Theories of Lexical Semantics

• Covers the period from the beginning of the 19th century up to the present day
• Brings together the various approaches to lexical semantics in a clear and insightful architecture of affinities and dissimilarities, of theoretical tensions and descriptive elaborations
• Reveals the underlying lines of development in what otherwise might seem a chaotic and unstructured field
• Focuses on essential currents and undercurrents, but also provides suggestions for further reading coupled to a large reference section of 800 items

Readership: Students of language and linguistics from intermediate level onwards, as well as scholars interested in the lexicon in fields such as anthropology, psychology, philosophy, literary studies, linguistics, and cognitive science.

Dirk Geeraerts, Professor of Linguistics, University of Leuven

"fills a crucial gap in the literature on word meaning...a long-awaited must-read in lexicological and semantic theory...should be background knowledge for anyone seriously committed to lexical work...a state-of-the-art overview awaited for decades, provides an indispensable reference in semantic theory" - Clara Molina, The Linguist List

Introduction
1: Historical-Philological Semantics
2: Structuralist Semantics
3: Generativist Semantics
4: Neostructuralist Semantics
5: Cognitive Semantics
Conclusion
References