Polysemy

Polysemy Polysemy comes from Neo-Latin polysemia, which comes from Greek polusemous poly- (many) + sema (sign) giving us a linguistic term, having many meanings or multiple meanings. Most of lex. items in English are polysemantic. Ex. family She lost both of her evokes. parent Envy is the parent of all evils. My family comes from Scotland. The cat family includes lions & tigers. ( ) A family of languages, etc. at that place are monosemantic run-in Ex. a lorry, a loudspeaker Different meanings of one & the same countersign are mingyly interrel take ind.Polysemy is a result of 1. Shifts in application ( ? ) Ex. adj. chromatic rubicund ink (is really red), red hair, red deer, red cabbage, red Indian 2. Specialization Ex. better half Basic meaning a cause of relationship amongst 2 or more(prenominal) people. business partner marriage partner partner in crime 3. Metaphorical accompaniment (a fundamental feature of any language) Ex. pitch of a tree leaf of a book, hands of a person hands of a measure Polysemy has been complicated by the tendency of haggling to pick up the meanings from other dialects, languages & slang. Ex. executiveBrE one who acts under the direction of somebody AmE a coach now AmE meaning is more widely used. New & old meanings bring to pass interrelated, form a hierarchy. They have some common semantic features, which write the integrity of the word. First, we have count/mass alternations for nouns, which can serve several(prenominal) functions (13) Animal/meat a. The lamb is running in the field. b. John ate lamb for breakfast. (14) Object/Stuff an object is made up a. There is an apple on the table. b. There is apple in the salad. (15) Stuff/ manakin 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 three beers. Plant/food alternation (17) a. bloody shame watered the anatomy in the garden. b. Mary ate the fig. We have alter nations between containers and contained (18) a. Mary stony-broke the bottle. b. The baby finished the bottle. Figure/Ground reversal (19) a. The window is rotting. b. Mary crawled through the window. Product/producer alternation, e. g. newspaper, Honda (20) a. The newspaper fired its editor. b. John spilled java on the newspaper. Process/result alternation (21) a. The companys merger with Honda give begin next fall. b.The merger will lead to the production of more cars. Alternations involving location (22) Building/institution, e. g. university, bank (see above) (23) Place/people a. John traveled to New York. b. New York kicked the whitethorner proscribed of office. (24) Capital/government, e. g. Washington accused capital of Cuba not to do enough for the victims. Being able to distinguish between polysemy lecture and homonym words is not easy. Dictionaries treat cases of multiple meanings either as polysemy or as homonymy, but in item it is not always easy to decide which one we are transaction with, and dictionaries sometimes differ in their decisions.Are table (furniture) and table (arrangement of data) two antithetic words, or the same word with two meanings? Dictionaries usually go for the latter(prenominal) solution, on the grounds 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(a) cases of meaning variation, which illustrate polysemy (6) a. The bank raised its interest grade 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 nurture will fail unless the drought ends soon. b. It is difficult to farm this land. (9) a. The store is open. b. The brigand tried to open the door. There are two hea vy differences 1. First, it is straight obvious to speakers that the meanings of a polysemous expression are related to from each one 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 flummox 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 uprise 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 existence available to us usually comes as a surprise out of approximately 60000 entries in websters seventh dictionary 21488 or just about 40 % have two or more senses. Moreover the about commonly used words tend to be polysemious. The verb run, for example, has 29 senses in websters furter divided into nearly 125 subsenses. These systematic aspects make polysemy an important field of study of synchronic and generative linguistics. Polysemy is a diametrical concept within disciplines such as media studies and linguistics.