Seeing clearly: Frame Semantic, Psycholinguistic, and Cross ...

CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION 13
L.U. Lexical Unit
L. U.
Lexical form Semantics Syntax
Word Forms
Sem. Reg.
Lexeme 1
Uses
context_token_context context_token_context
context_token_context
Sem.Reg.
Syn. Patterns
Lexeme 2
L. U. L.U. L. U. L.U.
Semantic Spectrum
Groupings
Generalizations (Schematicization)
Semantic Regularities
Metaphorical Leaps
Metaphorical
Extension
Figure 1.1: Lexical Units and Lexemes
Lexeme 3
word in a given context context is not merely the result of the constraining of the meaning
by the context, but the activation of a sense already associated with the word. More
precisely, anentire lexical form may may be associated with more than one lexical unit (of
the same part of speech), as in bat/bats `animal' vs. `baseball bat', or a single ambiguous
word form may be associated with more than one lexical unit as in saw `saber saw' vs.
`viewed'. (Both of these are examples of homonymy). Tests for ambiguity will be discussed
below in Section 1.3.
Generality refers to the phenomenon of a lexical unit having a range of uses
without the sort of quantal structure that would indicate ambiguity. In this case, we say
that the context of use modulates the sense of the unit, rather than selecting a sense
(and thus, a lexical unit) from among those associated with the form. In other words,
the variation across the uses of a general sense is continuous, and di erences between uses
are not speci ed as part of lexical semantic structure at any level; generality corresponds
roughly to what Langacker calls schematicity. A standard example is kick, which speci es
thatafootisinvolved, but says nothing about which foot of the kicker is involved. For
human agents, this means that, rather than saying that there is ambiguity between two