Hmm, interesting question and one that I cannot give a comprehensive answer to I'm afraid. Semantics is not my major field, but I have some background knowledge about how words and meanings work. I'll give some examples.
One basic way of looking at word meanings and usages is through corpus studies. In this field, a data base of text is made. Some of the larger ones run to tens of millions of words. There are different corpora for different types of language. Spoken or written, British or American (or other national varieties) TV programs, interviews, casual conversation and so on. A computer program (A concordancer) will search for every instance of the word in the corpus and display it in it's immediate context.
Here is a concordance for the word 'effect' (You don't need to read it all...just scan it)
001. e table should be thinking, well does that change adversely EFFECT other jobs in our areas and it shouldn't happen that
002. eight days but that's ignored! And that's that's that's an EFFECT of of statute so if you are getting your divorce, mak
003. matter? I've taken speed as powder right and erm it had an EFFECT like these ones. It's a thirty have a look on the bot
004. the divisions are not identical. Yeah. Yeah? And it has an EFFECT. Mm. If York had erm five percent greater number of e
005. to teach. Yeah, I suppose it would. True! Would it make an EFFECT? Mm. I suppose I, I better go and get hair done. Yes,
006. e Right. she argues, not unreasonably, that it does have an EFFECT on the management It certainly does. because of the
007. ill the same number of young people. Mm. That would have an EFFECT. Have an impact, that's right. Yeah. What did occ
008. s , the primary purpose of the York greenbelt is to have an EFFECT on the character of historic York, is it not? It is t
009. time staff, which is one I raised. Yes. Because that has an EFFECT on how you can use people. Erm Yeah, I was looking at
010. nction, you could release, reduce delays from junctions and EFFECT of your making your total journey in a shorter time
011. ewspapers, I really don't expect the Times erm, to have any EFFECT on the F T's sale. Could you just on that remind us w
012. main switch areas. At that stage he didn't seem to have any EFFECT on anything in terms of erm, alerting anybody, so e
013. s. Did it? Yeah. As a deterrent. Which it never has had any EFFECT on at all. That was the reason behind it. It was a, a
014. ought the Italian style double-breasted Mm. for their baggy EFFECT see. Yeah but where can you buy them? Tut that sho
015. ss the county. I mean Trident is one and that has a certain EFFECT. Erm I don't know but there may well be activities fo
016. It doesn't matter whether it's a solid fuel fire or a coal EFFECT er g gas fire or whether it's an electric fire. If th
017. would make a difference, because it would have a cumulative EFFECT and that's why I think we can do it in our own soci
018. ure development of these sites would not have a deleterious EFFECT on the conservation area, the listed buildings, the a
019. ou are all welcome. O.K. I'll try do a version, but it does EFFECT on Q P 5 an Q P6 you see as well coughing. Can you an
020. aces within their area, which of course will have a further EFFECT of decanting even more cars into neighbouring streets
021. the erm chemicals they were spraying on them had a harmful EFFECT on their nervous systems. Er this is sort of thing we
022. at the lord's table. Now that is not to deny that it is in EFFECT surely of bringing Christians together, but there are
023. hat er he will support the Conservative resolution which in EFFECT recognises that some of the changes in government
024. hear it from the witness. Which like the breaching order in EFFECT. It just sets out the information with any further su
025. ould be. Right how do you er plan to address that issue? In EFFECT although although the water is the same product it's
026. r if we strike this out. Maybe she's not covered by this in EFFECT. Well, I mean, we have a different costing form but w
027. rld complementary medical evidence showing it does state in EFFECT that the have our local populations. Even in this c
028. pounds this is where a bit of estate planning can come into EFFECT in your will. Now you may want to leave everything t
029. rtain considerations that obviously we take er we take into EFFECT. And what are they? Well obviously the fact that we e
030. sh and water and air, but little has been done to study its EFFECT on the human population. In the Amazon research is ha
031. it's a drain on, on the time, not just his but the knock-on EFFECT. Ray's also introduced a holiday traffic for the Scar
032. neously with the software. The that is the kind of knock-on EFFECT we experience. So let's look at the er software, who
033. at mine were really here until they . Did it have a lasting EFFECT on you Mollie? Well, you can be the judge of that! No
034. speed cushions and what have you which, which have a lesser EFFECT on, on erm on both minibuses and buses. Not reall
035. l, whatever we want to say. Yeah. I, I think we'd have more EFFECT if, if we'd erm gave them in at the shop where we'r
036. ality system procedures. And those which have absolutely no EFFECT on the quality of the service that we provide to our
037. belt function, the the the the boundary between them has no EFFECT on the greenbelt purposes . It is the boundaries to
038. ng whether or not Or in the County Council's opinion had no EFFECT for the determination of whether or not these sites p
039. something like Divorce any gift to a spouse, quote is of no EFFECT, unquote. But there are big problems that arise there
040. and smoke it in a pipe with tobacco, would it have the same EFFECT? I don't know I bet it would eh? I used to use them w
041. and that kind of thing, road markings, do not have the same EFFECT er but we are working on that and hopefully in our n
042. r that, he could of gone to Doddington market, get the same EFFECT couldn't ya? Same thing both selling rubbish Eh? G
