2.3 Polysemy Stages of semantic change /Definition of polysemy and polysemes / Polysemy vs Homonymy / Examples of polysemes / Polysemy vs Indeterminacy /Linguistic processes governing polysemy

The change of lexical meaning undergoes three stages:

1. Innovation in speech (a new use of the word), which does not influence the semantic structure of the word.

2. Formation of a new meaning, as a part of semantic structure of the word as a result of the regular new use. The new meaning may acquire special new grammatical characteristics.

3. Appearance of homonyms when lexical meanings separate and the connection between them is lost.

The second stage of this change may be described as polysemy.

Polysemy (from the Greek πολυσημεία = multiple meaning) is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a word, phrase, etc...) or signs to have multiple meanings (sememes, i.e. a large semantic field).

A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple, related meanings. Homophonous words are judged to be polysemous if their meanings are related. Different meanings of polysemes are actualised in different contexts.

The complex relations between meanings and words were first noted by the Stoics (Robins, 1967). They observed that a single concept can be expressed by several different words (synonymy) and that conversely, one word can carry different meanings (polysemy).

The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle. “Traditionally, polysemy is distinguished from homonymy. Strictly speaking, homographs are etymologically unrelated words that happen to be represented by the same string of letters in a language. For example, bass the fish is derived from Old English barse (perch) while bass the voice is derived from Italian basso. Conversely, polysemes are etymologically and therefore semantically related, and typically originate from metaphoric usage. Line in a line of people and a line drawn on a piece of paper are etymologically related, and it is easy to see their semantic relation. The distinction is not always straightforward, especially since words that are etymologically related can, over time, drift so far apart that the original semantic relation is no longer recognizable” (Ravin, 2000, p.2).

Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma, numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata. Semantic shift can separate a polysemous word into separate homonyms. For example, check ("bank check", also spelled cheque for disambiguation), check in chess and check "verification" are considered homonyms, while they originated as a single word derived from chess in the 14th century.

Here are some examples of polysemes²:

• Book (noun)

1. a set of printed pages that are fastened inside a cover so that you can turn them and read them: a pile of books; hardback/paperback book;

2. a written word published in printed or electronic form: She's reading a book by Stephen King. A book about / on wildlife; reference / children's library book;

3. a set of sheets of paper that are fastened together inside a cover and used for writing in: an exercise book; an address book; a notebook;

4. a set of things that are fastened together like a book: a book of stamps / tickets / matches; a chequebook.

• individual (adj.)

1. [only before noun](often used after each) considered separately rather than as part of the group: We interviewed each individual member of the group. The minister refused to comment on individual cases;

2. [only before noun] connected with one person; designed for one person: respect for individual freedom; an individual pizza.

• milk (verb)

1. to take milk from a cow, goat, etc.;

2. A (of B) | B (from A) (disapproving) to obtain as much money, advantage, etc. for yourself as you can from a particular situation, especially in a dishonest way: She's milked a small fortune from the company over the years. She's milked the company of a small fortune. I know he's had a hard time lately, but he's certainly milking it for all it's worth (= using it as an excuse to do things people would normally object to).

It is important that a distinction be made between polysemy and indeterminacy, sometimes referred to as vagueness. “The distinction is between those aspects of meaning that correspond to multiple senses of a word versus those aspects that are manifestations of a single sense” (Ravin, 2000, p.2-3). For example, the referent of child can be either male or female. This difference in gender can be viewed as polysemy, creating two different senses of child; or, more intuitively, it can be seen as a difference that is indeterminate within a single sense of child.

In the classical linguistic tradition a word is regarded as polysemous if more than a single definition is needed to account for its meaning. In other words, a word is polysemous if a single set of necessary conditions (or defining features, the ones that make the object different from the others of its class) and sufficient conditions (or core properties which unite all objects of the same class) cannot be defined to cover all the concepts expressed by the word.

Prof. Apresjan defines polysemy as the similarity in the representations of two or more senses of a word: “the definition does not require that there be a common part for all the meanings of a polysemantic word; it's enough that each of the meanings be linked with at least one other meaning” (Apresjan, 1974).

The word meaning contains several components: some of them possess context-invariant semantic properties (the basic part of meaning which doesn’t change), the others are context-dependent (“nodules of meaning that are created and dissolved with changes in the context” (Cruse, 1986).) Single-sense words can acquire different readings in different contexts: a fast car is one that can be driven quickly but a fast typist is one who can type quickly. Similarly, English sentences like the construction is complete convey an ambiguity between the product and the action that caused it.

Regular polysemy is governed by certain linguistic processes, which are productive, rule-governed, and predictable. Here are some of them:

• Metonymic extension, responsible for creating senses such as foot in the foot of the mountain.

• The extension from a feeling (sad as in ‘the person is sad’) to something evoking this feeling (as in ‘a sad day’).

• Container vs quantity: the systematic relation between words denoting vessels and the quantity that the vessel holds, such as spoon, the utensil and spoon meaning ‘spoonful’, as in a spoon of sugar.

• Container vs content: nouns like book alternate between the physical object and its content. In fact, as Cruse points out, both meanings can be active simultaneously, as in I'm going to buy John a book for his birthday (Cruse, 1986).

• Action vs result: nominals that describe an action, such as construction, cooperation, separation, often describe its result too.

• Place vs administrative unit vs people: nouns like city, country, state alternate their meaning between an administrative entity or unit, the group of people living within the unit's borders and the people who govern it.

• Plant vs material or food stuff: oak the tree (as in oak grove) and oak the wood (as in oak table), cotton the plant (as in cotton field) and cotton the material (as in cotton jeans), rice the plant (as in rice fields) and rice the food stuff (as in rice porridge).

• Syntactic alternations, as in: 1) Bees swarm in the garden. 2) The garden swarms with bees. The two syntactic forms – one with an agent subject; the other with a locative subject – exhibit a variety of differences in the semantic structure of the verb.

One more prototypical kind of relationships between polysemes is the one where a certain condition included in the meaning is more privileged, or basic, than the others. Long, for example, is more prototypically used in the spatial sense; and only by extension in the duration sense.

The more subtle the interactions between lexical meaning and context, the more complex mechanisms are necessary for governing these interactions. Pustejovsky discusses a particularly vexing group of verbs, like risk, which occur with contradictory contexts, as in Mary risked her life versus Mary risked death. The same verb meaning here combines with antonymous complements to form roughly the same compositional meaning, that of some likely harmful result (Pustejovsky, 1995).

Another group of verbs have conflated with one of their complement meanings. For example, consider the sentences: 1) The fish smells good. 2) The fish smells. In the second sentence, the sense of the verb smells has been conflated with that of a particular concept, bad. So, the meanings of the verb to smell are: 1) emit an odour, as in ‘The soup smells good’; 2) smell bad, as in ‘He rarely washes, and he smells’ 3) reek, stink. Fellbaum represents this kind of polysemy as superordinate and subordinate senses, where the subordinate sense has a more specific meaning which includes the adjectival element (Fellbaum, 1990).

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