Polysemy, Homonymy, Homophone and Homographs

POLYSEMY

Polysemy is derived from the Greek, Poly "many" and Sema "sign" is the capacity to sign (such as a word, phrase or symbol) to have multiple meanings (ie, several semes or sememes and thus multiple senses), usually are related to the meaning in the field of semantics. Thus usually regarded as distinct from homonymy, in which multiple meanings of a word may not be related or unrelated.

Charles Fillmore and Beryl Atkins' definition specifies three elements: the various senses of the word polysemous has its origins centers, the relationship between these senses to form a network, and  understand the 'inner' one contribution to the understanding of the 'outside'.

Polysemy is an important concept in disciplines such as media studies and linguistics. Analysis polysemy, synonyms, and hyponymy and hypernymy very important for taxonomy and ontology in information science senses of the term. It has applications in pedagogy and machine learning, because they rely on word-sense disambiguation and schemes.

A polyseme is a word or phrase with different, but related sense. Since the test for polysemy is the vague concept of relatedness, judgments of polysemy can be difficult to make. Because applying pre-existing words to new situations is a natural process of language change, looking at words' etymology is helpful in determining polysemy but not the only solution; as words become lost in etymology, what once was a useful distinction of meaning may no longer be so. Some apparently unrelated words share a common historical origin, however, so etymology is not an infallible test for polysemy, and dictionary writers also often defer to speakers' intuitions to judge polysemy in cases where it contradicts etymology. English has many words which are polysemous. For example, the verb "to get" can mean "procure" (I'll get the drinks), "become" (she got scared), "understand" (I get it) etc.

In vertical polysemy a word refers to a member of a subcategory (e.g., 'dog' for 'male dog'). A closely related idea is metony, in which a word with one original meaning is used to refer to something else connected to it.

There are several tests for polysemy, but one of them is zeugma: if one word seems to exhibit zeugma when applied in different contexts, it is likely that the contexts bring out different polysemes of the same word. If the two senses of the same word do not seem to fit, yet seem related, then it is likely that they are polysemous. The fact that this test again depends on speakers' judgments about relatedness, however, means that this test for polysemy is not infallible, but is rather merely a helpful conceptual aid.

The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle. Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma, numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata. Semantic shift can separate a polysemous word into separate homonyms. For example, check as in "bank check" (or Cheque), check in chess, and check meaning "verification" are considered homonyms, while they originated as a single word derived from chess in the 14th century. Psycholinguistic experiments have shown that homonyms and polysemes are represented differently within people's mental lexicon: while the different meanings of homonyms (which are semantically unrelated) tend to interfere or compete with each other during comprehension, this does not usually occur for the polysemes that have semantically related meanings. Results for this contention, however, have been mixed.

For Dick Hebdige, polysemy means that, "each text is seen to generate a potentially infinite range of meanings," making, according to Richard Middleton, "any homology, out of the most heterogeneous materials, possible. The idea of signifying practice — texts not as communicating or expressing a pre-existing meaning but as 'positioning subjects' within a process of semiosis — changes the whole basis of creating social meaning".

One group of polysemes are those in which a word meaning an activity, perhaps derived from a verb, acquires the meanings of those engaged in the activity, or perhaps the results of the activity, or the time or place in which the activity occurs or has occurred. Sometimes only one of those meanings is intended, depending on context, and sometimes multiple meanings are intended at the same time. Other types are derivations from one of the other meanings that leads to a verb or activity.

Examples:

Man

        The human species (i.e., man vs. animal)

        Males of the human species (i.e., man vs. woman)

        Adult males of the human species (i.e., man vs. boy)

This example shows the specific polysemy where the same word is used at different levels of a taxonomy.

Example 1 contains 2, and 2 contains 3.

Mole

·     a small burrowing mammal

consequently, there are several different entities called moles (see the Mole disambiguation page). Although these refer to different things, their names derive from 1. :e.g. A Mole burrows for information hoping to go undetected.

Bank

·     a financial institution

the building where a financial institution offers services

a synonym for 'rely upon' (e.g. "I'm your friend, you can bank on me"). It is different, but related, as it derives from the theme of security initiated by 1.

