Semantic organization

DOWNLOAD REFERAT

Preview referat: Semantic organization

In generative grammar, the lexicon has a special status and it refers to the component containing all the information about the structural properties of the lexical items in a language. Thus, a lexical entry includes phonological, semantic and syntactic information. Recent syntactic theories ascribe a more significant role to the lexicon, some claming that much of the syntax is projected from the lexicon (Bresnan, 1982; Chomsky, 1981). In other words, the semantic organization of the lexicon can predict and explain at least some regularities.

According to Dirven (1985) the lexicon has an internally structured character and is only theoretically finite. It contains a number of rules for creating new lexical items or for extending the meaning of given lexical items. New lexical items are formed by the rules of compounding, derivation, borrowing, the creation of neologisms, acronyms. The meaning of given lexical items can be extended by processes such as the metaphor and the metonymy.

Starting with 1990's there has been a surge of interest in the lexicon. The demand for a fuller and more adequate understanding of lexical meaning required by developments in computational linguistics, artificial intelligence and cognitive science has stimulated a refocused interest in linguistics, psychology and philosophy.
The basic problem that distinguishes the different views of the lexicon relates to the nature of the information in the lexicon.

Murphy () argues that knowledge about words (i.e. lexical knowledge) does not always overlap with knowledge about the things words denote (conceptual knowledge). The lexicon contains information that is necessary for linguistic competence, i.e. our capacity to produce grammatical and interpretable sentences.aThe fact that we can fail to make the association between things that we recognize and words that we know for those things indicates that our means of storing and/or accessing the name of that thing is the same of our means of storing and/or accessing other knowledge about the thing. « mai multe referate din Engleza