Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics (review)

This book contains selected papers first presented at the Workshop on Cognitive Approaches to Lexical Semantics during the 16th Scandinavian Linguistics Conference in Turku, Finland in November 1996. It is supplemented by a number of additional contributions that were specially solicited for this volume and are intended to offer new perspectives on cognitive lexical semantic research.

The volume opens with an introductory chapter, ‘New directions in cognitive lexical semantic research’ (1–28), in which the editors sketch the development of the field of cognitive lexical semantics and outline its core research areas in the last two decades: the internal structure of lexical categories (prototype structure and family resemblance), polysemy and its underlying, motivating principles such as metaphor and metonymy, and larger conceptual structures (e.g. frame semantics). They also consider the highly influential role of conceptual metaphor in cognitive linguistics and put forward some controversial and unresolved issues, which are subsequently addressed by the papers in this volume.

In ‘Meaning potentials and context: Some consequences for the analysis of variation in meaning’ (29–65), Jens Allwood proposes an alternative approach to the study of word meaning, introducing the concept of ‘meaning potentials’ and explaining how this can be applied to handle problems of meaning variation, especially in relation to homonymy and polysemy. Theo A. J. M. Janssen (‘Monosemy versus polysemy’, 93–122) suggests that polysemous and monosemous analyses of word meanings are not necessarily mutually exclusive but can in fact complement each other. He then proposes a cognitive-pragmatic approach based on an analysis of several types of possessive constructions. Other papers that address the polysemy vs. monosemy debate are ‘The Nawatl verb kīsa: A case study in polysemy’ (323–62) by David Tuggy and Jordan Zlatev’s ‘Polysemy or generality? Mu’ (447–94).

Stefan Grondelars and Dirk Geeraerts argue for a shift in perspectives within cognitive lexical semantics: they suggest an onomasiological reorientation, encompassing pragmatic and sociolinguistic variation in ‘Towards a pragmatic model of cognitive onomasiology’ (67–92). In ‘The grammaticalization of alltså and således: Two Swedish conjuncts revisited’ (123–62), Hanna Lehti-Eklund investigates the semantic development of these formerly synonymous Swedish conjuncts meaning ‘in such a way’ or ‘in such a manner’ up to their meanings in present day spoken and written Swedish. Her findings show that both words have changed significantly in meaning and function: their use as conjuncts is highly restricted and they occur more typically as metatextual and discourse markers in contemporary Swedish. In ‘Word meaning, sentence meaning, and syntactic meaning’ (163–209), Laura A. Michaelis challenges the view that syntactic structures merely instantiate meaningful sentences but do not convey meaning themselves. She argues that in conflict situations, construction meaning may even override word meaning. This is exemplified by case studies of argument-structure constructions, aspectual constructions, and sentence types that convey specific discourse functions.

Kurt Queller (‘Metonymic sense shift: Its origins in hearers’ abductive construal of usage in context’, 211–41) examines the hypothesis that sense shifts may not necessarily be caused by an underlying metonymic motivation and proposes a usage- and context-based analysis of semantic change, assuming that hearers may simply infer innovative senses of words on the basis of their discourse-contextual embeddedness. Similarly, Sally Rice (‘Growth of a lexical network: Nine English prepositions in acquisition’, 243–80) reports on a longitudinal study that investigates the acquisition of nine prepositions and their different usages by two American children on the basis of data retrieved from the CHILDES corpus. Her data suggest that the process in which the two children acquire the different usages of locative particles does not necessarily underlie cognitive mechanisms believed to be responsible for semantic extension, such as metaphor or metonymy.

Claude Vandeloise investigates the extent to which universality and relativity...