Polysemy

Author : Brigitte Nerlich,Zazie Todd,Vimala Herman,David D. Clarke
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 437 pages
File Size : 55,7 Mb
Release : 2011-05-12
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110895698

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Polysemy by Brigitte Nerlich,Zazie Todd,Vimala Herman,David D. Clarke Pdf

About fifty years ago, Stephen Ullmann wrote that polysemy is 'the pivot of semantic analysis'. Fifty years on, polysemy has become one of the hottest topics in linguistics and in the cognitive sciences at large. The book deals with the topic from a wide variety of viewpoints. The cognitive approach is supplemented and supported by diachronic, psycholinguistic, developmental, comparative, and computational perspectives. The chapters, written by some of the most eminent specialists in the field, are all underpinned by detailed discussions of methodology and theory.

Author : Yael Ravin,Claudia Leacock
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 242 pages
File Size : 47,5 Mb
Release : 2000-06-15
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9780191584695

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Polysemy by Yael Ravin,Claudia Leacock Pdf

This volume of newly commissioned essays examines current theoretical and computational work on polysemy, the term used in semantic analysis to describe words with more than one meaning or function, sometimes perhaps related (as in plain) and sometimes perhaps not (as in bank). Such words present few difficulties in everyday language, but pose central problems for linguists and lexicographers, especially for those involved in lexical semantics and in computational modelling. The contributors to this book–leading researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics–consider the implications of these problems for grammatical theory and how they may be addressed by computational means. The theoretical essays in the book examine polysemy as an aspect of a broader theory of word meaning. Three theoretical approaches are presented: the Classical (or Aristotelian), the Prototypical, and the Relational. Their authors describe the nature of polysemy, the criteria for detecting it, and its manifestations across languages. They examine the issues arising from the regularity of polysemy and the theoretical principles proposed to account for the interaction of lexical meaning with the semantics and syntax of the context in which it occurs. Finally they consider the formal representations of meaning in the lexicon, and their implications for dictionary construction. The computational essays are concerned with the challenge of polysemy to automatic sense disambiguation–how intended meaning for a word occurrence can be identified. The approaches presented include the exploitation of lexical information in machine-readable dictionaries, machine learning based on patterns of word co-occurrence, and hybrid approaches that combine the two. As a whole, the volume shows how on the one hand theoretical work provides the motivation and may suggest the basis for computational algorithms, while on the other computational results may validate, or reveal problems in, the principles set forth by theories.

Author : Nick Riemer
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 504 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2008-08-22
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110197556

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The Semantics of Polysemy by Nick Riemer Pdf

This book, addressed primarily to students and researchers in semantics, cognitive linguistics, English, and Australian languages, is a comparative study of the polysemy patterns displayed by percussion/impact ('hitting') verbs in English and Warlpiri (Pama-Nyungan, Central Australia). The opening chapters develop a novel theoretical orientation for the study of polysemy via a close examination of two theoretical traditions under the broader cognitivist umbrella: Langackerian and Lakovian Cognitive Semantics and Wierzbickian Natural Semantic Metalanguage. Arguments are offered which problematize attempts in these traditions to ground the analysis of meaning either in cognitive or neurological reality, or in the existence of universal synonymy relations within the lexicon. Instead, an interpretative rather than a scientific construal of linguistic theorizing is sketched, in the context of a close examination of certain key issues in the contemporary study of polysemy such as sense individuation, the role of reference in linguistic categorization, and the demarcation between metaphor and metonymy. The later chapters present a detailed typology of the polysemous senses of English and Warlpiri percussion/impact (or P/I) verbs based on a diachronically deep corpus of dictionary citations from Middle to contemporary English, and on a large corpus of Warlpiri citations. Limited to the operations of metaphor and of three categories of metonymy, this typology posits just four types of basic relation between extended and core meanings. As a result, the phenomenon of polysemy and semantic extension emerges as amenable to strikingly concise description.

Author : H. Cuyckens,Britta Zawada
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 324 pages
File Size : 54,6 Mb
Release : 2001-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027236838

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Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics by H. Cuyckens,Britta Zawada Pdf

In Cognitive Linguistics, polysemy is regarded as a categorizing phenomenon; i.e., related meanings of words form categories centering around a prototype and bearing family resemblance relations to one another. Under this polysemy = categorization view, the scope of investigation has been gradually broadened from categories in the lexical and lexico-grammatical domain to morphological, syntactic, and phonological categories. The papers in this volume illustrate the importance of polysemy in describing these various categories. A first set of papers analyzes the polysemy of such lexical categories as prepositions and scalar particles, and looks at the import of polysemy in frame-based dictionary definitions. A second set shows that noun classes, case, and locative prefixes constitute meaningful and polysemous categories. Three papers, then, pay attention to polysemy from a psychological perspective, looking for psychological evidence of polysemy in lexical categories.

