Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

International Conference on Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology

EUROPHRAS 2017: Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology pp 54–68Cite as

Mechanisms of Meaning

  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 10596))

Abstract

Word meaning is at best a very vague phenomenon – some lexicographers, including the present writer, have gone so far as to claim that word meanings do not exist. So how is it possible that people can achieve precision in the meaning of their utterances? And how is it possible to use language creatively, to talk about new concepts or to talk about old concepts in new ways? The answer is surprising; it calls into question most previous work in computational linguistics on the so-called ‘word sense disambiguation problem’, which, I shall argue, is still unresolved because it is based on unsound theoretical assumptions. If word senses do not exist, they surely cannot be disambiguated (or processed in any other way). The hypothesis to be explored in this paper is that meanings are associated with the phraseological patterns associated with each word in normal usage, rather than with words themselves.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   74.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   95.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

References

  • Berners-Lee, T., Hendler, J., Lassila, O.: The Semantic Web. Scientific American (2001)

    Google Scholar 

  • Bowdle, B., Gentner D.: The career of metaphor. Psychol. Rev. 112(1) (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  • Deignan, A.: Metaphor and Corpus Linguistics. John Benjamins Publishing, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (2005)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Firth, J.R.: Personality and language in society. Sociological Review 62. Papers in Linguistics, pp. 1934–1951. Oxford University Press, London (1957)

    Google Scholar 

  • Halliday, M.: Categories of the theory of grammar. Word 17(3) (1961)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanks, P.: Do word meanings exist? Comput. Humanit. 34, 205–215 (2000)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Hanks, P.: Corpus pattern analysis. In: Euralex Proceedings, Université de Bretagne-Sud, Lorient, France (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanks, P.: How people use words to make meanings: semantic types meet valencies. In: Boulton, A., Thomas, J. (eds.) Input, Process and Product: Developments in Teaching and Language Corpora. Masaryk University Press, Brno, CZ (2012)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanks, P.: Lexical Analysis: Norms and Exploitations. MIT Press, Cambridge (2013)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hanks, P., Pustejovsky, J.: A pattern dictionary for natural language processing. Revue française de linguistique appliquée 10(2), 335–368 (2005)

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoey, M.: Lexical Priming. Routledge, Abingdon (2005)

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hunston, S., Francis, G., Manning, E.: Collins Cobuild Grammar Patterns, vol. 1: Verbs; vol. 2: Nouns and adjectives, HarperCollins, London/Glasgow (1996; 1998)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kilgarriff, A.: I don’t believe in word senses. Comput. Humanit. 31, 91–113 (1997)

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kilgarriff, A., Rychlý, P., Smrž, P., Tugwell, D.: The sketch engine. In: Williams, G., Vessier, S. (eds.) Proceedings of the 11th Euralex International Congress, Université de Bretagne sud, Lorient (2004)

    Google Scholar 

  • Kövesces, Z.: Happiness: a definitional effort. Metaphor Symbolic Act. 6(1) (1991)

    Google Scholar 

  • Putnam, H.: The meaning of meaning and is semantics possible? In: Putnam, H.: Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers. Cambridge University Press (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  • Rosch, E.: Cognitive representations of semantic categories. J. Exp. Psychol. 104(3) (1975)

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinclair, J.: Beginning the study of lexis. In: Bazell, C.E., Catford, J.C., Halliday, M.A.K., Robins, R.H. (eds.) In Memory of J.R. Firth, Longman, London (1966)

    Google Scholar 

  • Sinclair, J.: The lexical item. In: Weigand, E. (ed.) Contrastive Lexical Semantics. John Benjamins, Amsterdam/Philadelphia (1998)

    Google Scholar 

  • Tesnière, L.: Eléments de Syntaxe Structurale. Klincksieck, Paris (1959)

    Google Scholar 

  • Whorf, B.L.: Language, Thought, and Reality. MIT Press, Cambridge (1940)

    Google Scholar 

  • Wilks, Y.: The Semantic Web: The apotheosis of annotation - but what are its semantics? Inst. Electr. Electron. Eng. (2008)

    Google Scholar 

  • Young, D.J.: The Structure of English Clauses. Routledge, Abingdon (1980)

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, Stafford Street, Wolverhampton, WV1 1LY, UK

    Patrick Hanks

Authors
  1. Patrick Hanks
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Patrick Hanks .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom

    Ruslan Mitkov

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2017 Springer International Publishing AG

About this paper

Cite this paper

Hanks, P. (2017). Mechanisms of Meaning. In: Mitkov, R. (eds) Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology. EUROPHRAS 2017. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10596. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69805-2_5

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69805-2_5

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69804-5

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69805-2

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation