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

—Chapter 18. Lexical Functions— 73
7) Indications on morphological peculiarities of L´ (special forms, missing forms—e.g., “| no
plural”, or “| no passive”, ...).
8) Indications on stylistic properties of L´ (informal, slang, literary, ...).
To sum up: In the general case, if the LU L´ appearing as an element of the value of an LF
differs from the free LU L´ in its GP or in some other details, it does not necessarily have a full-
fledged entry of its own but may be described by a subentry within the entry of its keyword L.
(L´ receives its own entry only if it appears with exactly the same properties in several lexical
entries as an element of the value of the same LF.)
5.2. Generalizing over the Values of Lexical Functions
In spite of the basically idiosyncratic character of LFs, in many cases a given LF f may
have the same values for quite a few different keywords: you take a BATH, a SHOWER, and a
REST; you are in DESPAIR, LOVE, and a RAGE; you follow the RULES, PRESCRIPTIONS, RECOM-
MENDATIONS, and INSTRUCTIONS. As is clear, the reason is mainly semantic proximity: seman-
tically related LUs tend to feature the same values for a given LF. This fact can be accounted for
by the Principle of lexical inheritance (Mel’čuk & Wanner 1996):
Principle of Lexical Inheritance
All lexicographic data systematically shared by a family of semantically related LUs should
be stored just once—under one LU of the corresponding vocable or under the generic LU
of the corresponding semantic field; these data are inherited by the LUs involved.
In the domain of LFs, this principle applies in two major ways. Namely, the elements of the
values of the LF f shared by several keyword LUs can be generalized by extracting them from in-
dividual keyword entries and storing them together just once—either on the keyword side (for a
group of LUs) or on the LF side (attaching them to the LF). Of course, in practice both ways can
be combined in different proportions. Each of these approaches to LF value generalization has, in
turn, two further versions, so that we have, all in all, four techniques for Lexical Inheritance. To
wit, the shared LF values can be grouped:
Generalizing on the keyword side
1. under a convenient LU (this can be the basic lexeme of the same vocable or a lexeme of a
different vocable); or
2. under the generic LU of the corresponding semantic field.
Generalizing on the LF side
3. under the LF itself; or