Author : Martine Vanhove
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 422 pages
File Size : 46,8 Mb
Release : 2008
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9789027205735

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From Polysemy to Semantic Change by Martine Vanhove Pdf

This book is the result of a joint project on lexical and semantic typology which gathered together field linguists, semanticists, cognitivists, typologists, and an NLP specialist. These cross-linguistic studies concern semantic shifts at large, both synchronic and diachronic: the outcome of polysemy, heterosemy, or semantic change at the lexical level. The first part presents a comprehensive state of the art of a domain typologists have long been reluctant to deal with. Part two focuses on theoretical and methodological approaches: cognition, construction grammar, graph theory, semantic maps, and data bases. These studies deal with universals and variation across languages, illustrated with numerous examples from different semantic domains and different languages. Part three is dedicated to detailed empirical studies of a large sample of languages in a limited set of semantic fields. It reveals possible universals of semantic association, as well as areal and cultural tendencies.

Author : Marina Zhadeyko
Publisher : Lulu.com
Page : 102 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2010-09-22
Category : Education
ISBN : 9781446189559

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Anthropolinguistic Aspect of English Polysemy by Marina Zhadeyko Pdf

Anthropolinguistics is a core topic of the majority of books on linguistics today. Still there are different approaches to word study within this field. This book provides a comprehensive survey of historic semantic changes of English polysemous words. Anthropolinguistic Aspect of English Polysemy is a wide-ranging account not only of how words witness history, but also of how evolution change is reflected in word semantics and of links between our past and present. It is available to a large audience as it sheds light on problems of evolution of human cognition that remain at the centre of contemporary linguistics.

Author : Gijs Dreijer
Publisher : BRILL
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 2023-02-17
Category : History
ISBN : 9789004540354

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The Power and Pains of Polysemy: Maritime Trade, Averages, and Institutional Development in the Low Countries (15th–16th Centuries) by Gijs Dreijer Pdf

This book offers a study of so-called ‘Maritime Averages’, a variety of risk management instruments used in maritime trade, in the Low Countries, showing how Averages played a major role in the institutional development of the Low Countries.

Author : Maria Brenda
Publisher : Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Page : 311 pages
File Size : 55,8 Mb
Release : 2014-09-18
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9781443867252

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The Cognitive Perspective on the Polysemy of the English Spatial Preposition Over by Maria Brenda Pdf

This volume investigates the English spatial preposition over and prepositions in general, frequently regarded as function words with little semantic content, and shows that they encode rich and diverse information, both grammatical and semantic. An important research endeavor which the present study undertakes is an examination of whether the meaning of the preposition over is in fact complex enough for the preposition to be treated as a lexical unit rather than merely a functional one. In order to achieve that goal, the gathered linguistic material is analyzed first and foremost in terms of its semantic content; that is, the geometric relations between the trajector and landmark, and the functional consequences of such relations. The research into the morphology of prepositions reveals a considerable area of overlap between prepositions and adverbs, adverbial particles, and prefixes, as well as nouns, verbs and adjectives. The discussion of the syntax of prepositions is illustrated with labeled tree diagrams of selected sentences to show how the preposition over and the prepositional phrases it heads are embedded in larger structures of the English sentence. An important finding of the present study is the confirmation that the spatial preposition over encodes a broad range of geometrical and functional relations, as well as rich grammatical information. This book will be of interest to students and researchers interested in semantic and conceptual aspects of prepositions, meaning construction, human cognition, and management of space.

Author : Melina Wiese
Publisher : GRIN Verlag
Page : 35 pages
File Size : 40,8 Mb
Release : 2016-02-16
Category : Literary Collections
ISBN : 9783668151451

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The Representation of Homonymy and Polysemy in the Mental Lexicon by Melina Wiese Pdf

Seminar paper from the year 2015 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Bonn (Anglistik), course: Language in the Mind, language: English, abstract: When homonymous meanings are assumed to have separate representations in the human mind does this count for polysemous senses and does the processing advantage differ between homonymous and polysemous words? Since this is a very new perspective in psycholinguistics, not many results have been achieved by now. Thus, this study aims to go further and explain ‘the source of the processing advantage’ which could have been observed in previous lexical decision studies with ambiguous words. In addition this study will focus on the diverse processing advantages for homonyms and polysemes and attempts to provide a model for the word representation of homonymous and polysemous words. Accordingly, the experiment is constituted as a lexical decision task. The used corpus was adopted from the study of Rodd et al. (2002: 263-264) which built the base for this study. This corpus was used because the present study only included 20 participants which thus only allows a predication to a limited extent. But by choosing this corpus parallels can be drawn between those two experiments and thereby a more general and meaningful statement can be provided.

