Can you really know a word by the company it keeps? : an investigation into the contextual influence on aspects of polysemy

One of the most pressing issues in lexical semantics is surely the lack of solid empirical criteria in accounting for polysemy. The fact that to date the only viable mode of word sense disambiguation, identifying category membership, and constructing lexical networks has been based on the researcher's own judgment implies that clearly defining the boundaries of different interpretations of a polysemous lexeme together with the links between them and expressing such a statement in empirical (linguistic) criteria is practically impossible. The methodology explored within the paper promises a fully criteria-based account of word senses based on the use of representative language corpora. The paper aims to test this claim, raised once again by the recently re-emerging corpus-based decompositional approaches to accounting for word senses. Through the application of one of the most recent versions of this methodology, namely Behavioral Profiling, to the polysemous verb look, the paper will try to show how reliable the methodology is in its promise of an objective and purely linguistic explanation of polysemy.Keine Zusammenfassung vorhandenNikola DobrićAbweichender Titel laut Übersetzung der Verfasserin/des VerfassersKlagenfurt, Alpen-Adria-Univ., Diss., 2012OeBB(VLID)241065