Lexical Meaning

Discussing about lexical meaning, there is a currently growing interest in the content of lexical entries from a theoretical perspective as well as a growing need to understand the organization of the lexicon in a text. Lexical semantics has boomed in the meantime. In terms of the structure or detail, lexical semantic research has developed over than twenty years long.

Generally, lexical meaning is the meaning of a word in relation to the physical world or to abstract concepts, without reference to any sentence in which the word may occur. In the other words, it is a linguistic theory that investigates word meaning. This theory understands that the meaning of a word is fully reflected by its context. Here, the meaning of a word is constituted by its contextual relations. Therefore, a distinction between degrees of participation as well as modes of participation are made.. In order to accomplish this distinction any part of a sentence that bears a meaning and combines with the meanings of other constituents is labeled as a semantic constituent. Semantic constituents that can not be broken down into more elementary constituents is labeled a minimal semantic constituent.