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Polysemy and Syntax Course Packet 1

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Polysemy and Syntax Course Packet 1 Polysemy and Syntax Stephen Wechsler, The University of Texas at Austin Course time: Monday/Thursday 9:00-10:50 AM Class handouts for Part I 1. Words and senses ..................................................................................................................... 2 1.1. Homonymy, polysemy, and generality ............................................................................. 2 1.2. Tests for homonymy vs. polysemy vs. generality ............................................................. 4 1.3. Facets ................................................................................................................................ 5 1.4. A zeugma test for prepositions ......................................................................................... 6 1.5. Refining the tests ............................................................................................................... 7 2. Generative theories of polysemy ............................................................................................. 9 2.1. Pragmatic roots of polysemy ............................................................................................ 9 2.2. Cross-linguistic variation in sense extension rules ......................................................... 11 2.3. Lexical licenses ............................................................................................................... 11 2.4. Coercion .......................................................................................................................... 13 2.5. Constructional polysemy and sense extensions .............................................................. 14 2.6. Type presupposition accomodation ................................................................................ 17 3. Sense indeterminacy as a route to polysemy ......................................................................... 18 3.1. Inquiry-resistant polysemy .............................................................................................. 18 3.2. Gavagai, repurposed for a theory of polysemy ............................................................... 18 3.3. Putting the brakes on generalization ............................................................................... 19 3.4. Semantic change ............................................................................................................. 20 3.5. Semantic change in modal verbs ..................................................................................... 21 3.6. The sound emission puzzle ............................................................................................. 25 4. Causative alternations ............................................................................................................ 32 4.1. Why are causative alternations so common? .................................................................. 32 4.2. Causative ~ Inchoative ~ Resultative Alternations ......................................................... 33 4.3. Spatiotemporal overlap and direct causation .................................................................. 34 4.4. Which verbs alternate and why ....................................................................................... 37 1 1. Words and senses 1.1. Homonymy, polysemy, and generality Traditionally, two types of lexical amibiguity are distinguished: homonymy refers to cases in which two words “accidentally” have the same phonological form (e.g., bank ‘financial institution’ versus bank ‘side of a river’), whereas polysemy refers to the phenomenon that one and the same word acquires different, though obviously related, meanings, often with respect to particular contexts. Consider the following examples of homonymy (cf. Pustejovsky (1995): p. 27): (1) a. Mary walked along the bank of the river. b. HarborBank is the richest bank in the city. (2) a. The judge asked the defendant to approach the bar. b. The defendant was in the pub at the bar. c. He bought a bar of soap. And contrast this with the following cases of meaning variation, which illustrate polysemy: (3) a. The bank raised its interest rates yesterday. b. The store is next to the newly constructed bank. c. The bank appeared first in Italy in the Renaissance. Words are said to be polysemous: each word form has a range of meanings that are related, whether closely or distantly. Polysemy is ubiquitous, ‘the rule rather than the exception’ (Cruse 1986, 50). homonyms accidentally take the same phonological shape but are unrelated in meaning, such as light in weight versus light in color. (Homophones have the same sound (break ~ brake); homographs have the same spelling (bow of a ship ~ bow and arrow); and homonyms have the same sound and spelling (the dogs bark ~ the bark of the tree). polysemy involves meaning variation, such as bank as ‘financial institution’ (3a) versus bank as ‘physical building housing a financial institution’ (3b) (Pustejovsky 1995). This example of polysemy differs from homonymy in two respects. 1. The financial institution and the building housing it are clearly related, while in contrast there is no apparent relation between financial institutions and riversides (but see below). 2. The polysemy relation connecting the two uses of bank in (3) is systematic. A parallel polysemy can be found across virtually all English words and phrases refering to buildings that house institutions, including even proper names such as Austin City Hall, The University of Texas, The Performing Arts Center, and so on: 2 (4) a. The University of Texas raised its tuition rates. b. The University of Texas is located several blocks north of the state capitol building. This alternation (institution X ~ building that houses X) is an instance of systematic (or regular) polysemy, since the relation is regular within the language. Idiosyncratic polysemy: Individual words are often extended to new uses that bear some semantic relation to the old ones. If these extensions catch on for a single word but fail to generalize to semantically related words of the language then they remain as isolated instances of idiosyncratic polysemy. cup ‘part of a bra that covers a breast’. (n.b. A hat covers a head but it is not called a cup) With idiosyncratic polysemy one of the two criteria distinguishing polysemy from homonymy has been lost: idiosyncratic polysemy is not regular. The connection between senses may still be motivated, in that one can explain it after the fact, while not being predictable in the sense that a general rule applies. This leaves only the criterion of semantic similarity. But if the connection between uses becomes opaque over time, either due to semantic drift or to changes in the extralinguistic world, then such cases of polysemy can grade off into homonymy. ex. bank illustrates homonymy, namely ‘riverside’ and ‘financial institution’; but they have a common historical origin in a form denoting a “shelf, natural or artificial, of earth, rock, sand, or wood.” (Oxford English Dictionary, OED). The bank of a river is such a shelf. Regarding the ‘financial institution’ sense, the OED notes that “The original meaning ‘shelf, bench’ … was extended in Italian to that of ‘tradesman’s stall, counter, money-changer’s table, … whence ‘money-shop, bank,’ a use of the word which passed, with the trade of banking, from Italy into other countries.” This connection between the two senses of bank is unknown to many contemporary speakers of English, so for them this is a case of homonymy, not polysemy. But since polysemy can gradually evolve into homonymy, the line between the two categories is fuzzy. These systematic aspects make polysemy an important field of study of synchronic and generative linguistics. Distinct from both polysemy and homonymy is generality, where a word is simply general in its application: a sweater can refer to either a red sweater or a green sweater; a teacher can be male or female. The word teacher refers to male teachers and female teachers but it lacks discrete senses for ‘male teacher’ and ‘female teacher’. (The term vagueness is sometimes used instead of generality, but we will reserve vagueness for the problem of fuzzy boundaries around senses.) Summarizing: generality does not involve discrete senses; when there are discrete senses then it is polysemy if the senses are related and possibly systematic; and homonymy if they are neither related nor systematic. 3 1.2. Tests for homonymy vs. polysemy vs. generality (i) identity test for discreteness (homonymy/polysemy vs. generality) (Zwicky and Sadock 1975) sweater is general between ‘blue sweater’ and ‘red sweater’: (5) Mary is wearing a sweater. Susan is wearing one too. Mary bought a sweater. Susan did too. (can combine different colors) bank has discrete senses ‘financial institution’ and ‘riverbank’: (6) Mary saw a bank. Susan saw one too. Mary saw a bank. So did Susan. (can’t combine financial institution with riverbank.) (ii) independent truth condition test for discreteness. Truth conditions can depend on which of the two senses is intended. (7) Mary is wearing a light coat. (No she isn’t— it’s a rather heavy coat.) (If Mary’s coat is light in color but heavy in weight, this is true under one sense but false under the other.) (8) Mary saw a teacher. (#No she didn’t— she saw a man.) (iii) the zeugma test for relatedness of senses: Use a single word token in two different ways in a sentence. Combining accidental homophones leads to an intuition of zeugma; combining
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