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Abstract Abstract: There are two unsettled issues in word meaning research. One is whether word meanings refer to lexical “semantics”, or “meanings” or “concepts”. The other one is why people can obtain variable “lexical meanings” in contexts by means of stable “lexical semantics”. For these two issues, the present paper assumes that a new research perspective can be provided by taking “lexical concepts” as a starting point to clarify the relationship among the three aspects of word meanings and by so doing, to reveal its essential attributes. There are two main findings :(1) Word meanings embody stable lexical semantics in terms of language, variable lexical meanings in terms of usage, and schematic lexical concepts in terms of conception. Lexical concepts are the base of the backstage operation for lexical semantics and lexical meanings. Lexical semantics reflect the objective entities by way of lexical concepts, and lexical meanings can be adequately constructed in contexts based on lexical concepts. (2) Lexical concepts have bipartite structures, one of which is encoded in language as semantic content and associated with linguistic system, the other one can facilitate access to lexical conceptual structure and is associated with the conceptual system. Grounded on these two observations mentioned above, the paper looks into the two important features of lexical concepts: encapsulation and selection tendencies. The former embodies the essence of the bipartite structures of lexical concepts, and the latter is their “biometric identifiers”.
Key words: lexical concepts; lexical semantics; lexical meanings; encapsulation; selectional tendencies
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