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<Paper uid="J91-4003">
  <Title>The Generative Lexicon</Title>
  <Section position="8" start_page="436" end_page="436" type="concl">
    <SectionTitle>
8. Conclusion
</SectionTitle>
    <Paragraph position="0"> In this paper I have outlined a framework for lexical semantic research that I believe can be useful for both computational linguists and theoretical linguists alike. I argued against the view that word meanings are fixed and inflexible, where lexical ambiguity must be treated by multiple word entries in the lexicon. Rather, the lexicon can be seen as a generative system, where word senses are related by logical operations defined by the well-formedness rules of the semantics. In this view, much of the lexical ambiguity of verbs and prepositions is eliminated because the semantic load is spread more evenly throughout the lexicon to the other lexical categories. I described a language for structuring the semantic information carried by nouns and adjectives, termed Qualia structure, as well as the rules of composition that allow this information to be incorporated into the semantic interpretation of larger expressions, including explicit methods for type coercion. Finally, I discussed how these richer lexical representations can be used to generate projective inheritance structures that connect the conceptual information associated with lexical items to the global conceptual lexicon.</Paragraph>
    <Paragraph position="1"> This suggests a way of accounting for relations such as coherence and the prototypicality of a predication. Although much of what I have presented here is incomplete and perhaps somewhat programmatic, I firmly believe this approach can help clarify the nature of word meaning and compositionality in natural language, and at the same time bring us closer to understanding the creative use of word senses.</Paragraph>
  </Section>
class="xml-element"></Paper>