Linguistics: Prototype Theory

Prototype theory, as developed by Rosch, has had repercussions in two main areas of linguistics: lexical semantics and syntax. Word meanings are the names of categories, and the meanings of many words display characteristic prototype effects (fuzziness of category boundaries, degrees of representativity of category members). Further areas of application have been semantic change, and the structure of polysemy networks. The prototype approach does, however, encounter problems in connection with theories of semantic compositionality. Linguistic constructs, such as syntactic and lexical categories, also display prototype effects. The application of prototype theory to the study of parts of speech and syntactic constructions has been especially fruitful.