Making sense out of meaning : an essay in lexical semantics / Walter Hirtle.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hirtle, W. H., author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Polysemy.

Semantics.

Discourse analysis.

Cognitive grammar.

Metaphor.

Psycholinguistics.

Physical Description:

viii, 254 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Montreal : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2013]

Summary:

In his exploration of word meaning, Walter Hirtle examines an important and controversial topic in lexical semantics: polysemy, the capacity of words to manifest a range of different meanings when employed in different contexts. Building on the work of French linguist Gustave Guillaume, Making Sense out of Meaning is a speaker-oriented study that describes how speakers form word meaning and not, as in other theories, how listeners interpret the meaning of what they hear. Hirtle develops a general model of the ways in which words and word meaning may be realized in discourse contexts and addresses such issues as the demarcation of polysemy and monosemy, metaphorical meaning, parts of speech, and the concept of conversion or zero derivation. Bringing together both lexical and grammatical components, Hirtle shows that distinct lexical senses can be observed and their relations can be understood by focusing on speakers' use of verbs and nouns. A methodical and thoughtful work, Making Sense out of Meaning situates its central question by recalling traditional views of language's relation to thought and argues for meaning as a valid object of scientific inquiry. Book jacket.

Contents:

I Situating the Question

1 Language as a Human Phenomenon 11

2 Linguists and the Tradition 24

3 Meaning: An Object of Scientific Enquiry? 33

II Making Words

4 Coming to Grips with Meaning 43

5 How Access "Got Verbed" 57

6 Wording 73

III Lexemes of Verbs

7 Monosemy and Polysemy 87

8 Discerning Different Senses of See 111

9 Grammatical (In)compatibility with Other Verbs 128

10 Do, Be, Have 139

11 Working Out the Right Sense 146

IV Lexemes of Substantives

12 Common and Proper 159

13 'Unbounded' and 'Bounded' 172

14 Metaphor 182

V The Grammatical Connection

15 Making Lexemes into Nouns 199

16 Space Words, Time Words, and Adverbs 214

VI Concluding Remarks.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Hirtle, W. H. (Walter Heal), 1927-, author. Making sense out of meaning.

ISBN:

9780773542051

0773542051

OCLC:

857325831