Prototype Semantics: The English Word LIE

The meaning of the word lie (‘prevaricate‘) consists in a cognitive prototype to which various real or imagined events may correspond in varying degrees. This view contrasts with the familiar one in which word meanings consist of sets of necessary and sufficient conditions, and distinguish discretely between instances and non-instances. The relevance of the notions of prototype and gradience in semantics has previously been established in physical and sensory lexical domains. The present paper shows that these notions are also relevant in abstract and social domains. Results are reported from an experiment which supports this view.