Problems with word meaning
Presented by: Laurie Bauer, School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, Victoria University of Wellington
How do we know what words mean?
Past approaches to lexical semantics see words as fitting into a network which serves to relate them to each other and to limit their meanings. My point of departure is that we know how words fit into these networks by knowing what they mean (rather than the other way round). In this paper I present practical and theoretical problems for understanding how words mean and suggest a solution.