My intention in this chapter is to extend our system of lexical semantic representation by focusing on the feature [Loc] for “Location,” and by showing how an extended system can be used in the analysis of a number of affixes including privatives (-less, de-), negatives (in-, -un-, non-, dis-), and prepositional affixes (e.g., over-). My aim is to deepen our understanding of both the semantic skeleton and the body, and to explore further two of the questions with which I started this inquiry: why multiple affixes often occupy the same semantic space, and why at the same time these affixes exhibit polysemy. We will also begin to delve more deeply into the nature of affixal polysemy in this chapter.

The semantic features we have made most use of so far, [material] and [dynamic], define what we might refer to as major ontological classes of concepts/lexical items, perhaps the most basic of lexical classes: states, events, concrete or abstract simple substances/things/essences and concrete or abstract situational substances/things/essences. For a fuller description of the lexical semantics of a language like English we will clearly need to add features to these two, although how many and what sort is at this point an open question. To begin with, the semantic field of time/space immediately suggests itself, as it has to do with concepts that are so basic to language, and indeed to human existence, that they must surely play some role in the meanings exhibited by lexical items.