However: a river bank is a homonym to 1 and 2, as they do not share etymologies. It is a completely different meaning.[15] River bed, though, is polysemous with the beds on which people sleep.

Book

·     a bound collection of pages

a text reproduced and distributed (thus, someone who has read the same text on a computer has read the same book as someone who had the actual paper volume)

   

to make an action or event a matter of record (e.g. "Unable to book a hotel room, a man sneaked into a nearby private residence where police arrested him and later booked him for unlawful entry.")

Newspaper

·     a company that publishes written news.

·     a single physical item published by the company.

the newspaper as an edited work in a specific format (e.g. "They changed the layout of the newspaper's front page").The different meanings can be combined in a single sentence, e.g. "John used to work for the newspaper that you are reading."

Milk

 The verb milk (e.g. "he's milking it for all he can get") derives from the process of obtaining milk.

Wood

·     a piece of a tree

·     a geographical area with many trees

Crane

·     a bird

·     a type of construction equipment

·     to strain out one's neck

Related ideas

A lexical conception of polysemy was developed by B. T. S. Atkins, in the form of lexical implication rules. These are rules that describe how words, in one lexical context, can then be used, in a different form, in a related context. A crude example of such a rule is the pastoral idea of "verbizing one's nouns": that certain nouns, used in certain contexts, can be converted into a verb, conveying a related meaning.

Another clarification of polysemy is the idea of predicate transfer the reassignment of a property to an object which would not otherwise inherently have that property. Thus, the expression "I am parked out back" conveys the meaning of "parked" from "car" to the property of "I possess a car". This avoids incorrect polysemous interpretations of "parked": that "people can be parked", or that "I am pretending to be a car", or that "I am something which can be parked". This is supported by the morphology: "We are parked out back" does not mean that there are multiple cars; rather, that there are multiple passengers (having the property of being in possession of a car).

HOMONYMY, HOMOPHONE, and HOMOGRAPHS

A.  Homonymy

            Homonym is one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings. This usually happens as a result of the two words having different origins. The state of being a homonym is called homonymy, the quality or condition of being homonymous. Here are some examples:

·         Aid (to assist) and Aide (an assistant)

·          Air (stuff we breath) and Heir (one who will inherit)

·         Aisle (walkway) and Isle (island)

·         Allusion (an indirect reference) and Illusion (a misconception)

·         Ant (insect) and Aunt (parent's sister)

·         Bald (hairless) and Bawled (cried aloud)

·         Band (a group) and Banned (forbidden)

·         Capital (city) and Capitol (wealth and resources)

·         Climactic (great intensity) and Climatic (weather conditions)

·         Days (more than one day) and Daze (to bewilder)

·         Die (to become dead) and Dye (coloring agent)

·         Elicit (to bring out) and Illicit (unlawful)

·         Gorilla (large ape) and Guerrilla (military soldier)

·         Knead (working bread dough) and Need (must have)

·         Mail (postal delivery) and Male (masculine person)

·         Principle (a basic truth) and Principal (head of a school/sum of money)

·         Scene (visual location) and Seen (past tense of saw)

·         Than (a comparison) and then (shows time)

·         There (a place) and Their (belongs to them) and They're (they are)

·         To (a preposition) and Too (an adverb) and Two (a number)

 B. Homophone

            Homophone is a word that has the same sound as another word but is spelled differently and has a different meaning. Some examples of homographs are:

·        to, too, and two

·        they're and their

·        bee and be; sun and son

·        which and witch

·        plain and plane

  C. Homographs

            Homograph originated from the Greek word homos that means “the same” and graph means “to write”, and it is used extensively in language. It can be defined as words that are used in such a manner as to give two or more different meanings where the words have the same spelling, but different meanings and sometimes different pronunciation as well. Here are some examples:

·         bass as in fish vs bass as in music,

·         bow as in arrow vs bow as in bending or taking a bow at the end of a performance,

·         close as in next to vs close as in shut the door,

·         Desert as in dry climate vs desert as in leaving alone.