ABSTRACT
This chapter gives an introductory overview of some key aspects of English lexis, all of which can be straightforwardly investigated with corpora. A more useful question is how many words comprise the main vocabulary of a language, its central lexicon. Verbs of motion are typically followed by adverbials or prepositional phrases of direction or manner, even when metaphorical: against the blood-red sky; a man walking along the curving road; lights order. It is much more interesting, of course, to look at words in their corpus contexts than in isolation. Here the interdependence of words becomes most obvious, showing how the phraseological patternings of words are critically important in relation to meaning as well as usage. Following on from connotation, prosodies and collocation is the use of corpus data to explore ideologically significant items. Another aspect of word meaning to explore is polysemy: how many different senses or uses words have, and how these are distinguished in context.
