The Interplay of Synonymy and Polysemy

2.2 Polysemy 
Another important aspect of the four verbs under study is that each can express 
various meanings or senses. A lexical item that expresses multiple senses is said to be 
polysemous
. With verbs, it has been recognized that meaning can differ depending on the 
complement it combines with (Goldberg 1995:2, Pustejovsky 1991, 1995). Even though we 
use the same verb in saying 
begin a book
, 
begin a meeting
, and 
begin a speech
, a different 
action is being performed in each.
Acknowledging that a lexical item means something (slightly) different when used in 
two separate sentences is only a first step. Some researchers separate polysemy from cases of 
vagueness or homonymy. Even within cases that could be argued to be synonymy, 

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researchers disagree on what constitutes a new meaning that is part of the lexical entry, 
versus a sense that is derived from context and need not be part of the knowledge of a word.
Some authors distinguish polysemy from 
vagueness 
(or generality) (Kilgarriff 1997, 
Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2007, Cruse 1986). Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk (2007:141) 
exemplifies with the noun 
student
. It can be used equally well to describe a man or a woman. 
That does not necessarily mean that 
student 
has two senses, one for ‘male student’ and 
another for ‘female student’. Instead, this verb is vague regarding gender; it is unmarked for 
this characteristic. In that spirit, many different types of linguistic tests have been proposed in 
order to distinguish cases of polysemy from vagueness (see Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 
2007:141-143 for an overview).
Another division is also made between polysemy and 
homonymy
(Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk 2007, Gries 2006). In the case of polysemy, the senses are (historically) related. 
In homonymy, the lexical items happen to be pronounced (and spelled) identically but their 
meanings are not related (Lewandowska-Tomaszczyk 2007:142). The two senses of 
light
, 
‘not heavy’ and ‘not dark’ are unrelated; it is an example of homonymy (Lewandowska-
Tomaszczyk 2007:141). The noun 
ring 
which can refer to a piece of jewelry and a sports 
arena is an example of polysemy; the senses are related because both derive from the 
meaning of a circular object (Langacker 2008: 17).
Within Cognitive Linguistics especially, a scale has been posited ranging from 
homonymy to vagueness. Homonymous senses lie on one end of the scale, while cases of 
vagueness would lie on the opposite. Polysemy, then, is located in between these two 
extremes (Gries 2006:58). This means that there would be areas of uncertainty; there is no 
strict division between homonymy and polysemy or polysemy and vagueness. 
Pustejovsky (1995) proposes a classification of polysemy, distinguishing two types. 
The first type is what he terms