Choices for Lexical Semantics

The modern computational lexical semantics has reached a point in its development when it has become useful to compare the goals and methods of the various approaches to it. This article proposes several choices in terms of which these goals and methods can be discussed. It is argued that the central questions include the use of lexical rules for generating word senses; the role of syntax and formal semantics in the specification of lexical meaning; the use of a world model, or ontology, as the organizing principle for lexical-semantic descriptions; the relation between static and dynamic resources; the commitment to descriptive coverage; the tradeoff between generalization and idiosyncracy; and finally, the adherence to the “supply side” (method-oriented) or “demand side” (task-oriented) ideology of research. The discussion is inspired by, but not limited to, the comparison between the generative lexicon approach and the ontologic semantic approach to lexical semantics.