Lexical Relations

What is Polysemy
Polysemy refers to words or phrases with different, but related meanings. A word becomes
polysemous if it can be used to express different meanings. The difference between these
meanings can be obvious or subtle. It is sometimes difficult to determine whether a word is
polysemous or not because the relations between words can be vague and unclear. But,
examining the origins of the words can help to decide whether a word is polysemic or
homonymous.
The following sentences contain some examples of polysemy.
 He drank a glass of milk.
 He forgot to milk the cow.

 The enraged actor sued the newspaper.

 He read the newspaper.

 His cottage is near a small wood.

 The statue was made out of a block of wood.

 He fixed his hair.

 They fixed a date for the wedding.

Although the meanings of the underlined word pairs only have a subtle difference. The
origins of the words are related. Such words are generally listed in dictionaries under one
entry; numbers may be used to denote the subtle differences.

What is Homonymy
Homonymy refers to two unrelated words that look or sound the same. Two or more words
become homonyms if they either sound the same (homophones), have the same spelling
(homographs), or if they both homophones and homographs, but do not have related
meanings. Given below are some examples of homonyms:
Stalk
 – The main stem of a herbaceous plant
– Pursue or approach stealthily

Sow
– adult female pig
– to plant seeds in a ground

The above two examples are both written and read alike; they have the same spellings and
sounds. Some words do not have the same spellings, but they share same the same
pronunciation. For example,
Read vs Reed
Right vs Write
Pray vs Prey

Main Difference – Polysemy vs Homonymy

Polysemy and Homonymy are two similar concepts in linguistics. Both of them refer to
words having multiple meanings. Polysemy refers to the coexistence of many possible
meanings for a word or phrase. Homonymy refers to the existence of two or more words
having the same spelling or pronunciation but different meanings and origins. This is
the main difference between polysemy and homonymy.

Difference Between Polysemy and Homonymy

1. Definition
Polysemy is the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase.
Homonymy is the existence of two or more words having the same spelling or pronunciation
but different meanings and origins.

2. Meanings
Polysemy has different, yet related meanings.
Homonymy has completely different meanings.
 3. Origins
Polysemy has related word origins.
Homonymy has different origins.
4. Dictionaries
Polysemous words are listed under one entry in dictionaries.
Homonymous words are listed separately.

5. Guessing the Meaning

Polysemous words can be understood if you know the meaning of one word.
The meaning of homonymous words cannot be guessed since the words have unrelated
meanings.

In other words, if you hear (or read) two words that sound (or are written) the same but are
not identical in meaning, you need to decide if it’s really two words (homonyms), or if it is
one word used in two different ways (polysemy). The only real way we have of telling the
two apart is by applying our judgement. There are no tests that can tell them apart in a
foolproof manner. Still, for many cases this is enough.

There are, however, many other cases for which this decision is not clear. This doesn’t mean
that they are both or halfway between each; that makes no sense, because a word can’t be
both one word and two words. Rather, it means that one of the following options holds:

1. Different speakers treat the word differently. It might be one word for me but two for you.

2. We are dealing with two homonyms, but there is enough overlap between them.

3. We are dealing with one word whose different uses are relatively far enough apart.

A clear case of homonymy 1: The word down in sentence (1-a) and the word down in
sentence (1-b). These are two words that happen to share sound and spelling. There is no
relation between them:

1.a. Sarah climbed down the ladder.

 1.b. Sarah bought a down blanket.

A clear case of homonymy 2: The word bark in sentence (2-a) and the word Bark in sentence
(2-b).
2.a. My dog would always bark at mailmen.
2.b. The tree’s bark was a rusty brown.

A clear case of polysemy 1: The word Newpaper in the following sentences. The object that
got wet cannot fire people, and the company didn’t get wet. Still, it’s obvious that the same
word is used to refer to them both.
3.a. The newspaper got wet in the rain.
3.b. The newspaper fired some of its editing staff.

A clear case of polysemy 2: The word Good in the following two examples. In one case it’s a
moral judgement, in the other case it’s a judgement of skill.
4.a. John was a good man. He donated a lot of money to charity.
4.b. Bill was a good painter. His drawings always were exciting to look at.

Unclear case 1: Hammer in sentence (5-a) is a noun referring to a physical object. Hammer in
sentence (5-b) is a verb describing an action normally (but not in this case) performed with
that object. Is this one word or two? Different people may disagree.
5.a. I own a big heavy hammer.
5.b. I hammered the tent pole into the ground using a small rock.

Unclear case 2: The word bright in the following two sentences. The meanings are clearly not
the same, but is it one word that is used metaphorically in (6-a) and literally in (6-b), or are
these two different words?
6.a. Laura was a very bright student and always got good grades.
6.b. The lights in this room are very bright.
 Ambiguity

Ambiguity is an idea or situation that can be understood in more than one way. This extends
from ambiguous sentences (which could mean one thing or another) up to ambiguous
storylines and ambiguous arguments. It’s often viewed in a negative light, since we value
clarity in writing and ambiguity is the opposite of clarity; however, sometimes ambiguity can
be a good thing, especially in poetry and storytelling.
Ambiguity is similar to “vagueness,” except that ambiguity refers to something having
multiple possible meanings, while vagueness refers to a general lack of clarity; something
vague might not have any clear meanings while something ambiguous might have several
possible clear meanings.

