Language use and the lexicon

In this article I critically discuss two state-of-the-art theories of meaning in Cognitive Semantics: Evans’ (2006, 2009) LCCM-Theory and Jackendoff’s (2010a, 2010b) Parallel Architecture. The main focus will be on how these theories define meaning and how they represent it. This will serve as a starting point for the introduction of what I have called ‘meaning-in-use’, i.e. an action-theoretical notion of meaning embedded in language use (Feller 2010). Meaning is here construed as something that speakers do in communication, which is closely related to Weigand’s (cf., e.g., 2000, 2010) view of language as language action.