Norms and Exploitations: Mapping Meaning onto Use

Explore the intricacies of lexical semantics and corpus linguistics in this illuminating lecture by renowned lexicographer Patrick Hanks. Delve into Corpus Pattern Analysis (CPA), a method that groups word collocations into semantically motivated syntagmatic patterns to account for all uses of each word. Discover how CPA reduces lexical entropy by identifying typical contexts for words, linking patterns to meanings, synonym sets, and foreign translations. Examine the construction of noun and verb patterns, including the SPOCA framework and subvalency features. Learn about the Theory of Norms and Exploitations, which addresses both standard word meanings and rhetorical exploitations such as ad-hoc metaphors and ellipsis. Gain insights from Hanks' extensive experience as a lexicographer, including his work on influential English dictionaries and contributions to computational linguistics and onomastics.