II. Types of Ambiguity

There are many types of ambiguity, but these are a few of the most important:

a. Semantic Ambiguity, also known as Polysemy

It offers two or more than two possible meanings of a single word. This type of ambiguity
can be commonly seen in puns and other types of wordplay. When a word has multiple
meanings, this is called “polysemy.” Nearly all words in English are polysemous, meaning
that many sentences have semantic ambiguity. We can usually resolve the ambiguity using
context, but sometimes this doesn’t work. The word ‘play’ is a great example of polysemy.
You can play a role, play a guitar, play a game, or play the fool (among other meanings). In
most contexts, you wouldn’t have any question about which one you are talking about. But if
you were hanging out with both a guitar and an mp3 player and someone asked you to ‘play’
some music, it would be ambiguous!

I went out in the woods and found a bat.

Was it a little furry winged creature? Or a baseball bat? Because the word “bat” is
polysemous, it provides us with a very simple example of semantic ambiguity.

Other examples of Lexical ambiguity

bat = flying mammal / wooden club?
saw = past tense of "see" / present tense of "saw" (to cut with a saw.)

b. Syntactic Ambiguity
This kind of ambiguity offers two or more than two meanings within a phrase or sentence.
Syntactic ambiguity is also known as structural ambiguity. It is helpful to use contextual
clues, when dealing with syntactic or structural ambiguity, to find out the actual meaning of
the phrase or the ambiguous sentence. This sort of ambiguity comes out of the structure of the
sentence rather than the words. For example, “The murderer killed the student with a book.”
We know what all these words mean individually, but altogether they are ambiguous; was the
book used as a murder weapon? Or was the victim carrying a book during the attack? As
we’ll see in later examples, this kind of ambiguity can easily be caused by poor grammar.

The end . . . ?
There’s an ambiguous ending in the classic film The Blob (1958). When the movie closes, the
town has successfully defended itself against the monstrous all-consuming blob; but the
question mark at the end leaves open the possibility that the monster isn’t dead, and might
come back to life. Of course, a lot of horror movies end this way!

c. Narrative Ambiguity
This is when a plotline could mean several things; the storyteller doesn’t let you know
explicitly. For example, a relationship between two characters could be ambiguous if it’s not
clear whether or not they like each other.

“The dog is chasing the cat.” vs. “The dog has been domesticated for 10,000 years.”
In the first sentence, “The dog” means to a particular dog; in the second, it means the species
“dog”.

“John and Mary are married.” (To each other? or separately?) vs. “John and Mary got
engaged last month. Now, John and Mary are married.”

“Which of the men at this party are single? John and Mary are married; the rest are all
available.”

“John kissed his wife, and so did Sam”. (Sam kissed John's wife or his own?)
“The word good has many meanings. For example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at
a range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good shot, but not necessarily a good man.”
(G.K. Chesterton)
This quote explores the polysemy of the word “good.” If you simply said, “Wow, he’s really
good” without any context, a reader couldn’t know which sense of “good” you meant; it
would be ambiguous.
A phrase or word refers to something previously mentioned, but there is more than one
possibility.
“Margaret invited Susan for a visit, and she gave her a good lunch.” (she = Margaret; her =
Susan)

“Margaret invited Susan for a visit, but she told her she had to go to work” (she = Susan; her
= Margaret.)

“Bill told Amy that he had decided to spend a year in Italy to study art.”
“That would be his life's work.” (That = art)
“After he had done that, he would come back and marry her.” (That = spending a year in
Italy)
“That was the upshot of his thinking the previous night” (That = deciding)
“That started a four-hour fight.” (That = telling Amy)

Son: I watched a guy do 50 pushups. Can you do that, dad?

Father: Sure! Not to brag, but I could probably watch a guy do 100 pushups.

Some other examples of Ambiguity:

1. The lecturer said on Friday she would take a pop quiz.
(It can either mean that it was on Friday that the lecturer told the students about the pop quiz
or that the pop quiz would be held on Friday).

2. The goat is ready to eat.

(It can either mean that the goat is cooked and ready for everyone to eat it or that the goat is
ready to be fed some food).

3. Every single person at the game saw her duck.

(This sentence can either mean that the word duck is referring to the action of ducking or
everyone saw the bird ‘duck’).

4. The nearby shop owners assisted the dog bite victim.

(It can either mean that the nearby shop owners helped a dog bite someone or they helped
someone who was bitten by the dog. The meaning is not clear.).

5. Seb got the bath ready for his son wearing a blue cape.
Was Seb wearing a blue cape? Or was his son wearing the blue cape?

6. Well, I’ve definitely never had fresh juice prepared this way before.
So, was the fresh juice bad or delicious?

7. Can you call me an Uber, please?

Is the person asking someone to book them an Uber, or do they want to be addressed as
‘Uber’?

8. I saw a person sitting on the mountain with a telescope.

It might come as a surprise to you, but gerunds are a very common part of your daily life, and
whether you realize it or not, you use them every single day.