Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Department of English
and American Studies

English Language and Literature

Jozef Andraš

Theoretical Approaches to Polysemy

Supervisor: Doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, Ph. D.

2018
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 I declare that I have worked on this thesis independently,
using only the primary and secondary sources listed in the bibliography.

……………………………………………
Author’s signature
I would like to thank my supervisor, doc. PhDr. Naděžda Kudrnáčová, CSc. for
her kind supervision, patient guidance and support. I would also like to thank
my family for their support during the years of my studies.
Table of Contents

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 5
1. Meaning .................................................................................................................. 6
2. Lexical Ambiguity.................................................................................................. 7
3. Polysemy in contrast to homonymy ....................................................................... 9
3.1. Polysemy ................................................................................................................ 9
3.2. Homonymy ........................................................................................................... 10
3.3. Distinction between polysemy and homonymy ................................................... 12
4. Relations between polysemes............................................................................... 14
5. Polysemy in contract to vagueness....................................................................... 17
6. Polysemy within the classical, prototypical and relational approach................... 22
6.1. Polysemy within the classical approach ............................................................... 23
6.2. Polysemy within the prototypical approach ......................................................... 32
6.3. Polysemy within the relational approach ............................................................. 39
Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 43
Bibliography ................................................................................................................... 46
Résumé............................................................................................................................ 49
Résumé............................................................................................................................ 50
Introduction

This thesis discusses the phenomenon of polysemy: a single lexical form having

two or more related senses (e.g. bleed to death/bleed the radiators; feed the family of

five/feed the tomatoes). As the polysemy is one of the most interesting and demanding

aspects, it has been examined from several points of view. This thesis deals with the

theoretical approaches to polysemy.

The author divides this thesis into six chapters. The first chapter introduces the

term meaning with respect to the linguistics, as it is crucial to understand it clearly in

order to grasp the notion of polysemy. This chapter proposes several notions and levels

of the lexical meaning. The second chapter is dedicated to the lexical ambiguity, and

explains the term lexeme. The third chapter focuses on the differences between

homonymy and polysemy, which are the two instances of the lexical ambiguity, and

proposes the criteria to distinguish these two independent phenomena. Moreover, it

examines the term monosemy briefly. The fourth chapter talks about the relations

between the polysemes (i.e. between the words that have several meanings), which can

be either linear (autohyponymy and automeronymy), or non-linear (metaphor and

metonymy. The fifth chapter discusses the phenomenon of vagueness and points out

how it differs from the polysemy. The sixth chapter, the pivotal chapter of the thesis,

clarifies three approaches to the polysemy: classical, prototypical and relational

approach. Each theory differs from the others, as each one puts emphasis on different

areas. As a result, each of the mentioned theories may come to a different conclusion

with regard to the same lexeme. The summary is based on the analysis and comparison

of the polysemy, homonymy and vagueness, and the three above-mentioned theories.

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1. Meaning

Semantics is the branch of linguistics that deals with meaning. It is important to

emphasize that there are several notions of meaning: some of them are related to

linguistic semantics and some of them are not. Löbner proposes that, “linguistic

semantics is exclusively concerned with the meanings of linguistic expressions such as

words, grammatical forms and sentences, but not with the meanings of actions or

phenomena.” (2013: 1) The general definition of meaning is thus not easy. A Dictionary

of Linguistics and Phonetics by Crystal states that meaning is “the basic notion used in

linguistics both as datum and as criterion of analysis: linguists study meaning, and also

use meaning as a criterion for studying other aspects of language.” (2008: 298) Meaning

may be examined from various points of views. Not only linguists are considerably

concerned with it, but there are also other academic disciplines that deal with meaning,

for instance philosophy, psychology, sociology, neurology, semiotics and statistics.

The theory distinguishes numerous types of meaning. This thesis will deal with

only some of them, which the author considers to be the most relevant. The first

dichotomy is lexical meaning and grammatical meaning. Cruse states that, “if we

characterize lexical meaning as semantic information carried by major lexical units

(which for the moment we can take to be nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), then

grammatical meaning can be defined as semantic information in a sentence not carried

by major lexical units.” (2011: 267) According to Leech, the lexical meaning in its

widest sense into seven subtypes: conceptual meaning, connotative meaning, social

meaning, affective meaning, reflective meaning, collocative meaning, and thematic

meaning. (1981: 9) Leech considers the conceptual meaning (referred to as ‘denotative’

or ‘cognitive’ meaning too) to be the core meaning, as it deals with the relationship

between a word and the thing it refers to. “My chief reason for assigning priority to

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conceptual meaning is that it has a complex and sophisticated organization of a kind

which may be compared with, and cross-related to, similar organization on the syntactic

and phonological levels of language (1981: 9) Out of the seven senses he puts the

conceptual meaning on the first place due to its organization.

Löbner defines three levels of meaning: expression meaning, utterance meaning

and communicative meaning. (2013: 7) Meanwhile the expression meaning is the

meaning of an expression in isolation, i.e. with no context, the utterance meaning is the

meaning an expression has in a given context. At last, the communicative meaning is

the meaning of an utterance in a concrete situation.

Riemer distinguishes between sentence meaning and utterance meaning.

Sentence meaning is “the compositional meaning of the sentence as constructed out of

the meanings of its individual component lexemes.” (2010: 21) Sentence meaning is

thus what a sentence means. On the other hand, utterance meaning (or also called

speaker meaning) is “the meaning which the words have on a particular occasion of use

in the particular context in which they occur.” (2010: 21) That means utterance meaning

is what a speaker means when he uses a piece of language, for example words,

grammatical forms or sentences.

2. Lexical Ambiguity

This chapter discusses the concept of lexical ambiguity. Words have usually

more than just one meaning and sentences may also be interpreted in several ways. This

phenomenon is called ambiguity: “an expression or an utterance is ambiguous if it can

be interpreted in more than one way. The notion of ambiguity can be applied to all

levels of meaning: to expression meaning, utterance meaning and communicative

meaning.” (Löbner 2013: 41) Theory knows several types of ambiguity.

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 Cruse highlights the importance of distinguishing between lexical ambiguity and

non-lexical ambiguity, “as not all ambiguity is lexical in origin.” (2011: 100) He states

that the source of non-lexical ambiguity is mainly syntax (e.g., old men and women – is

it just the men that are old, or are women old as well?), but also the interpretation of

simile or metaphors may result in ambiguity (e.g., John works like lightning. (i.e. John

is very fast.) John works like lightning – in brief flashes and with lots of noise.)

One of the most important terms related to the lexical ambiguity is the term

lexeme. Riemer proposes this definition: “The lexeme is the name of the abstract unit

which unites all the morphological variants of a single word. Thus, we can say that go,

goes, went, have gone and to go all are instantiations of the lexeme to go.” (2013: 17)

From his words we can deduce that the lexeme is a linguistic unit carrying lexical

meaning. The lexeme can be represented by a single word, but composite expressions

may also carry their own lexical meaning (for example idioms or phrasal verbs). Löbner

gives a more precise definition and says that a lexeme is defined by the following

characteristics:

(i) its sound form and its spelling (for languages with a written standard)

(ii) the grammatical category of the lexeme (noun, intransitive verb,

adjective, etc.)

