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POLYSEMY
HOMONYMY
MULTIWORD LEXEMES
Polysemy
DEFINITION: It refers to the situation where the same
word has two or more different meanings.
ORIGIN: Greek- poly, many + semeon, sign.
EXAMPLE
table
1. a piece of furniture
2. the persons seated at a table
3. the food put on a table, meals; cooking
4. a flat slab of stone or board
5. slabs of stone (with words written on them or cut into
them)
6. Bibl. Words cut into slabs of stone (the ten tables).
7. an orderly arrangement of facts, figures, etc.
8. part of a machine-tool
9. a level area, plateau ['pl1tq4]
POLYSEMY
NATURE: In most cases, only one of the meanings of
a polysemous word will fit into the given context
BUT
1. Look at that bat under the tree.
2. Susan may go to the bank today.
meanings
Transference of
meanings
Difficulty in recognizing
Transference of Meanings
DEFINITION:
Metaphor
refers to the cases where a word
Transference of Meanings
Literal Sense: eye, face, foot, hand, leg, tongue- PARTS
OF THE BODY
Transference of Meanings
Comparison of the use of the same metaphor across
languages
The second type of transference is fairly productive
because it involves the transfer of meaning in a
predictable manner
EXAMPLE:
Literal sense- John is sad- He feels sadness
Transferred sense- the film is sad- it causes
someone to feel sad
Homonymy
DEFINITION: it refers to a situation, where we have
two or more words with the same shape.
NATURE: they are distinct lexemes- they have
unrelated meanings and different etymologies
Lead (metal) and lead (dogs lead)- HOMOGRAPH
(same spelling)
Right, rite and write- HOMOPHONE (same sound)
Homonymy Clashes
POSSIBILITY: two homonyms with totally different
meanings may both make sense in the utterance:
The route was very long
The root was very long
Helen did not see the bat (animal)
Helen did not see the bat (wooden
implementation)
DIFFERENCE: word class, spelling, overall content
Homonymy Clashes
Multi-word Lexemes
Multi-word Verbs
Multi-word Verbs
Idioms
DEFINITION: a type of collocation involving two or more
words in context
NATURE: multiword lexeme- can not be predicted from
the meanings of its constituent
TYPES: partial idioms- some words have their usual
meaning
e.g. to make bed- to make is not used in the usual
sense of to manufacture
white coffee- is brown in colour
white wine is yellow in colour
Idioms
CHARACTERISTICS: 1. Ambiguity and 2. syntactic
peculiarities
Ambiguity- most idioms are constructed from
morphemes that are also used non-idiomatically
Idioms
CHARACTERISTICS: 1. Ambiguity and 2. syntactic
peculiarities
syntactic peculiarity- have special syntactic
property
John kicked the bucket
Literal sense- passive variant: the bucket was kicked
by John
Idiomatic expression- kicked the bucket means
died, the expression does not allow the use of the
corresponding passive alternatives
Idioms
CHARACTERISTICS: 1. Ambiguity and 2. syntactic
peculiarities
syntactic peculiarity- have special syntactic
property
No synonym can replace a word in an idiomatic
expression
None of the words in an idiomatic expression may be