Author : CHEN WANG
Publisher : American Academic Press
Page : 155 pages
File Size : 54,8 Mb
Release : 2023-03-22
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781631814303

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METAPHOR, METONYMY AND POLYSEMOUS HUMAN BODY WORDS by CHEN WANG Pdf

Compared with other common nouns, human body words (hereinafter referred to as HBWs) are strikingly polysemous. Cognitive studies of the polysemy of HBWs have obtained many achievements in recent years, but there still exist some deficiencies, which is dealt with in this book. Based on Embodied Philosophy, category theory, metaphor and metonymy, the book aims to analyze the meanings of HBWs, particularly “foot” and “blood” in order to discuss the essence of polysemy from cognitive perspective, and then on the basis of the theoretical research the book proposes some practical implications for English vocabulary learning. The book focuses on the research of metaphorical and metonymic characteristics of HBWs by analyzing the meanings of “foot” and “blood”. There are two kinds of metaphorical mappings based on similarity, i.e. the interactional mapping between body domain and non-body domain, among which there are three sub-mappings from body domain to non-body domain: mappings of shape and appearance, mappings of situation and mappings of function. As to metonymy, there are mainly three types of metonymies concerning body parts: body part for person, body part for its relevant characteristics and body part for its relevant action. The meanings of “blood” are more polysemous when describing the relevant characteristics. The students should lay emphasis on the interaction between human body and the world, on the basic-level terms rather than spending too much time in reciting those infrequent words, and on the role of metaphor and metonymy rather than memorizing the words mechanically.

Author : Gitte Kristiansen,Michel Achard,René Dirven,Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez
Publisher : Walter de Gruyter
Page : 512 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2008-08-22
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 9783110197761

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Cognitive Linguistics by Gitte Kristiansen,Michel Achard,René Dirven,Francisco J. Ruiz de Mendoza Ibáñez Pdf

Cognitive Linguistics: Current Applications and Future Perspectives is an up-to-date survey of recent research in Cognitive Linguistics and its applications by prominent researchers. The volume brings together generally accessible syntheses and special studies of Cognitive Linguistics strands in a sizable format and is thus an asset not only to the Cognitive Linguistics community, but also to neighbouring disciplines and linguists in general. The volume covers a wide range of fields and combines wide accessibility with a highly specific information value. Key features: An excellent source for the study of Applied Cognitive Linguistics, one of the most popular and fastest growing areas in Linguistics. Authoritative and detailed survey articles by leading scholars in the field. Accessible to a general audience, yet also characterized by a highly specific information value.

Author : Ellen Contini-Morava,Robert S. Kirsner,Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller
Publisher : John Benjamins Publishing
Page : 410 pages
File Size : 55,6 Mb
Release : 2004-01-01
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : 902721560X

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Cognitive and Communicative Approaches to Linguistic Analysis by Ellen Contini-Morava,Robert S. Kirsner,Betsy Rodriguez-Bachiller Pdf

"This volume is the product of a Columbia School Linguistics Conference held at Rutgers University in October 1999, where the plenary speaker was Ronald W. Langacker, a founder of Cognitive Linguistics. The goal of the book is to promote two kinds of dialogue. First, dialogue between Cognitive Grammar and the particular sign-based approach to language known as the Columbia School." "The second kind of dialogue is that among several sign-based approaches themselves and also between them and two competitors: grammaticalization theory and generic functionalism. Topics range from phonology to discourse. Analytical problems are taken from a wide range of languages including English, German, Guarani, Hebrew, Hualapai, Japanese, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin, Polish, Russian, Serbian, Spanish, Urdu, and Yaqui."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Author : Marina Rakova,Gergely Pethő,Csilla Rákosi
Publisher : Peter Lang Publishing
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2007
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN : STANFORD:36105114868610

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The Cognitive Basis of Polysemy by Marina Rakova,Gergely Pethő,Csilla Rákosi Pdf

The volume aims to explore the relationship between the theoretical modelling and the mental representation of the perceived multiplicity of lexical meanings. The collection is divided into three thematic sections, discussing psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic evidence concerning polysemy; theoretical considerations regarding the representation of different types of meaning variation phenomena; and polysemy connected (in a variety of ways) to syntactic constructions. A common theme for the contributions is the recognition that consideration of a range of so far neglected types of evidence (both from within and from outside of linguistics proper) is essential to achieve further progress in polysemy research.

Author : Anna Wierzbicka
Publisher : Oxford University Press, UK
Page : 518 pages
File Size : 40,9 Mb
Release : 1996-03-28
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 9780191588594

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Semantics : Primes and Universals by Anna Wierzbicka Pdf

This book provides a synthesis of Wierzbicka's theory of meaning, which is based on conceptual primitives and semantic universals, using empirical findings from a wide range of languages. While addressed primarily to linguists, the book deals with highly topical and controversial issues of central importance to several disciplines, including anthropology, psychology, and philosophy. - ;Conceptual primitives and semantic universals are the cornerstones of a semantic theory which Anna Wierzbicka has been developing for many years. Semantics: Primes and Universals is a major synthesis of her work, presenting a full and systematic exposition of that theory in a non-technical and readable way. It delineates a full set of universal concepts, as they have emerged from large-scale investigations across a wide range of languages undertaken by the author and her colleagues. On the basis of empirical cross-linguistic studies it vindicates the old notion of the 'psychic unity of mankind', while at the same time offering a framework for the rigorous description of different languages and cultures. - ;A major synthesis of Anna Wierzbicka's work -

Author : Michele Emanatian
Publisher : Unknown
Page : 818 pages
File Size : 47,6 Mb
Release : 1991
Category : Polysemy
ISBN : UCAL:C3367731

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Grammatical Polysemy by Michele Emanatian Pdf