(iii) its inherent grammatical properties (for some languages, e.g. gender)

(iv) the set of grammatical forms it may take, in particular irregular forms

(v) its lexical meaning. (2013: 43)

Lexical ambiguity thus deals with various readings of lexemes. Lexical

ambiguity is subdivided into two different types: homonymy and polysemy (discussed

below). Contemporary distinction between polysemy and homonymy corresponds to

previous distinction between complementary and contrastive ambiguity established by

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Weinreich in 1964. Hong explains that, “contrastive lexical ambiguity is the situation

where a lexical item is associated with at least two distinct and unrelated meanings

while contemporary ambiguity must be distinguished in a full semantic description: a

purely formal analysis, without reference to the substance.” (2015: 10) Moreover,

whether we are talking about polysemy or homonymy, the two subsystems of lexical

ambiguity, Hong highlights their context-dependency:

Lexical ambiguity is context-dependent: the same linguistic item (be it a word,

phrase, or sentence) may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in

another context. For a word, lexical ambiguity typically refers to an unclear

choice between different definitions as may be found in the dictionary. A

sentence, however, may be ambiguous due to different way of parsing the same

sequence of words. (2015: 10)

The context plays a significant role when analysing the meaning of the words or

sentences. Usually without the further context it is impossible to reveal the real meaning

of the linguistic items.

3. Polysemy in contrast to homonymy

3.1. Polysemy

This chapter provides an overview of the polysemy, which must be

distinguished from the homonymy. Homonymy is not very common and does not

appear in language very often. On the contrary, polysemy is plentiful. Merriam-

Webster’s Dictionary traces the origin of the term polysemy to the Late Latin word

polysemus, which comes from Greek polysēmos (poly- many + sēma- sign).

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 Crystal states that polysemy is “a term used in semantics analysis to refer to a

lexical item which has a range of different meanings.” (2008: 373) According to

Löbner, “a lexeme is polysemous if it has two or more interrelated meanings.” (2013:

45) Meanings are interrelated if they are related reciprocally or mutually. He refers to

the interrelated meanings as to meaning variants and says that, “each of these meaning

variants has to be learnt separately in order to be understood.” (2013: 46)

The abundance of the polysemous words in the vocabulary is the result of the

economic tendency in the language, as people tend to use the existing words for new

objects instead of creating the new ones. According to Byrd et al. (1987), almost forty

per cent of the entries in Webster’s Seventh Dictionary have two or more senses. The

opposite of polysemy is monosemy or univocality. In a simplified way it can be said

that a word is monosemous when it is “consisting of a single meaning.” (Crystal 1985)

The examples of the monosemous words may be found among the technical terms.

3.2. Homonymy
The first subset of the lexical ambiguity is homonymy. According to Merriam-

Webster’s Dictionary, the word homonymy comes from a Latin homonymus, meaning

‘having the same name,’ from Greek homōnymo, homo- meaning ‘same’ and –ōnymos

meaning, ‘name.’

If the lexemes have the same form but are related to completely different

meanings, they are homonymous. For example a word ‘bank’ can be understood either

as a ‘financial institution’, or as ‘the side of a river or canal.’ Thus Lyons points that

when two words are homonymous, “we shall use numerical subscripts,” and to

demonstrate that he gives a figure as shown below (1995: 27):

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Figure 1: semantic triangle of the homonymous word “bank”

The theory distinguishes two types of homonymy: total homonymy and partial

homonymy. Löbner explains that, “two lexemes are totally homonymous if they have

unrelated meanings, but share all other constitutive properties.” (2013: 45) For instance,

the lexeme ‘coach1’ encodes ‘bus’ and lexeme ‘coach2’ encodes ‘sports instructor.’

Total homonymy is also referred to as the absolute homonymy. Lyons says that two

lexemes must meet three conditions in order to be considered absolute homonyms

(1995: 55):

(i) they will be unrelated in meaning;

(ii) all their forms will be identical;

(iii) the identical forms will be grammatically equivalent.

If some of the conditions are not met, we cannot talk about the absolute homonymy.

The second case of homonymy is partial homonymy. Löbner advocates that

“two lexemes are partially homonymous if they have unrelated meanings, but coincide

in some of their grammatical forms.” (2013: 45) For example, verbs ‘lie (lay, lain)’ and

‘lie (lied, lied)’ are partially homonymous, as in some situations they may bring about

ambiguity (when used in the present tense), but in others they can be easily

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distinguished (when used in the past tense or when using the past participle). In short, in

the case of partial homonymy not all three conditions specified by Lyons are met.

Homonymy is related to the sound forms or to the written forms. When two

lexemes have the same spelling, it is called homography. For example, the words ‘bow’

and ‘bow.’ Bow can mean to bend at the waist, but it can also be a piece of archery

equipment. Other examples may be ‘tear’ (drops of water from the eyes) and ‘tear’ (to

rip paper into pieces) and ‘entrance’ (to hold one’s attention) and ‘entrance’ (a

doorway). When two lexemes have the same sound form, it is called homophony (e.g.,

‘tail’/’tale’, ‘two’/’too’, ‘plate’/’plait’). To conclude, homonyms can be either

homophonic, or homographic.

3.3. Distinction between polysemy and homonymy

Polysemy is traditionally distinguished from homonymy. Usually it is no

problematic to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy. Lyons holds that,

“whereas homonymy (whether absolute or partial) is a relation that holds between two

or more distinct lexemes, polysemy (“multiple meaning”) is a property of single

lexemes.” (1995: 58) However, even among native speakers there tend to be

disagreements sometimes about what should be considered to be homonymy and what

should be regarded as polysemy. Two distinguish these two phenomena, Lyons

mentions two criteria that are applied: “etymology (the historical source of the words)

and relatedness of meaning.” (1995: 28) Meanwhile polysemous words have the same

source and are related one to another in some way, homonymous words come from

different sources and are not related in any way. Ravin and Leacock emphasizes the

importance of the differentiation of these two phenomena because “it separates the

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principled from the accidental.” (2000: 2) Polysemy and homonymy must be thus

carefully distinguished.

Sometimes using dictionaries may be helpful and can make it easier for us to

distinguish between polysemy and homonymy as “polysemous senses are listed under

the same lexical entry, while homonymous senses are given separate entries.” (Saeed

2003: 64) For example, the word bank occurs under four entries (bank1, bank2, etc.) in

Merriam-Webster’s Dictionary and is thus homonymous. The four entries are different

words but have accidentally the same pronunciation. The explanation of every single

entry subsequently specifies different uses of polysemous words. On the other hand,

polysemous words, such as bleed or feed, are listed under the same lexical entry.

Although homonymy and polysemy are two independent phenomena, Löbner

proves that “two homonymous lexemes may well at the same time be themselves

polysemous.” (2013: 46) He gives an example of the lexeme light:

LightA1 and lightA2 are homonymous, and both homonyms are in

themselves polysemous. Different meaning variants of lightA2 are

involved in combinations like a light bike, a light meal, a light exercise or

a light breeze. LightA1 has two meaning variants, too, the opposite of dark

and something like pale in expressions such as light blue. (2013: 46)

Apparently, homonymy and polysemy may co-exist one next to another. Löbner depicts

the relations between polysemy and homonymy, and the differences between them in a

figure as shown below (2013: 47):

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Figure 2: Homonymy versus polysemy

Meanwhile the homonymy is specific for the various meanings being assigned to as

many lexemes, in the case of polysemy all the meanings are assigned to the same

lexeme. Moreover, Löbner adds that, “the fact that the multiple meanings (i.e. meaning

variants) of polysemous expressions are related is indicated by depicting them as

clusters.” (2013: 46) This is pictured in the figure above.

4. Relations between polysemes

(2011: 115) recognizes two relationships between a pair of polysemes: linear relations

(also called vertical relations) and non-linear relations (also called horizontal relations).

We can thus talk about linear polysemy and non-linear polysemy. The first one includes

autohyponomy and automeronymy, the second one includes metaphor, metonymy and

so-called miscellaneous types.

