Chapter 18 Lexical Functions: Description of Lexical Relations in a ...

Chapter 18
Lexical Functions:
—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 2
Description of Lexical Relations in a Lexicon
Žolkovskij & Mel´čuk 1966, 1967, Mel´čuk 1974: 78ff, Mel’čuk 1982, 1988a: 61ff, 1996,
[78], [79: 55-66], [35], Alonso Ramos 1993, Polguère 2000, Steinlin et al. 2004.
To speak of Lexical Functions, one needs first the notion of lexical correlates and
those of their two major types: 1) semantic derivations and 2) collocates; I begin
with sketching these three notions. Based on them, Lexical Functions are introduced and studied
in detail. Accordingly, Chapter 18 is organized in seven sections:
1. Lexical Correlates
2. The Notion of Lexical Function
3. Review of Simple Standard Lexical Functions
4. Other types of Lexical Functions
5. Presentation of the Values of Lexical Functions in an ECD
6. Linguistic Nature of Lexical Functions
7. Exhaustiveness of the Simple Standard Lexical Functions Inventory
1 Lexical Correlates of a Lexical Unit
1.1 Introductory Remarks
In the process of text production, the Speaker is faced at the outset with the problem of lexical
choices: in order to go from a given Sem(antic) R(epresentation) [= SemR] to a corresponding
D(eep-)Synt(actic) R(epresentation) [= DSyntR] of the sentence he intends to utter, the Speaker
has to select lexical units [= LUs]—lexemes and phrasemes (that is, words and idioms)—that he
will use to build his sentence. In this perspective, two types of LUs have to be distinguished.
• The LUs of the first type constitute the huge majority of the LUs of any language L. They
could be somewhat loosely called free LUs. In text production a free LU L is selected by the
Speaker strictly according to its meaning, and it is looked for—in the Speaker’s lexical stock—
independently of other lexical choices, previously made or to be made. Thus, if the Speaker needs
to refer to a (four-wheel motor vehicle designed for transport of a few people ...) he says CAR.
These are semantically-driven free lexical choices.