The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

complementary polysemy
. This involves cases where the 
senses of a word are overlapping, dependent or shared (1995:28). An example of 
complementary polysemy can be seen with the word 
hammer
. It can refer to a physical object 
and to an action. The sense difference is accompanied with a change in category, the first 
sense associated with usage as a noun, and the second as a verb (1995:28). 
A more specific type of complementary polysemy is 
logical polysemy
which is 
constrained to cases where there is no change in lexical category. The noun 
door
can refer to 
an opening and to a physical object (1995:31). The senses are related since one can refer to 
both senses within a single sentence without any problem: 
He walked through the red door.

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The phrase 
walked through
evokes the opening sense, while the adjective 
red
evokes the 
physical object sense.
Complementary polysemy contrasts with 
contrastive polysemy
. The latter includes 
lexical items that carry distinct and unrelated meanings. Examples include: 
plane 
referring to 
an airplane and to the tool used by architects, and 
bar
as in a metal object and an 
establishment that sells alcoholic beverages (1995:27). Pustejovsky argues that contrastive 
senses are contradictory and that one sense is available only if the other senses are not 
(1995:32). Note that what Pustejovsky (1995) terms contrastive polysemy lines up with what 
others describe as homonymy (1995:27). It is important to highlight, then, that there are 
differing positions on where polysemy ends, since Pustejovsky treats homonymy as a type of 
polysemy.
A further problem in studies on sense variation is normally termed the lumping versus 
splitting issue (Vaamonde et al. 2010, Gries 2006). It is particularly relevant in lexicography, 
where lexicographers must decide whether a sense is different enough, or even frequent 
enough, to merit its own numbered definition in an entry (Gries 2006:61). This is also 
problematic because it is not always easy to draw a sharp distinction between two senses of a 
word (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2007:147). If we lump too much, we end up with a single 
general meaning that does not capture the variation. If we split too much, we could end up 
positing a different sense for every verb and object combination (Yarowsky 1993:266, 
Vaamonde et al. 2010:1906).
Context, which played a role in studies on synonymy, is also relevant in discussion on 
polysemy. Polysemous words can be understood as ambiguous, since they have the potential 
of referring to different things. But polysemous words are really only ambiguous in isolation. 
When used in language, they are rarely ambiguous (Miller 1999:12). Corpora studies have 
found that the context very often determines the sense that is being used. For example, 
Yarowsky (1993) found that polysemous items only exhibit one sense per collocation, with 
over 90% accuracy. The different senses of a word tend to appear in different syntactic 
environments and with different collocates (Gilquin 2010:197). The words surrounding a 
word can play an important role in determining the specific meaning that a word can adopt. 
Previous theoretical works on polysemy have attempted to classify the types of 
relations that exist between the various senses and uses of words. Authors differ, though, on 
the distinction they make. It is a complex issue, since it is not always clear when two uses of 
an item are separate senses or the same sense with a different focus. It is also not clear where 
polysemy ends and vagueness or homonymy begins. An important element in the study of 

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polysemous words is the syntactic context. The words that co-occur with a polysemous word 
tend to choose or highlight one of the senses, constraining the ambiguity of the lexical item.