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 Autohyponymy is the most common kind of linear relation. Oxford Dictionary

of Pragmatics states autohyponymy is the phenomenon, “whereby a polysemic or

polysemous lexical item functions in one of its senses as the superordinate to itself in

another sense.” (Huang 2012: 36) Cruse thinks a word dog is a good example of

autohyponymy. It means in a more general way, “member of canine race”, as in Dog

owners must register their pets, and in a more specific way it means, “male member of

canine race”, as in That’s not a dog, it’s a bitch. Another type of linear polysemy is

automeronymy “that is when a part and immediate whole have the same name (but

distinct senses, cf. autohyponymy).” (Cruse 2011: 173) A good example of this can be

found in the human body meronymy. “The term body is used (i) for both the whole

ensemble, and (ii) as a close equivalent to trunk (it is, in fact, perhaps the more usual

term). It is body in sense (ii) which is the metaphorical source of the suggestions of

body for the main parts of teapot and spoon.” (Cruse 2011: 173) Cruse draws a graph of

a segmental version of the human body (2011: 172):

Figure 3: Meronymy, segmental version of the human body

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 Non-linear polysemy results mainly from metaphor and metonymy. Löbner

proposes that, “an expression is used metaphorically if it is used to refer to things that

are in crucial aspects similar to the kind of objects to which the expression refers in its

literal meaning.” (2013: 53) In a simplified way we can say that a metaphor states that

one thing is another thing. When we talk metaphorically, we identify the one thing with

another not because they are the same, but in order to compare them. To demonstrate

how a word can be used metaphorically, Cruse (2011: 117) gives four examples for the

word position:

(1) That is an uncomfortable position to sleep in.

(2) This is a good position to see the procession.

(3) John has an excellent position in ICI.

(4) What is your position on EC membership?

Meanwhile the word position is in the first two sentences used in its literal meaning, i.e.

standing for a physical situation, in the last two sentences it is used metaphorically. In

the third sentence, it refers to a good job, and in the forth sentence it refers to opinion.

Another non-linear polysemy phenomemon is metonymy. Löbner explains that, “an

expression is used metonymically if it is used to refer to things that belong to the king

of objects to which the expression refers in its literal meaning.“ (Löbner 2013: 52)

Metonymy develops relations on the basis of close associations. Cruse proposes this

example:

(1) There are too many mouths to feed.

(2) Don’t talk with your mouth full.

In the first case, mouths stand for persons, human beings, and is thus used

metonymically. In the second second sentence mouth is used literally.

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5. Polysemy in contract to vagueness

This chapter is dedicated to the linguistic term vagueness (also indeterminancy),

which is related to the lexical meaning and is often discussed together with ambiguity.

Even though it may seem these two terms are synonymous, they must be carefully

distinguished. Concerning vagueness and ambiguity Tuggy observes, “the difference

between ambiguity and vagueness is a matter of whether two or more meanings

associated with a given phonological form are distinct (ambiguous), or united as non-

distinguished subeases of a single more general meaning (vague).” (1993: 167) In other

words, ambiguous words have more than one meaning, i.e. several meanings,

meanwhile vague words do not allow the reader to distinguish between two or more

different kinds of a thing. That means that vagueness involves “a lexeme with a single

but nonspecific meaning,” and polysemy involves “a single lexeme with different

distinct senses.” (1993: 168) Sometimes it is not easy to tell whether a word is

ambiguous or vague. Elbourne gives an example of a vague word. According to him,

horse is vague because “it does not specify whether we are talking about a racehorse, a

carthorse or a charger.” (2011: 34) Moreover, it is important to mention that a word

may be at the same time both ambiguous, and vague.

Quine deals with polysemy and distinguishes it from vagueness. He remarks that

people create ambiguity by means of naming their children after someone. “The name

‘Paul’, despite the thousands who bear it, is not a general term; it is a singular term with

wide ambiguity. Each typical utterance of the word designates or purports to designate

one specific man.” (1960: 130) As a result, when we refer to Paul, we do not use

definite or indefinite article. Nevertheless, when we use someone’s name, we designate

or we aim at designating one specific person. As for the vagueness, he notes it is a

natural result of the process by which people learn new words. Quine examines the

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proper name Mount Rainier, which is according to him not precisely delimited, and is

vague:

Insofar as it is left unsettled how far from the summit of Mount Rainier one can

be and still count as on Mount Rainier, ‘Mount Rainier’ is vague. Thus

vagueness affects not only general terms but singular terms as well. A singular

term naming a physical object can be vague in point of the boundaries of that

object in space time, while a general item can be vague in point of the marginal

hangers-on of its extension. (1960: 126)

Quine concludes that vagueness is applied to both general and singular terms, thus both

terms mountain and Mount Rainier are vague. Mountain is vague because it cannot be

precisely specified what elevation is required in order to count something as a

mountain. On the other hand, Mount Rainier is vague because if someone says I was on

the Mount Rainier., the sentence can be interpreted in several ways, as the person may

have climbed to the summit of the mountain, or also may have just climbed until the

midpoint.

Geeraerts proposes that if we want to distinguish between ambiguity and from

vagueness, we need to answer the question whether, “a particular semantic specification

is part of the stable semantic structure of the item, or is the result of transient contextual

specification.” (2010: 196) If a given semantic specification is only influenced by the

context, the word is vague. However, when the impact of the context is not so relevant

and a particular semantic specification is component of the stable semantic structure of

a word, we can assume the word is polysemous. Geeraerts proposes that neighbour is

vague but not polysemous, as in the utterance my neighbour is a civil servant one

cannot conclude the sex of the neighbour, thus “neighbour is vague (or general, or

unspecified) as to the dimension of sex.” (2010: 196)

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 As ambiguity differs from vagueness, several diagnostic tests have been

established to distinguish between polysemy and vagueness. These tests can be divided

into three groups: logical tests, linguistic tests and definitional tests.

The first group involves a logical test originally proposed by Quine who stated

that a word is polysemous when it is “at once true and false of the same things.” (1960:

130) For example, we can say the feather is light and not light because light can be

interpreted as not heavy and as not dark, too. It is also possible to claim that This man is

a minister, not a minister., having in mind that he is a priest but not a politician.

However, Quine then observes some problems arising from polysemy. He examines the

antonym of the adjective light, which is the adjective hard: “Take ‘hard’ said of chairs

and questions. As remarked, ambiguity may be manifested in that the term is at once

true and false of the same things. This seemed to work for ‘light’, but it is useless for

‘hard’. For can we claim that ‘hard’ as applied to chairs ever is denied of hard

questions, or vice versa?” (1960: 130) Meanwhile it did not seem problematic to use the

adjective light in the previous example, in the case of the adjective hard it seems to be a

problem, as Quine proposes that we cannot say that the chairs are hard to answer, and

the questions are hard to the touch.

The second group consists of linguistic tests. As Geeraerts notes they, “involve

acceptability judgements about sentences that contain two related occurrences of the

item under consideration (one of which may be implicit); if the grammatical

relationship between both occurrences requires their semantic identity, the resulting

sentence may be an indication for the polysemy of the item.” (2010: 197) This group is

represented by Zwicky and Sadock who proposed several ambiguity tests to distinguish

ambiguity from lack of specification, in other words to distinguish ambiguity from

vagueness. These tests are based on the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic principles

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and even though they are applicable in most situations, the authors admit they may fail

in some situations or may result in unclear answers.

With regard to the semantics tests, Zwicky and Sadock argue that, “a sentence

is ambiguous by characterizing the difference between two understandings.” (1975: 3)

Although the difference is relevant in the semantic tests, it is not sufficient for the

identification of ambiguity. Hintikka advocates this opinion as he claims:

From the fact that a sentence can be split into a disjunction of several sentences

by evoking some further feature of the speech-situation […], it does not follow

that it is ambiguous. Or, to put the same point in more linguistic terms, from the

fact that an expression exhibits an ambiguity when imbedded in a certain kind of

context it does not follow that it is ambiguous when considered alone.” (1973:

205)

According to him, if an expression has several understandings when it occurs in the

context, it does not necessarily mean it has to be ambiguous when it stands alone.

