A Theory of Lexical Semantics

The linguistic theory of Richard Montague (variously referred to as Montague Grammar or Montague Semantics) provides a comprehensive formalized account of natural language semantics. It appears to be particularly applicable to the problem of natural language understanding by computer systems. However the theory does not deal with meaning at the lexical level. With few exceptions, lexical items are treated simply as unanalyzed basic expressions. As a result, comparison of distinct lexical meanings or of semantic expressions containing these lexical meanings falls outside the theory. In this paper, I attempt to provide a compatible compatible theory of lexical semantics which may serve as an extension of Montague Semantics