Distributional semantics and the study of (a)telicity

In the literature it is argued that distributional semantics can provide a comprehensive model of lexical meaning. The present paper challenges this assumption and argues that the issue of semantic similarity cannot be fully addressed unless the denotation of terms is systematically examined, since the distributional approach on its own lacks the methodological and conceptual resources to pursue this task. The present proposal is an approach in which distributional semantics meets event semantics. Through an analysis of the verbs of creation it is demonstrated that shared distributional properties are not indicative of shared denotations. In other words, the data shows that the former can serve as an approximation, but cannot predict shared denotations. Finally, due to the combinatorial nature of the lexicon, it is likely that lexical combinations with the same semantics represent an exception rather than a rule.