Nevertheless, linguists advocate that the conclusion whether an expression is

ambiguous or not should be made on the understanding of the expression alone.

The syntactic tests are based on the proposition that, “other things being equal,

sentences with two distinct syntactic structures also have two distinct semantic

structures.” (Zwicky and Sadock 1975: 10) Some sentences can be interpreted in several

ways due to the sentence structure. For example, the exemplary syntactically ambiguous

sentence:

(1) They saw her duck.

may carry three different meanings:

a. They look at a duck that belonged to her.

b. They looked at her quickly squat down to avoid something.

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 c. They use a saw to cut her duck.

The actual meaning of the given sentence depends on the relationship between the

words and clauses of the sentence.

The third group is comprised of the definitional test, which is the oldest one and

which was proposed by Aristotle in Posterior Analytics II.13. Riemer, following

Aristotle’s ideas, states that, “a word has more than one meaning if there is no single

definition which can be applied to all of its uses, and it has no more meaning than the

number of maximally general definitions necessary to define its complete denotation.”

(2010: 163) In other words, a word of polysemous if we need more definitions to

explain its meaning.

Geeraerts explains what are the reasons for the existence of several tests, why

one is not sufficient. He proposes two interconnected reasons. Firstly, he states that the

three tests may be in mutual conflict, and they do not need to come to the same

conclusion. One test may reveal ambiguity, whereas another may not. Secondly,

Geeraerts’ findings maintain that, “each of the criteria taken separately need not lead to

a stable distinction between polysemy and vagueness, in the sense that what is a distinct

meaning according to one of the tests in one context may be reduced to a case of

vagueness according to the same test in another context.” (2010: 198) Geeraerts

suggests that context is also the important feature for the determination whether a word

is polysemous or vague. However, he concludes that the boundary between vagueness

and polysemy is not stable, and it is not possible to draw a line between them.

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6. Polysemy within the classical, prototypical and relational approach

Semantics, and the part of the semantics which deals with polysemy, can be

approached from various points of view. This chapter will examine polysemy within the

classical, prototypical and relational approach. Ravin and Leacock indicate that the

semantic theories often differ in their conclusions, as they are built on different

principles:

Semantic theories are guided by two sometimes contradictory principles:

generalize (or reduce polysemy) as much as possible in order to increase the

explanatory power of the theory; and make distinctions (or increase polysemy)

in order to account for as much semantic details as possible. Theories differ in

the degrees of abstraction they allow. Some postulate one sense where others

postulate many, for very similar data. (2000: 7)

Meanwhile one semantic theory may conclude a word is ambiguous, a different one

may conclude it is monosemous. Ravin and Leacock focus on the classical, prototypical

and relational approaches, as they consider them to be most relevant and thus they will

be discussed below. To describe the basic differences between the classical and

prototypical approaches to polysemy, they claim:

While the classical approaches have an affinity with philosophy and logic,

prototypical approaches have an affinity with psychology. While the classical

theories emphasizes definitions and related meaning to truth conditions, possible

words, and states of affairs, prototypical approaches emphasizes meaning as part

of a larger cognitive system and relates it to mental representations, cognitive

models, and bodily experiences.” (2000: 15)

The above-mentioned theories have a closer relationship with different scientific

disciplines, and put emphasis on different issues. The relational approach to polysemy is

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a according to Ravin and Leacock a little bit different from the classical and

prototypical approaches, as “representing regular polysemy within a relational

framework is problematic. Word senses that exhibit regular polysemy can be very

distant from each other in the semantic network’s conceptucal space. (2000: 21) In other

words, a word may have features of a regular polysemy and its senses may still be very

distant.

6.1. Polysemy within the classical approach

the definitions of the concepts, which are given in terms of necessary and sufficient

conditions. Ravin and Leacock define three basic principles on which the classical

theory is based on:

(i) senses are represented as sets of necessary and sufficient conditions,

which fully capture the conceptual content conveyed by words;

(ii) there are as many distinct senses for a word as there are differences in

these conditions;

(iii) senses can be represented independently of the context in which they

occur. (2000: 7)

In the modern era it was Katz, Fodor and Apresjan who represented the classical

approach. Meanwhile Katz does not distinguish between polysemy and homonymy and

does not explain regular polysemy, Apresjan defines polysemy and breaks it into

regular polysemy and irregular polysemy.

Apresjan considers it to be important to define the term similarity of meanings

before he gives the definition of polysemy, as he defines lexical polysemy by means of

this term. If we want to understand it, we need to know what it means for the words to

23
be similar in meaning. Apresjan specifies that, „the meaning ai and aj of the word A are

called similar if there exists level of semantic analysis on which their dictionary

definitions (semantic trees) or associative features have a non-trivial common part.“

(1974: 14-15) In other words, the semantic trees must be similar on any level if we want

to say the meanings of the words are similar, without being relevant whether the

similarity occurs on the first level or not.

Then he gives his definition of polysemy: “The word A is called polysemantic if

for any two of its meanings ai and aj there exist meanings a1, a2, . . . . , ak, al such that ai

is similar to a1, a1 to a2, etc., ak to a1 and al to aj.” (1974: 15) Apresjan suggests that each

of the meanings does not need to necessarily be related to all other meanings but the

link with at least one other meaning is required. Apresjan then breaks the polysemy into

two groups: regular polysemy versus irregular polysemy. “Polysemy of the word A with

the meanings ai and aj is called regular if, in the given language, 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 and if ai and bi, aj and bj are

nonsynonymous.” (1974: 15) The word “orange” is an example of the regular

polysemy, as it can relate either to fruit or colour, and there are some other words that

relate to fruit or colour as well, for example “chestnut” or “lemon”. Ravin and Leacock

note that, “regular polysemy is governed by processes which are productive, rule-

governed, and predictable, very much like processes of word formation. One such

process is metonymical transfer, […] another is the systematic relation between words

and the quantity that the vessel holds.” (2000: 10) This is the reason why the regular

polysemy is also called productive or systematic polysemy. On the other hand, the

irregular polysemy can be defined a contrario to the regular polysemy. “Polysemy is

called irregular if the semantic distinction between ai and aj is not exemplified in any

24
other word of the given language.” (Apresjan 1974: 15) Apresjan further remarks that

regular polysemy is more typical for metonymy, and the irregular polysemy is more

common for metaphor.

Weinreich (1966) spotted the problem of the classical approach to the semantics

in the sense distinctions. He criticized Katz and Fodor, as he claimed their proposals

were in several ways unsatisfactory. Firstly, Weinreich reproached them for their

limited section of semantic competence they focused on, as they concentrated only on

the identification of the semantic anomalies and specification of the quantity of readings

of a sentence. To determine the number of readings, they multiplied the numbers of

meanings of each word. For instance, if a sentence consists of three words, the first one

having three meanings in the dictionary, the second one having four meanings and the

third one having two meanings, they concluded a sentence could have twenty-four

readings in total. However, they also applied the projection rule to reduce polysemy. As

Weinreich explains, “the projection rules specify how the meanings of words are

combined when the words are grammatically constructed, and in particular, how the

ambiguity of individual words is reduced in context.” (1972: 17) The main role of the

projection rule was to reduce ambiguity, as by means of their multiplication they came

to conclusion a sentence should have twenty-four meanings but it had in fact four only.

Their calculations of the number of readings of a sentence were based on the idealized

semiotics signs, which combines expressions and meanings, as Katz and Fodor

proceeded. Secondly, Weinreich questioned their attitude towards the role of context, as

they attributed it a central place:

In the first place, it takes no cognizance of the obvious danger that the

differentiation of submeanings in a dictionary might continue without limit. In

the second place, one would think, a scientific approach which distinguishes

25
 between competence (knowledge of a language) and performance (use of a

language) ought to regard the automatic disambiguation of potential ambiguities

as a matter of hearer performance. (1972: 18)

Weinreich criticized Katz and Fodor for not having theoretical criteria for limiting

polysemy, i.e. they had no rules that would state when a sense should no longer be split.

