Polysemy

1. Types of Polysemy:

1.1. Regular, Inherent, and Irregular/Idiosyncratic

1.1.1. Is typically associated with senses generated by metonymical relations and irregular polysemy with senses that are derived metaphorically. -Pragmatic processes that may target individual lexical items -involve a similarity relation between two entities

2. Irregular or accidental polysemy

2.1. Senses that are derived metaphorically Metaphor: similarity relation between two entities.

3. Radical Polysemy

3.1. Definitions are all directly related to one another E.g. biological mother or stepmother. MOTHER

4. Inherent polysemy

4.1. Senses of contradictory semantic types.

5. Polysemy in Context and Communication

5.1. The speaker can rely on the addressee to apply the requisite linguistic mechanism(s) to generate the contextually appropriate sense

6. A single word form is associated with two or several related senses

7. Example:

8. John has is mouth full of food -Mary kissed him on the mouth

9. Historical Background:

9.1. In general linguistics, Bréal ([1897] 1924) was the first to use the term polysemy (la polysémie) to describe single word forms with several related meanings.

10. Vicente, A. (2017, 27 julio). Polysemy. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Polysemy