The Formational Reasons and Usage of Polysemy in E

The Formational Reasons and Usage of Polysemy in E The Formational Reasons of Polysemy in English Abstract:This paper discusses the main reasons about formational polysemy phenomena in English:external reasons;internal ones(Context plays a crucial role for the elimination of polysemy ambiguities in the course of usage;Learners should focus on cultivating the ability to understand polysemy in English learning(It should be seen as important competence instructive for English vocabulary learning( Key words:polysemy;context;vocabulary learning I.Introduction Polysemy is a pervasive phenomenon in English,but there is no exact definition for it.The New English Dictionary explains word polysemy ( in linguistics) as / the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or a phrase. It is surprising that few English - English dictionary or English - Chinese dictionaries give the definition of polysemy in detail .Some dictionaries even do not give the lexical entry of polysemy. Actually ,except terms,there are few monosemes, most words are polysemy .As we know , for a word the more frequent we use ,the more meanings it has.In Oxford English dictionary ,"get" has nearly 150 meanings .So polysemy brings many troubles for us to learn English,but it makes English more colorful and meaningful .In fact ,polysemy is based on the generality of the meaning and the evolution of the meaning. Due to the generality of the word , meaning appears differentiation and then new meaning form . There will be two results after new meaning formation . one is that old meaning disappear, the other is that both meaning are accepted .The later is our so-called polysemy .Though "cut" has nearly 150 separation of meanings as a verb in Oxford English Dictionary, there are only 32 in the new English-Chinese Dictionary .Of course ,it is imprecise only by the separation of meanings to make conclusion ,but different meanings indeed exist. The formation of diversified meanings is a historical process,we can not identified which is original meaning,which is developed meaning ,so if we want to understand and master the meaning of polysemy ,we should pay more attention to the relations of every meaning . II.The Formational Reasons of polysemy 2.1 External reasons External reasons mainly refer to social psychology,cognitive ability and so on. Social and psychological factors both play an important role in the formation of polysemy. 2.1.1 social factors With the development of social system,many words have widen their meanings in modern English. For example, "countdown" originally is used for count number before nuclear or bomb explosion ,now it refer to a dangerous situation .eg : That would lead to a countdown in Cambodia. Electronic term "feedback" means the process in which part of the output of a system is returned to its input in order to regulate its further output, now it means response to an inquiry or experiment ,eg: The reader feedback was generally favorable .Another example is "fire storm". we call a storm in which violent winds are drawn into the column of hot air rising over a severely bombed area as fire storm,now this phrase has been used in political field to indicate intense response . eg: The relations about the CIA’s activities in Chile broke in the press iust as the fire storm over the Nixon pardonput an abrupt end to Congress’S honey—moon with Gerald Ford( Besides,a trend in certain field also can extend the word meaning .Such as ,many baseball terms access to people'daliy life with the popularity of baseball in America. In the field of business ,law ,education and politics ,you will find many new terms involved in baseball.For example,when people want to discuss some certain situation or study a problem roundly,they will use" to touch all bases" (VOA:Words and Their Stories)。 This phrase refers to a baseball player who runs round four bases in the game.Another example about base term is get to first base ,in the first beginning it means that the baseball player run to first base ,but now it refers to a successful beginning .Eg :If you don’t dress neatly(you won’t get to the first base when you look for a job((Adam Makkai:A Dictionary of American Idioms). Except for sport terms above I have mentioned ,there are many similar words in economic terms ,such as "bottom line". It original meaning is the last line in an audit or the line that shows profit or loss ,but now we use it to show the basic meaning . Eg:“Let me give you the bottom line :Screen Crafts Studios is pulling out(We are exercising the escape clause in your contract." This word "defuse" is a good example for explaining polysemy in political field .Defuse means that one removes the triggering device from some place,now its meaning has extended as making something harmless or making less severe or harsh . Eg:(1).The President clearly intended to