Moreover, he stated their discussion of disambiguation was unsubstantiated, as the

grammatical theory does not need to illustrate the process a hearer experiences when he

or she interprets the ambiguous expressions.

Weinreich pointed out their theory could result in an infinite proliferation of

senses. He used the verb eat as an example, as it can involve using for example spoon,

fork or knife when eating. He observes the verb eat has a slightly different meaning in

the expressions eat bread and eat soup, as the first one does not require the usage of a

spoon, meanwhile in the second expression a spoon or a similar tool is required. In

order to demonstrate the process of eating in the two expressions, he draws this path

(1972: 35):

Figure 4: Branching path of eat

However, Weinreich also mentions that the process of eating is different not only when

using different tools (i.e. in one case spoon, in the other hands) but is also different

when the same tool is being used, as there are difference when a person eats apples and

peanuts with hands or peas and spaghetti with a fork. Through this, he wanted to

demonstrate that Katz and Fodor’s analysis would bring about unlimited differentiation

of meanings. To solve this problematic issue, Weinreich followed Kuryłowicz and

26
affirmed that there is no polysemy without a synonym which would correspond to the

each sense: “A dictionary entry W will be shown to have two subpaths (submeanings),

W1 and W2 if and only if there is in the language a subpath Z1 of some entry Z which is

synonymous with W1 and is not synonymous with W2.” (1972: 36) According to

Kuryłowicz, semantic analysis of a word depends on the synonymy of a word, as he

holds that the notions of polysemy and synonymy are complementary (or

interdependent), and they are not tenable without each other.

However, not only Weinreich criticized Katz and Fodor but also Katz responded

to his criticism and opposed him. With regard to Weinreich’s first remark, Katz stated

that “the danger lies in taking seriously the notion of infinite polysemy since no rule of

grammar could enumerate each and every one of the respects in which the “activity

symbolized by eat” can be “recognizably different” from case to case.” (1972: 60) Katz

spotted the danger in a different place and emphasized that Fodor and him just

demanded that the entries in the dictionaries included a finite numbers of lexical

readings. Moreover, Katz stated Weinreich failed to distinguish between meaning of

words and things to which they refer. Katz proposed the particularities (also proposed

by Weinreich) are not inherent in the meaning of eat but are just instances:

Various activities that can correctly be called “eating” may differ in the ways

they are carried out, as Weinreich suggests. They may be performed with

spoons, fingers, chopsticks, knives, shovels or whatever strikes one’s fancy, but,

nonetheless, they are instances of eating in the same sense of this term. The

fundamental point is that, insofar as eating applies to each activity with exactly

the same sense, they are equivalent activities. Meaning must be an abstraction

from the variable features of the things referred to by the term: the meaning of a

word must represent only the invariant features by virtues of which something is

27
 a thing, situation, activity, event or whatever of a given type. Otherwise, no

word could be used again with the same meaning with which it is used at any

one time, since there is always some difference in what is referred to from one

time to the next. (1972: 60)

Meanwhile one may eat with the cutlery, the other one may eat with his or her own

fingers. Even though the way these people perform these activities is different both

relate to the same term, to the verb to eat.

To conclude the discussion of Weinreich’s first remark, Katz’s statement proves

that classical theorists were not in favour of the infinite proliferation of senses, and held

the position that some polysemy reduction is required. With regard to Weinreich’s

second remark, Katz reproached Weinreich for not distinguishing between internal and

external disambiguation. Katz and Fodor regarded the internal disambiguation as

crucial, as “it concerns the internal semantic structure of sentences and no

extralinguistic considerations enter to decided such cases.” (1972: 62) Katz and Fodor

explained internal disambiguation by means of the selection restrictions and projection

rules. They explained this kind of disambiguation on several sentences, one of which is:

The man hit the colourful ball.

They claimed this sentence could not be meaningfully interpreted in a way that the word

ball has the sense of social event. Thus, in this case the word ball can be interpreted as

an instrument only. To prove this, they modified the sentence:

The man hit the tea party with a hammer.

Katz and Fodor replaced the word ball (in the sense of the instrument) with a different

word, which represents a social event. This helped them demonstrate that the word ball

in the given sentence cannot be interpreted as a social event, as it does not create a

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meaningful sentence. The second type of disambiguation, external disambiguation, “is

accomplished on the basis of extralinguistic considerations, particularly contextual

information.” (1972: 62) This type allows the hearer to determine that some meanings

are possible meanwhile some are not. Katz and Fodor demonstrate it on the sentence:

There is no school anymore.

The interpretation of this sentence in the situation when the hearer stands in front of the

school building, which is intact, is unique. The hearer cannot interpreted in a way the

building was demolished, and thus it is no longer where it used to be, as he or she can

interpreted it only in a way that there are no longer classes at the teaching institution.

Katz thus reproached Weinreich, as he confused the public for his inability to

distinguish between internal and external disambiguation.

Further research of the sense distinctions was carried out by Ravin who

investigated several event verbs. Ravin wanted to ascertain whether there is a pattern or

criteria for limiting polysemy. Based on Ravin’s investigation, Ravin and Leacock

conclude:

There are no clear criteria for which aspects of a real-world situation are relevant

to the semantics of particular verb, but there is a methodology for determining

which aspects ought to be semantically represented. The methodology is based

on the idea that semantic representations ought to account for all the semantic

properties and relations of linguistic expressions.” (2000: 11)

Although there are no strict rules for the polysemy reduction, the methodology

concerning the choice of the aspects that should be semantically represented was

established.

Another theorist of the classical approach to the polysemy is Wierzbicka who

developed the Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Wierzbicka presents her methodology

29
for determining whether a word is polysemous or not: “We must proceed by trial and

error, assuming always, to begin with, that there is only one meaning, constructing a

tentative definition, checking it against a word’s possible range of use, then, if

necessary, positing a second meaning and so on.” (1996: 242) Although this method is

extremely time-consuming, it is important to proceed this way in order to sort out the

meanings. Furthemore, Wierzbicka asserts that, “in sorting out closely related senses it

is important that the differences between what we posit as two separate meanings be

linked with the word itself and not simply with different contexts in which this word is

used. (1996: 242) She then gives an example of the noun love and claims it has the same

meaning in the collocations such as romantic love, parental love or brotherly love, as all

of them are the subtypes of love and represent an invariant meaning of love. However,

when we use a different adjective (for instance platonic) it may alter the meaning, and it

will no longer represent the same invariant meaning as in the previous examples.

Furthermore, Wierzbicka points out that dictionaries tend to increase polysemy,

as they posit polysemy in the cases when different senses originate in the context. She

gives an example of the American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

(AHDOTEL 1973), which contains three meanings for if:

1. in the event that: If I were to go, I would be late.

2. granting that: Even if that’s true, what should we do?

3. on condition that: She will sing only if she is paid.

She observes that the meaning of it in the first sentence is undoubtedly different from

the meanings of if in the following two sentences but she states that the difference of the

meaning between the second and third sentence is only a result of the context, thus it

cannot be attributed to the word if itself. She then rephrases the second and third

sentence to demonstrate the similarity in their meanings:

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 (1) If [we suppose that] that’s true [we have to decide: ] What should we do?

(2) If she is paid she will sing. [If she is not paid she will not.] (1996: 243)

Wierzbicka managed to prove that polysemy is often problematic for lexicographers.

