<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">All true, but the notion was pretty well explored by Ai work in the seventies, and has <div>been missed by the lexicographic community (if not by Hanks himself!)--it's all there really, the norms, the extensions in context based on what we know about the word and the world--all that was missing was the hard work of the sort lexicographers are said to be good at!</div><div>Yorick</div><div><br><div><div>On 12 Sep 2010, at 17:16, Adam Kilgarriff wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">Lothar,<div><br></div><div>yes, I'm very happy to own that position! </div><div><br></div><div>I'd add to it, the kind of thing that Ken Litkowski mentioned and Patrick Hanks has explored most deeply: that we make sense of unfamiliar uses of words by working out how what we already know of the word (its norms) can be made sense of in the context. (My own enlightenment on this front came from Geoff Nunberg's thesis, see his 'Pragmatics of Reference'). That is the cognitive process of interpreting an exploitation of the word's norms. A word's senses are then just those interpretations, which are commonly enough understood across a speech community, and over time. What counts as 'common enough', and 'the speech community' and the timespan, depends on the purposes for which we want to catalogue them</div>
<div><br></div><div>Adam<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On 7 September 2010 09:27, Lothar Lemnitzer <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:lemnitzer@bbaw.de">lemnitzer@bbaw.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
Dear Laura<br><br>I do not think that this insight is so spectacular. Word senses are artifacts and lexicographers are the experts (and are perceived by society as such) in finding and defining these artifacts.<br><br>If I am allowed to give a guess I would assign this position to Adam Kilgarriff (I don't believe in word senses).<br>
<br>Adam, sue me if I am wrong.<br><br>Regards<br><br>Lothar Lemnitzer<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">2010/9/7 Laura Lofberg <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:Laura.Lofberg@uta.fi" target="_blank">Laura.Lofberg@uta.fi</a>></span><div>
<div></div><div class="h5"><br>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex;border-left:1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204);padding-left:1ex">Could someone with a better memory help me?<br>
<br>
If I remember correctly, someone has said 'a word has as many meanings as a lexicographer cares to perceive' or something like that. Does anyone remember the exact wording? And who has made this brilliant comment, where and when?<br>
<br>
Best,<br>
<br>
Laura Löfberg<br>
University of Tampere<br>
Finland<br>
<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
Corpora mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no" target="_blank">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora" target="_blank">http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora</a><br>
</blockquote></div></div></div><font color="#888888"><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Lothar Lemnitzer<br>DWDS<br>Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften<br>Jägerstr. 22/23<br>10117 Berlin<br>
</font><br>_______________________________________________<br>
Corpora mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>
<a href="http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora" target="_blank">http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora</a><br>
<br></blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>================================================<br>Adam Kilgarriff <a href="http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/">http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk</a> <br>
Lexical Computing Ltd <a href="http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/">http://www.sketchengine.co.uk</a><br>Lexicography MasterClass Ltd <a href="http://www.lexmasterclass.com/">http://www.lexmasterclass.com</a><br>
Universities of Leeds and Sussex <a href="mailto:adam@lexmasterclass.com">adam@lexmasterclass.com</a><br>================================================<br>
</div>
_______________________________________________<br>Corpora mailing list<br><a href="mailto:Corpora@uib.no">Corpora@uib.no</a><br>http://mailman.uib.no/listinfo/corpora<br></blockquote></div><br></div></body></html>