The Lexicon-Encyclopedia Interface (review)

A three-decade-old debate on the distinction between lexical and encyclopedic knowledge is reviewed by Bert Peeters (1–52) in an introductory article to the volume. The fourteen papers that follow (of which eleven are novel contributions and three are reprints with newly added afterwords) present to the reader a number of views on the issue, grouped into five parts.

In Part 1, entitled ‘Assessments’, Anne Reboul (55–95) discusses James Pustejovsky’s model of the generative lexicon, concluding that it is more valuable for artificial than for natural cognition. Then, Carlos Inchaurralde (97–114) claims that connectionist models corroborate the idea of an integrated ‘lexicopedia’. In a similar vein, John R. Taylor (115–41) considers Ronald W. Langacker’s network model, which does not seek a distinction between the lexicon and encyclopedia, as more promising than Manfred Bierwisch’s two-level model.

Part 2, ‘Understanding understanding’, begins with Pierre Larivée’s (145–67) analysis of utterance interpretation which leads the author to conclude that experience-based knowledge and linguistic meaning constitute distinct but interacting levels of representation. Next is Keith Allan’s (169–217) study of quantity implicatures, which are said to reside in the lexicon, encyclopedia being perhaps the site of nonlexical implicatures. Finally, William Croft (219–56) argues for an encyclopedic approach to semantics in interpreting metaphors and metonymies.

In Part 3, ‘Words, words, words’, Richard Hudson and Jasper Holmes (259–90), adopting the framework of word grammar, offer a unified view of language as a knowledge network in which the lexicon and encyclopedia cannot be clearly distinguished. In contrast, Eva Born-Rauchenecker (291–316), in her study of Russian transitive action verbs, attempts to formulate a principled distinction between the two, necessary in lexicographic endeavors. This distinction is upheld, albeit in a different way, by M. Lynne Murphy (317–48), who investigates what speakers know about words as language items. Next, Heidi Harley and Rolf Noyer (349–74) show that distributed morphology has an advantage over government and binding models in that it replaces the lexicon with encyclopedia, allowing for a fuller analysis of nominalizations.

The framework of distributed morphology is also adopted by Rob Pensalfini (393–431) in his inquiry into a number of phenomena found in Jingulu, a language of Northern Australia. His contribution is preceded by Joseph Hilferty’s (377–92) suggestion that an interactionist view of the relationship between grammar, the lexicon, and encyclopedia is more adequate than modular conceptions of language. These two papers constitute Part 4, entitled ‘Grammar’.

Part 5, ‘Further afield’, starts with Susanne Feigenbaum’s (435–61) examination of the strategies adopted by students of a reading course, in whose performance world and linguistic knowledge interact. In the last contribution to the volume, Victor Raskin, Salvatore Attardo, and Donalee H. Attardo (463–86) discuss the nature of lexical knowledge in a lexical database called SMEARR.

A part from its other assets (author, subject, and language indices; rich bibliographical references; careful editorship; and elegant typesetting), the volume is an extremely valuable publication due to the wide range of issues addressed and (often conflicting) solutions proposed. To the interested reader, it is an up-to-date presentation of the state of the art in the lexicon-encyclopedia interface. Many of the points it raises may also become thought-provoking stimuli for further research.