This volume is a collection of original contributions from outstanding scholars in linguistics, philosophy and computational linguistics exploring the relation between word meaning and human linguistic creativity. The papers present different aspects surrounding the question of what is word meaning, a problem that has been the centre of heated debate in all those disciplines that directly or indirectly are concerned with the study of language and of human cognition. The discussions are centred around a view of the mental lexicon, as outlined in the Generative Lexicon theory (Pustejovsky, 1995), which proposes a unified model for defining word meaning. The individual contributors present their evidence for a generative approach as well as critical perspectives, which provides for a volume where word meaning is not viewed only from a particular angle or from a particular concern, but from a wide variety of topics, each introduced and explained by the editors.

Review of the hardback:‘Editors Bouillon and Busa deserve high praise for their selection of a wide range of divergent views on this subject, some of which are antithetical to their own beliefs … This book … provides a thorough and even-handed account of the enigmatic question of world meaning. Moreover, it offers some reasonable ways to address this topic.’

Source: Journal of Literary Semantics