defuse domestic criticism. (2).The Government went out of its way to defuse the economic and political crises(In Recent years ,some British and American newspapers have added the suffix -er to the defuse and then formed a new meaning that is a person who makes the dangerous situation into peace.Eg: ......his style and skill as a public man is as a defuser of explosive predicament( 2.1.2 psychological factors Though scientific language is objective and serious,it not means that some scientific English vocabularies go with a certain psychological factor.For example, people hate wiretap actions,so people when people mention this kind of actions ,they would say there is a bug which is a kind of insect with sucking mouthparts and forewings thickened and leathery at the base instead say it directly. In other word ,people often name something according to their feelings .Maybe 13 is the best example for illustration this factor .As we know, western people do not like this number because there has thirteen people in the Last Supper where Jesus' followers Judas betrayed him. 2.2 Internal factors 2.2.1 Arbitrariness and openness of word First, in terms of relations and conceptions ,it is arbitrary and indemonstrable for a word in reality . Meanwhile ,once a word establish its conception in the language collective ,it is relatively fixed for users .It just like we can not create another word to replace "antenna" .Second,there must have some relations between two different meaning of one word. For instance, if one person says he /she is cold ,we can not make conclusion that he /she is really cold in physiology ,because he/she is cold in psychology .Thus the arbitrariness and openness of word constitutes a pair of contradictions.On the one hand, established conceptions reject any form replacement and change at random .On the other hand ,we can make use of the openness of word to transmit the established relations and conceptions to the new one. If we can create new word to replace the old conception or every meaning is isolated , there will not be polysemy . 2.2.2 The generality of the word and the Concreteness of things Even though word meaning specifically refers to one certain conception,it is only used for the same category .The word meaning generalize this kind of words so as to describe the definition .However ,objective things exist specifically in reality ,thus contradiction appears .Polysemy results from this contradiction.For example ,“green” summarizes all the characteristic of green color ,so it can modify everything that have this characteristic. But because thus words modify various things is quite specific, so there will have many differences when we combine it to different things.Eg: green vegetables are fresh,but green fruits are immature,from the example we can get new meaning of this word . 3.1 Two approaches to polysemy: 1)diachronic approach:It refers to the study of the growth or change in the semantic structure of a word, or how the semantic structure of a word has developed from a primary meaning to the present polysemic state, i.e. with derived ( second) meanings springing from the original (primary) meaning. From the diachronic point of view, polysemy is assumed to be the result of growth and development of the semantic structure of one and same word. The primary meaning gave birth to new meaning. The primary meaning become either absolute or disappeared altogether 2)synchronic approach :It refers to the comparative value of individual meaning and the interrelation between the central meaning and secondary meanings. Synchronically, polysemy is viewed as the coexistence of various meanings of the same word in a certain historical period of time, say, Modern English. The basic meaning of a word is the core of word meaning. The core of word meaning called the central meaning (secondary meaning). The central meaning has gradually diminished in currency with the changes and one of the derived meanings has become dominant. E.g. gay IV.conclusion As a universal phenomenon in a ll languages, the phenomenon of word polysemy reveals economy of human language by reducing the quantity of words. Ullmann ( 1951) had supposed if there is only one meaning for one word, we do not know how worse human condition is. Polysemy is a convenient way for people to cognize the world. Through the investigation of the mechanism of polysemy and the explanation of the network of meanings based on category is quite clear for us that how the same word acquires different meanings and how people can understand word polysemy through image schemas, which in turn can provide an efficient way of English word study. References: 【1】Lakoff, Johnson(Metaphors We Live By 【M】( Chicago: The University of Chicago Press， 1980( [2]廖光蓉(多义词范畴原型裂变、次范畴化及相关问 题研究?(外语与外语教学，2005， (10)( [3] 维普期刊网 一词多义形成的原因与用法 【4】赵艳芳(认知语言学概论【M】(上海:上海外语教育 出版社(2001( 【5】百度文库 Polysemy and Homonymy