Word Meaningmarked: the member of a pair of related expressions that is more complex
semantically and/or formally than the other member, e.g., stallion is marked
in relation to horse because the former includes the meaning male, whereas
a horse may be either male or female. See unmarked.
mental dictionary: mental store of words and word-like expressions, in-
cluding information on their phonological, morphological, syntactic, se-
mantic, discourse, and pragmatic properties. Also called mental lexicon or
just lexicon.
meronymy: see partonymy.
metaphor: a figure of speech in which an expression that is typically used
to denote one thing is used to denote another thing similar in some way to
the first. Metaphor may be the basis for certain meaning extensions, e.g., the
foot of a mountain.
necessary conditions: the conditions that must be met for something to be
a member of a category, e.g., in geometry a triangle must be a plane figure,
must have three sides, and the ends of the three sides must meet to create
three angles See sufficient conditions.
network model (N-model): model or theory of word meanings that speci-
fies the sense relations among words.
non-gradable antonyms: antonyms, typically adjectives, that typically do
not allow degree modification, e.g., clockwise in clockwise motion cannot be
modified by expressions such as very, cf. *very clockwise.
partonymy: a sense relation between expressions such that the entities de-
noted by one expression represent parts of the entity denoted by another,
e.g., blade/knife. The relationship can be paraphrased as X is a part of Y, thus
a blade is a part of a knife.
polysemy: situation in which one expression has two or more clearly related
meanings.
prototype: theory of categorization that posits that membership in catego-
ries is a matter of degree rather then of necessary and sufficient conditions
and that members of a category are ranked according to their degree of
similarity to the prototype or best example of the category.
redundancy rules: rules that aim to eliminate repetition of information
among words that are hyponymically related.
reversive antonyms: words that represent movement in opposite directions.
run-ons/ins: expressions related to the entry word that are included at the
end of a dictionary entry but are undefined because their interpretations are
deemed to be predictable from their forms.
selectional restrictions: semantic requirements that must be met for ex-
pressions to go together without anomaly in close grammatical relationships