Re: Semantic lexicon, qualia and Pustejovsky

Chris Palmer wrote:

> Philippe Caquant writes:
>
>
>>brought back a wide question to my mind: what is definition ?
>
>
> Maybe the definition of a word is all the contexts it can be used in.
That's a good idea; it helps to distinguish words that otherwise have
identical meanings, like "woodchuck" and "groundhog".

How much wood would a woodchuck chuck, if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
*How much wood would a groundhog chuck, if a groundhog could chuck wood?

February 2nd is Groundhog Day.
*February 2nd is Woodchuck Day.

For practical purposes you could limit the definition to the distínctive
contexts it can be used in; there are countless potential contexts where
you could use "rose" and "violet" interchangeably, but there's a
well-known minimal pair:

Roses are red.         *Violets are red.
Violets are blue.      *Roses are blue.

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