35 years of Cognitive Linguistics
Session 4: Polysemy
Martin Hilpert
“normal”
sign
form
meaning
synonymy
form
form
meaning
homonymy
& polysemy
form
meaning
meaning
“normal”
sign
form
meaning
synonymy
pants
trousers
form
form
meaning
homonymy
& polysemy
form
meaning
meaning
“normal”
sign
form
meaning
synonymy
form
form
meaning
homonymy
& polysemy
form
meaning
meaning
homonymy (Tuggy: ambiguity)
bank ‘sloping margin of a river’
bank ‘financial institution’
race
race
‘competition’
‘genetically defined population group’
polysemy
summit ‘top of mountain’
‘meeting at the highest political level’
paper
‘writing material’
‘document written on paper’
 one form, two related meanings
ambiguity
form
meaning
polysemy
form
meaning
e.g. bat
meaning - - - - meaning
e.g table
vagueness
form
meaning
e.g reporter
• two different words
• one word
• one word
• unrelated meanings
• related meanings
• highly similar meanings
ambiguity
form
meaning
polysemy
form
meaning
e.g. bat
meaning - - - - meaning
e.g table
vagueness
form
meaning
e.g reporter
• two different words
• one word
• one word
• unrelated meanings
• related meanings
• highly similar meanings
ambiguity
form
meaning
polysemy
form
meaning
e.g. bat
meaning - - - - meaning
e.g table
vagueness
form
meaning
e.g reporter
• two different words
• one word
• one word
• unrelated meanings
• related meanings
• highly similar meanings
tests for ambiguity
• the ‘logical’ test:
– This is an X but not an X.
– * This is a banana, not a banana. >> not
ambiguous
– This is a bank, not a bank. >> ambiguous
tests for ambiguity
• the ‘definition’ test:
– Is there a common meaning?
– if yes >> not ambiguous
– if no >> ambiguous
tests for ambiguity
• ‘linguistic’ tests:
– X did Y and so did Z
• I have a bat and so does Bill.
– A did B and C D
• I lost my wallet and Argentina the world cup final.
– if not zeugmatic >> not ambiguous
– if zeugmatic >> ambiguous
tests for ambiguity
• puns of varying quality:
– if a pun works >> ambiguous
problems with these tests
• clear yes-or-no answers only in clear cases
– I painted a portrait and Bob the living room.
– zeugmatic, funny, a little funny?
• sometimes in mutual conflict
– I’m a painter, but not, you know, a painter.
– logical test suggests ambiguity
– common meaning suggests vagueness, not
ambiguity
same form
two clearly distinct meanings
weakly related through a
common meaning
summit
‘mountain top’
‘meeting of decision makers’
same form
two distinct meanings
clearly related through a
common meaning
string
‘thin rope’
‘part of a guitar’
same form
very similar meanings
obviously related through a
common meaning
wing
‘body part of a bird’
‘part of an airplane’
same form
barely distinguishable
meanings
common meaning more
accessible than the
different meanings
grandmother
‘mother’s mother’
‘father’s mother’
advantages of the continuum view
• gradience is found in many other linguistic
categories
• the traditional tests of ambiguity and
vagueness correctly identify cases at the end
points of the continuum
• in-between cases are naturally accounted for
How do we know where a word is on
the continuum?
What is the basic meaning of
over?
Draw a picture!
The bird flew over the house.
John walked over the bridge.
The cathedral is over the bridge.
The paper is over the hole.
The dots are all over the carpet.
The fence fell over.
basic and extended senses
• Polysemous words have a basic, central sense that is
–
–
–
–
conceptually simple
frequent
learned early by children
conceptually connected to many other senses
• New senses emerge when a word is used in new
contexts that invite a slightly different understanding
of the situation
• The result of meaning extension is a ‘radial category’,
where members share some properties, but not
necessarily all of them
a strong hypothesis
• Each node in the network of a polysemous
item corresponds to a representation in
the speaker’s mental lexicon
a too strong hypothesis?
• Perhaps the network reflects linguistic
analysis, and not what speakers actually
think!
