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Answers the following questions:
What is “semantic change”?
What are the causes for a semantic change?
What can the nature of semantic change be?
What is ‘specialisation of meaning’?
What is understood by the ‘generalisation’ of meaning?
What do you understand as a ‘seme’?
What is understood as “ semantic derivation’?
What is the role of context in semantic change?
LECTURE 5. POLYSEMY AND HOMONYMY AS LINGUISTIC PHENOMENA
Plan of the lecture:
1. Meaning and polysemy
2. Synchronic and diachronic approaches to polysemy
3. The semantic structure of the word and the notion of LSV
4. Homonymy of words and word-forms
5. Sources of homonymy.
6. Classification of homonyms
So far we have been discussing the concept of meaning, different types of word-meanings and the changes they undergo in the course of the historical development of the English language. When analysing the word-meaning we observe, however, that words as a rule are not units of a single meaning. Monosemantic words, i.e. words having only one meaning are comparatively few in number, these are mainly scientific terms, such -as hydrogen, molecule and the like. The bulk of English words are polysemantic, that is to say possess more than one meaning. The actual number of meanings of the commonly used words ranges from five to about a hundred. In fact, the commoner the word the more meanings it has.
Polysemy is a phenomenon of language, not of speech. The sum total of many contexts in which the word is observed allows the lexicographers to record cases of identical meaning and cases that differ in meaning. They are registered by lexicographers and can be found in authoritative English dictionaries.
A distinction has to be drawn between the lexical meanings of a word in speech, which can be called ‘contextual meaning’, and the semantic structure of a word in the language system. Thus the semantic structure of the verb act comprises several variants: ‘take action’, ‘do something’, ‘behave’, ‘take a part in a play ’, ‘pretend’. However, ‘act of God’ is an event that is beyond human control, especially one in which something is damaged or someone is hurt., an instance of uncontrollable natural forces in operation (often used in insurance claims).
As a rule the contextual meaning represents only one of the possible variants of the word but this one variant may render a complicated notion or emotion analyzable into several semes. In this case we deal not with the semantic structure of the word but with the semantic structure of one of its meanings. Polysemy does not interfere with the communicative function of the language because the situation and context cancel all the unwanted meanings.
Consider also the following joke, based on the clash of different meanings of the polysemantic word expose (‘leave unprotected’, ‘put up for show’, ‘reveal the guilt of’). E. g.: Painting is the art of protecting flat surfaces from the weather and exposing them to the critic. Or, a similar case: “Why did they hang this picture?” “Perhaps, they could not find the artist.” Contextual meanings include nonce usage. Nonce words (or ad hoc words) are words invented and used for a particular occasion.
Summing up this discussion about the role of context, we can get to the discussion of the semantic structure of a word. The most comprehensible definition of the semantic structure seems to be a structured set of interrelated lexical variants with different denotational and sometimes also connotational meanings. These variants belong to the same set because they are expressed by the same combination of morphemes, although in different contextual conditions. The variants, or, rather, the lexico-semantic variants are interrelated due to the existence of some common semantic component – a seme. In other words, the word’s semantic structure is an organised whole comprised by recurrent meanings and shades of meaning that a particular sound complex can assume in different contexts, together with emotional, stylistic and other connotations, if any. Such a situation brings us to the phenomenon known as polysemy, and allows us to say that if a word has more than one meaning such a word is polysemantic, or polysemous. E.g.. head has been assigned 47 meanings, together with its phraseologically bound meanings, and thing has been assigned 38 meanings by the Collins COBUILD Dictionary of English (see ABBYY Lingvo x5).The words with only one meaning are quite rare and usually belong to the terminological vocabulary, e.g. noun, verb, atom, nuclear, etc. Such words are called monosemantic.
The hierarchy of lexico-semantic variants and shades of meaning within the semantic structure of a word is studied with the help of formulas establishing semantic distance between them. Words are observed in real texts, not on the basis of dictionaries. The importance of the approach cannot be overestimated; in fact, as E. Nida puts it, “it is from linguistic contexts that the meanings of a high proportion of lexical units in active or passive vocabularies are learned."
If, on the other hand, the indicative power belongs to the syntactic pattern and not to the words which make it up, the context is called syntactic. E. g. make means ‘to cause’ when followed by a complex object: I couldn’t make him understand a word I said.
Polysemy and homonymy are two similar concepts in Linguistics. Both of them refer to words having multiple meanings. Polysemy refers to the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Homonymy refers to the existence of two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins. Polysemy is the existence of several meanings for a single word or phrase. The word ‘polysemy’ comes from the Greek words πολυ-poly-, “many” and σήμα, sêma, “sign”. In other words, it is the capacity for a word, phrase, or sign to have multiple meanings, i.e., hand, head, get, lovely, etc.
The word ‘homonym’ comes from the Greek ὁμώνυμος (homonumos), meaning “having the same name”, which is the conjunction of ὁμός (homos), meaning “common” and ὄνομα (onoma) meaning “name”. In other words, homonymy refers to two or more distinct concepts sharing the “same name”:E.g. Can/can, bank/bank, desert/desert, peace/piece, scent/cent, etc.
Before starting comparative analysis of the linguistic features of polysemy and homonymy, which many linguists draw attention at, let’s first look at the interpretation of English homonyms in academic Lexicology.
In one of the most respectable book on English Lexicology homonyms are defined as words identical in sound-form but different in meaning.2 Modern English is exceptionally rich in homonymous words and word-forms. It is held that languages where short words abound have more homonyms than those where longer words are prevalent. Therefore it is sometimes suggested that abundance of homonyms in Modern English is to be accounted for by the monosyllabic structure of the commonly used English words.
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