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Roots, concepts, and word structure: on the atoms of lexical semantics
Author(s)
Date Issued
2014-01
Date Available
2014-05-22T14:02:16Z
Abstract
This chapter examines the relation between the structure of words as linguistic objects and their conceptual content. It
addresses two questions: what are the primitives of lexical semantic interpretation, and how they are expressed in the
grammatical and morphological representation of a lexical item. The answer involves a characterization of roots as
theoretical objects, followed by an argument to the effect that it is not roots, but larger structures of variable size which
relate to lexical concepts. An in-depth discussion of nouns leads to the claim that the conceptual content of a lexical
item does not reflect its grammatical structure, because a concept is not the meaning of a linguistically defined unit, but
a language-external cognitive content, globally associated with the lexical word as a whole.
Type of Material
Book Chapter
Publisher
John Benjamins
Copyright (Published Version)
201, Jon Benjamins
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
Part of
Franz Rainer, Francesco Gardani, Hans Christian Luschützky and Wolfgang U. Dressler (eds.). Morphology and Meaning : Selected papers from the 15th International Morphology Meeting, Vienna, February 2012
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
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