Group Members/Contributions: ELS 2106 T/TH 9:00 - 10:30

Cabrera, Lea Gein: Epistemology & Types of Polysemy Prof. Christy Constantino
Dasig, Jose Antonio: Polysemy - Definitions, Polysemy Paradox September 24, 2020
Gilig, Christian Francis: PPT

Activity 1: Sense Relations (Polysemy)

Polysemy - Same word, multiple senses

According to the Oxford Dictionary, polysemy is the coexistence of many possible meanings for
a word or phrase. It originated from the early 20th century Greek word poly meaning many and
sēma meaning sign. It is the capacity of a sign(s) to have multiple related meanings and senses.

Polysemy is described as the phenomenon wherein a single word is associated with two or
several related senses (the different related meanings of polysemous expressions are usually
called senses). It is a case where what we perceive to be a single word has several
connotations. It is different from monosemy, wherein one word form is associated with a single
meaning, and from homonymy, wherein a single word form is associated with two or more
unrelated meanings (Falkum, 2009).
E.g. Polysemous word/sense: straight
- a straight line/a washing on a line/a line of bad decisions; lose a
wallet/lose a relative; a handsome man/a handsome gift
Compare with homonymous word/sense: bank
- the ‘financial institution’ and ‘riverside’ meanings of bank

In her paper entitled “Polysemy”, linguist Ingrid Falkum (2017) characterized polysemy as
pervasive among natural languages, and affects both the content and function of words.
According to her, that while deciding which sense is intended in a given occasion of use rarely
seems to cause any difficulty for speakers of a language, polysemy has proved notoriously
difficult to treat both theoretically and empirically. Some of the questions that have baffled
linguists that are curious about the phenomenon concern the representation of polysemous
senses within a mental lexicon, how one should deal with polysemous words in a compositional
theory of meaning, how novel senses of a word arise in the course of discourse, and how
hearers, usually effortlessly, arrive at the contextually appropriate sense on a given occasion of
use (Falkum and Vicente, 2015). The word ‘run’, for example, can denote several senses
depending on whether we’re talking about running in a marathon, running water, running on
gasoline, running on empty, running a shop, running away from responsibilities, and so on.

The Polysemy Paradox

A polysemous lexical item poses a problem when applied to semantic applications such as
translations and dictionaries. For example, how is a polysemous lexical item to be encoded
within a dictionary? List it as a matter of different senses under a single lexical entry (sense
enumeration lexicons)? Or do we regard it as being represented under a single, general
meaning from which the contextually appropriate sense is derived (core meaning approach)?
Another problem polysemy poses is how polysemy is stored within our mental lexicons. Are all
the varying senses of a polysemous word lexically stored or only select ones? Or maybe only a
single representation is stored and the rest are pragmatically derived? The discrepancy
between the definition of polysemy, how it’s represented lexically, and how it’s produced and
understood within communication, gave rise to multiple theoretical and descriptive problems
which was then called the polysemy paradox (Ravin & Leacock, 2000 as cited in Falkum, 2011).
The Three Broad Types of Polysemy

Regular Polysemy

Apresjan (1974) described the polysemy of a word A in a given language with the meanings ai
and aj as being regular if “there exists at least one other word B with the meanings bi and bj,
which are semantically distinguished from each other in exactly the same way as ai and aj.”
Regular polysemy is typically associated with senses generated by metonymical relations
(Apresjan 1974) and it does not look like the senses refer to entities which can be seen as being
fused into a single whole.
E.g. Animal/meat/fur
- The fox was cunning. (Animal)
- Though quite tough, foxes are edible. (Meat)
- She owns a fox winter coat. (Fur)
Tree/wood
- Cedars grow in western regions. (Tree)
- There are now a lot of cedar ornaments sold online. (Wood)

Inherent or Logical Polysemy

Pustejovsky (1995) introduced inherent or logical polysemy to refer to a special kind of regular
polysemy. Inherent polysemy involves related senses of contradictory types. Pustejovsky (1995)
suggested the existence of a special complex type, dot-object, to account for inherent polysemy.
Instead of:
E.g. - Mary has written an excellent book. (Info)
- John sold his books to Mary. (Physical Object)
- I have my lunch in the backpack. (Food)
- Lunch was really long today. (Event)

The types info and physical object, and food and event become the aspects that constitute the
dot-object. Therefore, book, becomes a property that holds both what informational objects and
physical objects can have. The same process takes place with lunch.
E.g. - That heavy book is real fun. (Info & Physical Object)
- Lunch was delicious but took forever. (Food & Event)

Irregular or Idiosyncratic Polysemy

According to Apresjan (1974), irregular polysemy is associated with senses that are derived
metaphorically. Unlike regular and inherent polysemies which mainly affect nouns, irregular and
metaphor-based polysemy affects all kinds of words, from nouns and prepositions to adjectives
and verbs. Creative metaphors are usually one-off and, if conventionalised, become instances
of irregular polysemy
E.g. Metaphorical uses of animal denoting nouns to refer to some human
characteristic:
- Jose is a lion/snake/pig.
Uses of body parts to refer to analogous parts of inanimate objects:
- Foot of a mountain/tree.
- Mouth of a cave.
References:

Falkum, I. (2009). A pragmatic approach to Polysemy paradox. In the polysemy paradox. [PDF
File]. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332963867_A_pragmatic_solution_to_the_polyse
my_paradox/link/5cd41355a6fdccc9dd974c5b/download

Falkum, I. (2011). The semantics and pragmatics of Polysemy: A relevance theoretic account.
In What is Polysemy. [PDF File]. Retrieved from:
https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1139079/1/1139079.pdf

Falkum & Vicente (2015). Polysemy: Current approaches and perspectives. In Preliminaries.
[PDF File]. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272740167_Polysemy_Current_perspectives_and
_approaches

Falkum & Vicente (2017). Polysemy. In What is Polysemy. [PDF File]. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315458677_Polysemy

Vicente, A. (2017). Polysemy and Word Meaning: An account of lexical meaning for different
kinds of content words. [PDF File]. Retrieved from:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315492033_Polysemy_and_word_meaning_an_ac
count_of_lexical_meaning_for_different_kinds_of_content_words