POLYSEMY

POLYSEMY

Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings.

About 40% of English words are polysemous. This means that they have more than one meaning. Some words, such as run or set have more than thirty different meanings. Polysemous words can cause difficulty in contexts where the meaning is other than the primary* meaning of the word.

Example:

         1.  He drank a glass of milk.

       He forgot to milk the cow.

        2. The enraged actor sued the newspaper.

      He read the newspaper.

        3. His cottage is near a small wood.

      The statue was made out of a block of wood.

        4. He fixed his hair.

     They fixed a date for the wedding.

        5. Head 
           Head disini juga merupakan bentuk polisemy dalam bahasa inggris, arti dari head sendiri 
           adalah kepala dan juga pemimpin. For Example:

-Plese keep your head with helmet (tolong jaga kepala mu dengan helm)

-He is a wise head master in this school (Dia adalah seoarng kepala sekolah yang  

 bijak di sekolah ini)

-Can I meet a head of this office? (Dapatkah saya bertemu dengan kepala dri kantor ini?)

Main Difference – Polysemy vs Homonymy

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. This is the main difference between polysemy and homonym.

Article Review

Distinguishing Between Polysemy and Homonymy

A Critique of a Common Dictionary Approach 

Liene Alekse

Kt.: 200187-3779

January 2017

Polysemy and homonymy are semantic phenomena that are part of our everyday language. Polysemous words possess two or more related senses; homonyms possess two or more unrelated meanings. These phenomena are distinguished by dictionaries based on two criteria: first, the word’s etymology, second, the word’s core meaning. Polysemous words are given one single entry, as they are believed to have arisen from the same historical source and possess a core meaning. Each homonym receives a separate entry, based on the claim that homonyms have arisen from different historical sources and that they do not possess a shared core meaning. This paper argues for various weaknesses in this approach. Etymology, the evidence used by scholars to support it, is assessed in order to argue that the historical origin of the word cannot always be determined, therefore some words are classified as being homonyms while they are really polysemous. It is also unclear how far back in history one must go in order to determine the true origin of the word. Various theories are assessed that argue for/against the existence of a core meaning being possessed by polysemous words as opposed to homonyms, along with the experiments that support/undermine this argument. Theories, such as Sense Enumeration Lexicon(SEL) and General Lexicon Approach(GL) have been discussed, both having opposing views when dealing with polysemy and homonymy. The paper concludes-that the theories and research aimed at distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy are conflicting- therefore that the approach used by dictionaries in distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy is arbitrary.
Homonyms are believed to arise by a historical accident, when one form of a word has
acquired two distinct meanings, therefore these words have kept the same spelling even if
their meaning is completely different and unrelated. This approach, however, does not always
prove easy to use, as some origins of words can be difficult to trace back in history and it is
not always easy to decide how far in history one has to go in order to retrieve the original
word form from which the given homonym has arisen. 

        Is Polysemy and Homonymy Really So Different?  
Polysemy and homonymy are representatives of lexical ambiguity. Ullmann (1962) explains
it to be the most important type of ambiguity due to lexical factors, as the same word can be
connected by countless senses. Lexical ambiguity according to him can take two different
forms. The first form is when the same word can have one or more different meanings which
is known as polysemy. For example, the noun board could mean either a thin plank or tablet
or a table or food served at the table, as well as various other things.  The second form according to Ullmann is when two or more words are identical in pronunciation which represents the case of homonymy. For example, mean can either represent ‘middle’ or ‘inferior’; seal can represent either the name of the animal, or a ‘piece of wax sealed on a letter’. Ullmann (1962) also explains that words that sound the same, but are spelt differently are representing homonymy, for example, root-route and site-sight-cite. Ullmann (1962) explains the border-line between polysemy to sometimes be fluid, and proposes these two semantic items to be considered differently. However, often they can prove to be difficult to tell apart. 

         Distinguishing Between Polysemy and Homonymy
According to Falkum and Vincente (2015) researchers have been mostly concerned from
telling apart polysemy from monosemy (only one meaning represented by the word), and
various tests have been proposed to tell these semantic phenomena apart. They explain that
distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy has been of little interest to the researchers,
however, recently, based on psycholinguistic research, it has increased, because the research
has shown polysemy and homonymy to possibly be associated with different storage profiles.
 

 

Sources: 
http://skemman.is/en/item/view/1946/26712
https://www.google.com/search?q=thesis+about+polysemy&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-ab 
http://www.kuliahbahasainggris.com/6-contoh-polisemy-dalam-bahasa-inggris-beserta-penjelasan-lengkap/