Disambiguating polysemy (was: "triggers et al" as I presently understand them)

On Friday, November 19, 2004, at 09:20 , Rodlox wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Amanda Babcock Furrow <>
[snip]

>> On the other hand, just keep your original idea and give it a new name :
>> )
>
>  thus far, Polynymic Selectives.  bad name?  :)
'Selective' is OK - tho 'selector' might be considered. But 'polynymic'?
There is a correctly formed English word 'polyonymic' but that means
"formed from more than one word".

I think what you are trying to deal with is 'polysemy' - the property of
being _polysemic_, i.e. of having more than one meaning.

But 'polysemic selective' would mean that 'selective' itself had more than
one meaning. What you need is a name for a particle that selects one out
of a set of possible different meaning. The word that come immediately to
mind is _disambiguator' - which I admit is a bit of a mouthful.

But your idea reminds me quite a bit of R. Srikanth's _Lin_ in which words
are 'enneasemic' (have nine different possible meanings - indeed, a few
have ten!). Srikanth had an ingenious system of "cements".

A 'cement' in fact did two things:
- it serve to bind or relate one word to another (hence the term 'cement')
;
- it also served to _disambiguate_ the meaning of the two words, i.e. it
selected the correct meaning.

Ray
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