The book deals with the topic from a wide variety of viewpoints. Polysemy is the existence of different senses and or meanings for a single word, expression, or phrase. Among english prepositions, over has been studied by brugman 1988. Effects of polysemy in lexical decision and naming. Examples include oxton, newton and maryburgh in various parts of the british isles, and. Flexible patterns of meaning in mind and language, page 3. Fifty years ago the linguist and semanticist stephen ullmann wrote that polysemy, the fact that some words have a network of multiple but related meanings, is the.
Many cases of conventional nominal metonymy, such as those introduced above, can be analysed in these terms. View semantics, homonymy and polysemy research papers on academia. In contrast, a onetoone match between a word and a meaning is called monosemy. About fifty years ago, stephen ullmann wrote that polysemy is the pivot of semantic analysis. Polysemy is an inevitable and routine outcome of blending, but it is only rarely noticed.
One of his shoes felt too tight for his foot foot here refers to the bottom part of the mountains in the first sentence and the bottom part of the leg in the second. Interperting an ad isinherently different from liking it. Originally published as two special issues of the journal of. Times arial wingdings blank slide 1 slide 2 slide 3 slide 4 slide 5 slide 6 slide 7. The polysemy networks of over seoul national university. Polysemy, or multiple distinct yet related motivated senses of a form, is a complex phenomenon which has been studied from many perspectives. Homonymy and polysemy are very important meanings in linguistics semantics. It is usually regarded as distinct from homonymy, in which the multiple meanings of a. Edited by brigitte nerlich, vimala herman, zazie todd, and david clarke. Jastrzembski and stanners 1975 and jastrzembski 1981 also observed polysemy effects in lexical decision experiments using a slightly different measure of polysemy. A neglected concept in wordplay had to have unique sounds for every concept. Ling 390 intro to linguistics winter 2005 class 1 monday, january 3, 2005 author. All ads are open to different interpretations advertasing polysemy the occurence of multiple meanings for the same advertising message 2. Homonymy and polysemy pdf in contrast to the notion of sense relations, polysemy and homonymy refer to similarities rather than differences between meanings.
View sspolysemy and homonymy from english 100200 at sun yatsen university. The cognitive approach is supplemented and supported by diachronic, psycholinguistic, developmental. Murphyb a department of psychology, suny college at buffalo, 0 elmwood ave. Words that have the same historical origin or are related conceptually are said to be polysemous. Polysemy article about polysemy by the free dictionary. For a commonplace example, consider the meaning of the adjective good in the following sentences. However, it would normally be clear in a given context which of the two homonyms, port1 2harbour or port kind of fortified wine, is being used and also which sense of the polysemous verb.
Polysemy polysemy is the existence of several meanings for a single word or phrase. In section 2 we describe the lexical representation language that we have developed to represent basic lexical entries and characterize systematic lexical processes. Synonymy and polysemy in legal terminology and their applications to bilingual and bijural translation 35 canadian government calls bijuralism. Polysemy is the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Mar 28, 2018 homonymy and polysemy both involve one lexical form that is associated with multiple senses and as such both are possible sources of lexical ambiguity. The effects of homonymy and polysemy on lexical access. Homonymy and polysemy both involve one lexical form that is associated with multiple senses and as such both are possible sources of lexical ambiguity. Cognitive linguistics eva kovacs 1 introduction polysemy, the phenomenon whereby a linguistic unit exhibits multiple distinct yet related meanings is a very common feature of any language. In these cases is it the same sign that stands for several things polysemy, or is it just an accident that signs which stand for these things happen to look like homonymy. The noticeability of polysemy is a function of the availability of certain frames either through defaults or through contexts or through culture. View ss polysemy and homonymy from english 100200 at sun yatsen university.
It is usually regarded as distinct from homonymy, in which the multiple meanings of a word may be unconnected or unrelated. Manyrelatedsenseshelp,butmanyunrelatedmeaningshurt. Information extraction using metadata andsolving polysemy problems iswarya r. If we think of dictionaries, they put all concepts in one entry, while in a termbase we register each concept on separate term entries, a key difference between lexicography and terminology. The aim of this paper is to assess the two descriptively controversial cases of lexical ambiguity known as polysemy and homonymy in an attempt to illustrate a practical solution. If you are a language student, then you must have proper understanding about these meanings. A word is polysemous when it has more than one meaning e. If different senses of word are systematically related, then how these senses. N2 school of computing, sastra university, thanjavur6401, tamilnadu, india.
Polysemy and homonymy it is quite difficult to say where polysemy ends and homonymy begins main points polysemy and. Polysemy pollyseamus in latin is defined roughly as the existence of one lexeme with many related meanings. The findings also provide neural correlates for a behavioral study of lexical ambiguity that demonstrated that the frequently reported ambiguity advantage in lexical decision tasks is not due to the presence of many unrelated meanings. Homonymy and polysemy are then defined in terms of formal identity only indirectly, one might, for instance, maintain that formal identity primarily involves entities which are usually called wordtokens, while polysemy and homonymy involve entities referred to as lexemes, lexical items, lexical words, or simply words. Polysemous meaning in the cambridge english dictionary. The adjective forms of the word include polysemous or polysemic. On homonymy and polysemy alina preda, assistant professor, phd.
