"The Disambiguation Of Word Senses"

Fontaine (2017: 6):

Lexicology concerns the study of words and their semantics, morphology, development and lexical representation, including word formation processes and the various types of relations among words. Context will be significant to lexical studies in different ways depending on the area of interest. For example, research into word histories requires a historical context, a diachronic perspective, often referred to as phylogenesis, and work related to the disambiguation of word senses involves context of situation and collocation. Areas that do not tend to overlap with SFL include lexical representation (i.e. what is its semantic nature and how is it represented) which covers morphology, semantics and lexical relations.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, lexicology is a field within linguistics, defined by specific theoretical assumptions, rather than a theory of language. Moreover, there are different theoretical approaches to lexicology. As will be seen, the theoretical assumptions that distinguish lexicology as a field of study are inconsistent with the theoretical assumptions of SFL Theory.

[2] As previously explained, the notion of lexical representation assumes a mental lexicon, and is inconsistent with both SFL Theory and 'the known facts of human biology and brain science' (Edelman 1989: 228).

[3] To be clear, in terms of SFL Theory, this confuses context, the culture as semiotic system, with phylogenesis, the evolution of the system in the species.

[4] To be clear, the notion of 'disambiguating word senses' takes a 'bottom-up' perspective on language, which is the direct opposite of the 'top-down' perspective taken by SFL Theory. That is, it begins with the word as form, and asks what meaning it expresses in a particular instantiation, whereas SFL begins with the meaning, and asks how the meaning is expressed.