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8 Word Meaning
key concepts
Dictionary entries
Sense relations
Models of word meaning
Mental dictionaries
i n t ro d u c t i o n
In this chapter we discuss word meaning. While it’s uncontroversial that
words mean, it is far from clear how they mean, or indeed what meaning is.
Because dictionaries are so familiar, we begin our discussion from the point
of view of dictionary entries, which are designed primarily to describe the
meanings of words, though they do much else besides. We discuss two ap-
proaches to modeling word meaning, and then move to a discussion of the
meanings of words as they might be stored in human minds and of the ways
in which book and mental dictionaries are alike and different.
We would be surprised if anyone reading this book had never consulted
a dictionary; however, our experience over several decades of teaching about
language is that very few people read the introductions (front matter) of dic-
tionaries they may have had for many years. Indeed, our experience strongly
suggests that most people believe in the myth of “ The Dictionary,” a unique,
authoritative, and accurate source of information on words, their spellings,
meanings, and histories, of which actual dictionaries are merely longer or
shorter versions.
Everyone, especially teachers, should be aware that dictionaries are not
all cut from the same cloth. Rather, they differ in substantial ways, which
their users ignore at the cost of misinterpreting what they read. The goals of
the exercise just below are to raise your awareness of the differences among
dictionaries, to show you that it is essential to adopt as critical a stance
toward dictionaries as you would toward any other commercial product,
and to encourage you to examine dictionaries carefully as you buy them for
yourselves, have them bought for your schools, or recommend them to your
students.
More generally, teachers and students should have some appreciation of
the complexity of issues regarding linguistic meaning, a topic that has chal-
lenged western thinking for over two and a half millennia. We have included
several items in our References and Resources to this chapter that we hope
will help develop that appreciation. The chapter will give you a basic vocab-
ulary for use in conceptualizing and discussing meaning, as well as concepts
Delahunty and Garvey
to augment our discussion of morphology and parts of speech.
d i c t i o n a ry e n t r i e s
Dictionaries are probably the sources of information on words you are
most familiar with, so we begin our discussion of words by exploring the
information dictionaries provide and the ways in which they present it.
Exercise
- Just to see how much you may have been taking for granted, and
how much of that was right and how much was mistaken, write a 6-
page critical review comparing/contrasting two reasonably substantial
dictionaries (i.e., compact, collegiate or larger; pocket dictionaries are
too small) suitable for your purposes, e.g., for your own personal or
professional uses or to recommend to the kinds of students you may
teach. We think you will learn a lot about dictionaries by comparing/
contrasting a learner’s dictionary with one for native English speak-
ers. Make sure to give their full names, editions, publishers, dates of
publication, and sizes. Indicate the size of the dictionaries by number
of pages or entries. Your instructor should approve your choice of dic-
tionaries before you begin. As this is to be a critical review, you should
clearly articulate for yourself and your readers the criteria you use to
evaluate the dictionaries.
Compare/contrast their front matters (i.e., everything from the
front cover to the beginning of the alphabetical listing of words) and
their back matters (i.e., everything from the end of the alphabetical
listings to the inside back cover). Pay particular attention to:
a. the dictionaries’ range of contents (e.g., illustrations, proper
names, maps, etc.);
b. the information included in the entries (e.g., pronunciation
[what systems are used to describe it, e.g., IPA or some other
system?], syllabication [what is meant by this in the dictionar-
ies?], etymology, part(s) and subcategories of speech [what range
of these is used in the dictionaries?], definitions, etc.);
c. the ways in which definitions are organized (e.g., earlier to later,
most general to most particular, most frequent to least, etc.);
d. the ways in which your dictionaries deal with expressions related
to the head word, including derivationally related forms, com-
pounds, phrases, idioms, homographs, etc.;
e. the ways in which your dictionaries deal with controversial usage
Delahunty and Garvey
er Collins Beginners ESL Dictionary /Collins CoBuild New Student’s Diction-
ary , Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (also available online),
and the American Heritage Dictionary for Learners of English. Many learner’s
dictionaries provide simplified definitions, often by using a limited “defin-
ing vocabulary” of about 2,000 of the most frequently used English words.
