Lexicalization Patterns and the World-to-Words Mapping

Knowledge of words and knowledge of the world must somehow be linked. Words evoke knowledge about the world, and thoughts about the world are conveyed through words. The precise nature of this linkage is far from known, however. Our goal in this chapter is to shed light on the connection. In the first part of the chapter, we consider arguments for a tight mapping between words and conceptual representations and discuss reasons why these arguments are not entirely convincing. We also briefly consider and dismiss the extreme alternative that there is only the loosest relation between words and conceptual representations of the world. In the second part of the chapter, we turn our attention to a third alternative that we call a “constrained but flexible” mapping. In this section we review data indicating that in at least some domains, the mapping between words and conceptual representations is not tight. We consider the ways in which the mappings may nevertheless be constrained, and we discuss where flexibility is possible despite the constraints. We present data from two studies on the naming of human locomotion that test the ideas about both where the mapping is constrained and where flexibility may enter the picture. In a final section, we discuss implications of the “constrained but flexible” idea for several associated issues. THE TIGHT AND LOOSE MAPPING POSSIBILITIES