How Words Meanintroduces a new approach to the role of words and other linguistic units in the construction of meaning. It does so by addressing the interaction between non-linguistic concepts and the meanings encoded in language. It develops an account of how words are understood when we produce and hear language in situated contexts of use. It proposes two theoretical constructs, the lexical concept and the cognitive model. These are central to the accounts of lexical representation and meaning construction developed, giving rise to the Theory of Lexical Concepts and Cognitive Models (or LCCM Theory).
Vyvyan Evans integrates and advances recent developments in cognitive science, particularly in cognitive linguistics and cognitive psychology. He builds a framework for the understanding and analysis of meaning that is at once descriptively adequate and psychologically plausible. In so doing he also addresses current issues in lexical semantics and semantic compositionality, polysemy, figurative language, and the semantics of time and space, and writes in a way that will be accessible to students of linguistics and cognitive science at advanced undergraduate level and above.
Part I Introduction 1. Words and Meaning 2. Towards a New Account of Word Meaning 3. Cognitive Linguistics 4. Word Meaning in LCCM Theory Part II Lexical Representation 5. Symbolic Units 6. Semantic Structure 7. Lexical Concepts 8. Polysemy 9. Conceptual Structure 10. Cognitive Models Part III Compositional Semantics 11. Lexical Concept Selection 12. Lexical Concept Integration 13. Interpretation Part IV Figurative Language and Thought 14. Metaphor and Metonymy 15. The Semantics of Time Part V Conclusions 16. LCCM Theory in Context References Index
An inspiring contemporary account of semantic and cognitivelc*
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