Toward an Economic Principled Polysemy Model

Authors

  • Dhaifullah Z. Harbi Al-Zahraa University for Women
  • Mustafa A. Abdulkareem Al-Zahraa University for Women

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1308.11

Keywords:

polysemy, semantic network, spatial preposition, central sense

Abstract

Polysemy is one of the complex semantic phenomena that have been tackled by many scholars from different points of view. Different models have been suggested about how the polysemous words are represented in the mental lexicon. One of these sophisticated models is proposed by Tyler and Evans (2003). It seems that this model has some problems that this paper is directed to solve. The paper is based on two questions: (1) what are the main aspects of the polysemous network of meanings regarding the central meaning and its extensions? (2) How the polysemous network of meanings is structured? Therefore, the main aims of this study are to diagnose the weaknesses of the model and to provide another modified model. The new model is applied to one of the most complicated spatial prepositions of Arabic, alla.

Author Biographies

Dhaifullah Z. Harbi, Al-Zahraa University for Women

Department of English, College of Education

Mustafa A. Abdulkareem, Al-Zahraa University for Women

Department of English, College of Education

References

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Fillmore, Ch. & Atkins, B. (2000). ‘Describing Polysemy: The Case of ‘Crawl’’. In Ravin, Y. & Leacock, C. (eds.), Polysemy: Theoretical and Computational Approaches. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 91-110.

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Nerlich, B. & Clarke., D. (1997). "Polysemy: Patterns of Meaning and Patterns in History". Historiographica Linguistica, 24(3), 349-385.

Nerlich, B., & Clarke, D. (2003). Polysemy and flexibility: Introduction and overview. In B. Nerlich, Z. Todd, V. Herman & D. Clarke (Eds.), Polysemy: Flexible patterns of meaning in mind and language. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyer. pp. 3-30.

Tyler, A and Evans, V. (2003). The Semantics of English Prepositions: Spatial Scenes, Embodied Meaning and Cognition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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Published

2023-08-01

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Section

Articles