The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

Jackendoff (1990)
Jackendoff (1990) proposes that meaning is made up of primitives that combine in 
specific ways. All concepts belong to a set of “parts of speech” which include Thing, Event, 
State, Path, among others (1990:22). He also uses primitives to describe certain aspects of 
meaning; for example GO represents motion, BE represents existence, and prepositions such 
as FROM or IN symbolize certain spatial configurations (1990:43-46). These elements all 
combine to create meaning. The following is his representation of the verb 
run
.
(3) [
E
VENT
GO ([
T
HING
]
i
,
[
P
ATH
]
j
)] 
(1990:45) 
The verb is an Event which involves movement, marked by GO. It also contains two 
open argument positions: one is a Thing and the other is a Path. In a sentence such as 
The dog 
ran inside
the constituent 
the dog
fills in the argument position for Thing, satisfying the 
semantics of this position. Then 
inside
fills in the Path argument position. The semantics of 
the verb determines to a large extent the types of sentences it will form.
Jackendoff (1990:34) stresses that his conceptual semantic structure only includes 
information that is relevant to syntax. Other information might appear in the mind of the 
speaker, but not necessarily within the meaning structure of individual lexical items. This 
separation of meaning into two components plays an important role in his characterization of 
polysemy and synonymy. 

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As with the previous two views of language, synonymy is captured by similarity of 
conceptual structure. For example, 
throwing
and 
tossing 
are, at the level of conceptual 
structure, both verbs of propulsion (1990:34). Speakers have different characterizations of 
these actions, but this information is not included here. He adopts the notion of a 3D model, 
which contains information about shape, color and other physical attributes, which help a 
speaker decide whether a given object or action in the world can be labeled with a specific 
word (1990:33). A speaker can have a 3D model of what an act of 
throwing 
looks like and 
this is likely different from the 3D model for 
tossing.
Synonyms are words with the same (or 
similar) conceptual structure, even though they may differ in their 3D model.
There are issues, though, when it comes to the primitives chosen to be represented in 
the conceptual structure. Verbs such as 
walk
have the same conceptual structure as that 
shown for 
run
in (3) above, seemingly making them synonymous. The issue is that the entry 
in (3) is only approximate, and there may in fact be other elements that must be included in 
the conceptual structure (1990:45 fn 2). Our judgments on synonymy will depend on the 
amount of detail we include in the conceptual structure.
One way Jackendoff’s theory handles polysemy is by allowing primitives to express 
different concepts depending on the domain. The concept BE can mean different things 
depending on the semantic field: “In the spatial field, a Thing is located spatially; in 
possessional, a Thing belongs to someone; in ascriptional, a Thing has a property; in 
scheduling, an Event is located in a time period.” (1990:26). A lexical item that contains the 
primitive BE can have these various meanings without any difference being marked in the 
conceptual structure.
Other meaning extensions can be captured using principles. Some meaning extensions 
are common and apply to several lexical items. For example, a word denoting an object X can 
also refer to a person characterized by X (an example of metonymy). These types of common 
changes in sense should be covered by principles that apply to (most) lexical items (1990:21). 
In these cases, there is no information in the lexical entry itself. 
Jackendoff’s (1990) main focus is on exploring the relationship between lexical 
semantics and syntactic structure. He places very little focus on polysemy, and even less so 
on synonymy. But both can be accommodated into his system to a certain extent. Synonymy, 
like in all the previous views, implies similarity of structure. Polysemy is not marked in any 
way in lexical entries. Instead primitives are allowed to express different types of meanings, 
and principles can be applied to lexical items to derive new senses. 

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