Tsohatzidis S.L. (Editor). Meanings and Prototypes: Studies in linguistic categorization

Routledge, 2014. — 584 pages. — (Routledge Library Editions: Linguistics). — ISBN: 0-415-03612-7; ISBN: 978-1-315-85739-8.There are fewer distinctions in any language than there are distinct things in the universe. If, therefore, languages are ways of representing the universe, a primary function of their elements must be to allow the much more varied kinds of elements out of which the universe is made to be categorized in specific ways. A prototype approach to linguistic categories is a particular way of answering the question of how this categorization operates. It involves two claims. First, that linguistic categorization exploits principles that are not specific to language but characterize most, if not all, processes of cognition. Secondly, that a basic principle by which cognitive and linguistic categories are organized is the prototype principle, which assigns elements to a category not because they exemplify properties that are absolutely required of each one of its members, but because they exhibit, in varying degrees, certain types of similarity with a particular category member which has been established as the best example (or: prototype) of its kind.The development of the prototype approach into a satisfactory body of theory obviously requires both that its empirical base be enriched, and that its conceptual foundations be clarified. These are the areas where this volume, in its 26 essays, makes original contributions. The first two parts contain discussions in which various kinds of linguistic phenomena are analysed in ways that make essential use of prototype notions. The last two parts contain discussions in which prototype notions themselves become the object, rather than the instrument, of analytical scrutiny.On the content of prototype categories: questions of word meaning
A survey of category types in natural language
Possible verbs and the structure of events
Prototypical considerations on modal meanings
Belief ascription, metaphor, and intensional identification
Negated beliefs and non-monotonic reasoning
Lexical hierarchies and Ojibwa noun derivation
Some English terms of insult invoking sex organs: evidence of a pragmatic driver for semantics
The lexicographical treatment of prototypical polysemy
On the content of prototype categories: further questions
Settings, participants, and grammatical relations
On the semantics of compounds and genitives in English
A notional approach to the French verbal adjective
Prototypical uses of grammatical resources in the expression of linguistic action
Toward a theory of syntactic prototypes
Accent in prototypical wh questions
Prototypical manners of linguistic action
Where partonomies and taxonomies meet
On the context of prototype methods: questions of word meaning
'Prototypes save': on the uses and abuses of the notion of 'prototype' in linguistics and related fields
Prototype theory and its implications for lexical analysis
Prototype theory and lexical semantics
Representation, prototypes, and centrality
A few untruths about 'lie'
On the context of prototype methods: further questions
On 'folk' and 'scientific' linguistic beliefs
Gestures during discourse: the contextual structuring of thought
Why words have to be vague
Schemas, prototypes, and models: in search of the unity of the sign
Psychologistic semantics, robust vagueness, and the philosophy of language