They also typically provide considerably more grammatical information
and examples of the uses of the words than dictionaries prepared for native
speakers. For example, in addition to the grammatical information provided
in its entries, the HarperCollins Beginner’s ESL Dictionary provides a very
useful 220 page synoptic “English grammar guide.” Bilingual dictionaries
provide definitions in one language for words in another.
To make our discussion concrete and specific we will make use of the fol-
lowing entry from The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
(AHD) (Fourth Edition).
jeal
ous (jĕl @s) adj. 1 Fearful or wary of being supplanted; apprehen-
sive of losing affection or position. 2a Resentful or bitter in rivalry;
envious: jealous of the success of others. b Inclined to suspect rivalry. 3
Having to do with or arising from feelings of envy, apprehension, or
bitterness: jealous thoughts. 4 Vigilant in guarding something: We are
jealous of our good name. 5 Intolerant of disloyalty or infidelity; auto-
cratic: a jealous God. [Middle English jelous , from Old French gelos ,
jealous, zealous, from Vulgar Latin * zēlōsus , from Late Latin zēlus , zeal.
See zeal]— jeal ous
ly adv. —jeal ous
ness n.
Dictionaries differ in the categories of information they include in their
entries and in the ways in which they organize that information. Editors try
to chose the most readable presentation for each entry. But practices vary,
and teachers should be aware of the variations and choose appropriate dic-
tionaries for themselves and their students.
Entry and entry-word
The entire paragraph quoted above is called an entry ; the first (bolded)
word of the entry is its head- or entry-word. Ordinary dictionaries facili-
tate finding information about the headwords by arranging them alpha-
betically.
Word Meaning
Exercise
What advantages and disadvantages might come from arranging the
entries of a dictionary alphabetically?
A typical native speaker dictionary provides substantial information in
each entry. In the entry above, the conventional spelling is given by the
entry word; if there had been another well-accepted spelling, it would have
been included after the entry word. The spelling includes syllabication in-
formation, in this dictionary by means of a raised dot in the entry word.
Syllabication in the entry word tells writers where they may hyphenate the
word at the end of a line of type; it is only indirectly related to pronuncia-
tion and is becoming irrelevant as we rely on the justification programs in
our word processors to space letters for us.
Pronunciation
The pronunciation of the word is given in parentheses after the headword.
AHD uses a mix of ordinary English letters, letters with diacritics, joined
letters ( ligatures ), and one letter, @ , from the International Phonetic Al-
phabet (IPA). The sound value of each letter in the pronunciation guide is
indicated by reference to an English word. This kind of system works if you
know how to pronounce the reference words as the lexicographers expect,
but if you don’t know how that word is pronounced, or if you pronounce it
in an unusual way (for example, according to a non-standard dialect), then
the dictionary’s pronunciation guide may be quite misleading. AHD, like
many dictionaries, repeats the list of reference words on each second page.
Syllabication (or syllabification ) in the pronunciation section sepa-
rates the word into its component spoken syllables and typically also in-
dicates stress. AHD inserts a hyphen or stress mark between each syllable
in the pronunciation and marks the syllable with the main stress by a fol-
lowing . For example, the most usual pronunciation of Mongolia is given
as (mŏng-gō - lē-@,.. .).
Learners’ dictionaries typically use IPA symbols to indicate pronuncia-
tion. These symbols have fixed sound values, independent of anyone’s native
language, dialect, or idiosyncrasies, so they avoid some of the problems as-
sociated with native speaker dictionary pronunciation guides. However, if,
like most American students, you don’t know the sound values of the IPA
symbols, they are quite unhelpful. It is important to understand your dic-
tionary’s way of indicating pronunciation, and perhaps to learn a relevant
set of the IPA symbols.
