An Introduction to Lexical Semantics: A Formal Approach to Word Meaning and Its Composition

An Introduction to Lexical Semantics provides a comprehensive theoretical overview of lexical semantics, analysing the major lexical categories in English: verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions. The book illustrates step-by-step how to use formal semantic tools.

Divided into four parts, covering the key aspects of lexical semantics, this book:

• introduces readers to the major influential theories including the syntax-lexical semantics interface theory by Levin and Rappaport and Pinker, the generative lexicon theory by Pustejovsky and formal semantic analyses
• discusses key topics in formal semantics including metonymy, metaphor and polysemy
• illustrates how to study word meaning scientifically by discussing mathematical notions applied to compositional semantics.

Including reflection questions, summaries, further reading and practice exercises for each chapter, this accessible guide to lexical semantics is essential reading for advanced students and teachers of formal semantics.

EunHee Lee is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at University at Buffalo, The State University of New York. She is the author of four books, Korean Tense and Aspect in Narrative Discourse (2012), Introduction to Korean Linguistics (2016, with Sean Madigan and Meejeong Park), Korean Syntax and Semantics (2019), and The Logic of Narratives (2020). She teaches Lexical Semantics, Formal Semantics, and Language Acquisition to undergraduate and graduate students at UB.