Polysemy is the association of one word with two or more distinct meanings. A polyseme is a word or phrase with multiple meanings. Adjective: polysemous or polysemic.
In contrast, a one-to-one match between a word and a meaning is called monosemy. According to William Croft, "Monosemy is probably most clearly found in specialized vocabulary dealing with technical topics" (The Handbook of Linguistics, 2003).
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)
- Mole
- 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").
- 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
references : http://grammar.about.com/od/pq/g/polysemyterm.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy
0 komentar:
Posting Komentar