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

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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.
—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 3 • The LUs of the second type are different in this respect. The selection of such an LU is contingent upon other lexical choices—such that its own meaning can be more or less disregarded in the search and selection process. These are restricted LUs. The Speaker looks for a restricted LU (in his lexical stock) based on some other LUs he has already chosen. These lexically-driven restricted lexical choices are carried out along the two major linguistic axes: paradigmatic and syntagmatic. On the one hand, the Speaker, while speaking of cars, may need to find the name for a (small business which sells gas and oil for automobiles ...) [= GAS STATION] or for a (little plaque which is designed to be fixed on a vehicle and on which the vehicle’s registration number is printed) [= LICENSE PLATE]; this is a paradigmatic choice, and the corresponding search is done starting with CAR, AUTOMOBILE or VEHICLE, which must have pointers to GAS STATION and LICENSE PLATE. On the other hand, the Speaker may need to find the name for an event or a property involving a car, e.g., when (the wheels of a car lose their grip on the road, so that the car slides sideways) [= The car SKIDS] or to say that his (car uses up too much gasoline) [= This car is a GAS-GUZZLER]; this is a syntagmatic choice, the search for the necessary LU also being conducted under the control of the LU CAR. Underlying both types of lexical choices are relations that link LUs in a lexicon: in both cases what the Speaker needs are lexical correlates of the starting LU he has in mind. Lexical Functions [= LFs], the object of this chapter, are a set of formal tools designed to describe, in a systematic and compact way, all types of genuine lexical relations 1 that hold between LUs of any language. This amounts to specifying, for any given LU, all the lexical correlates that might be needed in the process of speaking. LFs are also extremely convenient for paraphrasing on the DSynt-level—a topic that is covered in Part IV, Chapter 14, p. 00ff. Lexical Functions were first introduced in 1965 (Žolkovskij & Mel´čuk 1965, 1966 and 1967). 2 They are aimed at describing ‘in parallel’ both of the two above-mentioned types of lexical correlates, that is, the paradigmatic and the syntagmatic choices of LUs which depend on previously made lexical choices. These types have mostly been considered separately in linguistics, but turn out to be of the same logical nature: both are readily amenable to a description via the concept of function in the mathematical sense. Thus, for an LU L, the LFs cover both types of lexical correlates: 1) paradigmatic lexical correlates, or semantic derivations of L; and 2) syntagmatic lexical correlates of L, or collocates of L, which form collocations with L.
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—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions—
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NB: CausFin(P) means—by definitio
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6.1.1 Lexical Functions Are Not Sem
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Bibliographic Remarks —Chapter 18
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