Monket :: Conceptual and Lexical Fields

Conceptual and Lexical Fields

I've been having some problems with the concept of sense as it relates to lexemes, and I just came upon a very useful passage in Semantics:

The sense of a lexeme is therefore a conceptual area within a conceptual field, and any conceptual area that is associated with a lexeme, as its sense, is a concept. [lyons:semantics1 pp. 254]

Additionally, the set of lexemes which collectively cover a conceptual field make up the covering lexical field.

So, to use the cononical example, if we wish to discuss color in a language, then the collection of all conceptual understandings of color make up the conceptual field of color; and we break this field up into various conceptual areas, each of which we associate with a lexeme. The set of these lexemes make up the lexical field of color in the language.