Word Meaning
Dictionary practices are not always consistent. While AHD lists retalia-
tion , retaliative , retaliatory , and retaliator as run-ons at the end of the entry
for retaliate , it gives retrench and retrenchment separate entries, even though
the meanings of the latter are readily derivable from those of the former.
Check your dictionary for its policies.
Etymology/word history
After the definitions of the word, AHD provides a brief sketch of the history
or etymology (not entomology ) of the word. In this case, modern English
jealousy is descended from Middle English jelous , which was borrowed from
the Old French word gelos , which in turn came from Vulgar (i.e., ordinary
spoken) Latin * zēlōsus (* indicates that the form does not occur in any man-
uscript but has been reconstructed according to generally accepted linguis-
tic principles of language change), which descended from Late Latin zēlus.
(Many dictionaries abbreviate the names of languages and historical stages
of languages; check your dictionary’s list of abbreviations for expressions
like ML and ME.) AHD is unusually helpful in providing for many words
a paragraph-length Word History separate from the etymological sketch
within the entry.
Typically, learners’ dictionaries do not include etymological information,
though some language teachers believe that such information can be useful.
Usage
Usage is the study of the ways in which expressions of a language are used
by the speakers of that language, especially in formal speaking and writing.
Linguists view usage descriptively, that is, they study how expressions are ac-
tually used. Others adopt a prescriptive approach to usage, that is, they seek
to impose rules of correctness based on criteria other than the practices of
the users of the language. English dictionary users expect guidance on how
expressions are (or should be) used, especially when usages are controversial.
And indeed, many dictionary editors see it as their duty to provide authori-
tative advice on the usage of the headwords or of particular senses. For many
words whose usage is controversial, AHD provides a very useful, critical,
paragraph-length Usage Note , based on comments by its usage panel leav-
ened by the linguistic expertise of its Usage Consultant, Geoffrey Nunberg.
Other dictionaries use other devices to provide usage information. Typ-
ical is Webster’s New World Dictionary’s use of short Usage Labels. For
example, WNWD attaches the rubric [Now Rare] to its version of AHD’s
sense 5 of jealous. As dictionaries differ on whether they include usage ad-
vice as such, as well as on the number of usage labels and their meanings,
Delahunty and Garvey
their readers are best advised to read their front matters.
Some dictionaries embed usage information as though it were grammatical
information. A dictionary that ignores or treats a controversial usage issue as a
straightforward grammatical one misinforms its readers. For example, CIDE
says that unique is grammatically [ not gradable ], “being the only existing one
of its type.. .” According to this grammatical categorization, expressions such
as almost unique and very unique should be ungrammatical, though they are
widely used by native English speakers, including highly educated ones. This
puts the grammatical horse before the usage cart. Languages change, and one
way in which they change is by extending the range of ways in which words
may be used, for instance by broadening the scope of a non-gradable adjective
by allowing it to be modified. Unique is only a non-gradable adjective if speak-
ers of English treat it consistently that way. But they don’t, and no dictionary
can put that genie back in its bottle. What CIDE ought to have done was alert
its users to the fact that under some circumstances, some people will object
to modified unique. What it actually does, somewhat contradictorily, is add
“more generally, unusual or special in some way.” Note that unusual and spe-
cial are gradable adjectives. It is best to read the front matter to find out what
your lexicographers have been up to, though they are not always consistent.
You might compare the CIDE entry for unique with that in AHD, especially
its Usage Note for that word.
Exercise
Check your dictionary for how it deals with usage issues, and then
check unique, hopefully, infer, irregardless. Compare your dictionary’s
approach with the AHD’s Usage Notes on each of these; you might also
consult a usage dictionary such as the Harper Dictionary of Contem-
porary Usage (Morris and Morris 1985) to see what it says about these
words.
