Ling 423/640G: Cognitive Linguistics

Ben Bergen

Meeting 4: Polysemy and homonymy

September 4, 2008

One of the first things we find when looking at word meaning is that a given word may have multiple meanings or senses. Today we're going to look at multiple meanings - polysemy and homonymy.

An example: The winning joke from Laughlab's world's funniest joke competition.

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?"

It seems make sure has (at least) two different senses. We'll come back to how that works.

A useful and pervasive distinction is made between polysemy and homonymy

• In cases of polysemy: a word has multiple, related meanings

e.g. ring (wedding vs. boxing)

• In cases of homonymy: two, unrelated words, have the same form (spelling or sound)

e.g. saw (see vs. tool)

But it's more complicated than this - how do we determine when we're looking at two related senses of a word and when we have to different words? Consider:

• I just deposited that check at the bank.
• I got tired of high interest rates so I got myself an online bank
• You should donate some blood to the blood bank
• The banks of the stream were muddy.
• We moored the boat to the bank.

How many senses are there evidenced above, and are they cases of polysemy or homonymy or both?

Ways to have multiple senses of a word

The same word can denote the same conceptual category in different frames

• When the mean teacher woke up, there was egg all over her windows.
• Mix the egg thoroughly with the melted butter before adding flour.

Different conceptual categories that are members of the same superordinate category

• A butter knife vs. a carving knife
• The sun was bright vs. His shirt was bright

Different conceptual categories that have perceived similar properties

• Johnny saw a lion at the zoo.
• Johnny's favorite stuffed animal is a lion.

Types and subtypes

• There were a bunch of cows in the field.
• To make calves, you need both cows and bulls.

Different aspects of the same frame (this is called metonymy)

• The New York Times is heavy on Sundays.
• The New York Times employs hundreds of writers.
• I found 4 mistakes in The New York Times this week.

Different conceptual categories that are metaphorically related

• The sun is hot vs. The movie star is hot.

The problem with the polysemy-homonymy distinction is that we need clear criteria for determining which is the appropriate characterization.

• We can determine whether the two words are historically related, but that's not necessarily relevant to what we're interested in - how they're represented in people's heads
• We can measure how related we think the senses are, but again, this doesn't tell us how they're represented in people's heads.

An experimental approach to polysemy versus homonymy

Method: Subjects heard a sentence that primed one meaning of an ambiguous word, and then performed a lexical decision task on that word.

Stimuli: All the snow has melted now. spring [homonymy] hotel [control]

In the mountains, we refilled our canteens

My dog is happy. tail [polysemy] motel [control]

I went to the back of the airplane

Results: Metaphorical and metonymical polysemy showed stronger priming than homonymy (compare the gray bars with the white ones for each of these categories).

What we learn from polysemy

• Multiplicity of word senses seems to rely on frames and conceptual categories, in addition to other mechanisms, such as similarity, metonymy, and metaphor
• The senses of a word need not have a single set of common properties