{"title":"Polysemy: Pragmatics and sense conventions","authors":"R. Carston","doi":"10.1111/mila.12329","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Correspondence Robyn Carston, Department of Linguistics, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK. Email: robyn.carston@ucl.ac.uk Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule-based) cases and irregular (resemblancebased) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic polysemy and semantic polysemy; and (c) the role of syntactic meaning in both generating and constraining polysemy.","PeriodicalId":51472,"journal":{"name":"Mind & Language","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":1.8000,"publicationDate":"2021-02-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/mila.12329","citationCount":"37","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Mind & Language","FirstCategoryId":"102","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12329","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"心理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"LINGUISTICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 37
Abstract
Correspondence Robyn Carston, Department of Linguistics, University College London, Chandler House, 2 Wakefield Street, London WC1N 1PF, UK. Email: robyn.carston@ucl.ac.uk Polysemy, understood as instances of a single linguistic expression having multiple related senses, is not a homogenous phenomenon. There are regular (apparently, rule-based) cases and irregular (resemblancebased) cases, which have different processing profiles. Although a primary source of polysemy is pragmatic inference, at least some cases become conventionalised and linguistically encoded. Three main issues are discussed: (a) the key differences between regular and irregular cases and the role, if any, of a “core meaning”; (b) the distinction between pragmatic polysemy and semantic polysemy; and (c) the role of syntactic meaning in both generating and constraining polysemy.