In mathematics, a word may be polysemous if its mathematical meaning is different from its everyday, familiar meaning durkin and shire, 1991, or if it has two related, but different, mathematical meanings zazkis, 1998. Pdf there is no need for the terms polysemy and homonymy. There is no need for the terms polysemy and homonymy in lexicography article pdf available in lexikos 241. For example, the russian word gorlo has four meanings. Oct 25, 2019 polysemy usually uncountable, plural polysemies semantics the property of a word, sign or symbol that can represent multiple similar meanings. If we think of dictionaries, they put all concepts in one entry, while in a termbase we register each concept on separate term entries.
A semiotic account of polysemy and homonymy springerlink. Apr 05, 2016 the secret of homonymy and polysemy meaning in linguistics. Polysemy refers to a word that has two or more similar meanings. Its 2 completely different concepts, however polysemy is one word, that has many different meanings.
In other words it is the capacity for a word, phrase, or sign to have multiple meanings i. The word polysemy comes from the greek for many signs. Among the key issues are the distinction between polysemy and monosemy and the. For example, klepousniotou, titone, and romero 2008 argued that the senses in objectsubstance polysemy e. Polysemy is when a word has a variety of different meanings that are etymologically related. Very often, the distinction between polysemy and homonymy cannot be drawn precisely. Polysemy is the existence of several meanings for a single word or phrase. Polysemous words can be understood if you know the meaning of one word. Analysis of a sample of enantiosemy cases reveals that they can be divided into seven distinct.
Information extraction using metadata andsolving polysemy. The words can be related morphologically, by word formation rules, and semantically. Polysemy is a broad phenomenon, and some senses that theorists have identi. A conceptual labyrinth niladri sekhar dash linguistic research unit indian statistical institute, kolkata email. Jun 02, 2017 its 2 completely different concepts, however polysemy is one word, that has many different meanings. Producers of dictionaries often make a decision in. Our results support the need to distinguish homonymy and poly semy.
This etymology led soft being used to describe pillows, voices, drinks, and even people. In contrast to the notion of sense relations, polysemy and homonymy refer to similarities rather than differences between meanings. What is the difference between polysemy and homonymy. A criterion for distinguishing polysemous and homonymic expressions is a historical or conceptual relationship between the words. Polysemy traditionally, two types of lexical amibiguity are distinguished. When a word is written the same but has various different and unrelated meanings, we call this homonymy. We can use the word to either describe the entire human race, man, not beast, to specify a male, man, not woman, or specify an adult man, not boy. Cognitive linguistics 5 1 they passed the port at midnight. In semantic, there are at least nine types of meaning relation. Polysemy was originally a linguistic concept, but it is natural that the concept should have found application in all the abovementioned fields. Synonymy and polysemy in terminology in my own terms. Polysemous words are listed under one entry in dictionaries. They are synonymy, antonymy, homonymy, polysemy, hypernymy, hyponymy, meronymy, holonymy, and troponymy.
Polysemy refers to words or phrases with different, but related meanings. On homonymy and polysemy in placenames carole hough. Semantics, homonymy and polysemy research papers academia. Fifty years on, polysemy has become one of the hottest topics in linguistics and in the cognitive sciences at large. The cognitive approach is supplemented and supported by diachronic, psycholinguistic, developmental, comparative, and computational perspectives. Polysemy the existence of more than one meaning for a given word, that is, the capability of a word to convey different information about objects and phenomena of extralinguistic reality.
Homonymy and polysemy in semantic analysis, the theoretical distinction between homonymy and polysemy creates a problem that has captivated the attention of many linguists. Like synonyms, but synonyms are different words with one meaning. Whereas a polysemy, is simply one word with multiple meanings. Blending provides a continuum for polysemy effects. This was a rather dramatic finding because the homonymous. Synonymy and polysemy in terminology when we deal with concepts, we also deal with terms in different forms. Dictionaries recognize the distinction between polysemy and homonymy by making a polysemous item a single dictionary entry and making homophonous lexemes two or more separate entries. Difference between polysemy and homonymy definition, meaning, word origin, etc. In fact, almost all the words in language are polysemous to a greater or lesser extent. Canadian legislative bijuralism was officially launched ten years ago although the first attempts to raise awareness of the tight.
Lexical ambiguity presents one of the most intractable problems for language processing studies and, not surprisingly, it is at the core of research in lexical semantics. On homonymy and polysemy in placenames carole hough doi. Figure 1 lists only a sampling of the different senses of the useful, onesyllable english word set. Some words do not have the same spellings, but they share same the same pronunciation. Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings, and a polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. Good and polysemy the good is spoken of in as many ways as being is 1 david conan wolfsdorf introduction polysemy is the property of a single word having multiple, but proximate meanings or senses. But while homonyms are distinct lexemes that happen to share the same form, in polysemy a single lexeme is associated with multiple senses. A ring can signify wedding, engagement, graduation, reward, etc. Polysemy is a pivotal concept within the humanities, such as media studies and linguistics. Polyseme definition of polyseme by the free dictionary. Words do not only have meanings, but they also have meaning relation to one another. Polysemy is an aspect of semantic ambiguity that concerns the multiplicity of word meanings. Polysemy is thus distinct from homonymyor homophonywhich is an accidental similarity between two words such as bear the.