The Lexicography of State/Change of State Polysemy in Paraguayan Guarani

Abstract

This paper investigates the lexicographic representation of state (S)/change of state (CS) polysemy of Paraguayan Guarani predicates as -pochy ‘be angry/become angry.’ To do this, a survey was conducted of seven dictionaries looking at the treatment of a sample of 20 polysemous predicates of different semantic classes. This involved asking whether, to what extent, and how the pattern is represented. A polysemy-oriented and a dictionary-oriented perspective were considered for the analysis. It was found that the pattern is rather underrepresented, with important differences across the semantic classes, the individual predicates, and the dictionaries. Dependent condition predicates have their S and CS senses recorded more frequently than independent condition predicates. Where this is not the case, the former are generally presented as CS and the latter as S. Some dictionaries provide the two senses most of the time, while others rarely do. When the two meanings are represented, there is substantial variation across the dictionaries as to the procedure they follow, differing in the direction, number of entries, and section where they are shown, and the definition strategy employed. Finally, a bias towards the typological characteristics of Spanish was conjectured to underlie some features of the lexicographic treatment of the phenomenon.