ABSTRACT
The development of prototypes has been widely acclaimed as a radical new breakthrough in the study of concepts. This chapter explores the implications of prototype theory for lexical semantics. One effect is on the goal of lexical analysis itself, which is to specify the focal part of a concept rather than the boundaries. Since meanings either are or are related to concepts, prototypes may have far-reaching consequences for semantic theory and semantic analysis. The chapter concerns the aspects of word meaning are definitions, semantical entailments, and lexical relationships. It looks at some of the detailed lexical descriptions that have been done; the data themselves have forced the investigator to posit fuzzy boundaries and partial class inclusion, implicitly acknowledging something like prototype theory. Definitions for words might accommodate prototype effects by marking some features as optional or by weighting them or by listing them in order of importance.
