LEXICAL SEMANTICS

• Lexical Semantics: the semantic structure associated with a word, as represented in the lexicon.
  
  
• Taxonomy: orderly classification of words according to their presumed natural relationships.
  
  
• Examples:
  
  
  • Is-A Taxonomy: a crow is a bird.
    
    
  • Has-a Taxonomy: a car has a windshield.
    
    
  • Action-Instrument: a knife can cut.
  
  
• Words can appear in many relations and have multiple meanings and uses.
  
  
• There are no universally-accepted taxonomies:
  
  

  Family	Subtype	Example
  Contrasts	Contrary	old-young
  	Contradictory	alive-dead
  	Reverse	buy-sell
  	Directional	front-back
  	Incompatible	happy-morbid
  	Asymmetric contrary	hot-cool
  	Attribute similar	rake-fork
  Case Relations	Agent-action	artist-paint
  	Agent-instrument	farmer-tractor
  	Agent-object	baker-bread
  	Action-recipient	sit-chair
  	Action-instrument	cut-knife