The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

particular meaning. Only 
arrojar
can appear in the 
PRODUCING DATA 
and 
SHED LIGHT 
constructions. 
Tirar
can mean ‘to pull’, ‘to print’, ‘to slam (a door)’ and ‘to shoot’. 
Lanzar
monopolizes the 
POLITICS 
schema and it is the only verb that expresses the throwing of facial 
expression (excluding looks) and the beginning of attacks (excluding hits). 
Echar
shows the 
most variation in uses: it can mean ‘to lock’, ‘to grow (part of a plant)’, ‘to miss 
(someone/thing)’, ‘to blame’ and it also appears in several semantically-schematic idioms. 
A first generalization that can be made of the data is that each verb has its own 
constructional profile (Janda & Solovyev 2009). A verb is associated with its own unique 
distribution of constructions. Most of the data for 
arrojar
can be accounted for with three 
schemas: 
THROWING
,
PRODUCING DATA 
and 
SHED LIGHT
. The most frequent schemas for 
tirar
are the 
THROWING 
and 
PULLING 
schema, though it also occurs in other infrequent 
constructions including the 
SHOOT 
(
SPORTS
),
BANISHMENT 
and 
HITS
schemas. 
Lanzar
has a 
very strong preference for appearing in LVCs of different types (
SOUNDS
,
FACIAL 
EXPRESSIONS
,
ATTACKS
,
POLITICS
)
and is also somewhat frequent in an inchoative schema. 
Echar 
has the widest variety of schemas; the most common are the inchoative constructions 
and the semantically-idiomatic schemas, but it also appears in the 
LOOKS 
and 
BLAME
schemas 
with some frequency.
The data also provide interesting details on the topic of synonymy. There are cases 
where two or more verbs can be used in similar constructions to express similar meaning (and 
keep the same truth-conditions even), even though there may certainly be some semantic and 
pragmatic details that tease them apart. I describe these as cases of functional synonymy. One 
of the strong reasons for speakers to label these verbs as synonymous is that they share the 
more physical and central sense of ‘to throw’. But the verbs also share some of the same 

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meaning extensions. Murphy (2003:11) notes that words that are antonyms in one sense can 
maintain that relation of antonymy in some of the meaning extensions. She gives as example 
hot
and 
cold
. They are antonyms in many different senses: high temperature versus low 
temperature, near the searcher versus far from the searcher (in a hiding game), and 
radioactive versus not radioactive. 
I believe these verbs are synonymous not only because they share meanings, but 
because the same types of meaning extensions can apply to them. I argue that the 
LOOKS
schema is a meaning extension from the concept of ‘to throw’. The verbs 
arrojar
, 
echar 
and 
lanzar
are all part of this schema, but there is also one example of 
tirar
in this schema. Part of 
being synonymous may be not only sharing a meaning, but also having the same meaning 
extensions apply to the synonyms. One could argue that a speaker can make an analogy 
between the central uses and extended uses: if 
tirar 
can be used interchangeably with the 
other 
throw
-verbs in the 
THROWING 
schema, a speaker may also use the verbs interchangeably 
in the 
LOOKS 
schema or in other senses.
Synonyms share some of their semantic space. But the results of this study have also 
shown that each verb monopolizes certain areas of semantic space. Even in cases where there 
is overlap, one verb may show a higher frequency (