Dictionaries tend to lump several different linguistic categories together un-
der Usage Labels. WNWD usage labels include a word’s frequency of use
(archaic, obsolete, rare), its level of formality (colloquial, slang), its field
(poetic), and its region (dialect, British, Canadian).
Lexical fields
Words may have different (though related) meanings in different fields ; that
is, in different topics, disciplines, work and play domains, and the like. For
Delahunty and Garvey
a
lum
na... n., pl. -nae
a
lum
nus... n., pl. -ni (WNWD p. 41)
ser
aph n., pl. - aphs , - aphim (WNWD p. 1299)
AHD lists verb inflections in the following order: past tense (-ed form),
past participle (-en form), present participle (-ing form), and third person,
singular, present tense (-s form). Where individual inflected forms would
occur at some distance from the main entry in the alphabetical listing, they
may be cross referenced to it, as in WNWD:
sang... alt. pt. of sing (WNWD p. 1261)
sing... sang or now rarely sung , sung , singing (WNWD p. 1329)
sung... pp. & rare pt. of sing (WNWD p. 1427)
Senses
Senses are the definitions associated with the entry word. In AHD, they fol-
low the part of speech label. In WNWD, they follow the etymology. Defini-
tions are the lexicographers’ attempts to represent the meanings associated
with the head word. These are typically given in words, though there are pic-
torial dictionaries for children and many dictionaries include illustrations of
various sorts. The definitions given for a word in one dictionary are likely to
be very similar to the definitions given for that word in other dictionaries.
This is because modern English dictionaries are representatives of a lexi-
cographical tradition that is many centuries old; it is also because crafting
definitions within the conventions imposed by that tradition is constraining
and difficult, and because lexicographers look to see how their competitors
have crafted their definitions. We will look at some of the devices lexicogra-
phers use to craft definitions below.
If every form were associated with only a single meaning, and if every dif-
ferent meaning were associated with only a single form, then the lexicogra-
pher’s task would be considerably simplified, although dictionaries might be
rather larger than they are now. However, as our examples have shown (and
as a quick flick through a dictionary will confirm), many, if not most, entry
words are associated with multiple meanings. Given that, lexicographers
have to decide on the best strategy to represent the form-meaning connec-
tion. Should there be one entry with lots of senses? Or should there be mul-
tiple entries whose headwords are spelled identically but whose meanings
differ?
Lexicographers have developed strategies for dealing with such situa-
tions. Generally, if the meanings associated with a single spelling are his-
Word Meaning
torically descended from the same earlier form, and are clearly closely
related to each other, then they will be grouped under a single headword.
Such a headword is polysemous. Morphology is presented as a polysemous
word in AHD, WNWD, and WNTC, though not in CIDE.
Once dictionaries allow polysemous entries, the editors have to decide on
how to order the senses in an entry. Webster’s groups them so that the most
similar are presented together under the same number, separated if neces-
sary by letters. As most words have more than a single meaning, most entries
will be organized in this way.
read
1
... 1 a ) to get the meaning of (something written, printed, em-
bossed, etc.) by using the eyes, or for Braille, the finger tips, to interpret
its characters or signs b ) clipped form of proofread (WNWD p. 1181)
par
a
site... 1 a person, as in ancient Greece, who flattered and amused
his host in return for free meals 2 a person who lives at the expense of
another or others without making any useful contribution or return;
hanger-on 3 Biol. a plant or animal that lives on or in an organism of
another species from which it derives sustenance or protection without
benefiting the host and usually doing harm. (WNWD p.1031)
Dictionaries differ in the principles they use to order the senses in an
entry. WNWD uses a mix of historical and logical ordering:
The senses of an entry have, wherever possible, been arranged in seman-
tic order from the etymology to the most recent sense so that there is a
logical, progressive flow showing the development of the word and the
relationship of its senses to one another. (p. xii)
This principle is clearly evidenced by the entry for parasite above. The first
sense is the original and the others derive from that both logically and his-
torically.
AHD orders senses “with the central and often the most commonly
sought meaning first.”
