Semantic Relations and the Lexicon: Antonymy, Synonymy and other Paradigms

Description

Semantic Relations and the Lexicon explores the many paradigmatic semantic relations between words, such as synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy, and their relevance to the mental organization of our vocabularies. Drawing on a century's research in linguistics, psychology, philosophy, anthropology and computer science, M. Lynne Murphy proposes a new, pragmatic approach to these relations. Whereas traditional approaches have claimed that paradigmatic relations are part of our lexical knowledge, Dr Murphy argues that they constitute metalinguistic knowledge, which can be derived through a single relational principle, and may also be stored as part of our extra-lexical, conceptual representations of a word. Part I shows how this approach can account for the properties of lexical relations in ways that traditional approaches cannot, and Part II examines particular relations in detail. This book will serve as an informative handbook for all linguists and cognitive scientists interested in the mental representation of vocabulary.

M. Lynne Murphy is Lecturer in Linguistics at the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences, University of Sussex

From the hardback review: 'A new book on semantic relations? Is there anything left to be said on this topic? Lynne Murphy gives a positive answer to these questions. The novelty of her approach comes from the interdisciplinary perspective she adopts.' Studies in Informatics and Control From the hardback review: 'Murphy's book sheds light on the important challenges and interesting insights which the matter of SR's are still able to offer, even if such relations have been subject of interest for centuries.' The Linguist List From the hardback review: 'The book is in many ways an impressive achievement: well written and cogently argued, it demonstrates sharp analytical skills, methodological awareness and stringency, and a depth of scholarship of the highest international standard. A particularly commendable feature of the study is the way the author manages to attend to detail without losing sight of the big picture ... there can be little doubt that Semantic relations and the lexicon makes a very significant contribution to current thinking about lexical semantics, and that future scholarship will find the book difficult to ignore. It is hereby warmly recommended.' Acta Lingvistica Hafniensia From the hardback review: '... there can be little doubt that Semantic Relations and the Lexicon makes a very significant contribution to current thinking about lexical semantics, and that future scholarship will find the book difficult to ignore. It is hereby warmly recommended.' International Journal of Linguistics