Furthermore, she notes that dictionaries not only “posit a great deal of unjustified

polysemy, they also frequently fail to recognize polysemy which is really there.” (1996:

244) She stresses this problem can be easily solved, as “in a system of semantic analysis

based on a finite set of indefinable and on the principle of reductive paraphrase,

meanings re-emerge as discrete, determinate entities.” (1996: 244)

Wierzbicka additionally presented a concept of semantic primes or semantic

primitives. She argued that word senses can be split into a finite number of universal

semantic senses and she called them ‘primes’:

One cannot define all words, because the very idea of ‘defining’ implies that

there is not only something to be defined (a definiendum) but also something to

define it with (a definiens, or rather, a set of “definienses”). The elements which

can be used to define the meanings of words (or any other meanings) cannot be

defined themselves; rather, they must be accepted as “indefinibilia”, that is, “as

semantic primes, in terms of which all complex meanings can be coherently

represented. (1996: 9-10)

Semantic primitives are words and phrases that are understood but it is impossible to

define them properly. She remarks that the primitives are crucial because if it were not

for them, the descriptions could be circular. “Any set of primitives is better than none,

because without some such semantic description is inherently circular and, ultimately,

untenable.” (1996: 11) Wierzbicka believes people need to understand the primitives

first in order to understand other words that are based on the given prime. She gives an

example of verbs ‘promise’ and ‘denounce’ that are based on the verb ‘say’ and thus a

31
person that cannot understand the word ‘say’ cannot understand the previously

mentioned words either. To answer the question how the primitives are chosen she

quotes Goodman:

It is not because a term is indefinable that it is chosen as primitive; rather, it is

because a term has been chosen as primitive for a system that is indefinable in

that system. No term is absolutely indefinable. Indefinability sometimes means

incomprehensibility; but incomprehensible terms have no place at all in a

system. In general, the terms adopted as primitives of a given system are readily

definable in some other system. There is no absolute primitive, no one correct

selection of primitives. (1951: 57)

To conclude, primitives are not chosen arbitrarily, as some may argue and they are not

indefinable either, as they can be adopted too.

6.2. Polysemy within the prototypical approach

the twentieth century, as some theorists disapproved of the idea that words have distinct

meanings and that definitions consist of necessary and sufficient conditions. One of the

representatives of this approach, Wittgenstein (1958), disagreed that we tend to look for

essential definitions of words, and argued we look rather at different cases of their use:

The idea that in order to get clear about the meaning of a general term one had to

find the common element in all its applicants has shackled philosophical

investigation; for it has not only led to no result, but also made the philosopher

dismiss as irrelevant the concrete cases, which alone could have helped him to

understand the usage of the general term. When Socrates asks the question,

32
 “what is knowledge?” he does not even regard it as a preliminary answer to

enumerate cases of knowledge.” (2002: 19-20)

Wittgenstein criticized the classical theory of categorization and advocated the quest for

the definitions was superfluous. He introduced a concept of “family resemblance.”

According to this concept, all the members of a category do not need to have a common

feature that is peculiar to the category, but every member of the category may still be

related to one another.

Rosch, one of the founders of cognitive semantics, denied the idea that

categories have fixed boundaries between objects or ideas. She argued the boundaries

were rather blurred, and thus the categories were not fixed:

“By prototypes of categories we have generally meant the clearest cases of

category membership defined operationally by people’s judgments of goodness

of membership in the category […] we can judge how clear a case something is

and deal with categories on the basis of clear cases in the total absence of

information about boundaries. (Rosch 1978: 36)

Rosch together with her colleague Mervis identified with Wittgenstein’s concept of

family resemblance. She describes the form of the family resemblance: “A family

resemblance relationship takes the form AB, BC, CD, DE. That is, each item has at least

one, and probably several, elements in common with one or more items, but no, or few,

elements are common to all items.” (1975: 574–575) Rosch considered categorization to

be one of the most important issues in cognition. She opposed the classical theory that

people categorize objects on the basis of necessary and sufficient conditions. On the

other hand she argued the categorization is based on the resemblance of objects to a

member of the category, which was seen as prototypical. She considered the prototypes

33
to be very important in human thinking, as people tend to mention the prototypical ones

when they are inquired to choose a member of a category.

As for the categorization, the prototypical approach continued to respect the

concept of hierarchy. Lakoff explains that the polysemy is by means of categorization

“the idea that related meanings of words form categories and that the meanings bear

family resemblances to one another.” (1987: 12) According to the prototypical

approach, the categories are formed due to the features that frequently co-occur

together, and they are established thanks to the experience with exemplars. Lakoff

indicates, that “human categorization is essentially a matter of both human experience

and imagination – of perception, motor activity, and culture experience on the one hand,

and of metaphor, metonymy, and mental imagery on the other.” (1987: 8) He argues

that that categorization is most of the time automatic and we are usually not aware of it.

However, if we start thinking about it, it can bring about problems. With regard to the

members of a category, some of them are prototypical; in other words, each category is

represented by a prototype, which is the most typical member of a category.

Moreover, Lakoff presents the cluster concept, which is a source of prototype

effect. His prototypical concept is in opposition with the classical theory, which holds

that, “categories are uniform in the following respect: they are defined by a collection of

properties that the category members share. Thus, no members should be more central

than other members.” (1987: 17) However, Lakoff disagrees with the classical theory as

he holds that many categories cannot be defined this way. On the contrary, he argues

that some categories should be defined as clustered models that arise when “a number

of cognitive models combine to form a complex cluster that is psychologically more

basic than the models taken individually.” (1987: 74) Clustered models are models that

consist of a number of converging idealized cognitive models. Lakoff shows it is not

34
always possible to give clear necessary and sufficient conditions for a polysemous word

that would fit in all meanings. He analyses a word mother that can be according to him

understood in five concepts. Firstly, mother is a person who gives birth to a child.

Secondly, mother is a person who influences child’s genetics. Thirdly, mother can be

seen as a female person who raises the child. Fourthly, mother is a female adult married

to the father. Lastly, mother may be viewed as the closest female predecessor. Lakoff

then maintains that, “the concept mother normally involves a complex model in which

all of these individual models [genetic, nurturance, marital, and genealogical] combine

to form a cluster model.” (1987: 75) Any one of these individual models is then chosen

as a primary meaning in the dictionaries. As Lakoff observes, there are also differences

in the dictionaries. He concludes that meanwhile Funk and Wagnall’s Standard

Dictionary considers the nurturance model to be primary, American College Dictionary

lists the genealogical model as a primary meaning. However, Lakoff further points out

that some divergences from the cluster model can occur due to the complexity of

modern life. Consequently, he notes it is impossible to claim the criterion for a real

mother, thus he gives reasons why he opposes the classical theory:

The concept mother is not clearly defined, once and for all, in terms of common

necessary and sufficient conditions. There need be no necessary and sufficient

conditions for motherhood shared by normal biological mothers, donor mothers

(who donate an egg), surrogate mothers (who bear the' child, but may not have

donated the egg), adoptive mothers, unwed mothers who give their children up

for adoption, and stepmothers. They are all mothers by virtue of their relation to

the ideal case, where the models converge. That ideal case is one of the many

kinds of cases that give rise to prototype effects. (1987: 76)

Lakoff shows that real mother does not need to be only a birth-giver or a caretaker, but

35
it can also be someone else who meets the criteria that he states. Although Lakoff does

not mention the word polysemy at all in the part devoted to the cluster models, Lakoff

points out a word may have several meanings due to the meaning extension.

