Lexical meaning and presupposition †
Pieter A. M. Seuren · 2002
Abstract Not everyone is agreed that lexical meanings are, or can be, complex and are thus open to analysis. Fodor, for example, has claimed for years now that all lexical meanings are one and indivisible. This is, however, not the prevailing opinion. In fact, there is an old tradition, going back to Plato, of lexical analysis, and various systems have been thought up to implement lexical analytic procedures. In fact, systematic comparison of lexical items irresistibly invites analysis. Compare, for example, the three English verbs kill, murder, and assassinate. Whereas kill, following McCawley, can be seen as ‘cause to die’,2 murder clearly is ‘kill’ plus something extra, i.e. ‘kill unlawfully, with malice aforethought’, as the legal definition has it. And, in its turn, assassinate is ‘murder’