Re: Polysemy
| From: | taliesin the storyteller <taliesin-conlang@...> |
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| Date: | Wednesday, June 13, 2007, 11:57 |
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* Sai Emrys said on 2007-06-12 23:25:48 +0200
> 1. What are the most polysemous** words in English?
Others have suggested getting a dictionary and counting, I
suggest you start with counting the meanings of "go" (the verb).
> 2. Where can I find a list of the average polysemy per word of
> the most common (i.e. non technical/jargon) words across many
> languages?
Don't know if such exists. Actually I doubt that such exists.
> 3. What is the average polysemy in YOUR languages? Any
> comments on why etc etc open question?
Very low, thanks to few words yet and not wanting to be too vague with
their meanings. However, AFMCL there are words which I call "bagwords",
which:
* are all *very* polysemous
* are polysemous in such a way that you shouldn't pick one
meaning when encountering the word, but all of them,
simultaneously.
Btw, Taruven linguists consider the difference between homonymy
and polysemy of no consequence, as in order to know the
difference you need to know the history of a word, and the
history of words is not embedded in the wordform itself (since a
learner only learns a specific version of a language).
t.
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