Sandra & Rice 1995
• How do ordinary speakers distinguish
between different senses of the same
word?
• Sorting task:
– 29 participants received cards with 20
sentences each for the prepositions at, on, in
– Task: Sort the cards according to how the
prepositions are used, make as many or as
few groups as you like
I can say ‘How are you’ in Italian.
Make sure to get that in writing.
I saw him in my dreams.
There is a hole in your sweater.
Are you putting onions in the stew?
Don’t put that in your mouth.
My pen is in the drawer.
I looked him straight in the eyes.
In Japan, they eat raw fish.
Please come in.
What would you have done in my place?
What line of work are you in?
sorting task
• How often are two particular sentences of
the 20 put into the same group?
– Don’t put that in your mouth.
– My pen is in the drawer.
– In Japan they eat raw fish.
)
)
Often together
Rarely together
abstract
spatial
time
Sandra & Rice 1995
• Language users are clearly sensitive to the
different meanings of polysemous items.
• The sorting results show that speakers make
fine-grained distinctions
• However, it is not clear whether these
distinctions are made because the task
requires it, or because they are already there
in the mental lexicon.
meaning varies with context
• The meaning of words is tough to analyze.
–
–
–
–
predicative construction (X is tough)
followed by a to-infinitive
the subject is inanimate
…
difficult
• Tough guys never dance.
–
–
–
–
attributive construction (a tough X)
followed by a verb phrase
the subject is animate
…
rough
Gries (2006): the many meanings of run
– run a mile
– run for office
– run a small business
– you can run, but you cannot hide
– ooh you make my motor run, my motor run
–…
behavioral profile analysis
1. extract all examples of a word from a corpus
2. annotate each example for its rough meaning (e.g.
run a mile >> fast pedestrian motion)
3. identify contextual features
–
–
–
–
collocates
morpho-syntactic properties of the word
semantic features of surrounding elements
…
4. annotate all examples for all of these features
5. apply a statistical test that investigates correlations
between word sense and contextual features
features of run
1. morphological
– past vs. present, simple vs. progressive aspect, active vs.
passive
2. syntactic
– intransitive vs. transitive vs. complex transitive
– declarative vs. interrogative vs. imperative
– main clause vs. subordinate clause
3. semantic characteristics
– subject: human vs. animate vs. inanimate
– object: countable vs. mass, concrete vs. abstract
4. collocates
– Left 1, Left 2, Right 1, Right 2
• …
an annotated example
• My friend Bob runs a model agency.
–
–
–
–
–
–
sense: manage
present, simple, active
transitive, declarative, main clause
human subject, abstract countable object
L2: friend, L2: Bob, R1: a, R2: model
…
• 800 examples with this kind of information
senses have structural profiles
• manage
– by default transitive (100%)
– subject often an organization (55%)
– often past participle (43%)
– often followed by a preposition (34%)
– …
• fast pedestrian motion
– almost never transitive (7%)
– subject never an organization (0%)
– rarely past participle (12%)
– sometimes followed by a preposition (25%)
– …
---------senses-------
----------------------- features ------------------------
fastpedestrianmotion
escape
function
manage
meet
transitive
0.06
0.69
0.39
0.21
0.97
human subject followed prep subordinate clause
0.82
0.67
0.30
0.86
0.72
0.45
0.27
0.06
0.51
0.29
0.08
0.35
0.29
0.5
0.51
summing up
ambiguity
form
meaning
polysemy
form
meaning
e.g. bat
meaning - - - - meaning
e.g table
vagueness
form
meaning
e.g reporter
• two different words
• one word
• one word
• unrelated meanings
• related meanings
• highly similar meanings
polysemy
• the presence of various related meanings associated
with a single linguistic unit
• central and extended senses
– central: conceptually simple, first learned, frequent, highly
connected to other senses
• linguists’ analyses of polysemy should correspond to
speakers’ mental representations!
– psycholinguistic experiments
– corpus-based behavioral profile analyses
next time: conceptual blending
See you next time!
martin.hilpert@unine.ch