| Typographic conventions | p. xi |
| Preface | p. xiii |
| A contextual approach to lexical semantics | p. 1 |
| Introductory | p. 1 |
| Meaning and grammar | p. 1 |
| The data of semantics | p. 8 |
| Disciplining intuitions | p. 10 |
| The meaning of a word | p. 15 |
| Notes | p. 20 |
| The syntagmatic delimitation of lexical units | p. 23 |
| Introductory | p. 23 |
| Semantic constituents | p. 24 |
| Semantic constituents which fail the test | p. 29 |
| Indicators, tallies and categorisers | p. 32 |
| Phonetic elicitors of semantic traits | p. 34 |
| Words | p. 35 |
| Idioms | p. 37 |
| Degrees of opacity | p. 39 |
| Idioms and collocations | p. 40 |
| Idiom and 'dead' metaphor | p. 41 |
| Notes | p. 45 |
| The paradigmatic and syntactic delimitation of lexical units | p. 49 |
| Introductory | p. 49 |
| Selection and modulation of senses | p. 50 |
| 'Indirect' tests for ambiguity | p. 54 |
| Direct criteria for ambiguity | p. 58 |
| Some difficult cases | p. 62 |
| Non-lexical sources of ambiguity | p. 66 |
| Establishment of senses | p. 68 |
| Sense-spectra | p. 71 |
| Syntactic delimitation | p. 74 |
| Lexemes | p. 76 |
| Notes | p. 80 |
| Introducing lexical relations | p. 84 |
| Preliminaries | p. 84 |
| Congruence | p. 86 |
| Cognitive synonymy | p. 88 |
| Hyponymy | p. 88 |
| Compatibility | p. 92 |
| Incompatibility | p. 93 |
| Congruence variants | p. 95 |
| Partial relations | p. 96 |
| Quasi-relations | p. 97 |
| Pseudo-relations | p. 98 |
| Para-relations | p. 99 |
| Syntagmatic relations of meaning between lexical units | p. 100 |
| Notes | p. 109 |
| Lexical configurations | p. 112 |
| Introductory | p. 112 |
| Hierarchies | p. 112 |
| Proportional series | p. 118 |
| Notes | p. 134 |
| Taxonomies | p. 136 |
| Hyponymy and incompatibility | p. 136 |
| Taxonymy | p. 137 |
| Characteristics of natural taxonomies | p. 145 |
| Over-specification, under-specification and the generic level | p. 155 |
| Notes | p. 155 |
| Meronomies | p. 157 |
| Introductory: parts and pieces | p. 157 |
| Defining meronymy | p. 160 |
| Aspects of transitivity: integral parts and attachments | p. 165 |
| Characteristics of meronomies | p. 168 |
| Close relatives of the part-whole relation | p. 172 |
| Meronomies and taxonomies | p. 177 |
| Notes | p. 180 |
| Non-branching hierarchies | p. 181 |
| Introductory | p. 181 |
| From branching to non-branching | p. 181 |
| Chains, helices and cycles | p. 187 |
| Ranks, grades and degrees | p. 192 |
| Notes | p. 195 |
| Opposites I: complementaries and antonyms | p. 197 |
| Oppositeness | p. 197 |
| Complementaries | p. 198 |
| Antonyms | p. 204 |
| Sub-classes of antonyms | p. 206 |
| Inherentness | p. 214 |
| Implicit superlatives | p. 216 |
| Stative verbs | p. 217 |
| Contrastive aspects | p. 218 |
| Notes | p. 220 |
| Opposites II: directional oppositions | p. 223 |
| Directional opposites | p. 223 |
| Directions | p. 223 |
| Antipodals | p. 224 |
| Counterparts | p. 225 |
| Reversives | p. 226 |
| Relational opposites: converses | p. 231 |
| Indirect converses | p. 233 |
| Congruence variants and pseudo-opposites | p. 240 |
| Notes | p. 242 |
| Opposites III: general questions | p. 244 |
| Impartiality | p. 244 |
| Polarity | p. 246 |
| Linguistic polarity and natural polarity | p. 247 |
| Logical polarity | p. 252 |
| Neutralisation and semantic markedness | p. 255 |
| The nature of opposition | p. 257 |
| What makes a 'good' opposition? | p. 262 |
| Notes | p. 262 |
| Synonymy | p. 265 |
| Absolute synonyms and the scale of synonymity | p. 265 |
| Cognitive synonyms | p. 270 |
| Plesionyms | p. 285 |
| Congruence relations and synonymy | p. 289 |
| 'Absolute', 'cognitive' and 'plesio-' relations outside synonymy | p. 290 |
| Notes | p. 291 |
| References | p. 295 |
| Subject index | p. 302 |
| Author index | p. 309 |
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