Description:
First published in 1983, the aim of this book is to diagnose linguists' failure to advance satisfactory theories of lexical meaning, then to propose the requirements that such a theory should meet and, drawing on work in philosophy and psychology, to take the first steps towards satisfying these requirements. It begins by discussing the work of Quine on the indeterminacy of translation and goes on to explore the relation between the theory of word meaning and the theory of categorisation. The author argues that identification of certain implicit categories like 'action' and 'event' can be related to principles of individuation. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics.