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Questions tagged [lexical-semantics]

A branch of semantics, the study of the meaning of words, affixes and compounds too.

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13 votes
1 answer
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Why does "half" not follow the pattern of ordinal numbers across languages?

The cardinal "a half" is unrelated to "two", whereas "a third", "a quarter" (and certainly "a fourth"), etc. are related to "three", "four", etc. This seems to be true in other languages, too, in ...
msh210's user avatar
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6 votes
1 answer
430 views

(A)Telicity & Events

Dowty's (1979) classified predicates into: 1. States 'the woord is burning' ---Atelic 2. Activities 'Mary pushed the cart' ---Atelic 3. Accomplishments 'Mary melted the chocolate' ---Telic 4. ...
Tsutsu's user avatar
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20 votes
2 answers
13k views

How are languages deciphered?

How do archaeologists, cryptoanalysts and linguists decipher extinct languages? Has there been a case in history where this was successfully accomplished, without the means of something like the ...
Dexter's user avatar
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18 votes
1 answer
13k views

What do WordNet::Similarity scores mean?

I am using WordNet Interface in NLTK, which facilitates computation of a number of similarity metrics: Path similarity Leacock-Chodorow Similarity Wu-Palmer Similarity Resnik Similarity Jiang-Conrath ...
piggs_boson's user avatar
4 votes
1 answer
556 views

How to explore the meaning of a concept (like "friendship")?

I am trying to extract all components ("atoms") of meaning of the concept "friendship" in a certain language (actually in Russian). By components of meaning I mean, for example: "girl"="human"+"female"...
Alex.rft's user avatar
2 votes
0 answers
150 views

What books to read about lexical semantics?

I want to have a systematic understanding on semantic field, lexical semantics, and semantic change. Skimming at Kate Kearns' Semantics, it seems that its focus is more about formal semantics, with ...
Ooker's user avatar
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