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Polysemy: Pragmatics and sense conventions
Author(s) -
Carston Robyn
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/mila.12329
Subject(s) - polysemy , linguistics , meaning (existential) , pragmatics , expression (computer science) , inference , phenomenon , semantics (computer science) , key (lock) , computer science , philosophy , artificial intelligence , epistemology , computer security , programming language
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 (resemblance‐based) 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.