CIDE gives each separate set of closely related senses its own entry and
labels each entry with a guide word chosen to help the user home in on the
entry s/he wants:
oc
cu
py... fill
oc
cu
py... take control (CIDE p. 973)
Word Meaning
for explaining other words (CIDE p. 1702).
Exercise
Discuss the defining vocabularies of at least two other learners’ dictionar-
ies.
Native speaker dictionaries assume that their users have a much larger
vocabulary, although the fact that modern dictionaries typically include
even the most basic words means that they must define these words in less
basic terms. For example:
hole 1 a hollow or hollowed-out place; cavity; specif., a ) an excava-
tion or pit... (WNWD p. 668)
If possible, a single word equivalent, that is, a synonym , may be used:
to boot besides (WNWD p. 163)
apteryx same as kiwi (WNWD p. 69)
agree 1. to consent or accede (WNWD p. 27)
Synonymy is usually defined as words that have the same meaning, though
it is very unlikely that any two words will have exactly the same meaning. In
her lively and lucid study Words in the Mind , Jean Aitchison (2003, 3
rd ed.)
observes that we tend to pursue something desirable (e.g., knowledge, a career)
but chase things such as runaway horses (p. 94). For some speakers, chasing
evokes the notion of speed, while pursuing does not necessarily do so. Syn-
onyms thus have to be thought of as two “circles of meaning” that overlap to
a greater or lesser extent.
Partial synonymy is much more common than full synonymy. Typically,
synonyms are distinguished by subtle meaning differences that challenge
lexicographers, linguists, and second language learners, though generally
not native speakers. Usage labels may help to distinguish among partial syn-
onyms: words may differ in style ( to stick to something is neutral, to cleave to
something is poetic), or in the places where they are typically used ( elevator is
US usage, lift is British).
Delahunty and Garvey
Exercise
The following sets of words are partial synonyms. Identify how they
are similar and how they differ: car-automobile; silver-argent; crux-
cross; disconcert-rattle; truck-lorry; soda-pop-soft drink; cat-kitty;
make-fabricate; facile-skillful; irritate-annoy-aggravate; woodchuck-
groundhog; buy-purchase. Putting the words in sentences will help you
distinguish among them. So will consulting a good dictionary.
WNWD and WNTC provide lists of synonyms distinguished by com-
ments after the main body of the entry. After the synonyms, they provide
lists of antonyms. Antonyms are traditionally defined as words with op-
posite meanings, such as up and down , good and bad , and the like, though
they must share some important aspect of their meanings. For instance, large
and small share the notion of size. However, apple and eraser are not antonyms
because they share little, if any, meaning aside from “physical object.” We
distinguish several types of antonym (Cruse, 1986, 2001).
Complementary antonyms are pairs of words such that if one word ap-
plies the other cannot, for example, alive and dead. If a person is alive, he
or she cannot be dead, and vice versa. Other examples are hit-miss , pass-fail ,
open-closed.
Gradable antonyms denote opposing positions on some scale; for ex-
ample, hot and cold indicate opposite positions on a temperature scale. Be-
cause scales are continuous phenomena, we can indicate varying positions
on them by modifying the words, e.g., hotter , hottest , awfully hot , miserably
cold. The values between and beyond the antonyms may also be lexicalized.
In between hot and cold we have warm , tepid , cool , and beyond hot and cold
there is burning , scalding , and freezing , among others. Other gradable pairs
include tall-short , wide-narrow , big-small , strong-weak , heavy-light , high-low.
You probably noticed that the members of these pairs are not entirely
parallel; one seems to be more basic, or unmarked , than the other. We
use the basic, unmarked form to ask questions when we have no specific
expectation that the marked form describes the situation, i.e., when the
question is not loaded toward the marked form. For example, ordinarily if
we want to know how strong someone is we simply ask How strong is he or
she? If, however, we assume that this person is weaker than some norm, then
we use the marked member of the word pair: How weak is he or she? (The
marked/unmarked distinction is important in certain literary theories; see
Barthes’ S/Z .)