Other members of the prototype theory are Fillmore and Atkins who consider

polysemy to be a prototype concept. Meanwhile they regard the paradigm case as clear

enough, they claim that departures from the prototype cause the problems that cannot be

solved. According to them, a polysemous word needs to meet these features:

(i) the multiple senses of the word can each be clearly traced back to the same

word (this is the polysemy/homonymy distinction);

(ii) the set of senses permits a network-like description in which pairs of

adjacent senses in the network are related by motivated linguistic processes

(such as one or another type of metaphoric mapping) that recur across the

lexicon; and

(iii) in all of such links there is a cognitive asymmetry in that the understanding

of each derivative sense is aided by knowledge of the sense from which it is

derived. (2000: 100)

They proceed to the analysis of the adjective sad that meets all the above-mentioned

requirements to be considered as a polysemous word. Firstly, it can express both

someone’s feelings (I am extremely sad) and something that evokes such feelings (a sad

day). Secondly, the relation that is between these two senses of the adjective sad can be

also spotted between other adjectives, such as melancholy, happy or cheerful. Thirdly, a

day can be sad and because of that a person consequently becomes sad but on the

contrary a person may be sad without thinking about what caused his or her sadness.

We can thus deduce that in this case the meaning concerning feelings is central, and

other meanings are extended.

36
 Taylor refers to polysemy as to polycentric categories, and to monosemy as to

monocentric categories. He comments that:

If different uses of a lexical item require, for their explication, reference to two

different domains, or two different sets of domains, this is a strong indication

that the lexical item in question is polysemous. School, which can be understood

against a number of alternative domains (the education of children, the

administrative structure of a university, etc.), is a case in point. (1995: 100)

Taylor gives a typical definition of polysemy. He states that although it is usually not a

problem to distinguish between monosemy and polysemy, sometimes it may no be easy

to say whether two uses of the same linguistic form represent two different meanings or

they just represent two instance of the same meaning. Thus many tests were proposed to

diagnose polysemy.

Taylor pays attention to the polysemy of prepositions, as according to him they

are among the most polysemous words in English. To prove that, he compares some

German expressions with their English translations: “In German, you go auf Urlaub,

you live auf dem Lande, and you meet people auf einer Party, while in English you go

on holiday, you live in the country, and you meet people at a party.” (1995: 109) It is

obvious that meanwhile in one language you may use the same preposition, when

translating the expressions into another language may require completely different

prepositions in each case. Consequently, teachers and the authors of the textbooks yield

to give a reasoned explanation of the use of prepositions. Taylor notes that meanwhile

structuralist and generative linguists did not engage much in the usage of prepositions,

cognitive linguists have come up with major achievements. Furthermore, Taylor deals

with the spatial meanings of the preposition over, which is in his eyes the most

polysemous English preposition. Taylor (1995: 110-111) examines sixteen sentences,

37
from which only five will be discussed, as in the remaining sentences over is more of an

adverb than a preposition:

(1) The lamp hags over the table.

(2) The plane flew over the city.

(3) He walked over the street.

(4) He walked over the hill.

(5) He jumped over the ball.

Even though there is a difference in the meaning of over in the first two sentences, there

have also something in common. Meanwhile in the first sentence (The lamp hang over

the table.) the preposition over has a static meaning; in the second sentence (The plane

flew over the city.) the meaning is dynamic, and the expression over the city represents

the trajectory of TR1. On the other hand, the TR is not in contact with LM in either of

these cases. The third sentence (He walked over the street.) is similar to the second one

but in this case TR is in contact with LM. The fourth sentence (He walked over the hill.)

is alike the third one, but in this context the motion consists of ascending until reaching

a certain point, and then descending. In the fifth sentence (He jumped over the ball.) the

meaning is also dynamic, and the TR is not in contact with LM but the path is rather

curved. By means of the analysis of the sentences, Taylor wanted to demonstrate that

the preposition over is polysemous, as it “constitutes a complex family of related

meanings.” (1995: 111) Although it may seem the use of the preposition over cannot be

explained, thanks to the analysis one cannot argue its usage is not structured.

Moreover, Taylor proceeds to the analysis of the metonymy and metaphor. They

are the processes by means of which different meanings are established, defined as “a

1Langacker introduced in his book Cognitive Grammar (1987) a concept of trajector (TR) and landmark
(LM). Meanwhile trajector relates to the entity in the scene that is smaller and that is typically capable of
notion, landmark relates to the entity with respect to which the TR moves.

38
number of more or less discrete, though related meanings, clustering in a family

resemblance category.” (1995: 122) Metonymy and metaphor are polysemous

categories that can produce some semantic extensions beyond the central (or also called

prototypical) meaning. To conclude, Taylor refuses any absolute constraints, and

highlights the importance of the meaning extension: If it is not possible to state absolute

constraints on the content of family resemblance categories, it might none the less be

the case that certain kinds of meaning extension are more frequent, more typical, and

more natural, than others.” (1995: 121) In other words, Taylor proposes we should not

create prohibitions on meaning extensions but we should allow it. In this way Lakoff

agrees with Taylor.

6.3. Polysemy within the relational approach

Lexicons prepared on the basis of the relational approach organize the words

according to their meanings and relations between the meanings. As a result, they form

a semantic network. There can occur several relations between the words but the most

basic ones are antonymy and synonymy. WordNet, online relational lexicon, is based on

the synonym sets, which consist of nouns, adjectives and verbs that are related to each

other.

As far as the representation of the regular polysemy within a relational

framework, Ravin and Leacock find it rather problematic. “Word senses that exhibit

regular polysemy can be very distant from each other in the semantic network’s

conceptual space.” (2000: 21) To prove this, they choose the noun ash as an example. In

the WordNet, it is described as a “plant material” and as a “woody plant” and thus we

can conclude its senses are rather distant.

Fellbaum examined some general principles of lexicalization and polysemy.

39
Looking up different polysemous words in various dictionaries she observed that,

“lexicographers cannot agree on how to divide up the semantic space covered by a

polysemous word; dictionaries disagree with respect to the number of senses and

subsenses and with respect to the way these senses are distinguished.” (2000: 52) She

discovered that professionals like lexicographers disagree with regard to the number of

meanings of polysemous words. Moreover, she noticed that proficient speakers could

not agree on the senses of the polysemous words. She came to this conclusion based on

the semantic concordance project carried out by Landes, Leacock and Tengi. In this

project participants were asked to choose from the senses listed in WordNet the one that

they considered to be the most suitable for the given context. Moreover, they were also

required to rate to what extent they were sure (or self-confident) of their choice of

meaning. Some cases were rather demanding, as the participants were to choose from

the close senses that were difficult to distinguish. Each word contained from two to

forty-one senses. The most polysemous were verbs, which were followed by adjectives,

nouns and adverbs. The results have come up to the expectations of the authors of the

test. As Fellbaum notes, “nouns were tagged with more confidence than adverbs, which

in turn were tagged with more confidence than adjectives. Taggers were least certain

about their choice of senses for verbs.” (1998: 220) This conclusion is not surprising, as

the verbs are most polysemous. Consequently, the more polysemous the word is, the

less certain a person is when choosing certain meaning.

Furthermore, Fellbaum expands on the idea of autotroponymy, the subtype of

troponymy, which was first introduced by Miller. Troponymy is the term related to

verbs, as it describes one of the potential relations that can occur between verbs in the

WordNet database. Troponyms are thus verbs that “refer to specific manners of

performing actions denoted by other verbs.” (2000: 54) As for the verb of walking,

40
which is the superordinate, Fellbaum gives several troponyms that express a particular

manner of walking: sneak, strut, stroll, amble, limp. etc. Autotroponymy is a special

kind of troponymy, “in that the verbs linked by the manner relation share the same verb

form.” (2000: 56) She gives two sentences with the polysemous verb behave:

(1) The children behaved.

(2) The children behaved well/badly/impossibly.

The second sentence is either positive or negative, depending on the given adverbial

that describes children’s behaviour. The first sentence differs from the second sentence

in the way that it already includes a hidden adverbial, such as well, properly,

appropriately, satisfactorily, and acceptably, etc. This additional meaning component is

not present in the sentence but it has conflated with the verb. As Fellbaum mentions,

“conflation is a common phenomenon that yields new words and word meanings.”

