Installing which meanings a keyword has try arguably might action inside the lexical semantic lookup

Brand new semantic information that’s of items neighbors during the the brand new lexicon will not, put differently, contain a specification regarding sex; neighbor was unclear (or general, otherwise unspecified) to what dimensions away from gender

Polysemy ‘s the preferred name for the situation in which a great lexical product provides several meaning, eg when later can mean ‘after the typical, expected, otherwise agreed time’ (I’m late once again), ‘complex in time or night’ (a later part of the dinner), otherwise ‘no longer alive’ (my late cousin Polly). Terminologically speaking, polysemy needs to be compared which have homonymy and you may, even more important, vagueness. Whenever several (or more) words have the same profile, particularly financial (‘mountain, level for the ocean or river bed’) and you will bank (‘financial institution’), he could be homonyms; whereas polysemy relates to multiplicity off meaning within one phrase, the multiplicity is distributed more than individuals terms and conditions in the case of homonymy. Therefore, to make a big change anywhere between polysemy and you will homonymy comes down to deciding if we’re dealing with one to additionally the exact same word otherwise which have several different styles. The distinction between vagueness and polysemy requires the matter-of whether or not a particular bit of semantic info is a portion of the underlying semantic design of your product or is the consequence of a beneficial contextual (so because of this pragmatic) specification. For-instance, neighbor isn’t polysemous within readings ‘men dweller second door’ and you may ‘female dweller nearby,’ in the same way that utterance my personal neighbor is a beneficial civil servant won’t be thought to be requiring disambiguation throughout the method in which she is smart you are going to (Do you suggest ‘bright’ otherwise ‘stylish’?).

To choose anywhere between polysemy and you can vagueness, plenty of assessment might be invoked. The 3 fundamental of those will be after the. First, regarding a facts-theoretical point of view, a lexical goods are polysemous if it is also on the other hand be clearly genuine and you will obviously untrue of the identical referent. Considering the indication ‘harbor’ and you will ‘strengthened nice wines out of Portugal’ away from port, the newest polysemy of these item is created because of the sentences such Sandeman try a slot (in the a bottle), yet not a slot (having boats). So it requirement fundamentally catches good semantic intuition: are two interpretations out-of certain phrase intuitively sufficiently unlike thus that one may end up being believed to incorporate and almost every other perhaps not?

Specifically, he’s centered on acceptability judgments from the sentences containing a couple associated occurrences of goods in question (certainly one of and that matical relationships ranging from both incidents need the semantic label, the new ensuing sentence could be a sign to the polysemy out of the thing

Second, linguistic evaluating cover syntactic unlike semantic intuitions. As an instance, this new thus-called term attempt relates to ‘identity-of-feel anaphora.’ Therefore, at nighttime the fresh new motorboat passed the new port, and therefore did the latest bartender are embarrassing if the a couple lexical meanings of port is at stake. Disregarding puns, it does simply mean that the new boat and bartender the exact same introduced the latest harbor, or in contrast that each other moved a certain variety of drink regarding you to definitely place to another. A blended discovering, where in actuality the first occurrence away from port is the harbor and next so you can wine, can be omitted. In comparison, the point that the fresh new notions ‘classic nice wine out-of Portugal’ and you can ‘combined nice wine of Portugal’ should be combined in the Antique Noval was a slot, and thus try mixed Sandeman implies that port is vague as an alternative than polysemous with regard to the fresh difference in combined and antique drink.

Third, the new definitional traditional determine one to a product possess several lexical definition when there is zero minimally certain definition covering the extension of your product general, and that it doesn’t have alot more lexical meanings than simply there are maximally general definitions wanted to identify the extension. Definitions away from lexical circumstances are going to be maximally standard in the sense which they is defense just like the large good subset of the expansion away from something that you can. For this reason, separate meanings for ‘blended nice fortified drink of Portugal’ and you may ‘classic nice strengthened wines out of Portugal’ cannot qualify significance away from lexical meanings, as they can end up being delivered together underneath the definition ‘sweet strengthened wine regarding Portugal.’ On top of that, definitions are minimally particular in the same manner that they datingranking.net/cs/quiver-recenze/ would be to be sufficient to distinguish the thing off their nonsynonymous issues. A maximally standard meaning coating both port ‘harbor’ and vent ‘kind of wine’ under the meaning ‘material, entity’ try excluded because it cannot grab the brand new specificity from vent given that distinctive from other terminology.