Underspecifications, context selection and generativity

Jacques Jayez (1)

1 CELITH - Centre de linguistique théorique

The idea that semantic representations are underspecified, that is more abstract than the specific interpretations obtained in various contexts, is by now current in lexical semantics. However, the way in which underspecified representations give rise to more precise interpretations in particular contexts is not always clear. On one view, context provides missing information, for instance because it contains salient entities which can be referred to. I consider here the symmetric dependency, in which lexical elements impose certain semantic profiles to the contexts they fit in. I show that, althouh they are highly underspecified, those profiles cannot be reduced to a general semantic frame, unlike what is proposed in Pustejovsky's Generative Lexicon, and that their semantic adaptability reflects the highly abstract and similarity-based character of the predicates which help to define them.

Mots clés: context selection; generativity; Generative Lexicon

Mots clés: typage lexical

Domaines: Linguistique

Jacques Jayez. Underspecifications, context selection and generativity. Bouillon, Pierette;Busa, Federica;. The Language of Word Meaning, Cambridge Univ. Press, pp.124-148, 1999. ⟨halshs-00157223⟩