44. Problems in the concept of polysemy

Despite it’s a pair simplicity the concept of polysemy is complex and involved a certain number of problems. Today we’ll consider:

1) the number of meanings;

2) differences in recognizing polysemy.

Since one meaning cannot always be delimited and distinguished from another, it’s not easy to say without hesitation whether two meanings are the same or different. Consequently we cannot determine exactly how many meanings a polysemantic word has. Consider the verb “eat”. Most dictionaries distinguish the literal sense of “taking in through the mouth and swallowing”, and the derived meaning of “use up, damage or destroy smth”, which tends to suggest that the verb may have at least two different meanings. However, in the literal sense we can also distinguish between “eating nuts” and “eating soup”. The former with fingers, and the letter with a spoon, moreover we can also talk about drinking soup, as eating it. This discussion shows that there is no clear criterion for either difference or sameness of meaning and it would seem futile to attempt an expositive count of the number of possible meanings which a given verb may have. A word may have both a literal meaning and one or more transferred meaning. Although we cannot determine with precision how many different meanings this word may have altogether.

The second problem stated when we have to decide where we have polysemy and where we have homonymy. When we have a written form with two meanings, should we consider it as one word with different meanings (polysemy) or as two different words with the same shape (homonymy). Dictionaries have to decide whether the particular item is to be handled in terms of polysemy or homonymy, because a polysemantic word will be treated as a single entry, while a homonymous one will have a separate entry for each of the homonyms. Consequently polysemy must be considered an invaluable factor of economy and flexibility in language.

45. Homonymy

Homonymy refers to the situation where we have two or more words with the same shape. Although they have the same shape, homonyms are considered distinct lexemes, maybe because they have unrelated meanings and different etymologies. There is however some difficulty in the establishment of sameness of shape, owing to the fact that we do not make the distinction in both speech and writing.

Ex.: Lead (metal) lead (dog’s lead); right, rite, write.

Thus “Lead” (metal) and “lead” (dog’s lead) are spelt the same but pronounced differently. And “right”, “rite”, “write” spelt differently but pronounced the same. For the first case “lead – lead” the term homograph should be used (same spelling). For the second – homophone is the appropriate term. In addition to the difference in meaning homonyms may also be kept apart by syntactic differences.

Tender (adj., n, v), bear (n, v), hail (n. v) hoarse (adj.)horse (n.)

When homonyms belong to different word classes as in the case of “tender”, which has different lexemes as adj., n., v., each homonym has got only a distinct meaning but also a different grammatical function. The same observation apply to pairs of words such as bear (n, v), hail (n. v), hoarse (adj.), horse (n.), brave (n., adj.)

The route was very long. The root was very long.

Helen didn’t see the bat. Helen didn’t see the bat.