Towards an Exemplar Based Approach to Lexical Categorisation

Abstract

The exemplar-based approach to categorisation has recently become perhaps the most influential one within cognitive psychology. Still, it seems to be largely disregarded in other fields of cognitive science, such as philosophy or linguistics. In this article, I describe exemplar models against the background of classical and prototype theories, and try to explain the difficulties concerning wider application of exemplar models to categorisation studies in lexical semantics. I begin with a few general remarks on the nature of categorisation and the necessity to understand this notion in a broader theoretical frame. In a brief discussion of models of categorisation, I focus on the distinction between classical and ‘similarity’ models (the latter meaning prototype and exemplar models) and its far reaching implications, as well as explain the distinction between categorisation by prototypes and exemplars. By way of conclusion, I venture a suggestion that in thinking about categorisation in humans, different views should be treated as complementary rather than contradictory accounts.