043. was then really went into the school side, whereas the same EFFECT in York was much more minimal because Yeah. spr
044. ically saying is that erm it it er it wouldn't be a serious EFFECT acceptable in normal planning terms. And you have gre
045. ut if there was then that increase by convention would take EFFECT on the first of January nineteen ninety four but the
046. ence. No it's right, it is not just an application for that EFFECT. I see alright well or I I invite members of the jury
047. ovely Eighty eight, forty one, something, something of that EFFECT. And he's got to add them together? I think add the
048. and the Councils' replies, before I close the enquiry. The EFFECT of that would be that I would receive no further writ
049. cauti cautious than we have been in this country about the EFFECT of Chernobyl. Erm Of the total of goods that are sold
050. ay out of the main bedroom and I heard P C say words to the EFFECT of get down and I turned round to see what was g
051. I sh I won't say the exact words but they were words to the EFFECT that er that I was sorry, that I understood and appre
052. iven I don't know the audit timetable I can't visualise the EFFECT this would have but it seems that one could be making
053. onment of the four hundred and fifty million between er the EFFECT of programme re- orientation and other factors. Ca
054. ooks and periodicals but had he done so that would have the EFFECT of taking more than one hundred thousand pounds
055. or the safety of the occupiers. Did you say anything to the EFFECT that Lawrence was being harboured at the flat at or d
056. reet corner cos we've done it and it is it we don't get the EFFECT we want, because most people walk past us. Cos while
057. ssed another man. She's now in her seventies. Yes, it's the EFFECT you have on women Someone had a kiss in a broom cu
058. terms are a result of a British initiative. They've had the EFFECT of halving the value of payments due to creditors dur
059. the process of that it will be essential to monitor erm the EFFECT of some of the changes as you go forward to see in fa
060. y penalized because they happen to be sick or disabled? The EFFECT of metering will hit the poor and the disadvant
061. y style benefits to a nineteen ninety style membership. The EFFECT on us that every year our General Secretary during t
062. ery negative for the environment, they destroy rivers, they EFFECT the navigation, they are quite popular with the popul
063. the gospel is that if you and I allow that intervention to EFFECT us personally, then like those four men surely we too
064. the the the, the slimming down of the armies yet to take to EFFECT. Presumably they're still, you know, flying around an
065. ublicity is fairly short-lived, of course it has tremendous EFFECT on the British media, and we're all very, very happy
066. it was the thirteen years of binging I mean Yeah. wha what EFFECT does that have on you? Erm, it it, it makes it very,
067. is so thick here that it obscures the sun. To find out what EFFECT all this burning may be having on the upper atmospher
068. lar reference to what the new European unity law will, what EFFECT it'll have on trade in that part of the world. So tha
069. go into too much detail but basically what it is that with EFFECT from nineteen ninety one the smoke alarm smoke dete
070. therefore even if the copy is kicking around er that won't EFFECT the matter. The only problem will arise if somebody t
071. m four today whereas if we see that asks that the full year EFFECT of those er financial fire fighters are concerned, we
072. unt you can leave to the children at that point? Erm you're EFFECT erm limited to well no you could leave anything you l
http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/concord_e.html Use this tool to create your own concordance.
(Just google 'Corpus Concordance' to see what it looks like in the original. The copy and paste didn't keep the highlighting and centering.)
As you can see, the left words of the target word are organized alphabetically, so you can see patterns emerge.
Lines 2-9 list 'an effect', lines 48-61 list 'the effect'. So we can already see that the noun 'effect' is more likely to occur with the definite article than the indefinite article.
Likewise, if collocated with an adjective it is often with a negative one (Lines 18 and 21) or with a limit /upgrade adjective, lines 65 and 36 for example.
Even this cursory search has started to show patterns in usage and collocation. You can select for left or right hand placement, up to three or four words in either direction.
I was at a conference and someone was referring to some research that had been done on 'Actually' and 'In fact'. Now these would seem to be synonyms in daily usage, but the research found (now my memory is hazy here so I can't remember which was which) that one of them tended to occur more at the beginning of an utterance, the other at either mid-position or end position. One of them collocated with negative content utterances, the other with neutral of positive content. One was used to introduce corrections more than the other, and a whole bunch of other facts about the way these words TEND to get used.
The key point of corpus studies is that they are evidence based. Our intuitions about words and meanings, even as educated native speakers of a language, are often not particularly helpful.
An example that I once came across (I lost the reference!!) is directly related to my field. In a corpus study of the word 'Should', the most common usage is not the 'advice' meaning (You should quit smoking), but the logical outcome meaning (They should arrive by Thursday if you posted them yesterday). Most ESL textbooks introduce should in its advice meaning, way before it's logical outcome meaning, wrongly so.
That is a VERY brief overview of corpus. I'll post more on other meaning related research that I have come across when i get some time.