(2000: 56) Conflation is a process by means of which new words and new meanings are

created, and thus it is very productive. In addition, conflation does not apply only to

adverbials but also to nouns and adjectives. As for as for the verb behave, Fellbaum

adds that, “the polysemy of behave is based on troponymy and thus presents a case of

irregular polysemy in that the meaning relation between the two senses is not

predictable.” (2000: 56) Autotroponymy is a case of irregular polysemy, which unlike

regular polysemy, lacks a relational rule, and there is no systematic relationship

between the different meanings. Moreover, Fellbaum maintains there are several types

of autotroponymy. One of them is denominal verbs, verbs derived from nouns.

Fellbaum (2000: 56) gives an example of two sentences having the same meaning:

(3) The librarian put the books on the shelf.

(4) The librarian shelved the books.

Meanwhile in the first sentence the verb which is more general was used, in the second

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sentence it was replaced by a denominal verb, which was derived from the noun by

means of conflation. Fellbaum concludes that, “although autotroponymy is neither a

productive nor a regular pattern in the verb lexicon, there are clear generalizations based

on the semantics of the conflated nouns, verbs or adjectives.” (2000: 65) Even though

there cannot be viewed any regularities in the autotroponyms, clear conclusions about

the conflated words are always possible.

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Conclusion

The aim of this thesis was to present the theoretical approaches to polysemy, the

capacity of a lexeme to have multiple meanings. This paper explains how polysemy

differs from homonymy and vagueness, presents the relations between the polysemes,

and deals with three different theoretical approaches to polysemy.

The introductory chapter explains the term meaning from the linguistic point of

view and deals briefly with a variety of different categorizations of the meaning. The

next chapter is dedicated to the ambiguity, the situation when the lexeme can be

interpreted in more than one way. There are two types of the ambiguity: lexical and

non-lexical. Lexical ambiguity is concerned with different readings of the lexemes, and

covers two phenomena: homonymy and polysemy. Meanwhile the term homonymy

corresponds to the term complementary ambiguity, the term polysemy coincides with the

term contrastive ambiguity. There are several differences between these two

phenomena. Firstly, the occurrence of the polysemous words is abundant; the number of

the homonymous words is not so large. Secondly, the meanings of the polysemous

words are interrelated. On the contrary, homonymous words have the same form

(written or spoken) but are related to completely different meanings. Thirdly,

polysemous words have the same source but homonymous words come from a different

source. Etymology may thus help us distinguish between these two phenomena.

There are two types of the relations between the polysemes: linear (vertical) and

non-linear (horizontal) relations. Linear polysemy includes autohyponymy and

automeronymy, and non-linear polysemy consists of the metaphor and metonymy. In

the case of the linear polysemy, one meaning is a specialization of the other meaning,

which is more general. Non-linear polysemy, represented by metaphor and metonymy,

is widely used in our lives, often without realizing of using it.

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 Polysemy must be also distinguished from vaguesness. Although these

phenomena are independent, sometimes a word may be at the same time vague and

polysemous. Vagueness is a property of the lexeme when the reader is not able to

distinguish between several kinds of a thing. The theorists have come up with the

logical, linguistic and definitional tests that allow us to distinguish between polysemy

and vagueness. None of them is sufficient when used individually, as the tests may

sometimes be in a mutual conflict, and the individual use of either of them needs not to

be reliable.

The last chapter of the thesis looks into three theories dealing with polysemy:

classical, prototypical and relational. The classical theory, the oldest one traceable back

to Socrates and Aristotle, is built on the definitions of the concepts. It understands

senses in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, and states that a word has as

many senses as there are differences in these conditions. In the modern era the classical

approach was represented by Katz, Fodor, Apresjan and Wierzbicka. In the twentieth

century the classical theory encountered more and more criticizism. For instance,

Weinreich despised the classical theory, as he maintained the number of the concepts

that have proper definitions was very low. He reproached Katz and Fodor for their

limited scope of semantic competence, and their view of the context, as they attributed

it a central place. He opposed the proliferation of the senses, and blamed them for not

having any criteria for limiting polysemy. However, Katz and Fodor did not remain

silent, and opposed Weinreich for his alleged incompetence to distinguish meaning of

words from the things they refer to. Katz and Fodor advocated they did not support the

infinite proliferation of senses and claimed some polysemy reduction was required.

Wierzbicka asserted the theorists should always assume firstly the word is

monosemous, and only then posit the second meaning to the word. She also presented

44
the term primes, the semantic concepts generally understood without the possibility to

be explained in a simplified way.

The prototypical theory (prototype as the most typical member of a category)

emerged as an opposition to the classical theory, as its theorists disapproved of the

search for the definitions. Wittgenstein presented a concept of “family resemblance”,

later supported by Rosch and Mervis. They attached importance to the categorization

and maintained it was based on the resemblance of the objects. They considered the

prototypes to be crucial in human thinking, and respected the concept of hierarchy. In

their opinion, categories, the knowledge structures, are formed thanks to the experience

and imagination of the people. Lakoff disagreed with the classical theory, as he

remarked that it is not always possible to give clear necessary and sufficient conditions

for a polysemous word that would fit in all meanings. Taylor proceeded to the polysemy

of the prepositions, and proved they are among the most polysemous words in English.

The relational theory influences the creation of the relational lexicons, which are

organized according to their meanings and relations between the meanings. One of the

relational lexicons is the WordNet, online lexicon, which is based on the synonym sets.

Another relation that can arise between verbs is the troponymy. Troponyms are verbs

that specify the manner of the action. Fellbaum expanded on the idea of autotroponymy,

which is the instance of the irregular polysemy. Moreover, she examined several

distinct dictionaries, and concluded dictionaries do not agree on the number of senses of

the given polysemous words.

45
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Résumé

This thesis deals with the phenomenon of polysemy: polysemous words have two

or multiple senses that are related in some way. The first part of the thesis presents the

theoretical background, as it focuses on the explanation of the key terms, such as

meaning, lexical ambiguity, lexeme, polysemy, polyseme, homonymy, monosemy,

metaphor, metonymy, autohyponymy, automeronymy and vagueness. The first part also

presents several tests and criteria to distinguish polysemy firstly from homonymy and

secondly from vagueness. The second part is dedicated to the different theories related

to polysemy. It presents polysemy within the classical, prototypical and relational

approach, each having affinities with different disciplines. Moreover, the semantic

theories are built on the different principles: one emphasizes the need to increase

polysemy, meanwhile the other one stresses reduction of polysemy. As a result,

different theories may come to different conclusions when analyzing the same or similar

data. This can be proved by the analysis of different dictionaries.

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Résumé

Tématem této bakalářské práce je polysémie: polysémická slova mají dva či více

významů, které spolu určitým způsobem souvisí. Obsahem první části práce je

teoretický přehled a vysvětlení klíčových pojmů, jako jsou význam, lexikální ambiguita,

lexém, polysémie, polysém, homonymie, monosémie, metafora, metonymie,

autohyponymie, automeronymie a neurčitost. Vedle toho první část práce také obsahuje

několik testů a kriterií, pomocí kterých lze rozlišit polysémii od homonymie a

neurčitosti. Druhá část práce je zaměřena na odlišné teorie věnující se polysémii.

Představuje polysémii z hlediska klasického, prototypického a relativistického pojetí,

přičemž každá z těchto teorií je navázána na jiné vědecké disciplíny. Předmětné

sémantické teorie jsou navíc založené na rozdílných principech; zatímco jedna

zdůrazňuje potřebu rozšiřovat polysémii, jiná klade důraz na její redukci. V důsledku

toho tak dospívají teorie k odlišným výsledkům, ačkoliv jsou aplikovány na stejná či

podobná data, což může být prokázáno analýzou různých slovníků.

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