You probably also noticed that the scales we use depend on what we’re
Delahunty and Garvey
Saw
Chop saw Miter saw Table saw Ripsaw Hand saw Hacksaw
In this instance, the meaning and the form saw occur in each of the hypo-
nyms, which, in spite of their spellings, are all compound words. We must
mention here that not all groups of words that could be regarded as consti-
tuting a set of coordinates have a lexical superordinate. As far as we know,
there is no single term that encompasses doors and windows, even though
these are openings in walls for light, air, people, and refrigerators to pass
through.
Dictionaries make extensive use of hyponymy to define words. For in-
stance, WNTC defines orator as “a person who delivers an oration.” (p.
- and an oration as “an elaborate speech or discourse.. .” (p. 1257). So
an orator is a kind of person and an oration is a kind of speech. The remain-
ing parts of the definition tell us what kind of person an orator is and what
kind of speech an oration is, as well as how orators are distinct from other
kinds of persons, and orations from other kinds of speeches.
Dictionaries also make use of part/whole and part/part relationships
to define words. There are several types of these. When these relationships
apply to unified objects, they are called partonymy , or less transparently,
meronymy. For example, the covers and pages are parts of books ; the engine ,
trunk , carburetor , and fan belt are parts of cars. The crankshaft is a part of
the engine of a car. WNWD defines cap
i
tal
2 as “the top part of a column
or pilaster” (p. 210). Meronymic relationships apply not only to physical ob-
jects but extend to temporal relationships ( day / week ), events ( inning / baseball
game ), and even to quite abstract entities ( self-control / maturity ).
Because hyponymy and partonymy differ in the semantics of the rela-
tionships— kind of vs. part of —they differ in how lower order terms relate
to superordinates of superordinates. In hyponymy, the lower order term is
a kind of its superordinate and of its superordinate’s superordinate; for in-
stance, a standard poodle is a kind of poodle , and a poodle is a kind of dog. But
a standard poodle is also a kind of dog. On the other hand, a lower order term
in a partonymy may or may not be a part of the superordinate; for instance,
a page is a part of a book and a book may be part of a library , but it would
certainly be odd to claim that a page is part of a library.
Other part/whole relations refer not to parts and wholes of unified ob-
Word Meaning
jects but to entities associated with each other in a situation. Metonymy
is the basis for many shifts of meaning. It involves the use of an expression
denoting one person or thing to refer to someone or something associated
with it. The use of a restaurant customer’s order to refer to the customer is a
very productive source of metonymy. For instance, a waiter might say, The
fishburger wants more French fries , to identify a particular customer and their
request. The use of personal names to refer to events that the individual
named is responsible for is also productive: Bush invaded Iraq. Metonymy
is occasionally the basis for permanent shifts of meaning; look up bead in a
comprehensive dictionary with etymological information such as AHD.
Metaphor is yet another relationship among words. It is based on per-
ceived similarities between entities, and word meanings are often extended
to denote entities similar in some ways to the ones more typically denoted
by the word. Many metaphors are based on body parts; for example, AHD
(p. 807) includes in its meanings for head the head of a boil, the head of
a tool such as a hammer, a head of cabbage, the head of a group, the head
of a phrase, and lots of others, all metaphorically derived from the central
meaning of head , namely that mass of bone and brain that sits atop your
neck. Mouth and foot also have multiple metaphoric meanings, which your
dictionary should list.
Because metaphorical senses are extensions of the basic senses of words,
they develop historically later than them. Some extensions may be haphaz-
ard; for instance, we do not think of the nose of a river or a bottle. But there
may be some general principles in language for metaphorical creation. For
instance, English seems to have a principle by which color words may be
extended to psychological states: e.g., blue (sad), red (with anger), green (with
envy), yellow (cowardly), black (mood). (See Lakoff and Johnson 1980.)
