The Utility of Meaning: What Words Mean and Why

Contents

Conventions for Linguistic Examples ix
List of Figures and Tables xi
Preface xiv

1 The utility of meaning 1
1.1 What this book aims to show 3
1.2 Word utility as raison d’être for semantic coding 8
1.3 Meanings are hypotheses 11
1.4 The gap between mind and community 13

2 Meanings are layered 15
2.1 Semantic description 15
2.2 Polysemy 21
2.3 Semantic change 26

3 Meanings are multiple 31
3.1 The case of emotion terms 31
3.2 The multiple meanings of a word 37
3.3 Heterosemy 46
3.4 Monosemy and beyond 58

4 Meanings are anthropocentric 64
4.1 Conceptual rationale 65
4.2 Natural logic 71
4.3 Affordances and word meaning 73
4.4 The word utility hypothesis 88
4.5 The case of landscape terms 94

5 Meanings are cultural 101
5.1 Typicality of events 102
5.2 Complex events 109
5.3 The case of posture constructions 114
5.4 Enrichment in context 128
5.5 The case of Lao pronouns 133
5.6 The utility of a word’s meaning from its role in larger systems 146

6 Meanings are distributed 148
6.1 Tolerable friends 148
6.2 Convergence of minds 154
6.3 The case of flavour terms 160
6.4 Semantic emergence 165

7 Meanings are useful 172
7.1 Two types of utility in categorization 172
7.2 Words are double categories, with multiple utilities 173
7.3 What we do with words 174
7.4 What words mean and why 175

References 177
Index 197