Polysemy

lexical ambiguity Polysemy comes from Neo-Latin polysemia, which comes from Greek polusemous poly- (many) + sema (sign) giving us a linguistic term, having many importations or multiple meanings. Most of lex. items in slope be polysemantic. Ex. family She lost both of her evokes. parent Envy is the parent of all evils. My family comes from Scotland. The gag family includes lions & tigers. ( ) A family of languages, etc. There are monosemantic vocalizes Ex. a lorry, a speaker Different meanings of one & the uniform word are closely inter link.Polysemy is a force of 1. Shifts in application ( ? ) Ex. adj. blushful expiration ink (is really red), red hair, red deer, red cabbage, red Indian 2. strong point Ex. furnish Basic meaning a case of relationship among 2 or more people. business partner marriage partner partner in crime 3. Metaphorical extension (a heavy feature of any language) Ex. leaf of a tree leaf of a book, workforce of a person hands of a cl ock Polysemy has been complicated by the tendency of language to pick up the meanings from other dialects, languages & slang. Ex. executiveBrE one who acts under the accusation of whateverbody AmE a manager straightaway AmE meaning is more widely used. impudent & old meanings become interrelated, form a hierarchy. They have some common semantic features, which preserve the integrity of the word. First, we have front/mass alternations for nouns, which abide serve some(prenominal) functions (13) Animal/meat a. The have is running in the field. b. keister ate lamb for breakfast. (14) Object/ choke up an object is do up a. There is an apple on the disconcert. b. There is apple in the salad. (15) Stuff/Kind a. There was cheese on the table. b. Three cheeses were served. 16) Stuff/Portions a. The restaurant served beer, and so b. we ordered trinity beers. Plant/ diet alternation (17) a. Mary watered the fig in the garden. b. Mary ate the fig. We have alternations betwe en containers and contained (18) a. Mary broke the bottle. b. The baby undone the bottle. Figure/Ground reversal (19) a. The windowpane is rotting. b. Mary crawled through the window. Product/ manufacturer alternation, e. g. newspaper, Honda (20) a. The newspaper fired its editor. b. John spilled coffee berry on the newspaper. Process/result alternation (21) a. The clubs merger with Honda will fetch adjacent fall. b.The merger will carry on to the production of more cars. Alternations involving location (22) build/institution, e. g. university, bank (see above) (23) Place/people a. John traveled to New York. b. New York kicked the mayer appear of office. (24) Capital/government, e. g. Washington accused capital of Cuba not to do enough for the victims. be able to distinguish between lexical ambiguity words and homonym words is not easy. Dictionaries negotiate fibres of multiple meanings either as lexical ambiguity or as homonymy, but in fact it is not always easy to decide which one we are dealing with, and dictionaries sometimes differ in their decisions.Are table (furniture) and table (arrangement of data) deuce different words, or the same word with two meanings? Dictionaries usually go for the latter solution, on the thou of a shared etymology. On the other hand, a pupil (in school) and the pupil (of the eye) are usually listed as different words although in fact they have the same historical origin. And contrast this with the following cases of meaning variation, which illustrate polysemy (6) a. The bank increase its interest rates yesterday. b. The store is next to the newly constructed bank. c.The bank appeared first in Italy in the Renaissance. (7) a. John crawled through the window. b. The window is closed. c. The window is made of security glass. (8) a. The kick upstairs will fail unless the drought ends soon. b. It is unmanageable to farm this land. (9) a. The store is open. b. The thief act to open the door. There are two im portant differences 1. First, it is immediately obvious to speakers that the meanings of a polysemous expression are related to each other. This is typically not the case for homophonous expressions, even though they may be historically related as well (cf. ome of the examples above). 2. Second, polysemy is regular. For example, we find the three meanings illustrated with bank in (6) (specific institution, building that houses the institution, and the type of the institution) with university as well. Similarly, we find the three meanings of window illustrated in (7) (path, opening, and concrete object that can close an opening) with door. Polysemy is rarely a problem for communication among people. We are so adept at using contextual cues, that we select appropriate senses of words effortlessly and uncounsiously.The sheer number of senses listed by some sources as being available to us usually comes as a affect out of approximately 60000 entries in websters seventh dictionary 21488 or some 40 % have two or more senses. Moreover the most usually used words tend to be polysemious. The verb run, for example, has 29 senses in websters furter divided into intimately 125 subsenses. These systematic aspects make polysemy an important field of study of coincidental and generative linguistics. Polysemy is a pivotal concept within disciplines such as media studies and linguistics.