Exercise
- Compare and contrast a regular dictionary with a thesaurus, paying
particular attention to the ways in which both are organized and the
ways in which meanings are represented. What purposes do you think
each was designed for?
- Rhetoricians, literary critics, and others interested in figures of
speech (tropes) have distinguished many types and subtypes. Those re-
lated to metonymy are particularly interesting. You might investigate
synecdoche and antonomasia and discuss their implications for word
meaning. Lakoff and Johnson (1980) is a thought-provoking discussion
Word Meaning
speakers carry around in their minds something like a dictionary of their
language. However, there is good evidence that speakers’ mental dictionaries
are quite different from the book dictionaries of a language. For instance,
no book dictionary will tell you that the words idea and sleep cannot literally
be combined as subject and predicate. (Linguists often use the terms lexicon
or mental lexicon to refer to this aspect of our linguistic competence and to
emphasize its difference from written dictionaries.) In fact, the nature of
the mental lexicon is still unclear; we will explore some of its characteristics
below.
Second, you should not confuse knowing the meaning of a word with
being able to give it a satisfactory definition. Definition-stating is a learned
ability and is only marginally necessary in most communication; it is also far
beyond the normal capacities of people. The eminent lexicographer Sidney
Landau expresses the point simply (by “general definer,” he means one versed
in common, rather than technical, vocabulary):
It is difficult to find highly skilled general definers. Such people are about
as rare as good poets... there are probably fewer than a hundred experi-
enced general definers in the whole of the United States. (Landau 1984:
Exercise
Without consulting a dictionary, state the meaning(s) of the words be-
low:
a. situation
b. pong (as in “ping-pong ball”)
c. if
d. of
e. vacillate
What problems did you run into? How did you solve them?
Third, whatever the nature of the mental lexicon, it clearly must show that
words are related to one another. To put it negatively, words are not just listed
in our competence, in alphabetical or any other simple order. Rather, they
are, as we have seen, interconnected in complex ways. These interconnec-
tions determine which words can and cannot occur together in grammatical
constructions—e.g., as in (1a). Interconnections relate families of words re-
lated by polysemy, synonymy, meronymy, antonymy, and other sense relations.
Delahunty and Garvey
Some models and explanations of word meaning
Since published dictionaries do not offer a very useful model of our lexical
competence, linguists have struggled to present more plausible ones. Besides
having to account for the observations noted above, they must also explain the
fact that, while the human brain is finite, an individual’s vocabulary may be
very large. Estimates for an educated person’s vocabulary run anywhere from
50,000 to 250,000 words. The largest unabridged dictionaries of English con-
tain well over half a million entries. Clearly, however, no two individual speak-
ers of a language have exactly the same vocabulary. If this is so, how can we
hope to describe the vastness and variability of lexical competence? A general
solution is to describe not the vocabulary of a single individual or the entire
word-hoard of English, but instead to envisage the general properties according
to which the vocabulary of any individual—or of any language—can be con-
structed. There are two basic models of lexical structure, the network model
and the componential model.
The network model
The network model (N-model) posits that semantic competence is to be ex-
plained on the assumption that words have certain primitive semantic rela-
tions with each other. In other words, our semantic competence does not
consist of knowing definitions at all, but rather of knowing how words relate
to each other. You may recall from your literary theory classes that this is close
to the Saussurean/structuralist approach. The primitive relations most com-
monly explored in the N-model are the ones we’ve been discussing and are
listed and exemplified again in Table 1.
relationship characteristics examples
Synonymy extensive overlap large/big
in meaning chase/pursue
Antonymy oppositeness of meaning large/small
along related dimensions strong/weak
Hyponymy meaning inclusion rose/flower
Partonymy/Meronymy part-whole relationship keyboard/laptop
Metonymy co-elements in a situation writer/book
Metaphor similarity foot of person/
foot of bed
table 1. lexical relations recognized in the network-model
Although there are many other lexical relations, these are the most fre-
