similar contrast distinguishes lexical morphology from derivational MORPHOLOGY.