Cognitive Linguistics has given a major impetus to the study of semantics and the lexicon. The present volume brings together seventeen previously published papers that testify to the fruitfulness of Cognitive Linguistics for the study of lexical and semantic topics. Spanning the period from the late 1980s to recent years, the collection features a number of papers that may be considered classics within the field of cognitive linguistic lexicology.

The papers are grouped in thematic sections. The first section deals with prototypicality as a theoretical and practical model of semantic description. The second section discusses polysemy and criteria for distinguishing between meanings. The third section tackles questions of meaning description beyond the level of words, on the level of idioms and constructions. The following section casts the net even wider, dealing with the cultural aspects of meaning. Moving away from the theoretical and descriptive perspective towards applied concerns, the fifth section looks at lexicography from the point of view of Cognitive Linguistics. The final section has a metatheoretical orientation: it discusses the history and methodology of lexical semantics.

Each paper is preceded by a newly written introduction that situates the text against the period in which it was first published, but that also points to further developments, in the author's own research or in Cognitive Linguistics at large.

The variety of topics dealt with make this book an excellent introduction to the broad field of lexicological and lexical semantic research.

FROM THE CONTENTS

Preface

Publication sources

Section 1. Prototypicality and salience

1 Prospects and problems of prototype theory

2 Where does prototypicality come from?

3 The semantic structure of Dutch over

4 Salience phenomena in the lexicon. A typology

Section 2. Polysemy

5 Vagueness’s puzzles, polysemie’s vagaries

6 Classical definability and the monosemic bias

Section 3. Constructions and idioms

7 The semantic structure of the indirect object in Dutch

8 The interaction of metaphor and metonymy in composite expressions

Section 4. Meaning and culture

9 Looking back in anger. Cultural traditions and metaphorical patterns

10 Beer and semantics

11 Cultural models of linguistic standardization

12 Caught in a web of irony: Job and his embarassed God

Section 5. Lexicography

13 The lexicographical treatment of prototypical polysemy

14 The definitional practice of dictionaries and the cognitive semantic conception of polysemy

Section 6. Theory and method in lexical semantics

15 Cognitive grammar and the history of lexical semantics

16 The theoretical and descriptive development of lexical semantics

17 Idealist and empiricist tendencies in cognitive semantics

References

Index of names

Index of subjects

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