Contextually-Dependent Lexical Semantics

Cornelia Maria Verspoor

PhD
The University of Edinburgh
1997

 
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Introduction
  • Definitions and Assumptions
  • Sense variation
  • Chapter summaries
• Lexical Representation
  • Introduction
  • Jackendoff and syntactically-relevant semantics
    • Components of Jackendoff's Conceptual Semantics
      • Semantic Decomposition
      • A Semantic Ontology
      • Thematic role relations
      • Functions relating entities
    • Jackendoff and inferences
      • Thematic role relations
      • Functions relating entities
      • Selectional restrictions
    • Conclusions
  • Conceptual Structure and HPSG
    • Lexical Semantics in HPSG
      • Nouns in HPSG
      • Verbs in HPSG
      • Utility of the representation
    • Incorporation of Jackendoff's theory into HPSG
  • Davis' multiple-inheritance lexical semantics
    • Davis' relation types
    • Comparison with Jackendoff (1983, 1990)
      • Functions vs. Relations
      • States and Events
      • Extended relations
      • Polysemy
    • Necessary Extensions
      • Nominals
      • Preposition semantics
      • A situation index
      • Defaults
      • Summary
  • Verb semantics
    • Internal and External verb semantics
    • Formalisation of the representation within HPSG
    • An example of the representation
  • Nominal semantics
  • Conclusions
• Prepositional Phrases and Verb Semantics
  • Introduction
  • Adjuncts or Complements?
    • Syntactic Tests for Argument Structure
      • The ``do so'' Test
      • Iterability test
      • Relative Order
      • Complement-Internal Gaps
    • Semantic Tests for Argument Structure
      • Constancy of Semantic Contribution
      • Entailment Tests
    • Conclusions
  • Pseudo-Complements
    • Definition and Relation to adjuncts
    • Pseudo-complement semantics
      • The -dative pseudo-complement
      • The -dative pseudo-complement
    • Pseudo-complement lexical semantic compatibility
    • Conclusions
  • Adjuncts
    • Characteristics of adjuncts to be accounted for
      • Adjuncts have an unchanging semantic contribution
      • Restrictive, Operator, and Thematic adjuncts
      • Surface order vs. Semantic precedence
      • Redundancy constraints
      • Interspersal of adjuncts with complements (Mittelfeld phenomena)
    • The standard HPSG approach
    • A ``Semantic Obliqueness'' hierarchy
    • The lexical rule approach
    • Conclusions
  • Semantic Integration
    • Adjunct semantics
    • The op-adjuncts feature
    • Lexical rules
    • Dative alternation
  • Conclusions
• Manner of Motion Verbs and Resultatives
  • Introduction
  • Levin and Rappaport Hovav (1995)
    • The account
    • Problems with the Levin and Rappaport Hovav analysis
      • Auxiliary Selection
      • Resultative Constructions
      • Causative Alternation
      • Conclusions
  • Semantic properties
    • The meaning of the constructions
    • Argument Structure
    • Idiosyncrasy of Resultatives
    • Conclusions
  • Wechsler
    • Wechsler's approach
    • Discussion of the approach
      • The problem of the `canonical end state'
      • The problem of the optional TELOS feature
      • The problem of idiosyncrasy
      • Semantics
    • Conclusions
  • Construction Grammar
  • Criteria which the solution must satisfy
    • What licenses the constructions?
    • Why are only two classes of unergative verbs different from all the others?
    • Semantics of the constructions
    • Semantic restrictedness
  • The proposal
    • Resultatives
      • Formalisation in HPSG
      • Ruling out ungrammatical instances
    • The other constructions
      • Manner of Motion verbs
      • Unaccusatives
      • Verbs of Sound Emission
      • Conclusions
    • Causativisation revisited
    • Idiosyncrasy and Pragmatics
  • Conclusions
• Logical Metonymy
  • Introduction
  • Analysis of the meaning variation
  • The range of the data
    • Word knowledge represented in Qualia Structure
    • Problematic data
  • An Analysis
    • Proposed constraints on Logical Metonymy
      • Godard & Jayez (1993)
      • Pustejovsky & Bouillon
    • Problematic data remaining
  • An Alternative
    • {eventive verb + VP}
    • {eventive verb + NP} and Corpus-supported conventions
      • The Analysis: Methodology and Assumptions
      • The Data
      • Conclusions about Logical Metonymy
    • The Representation
    • Logical Metonymy and Pragmatics
      • The Analysis
      • Infeasibility of a purely pragmatic explanation
      • Choice of eventive structure
  • Conclusions
• Computational Issues
  • Introduction
  • What we want from a Computational Lexicon
  • Polysemy
    • Homonymy vs. Polysemy
      • Lyons
      • Cruse
      • Kilgarriff
    • Perspectives on the representation of polysemy
      • Multiple Lexical Entries
      • Regular Polysemy
      • Underspecified Representations
  • Lexical Disambiguation
  • Acquisition of the Lexicon
    • Machine Readable Dictionaries
    • Corpus-based Acquisition
    • Prospects for automatic lexicon acquisition
  • Linguistic analysis plus Conventionality
• Conclusions
  • Summary
  • Future Research
• References