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Is there a term for e.g. the lexical symbol "duck"? It is both a verb and a noun, in contemporary use having no apparent connection, and so would appear to be represent two words.

Then, is the a better term than 'lexical symbol' to describe any grouping of letters having some meaning? I just made up lexical symbol because it seemed convenient.

ProfK
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    On the contrary, I would myself appreciate a name for a word that can be only a single POS. Get the idea? – Kris Feb 19 '12 at 14:19
  • @Kris, yes, your point will probably keep me awake tonight. – ProfK Feb 19 '12 at 14:30
  • "a group of letters having some meaning" is what we now call a "word" -- why another name for that? There's a difference between the title and the implication of the body. – Kris Feb 19 '12 at 14:35
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    Because words don't have letters. Words have sounds. Letters are only for writing, but illiterate people still have words. And even if it were true, it begs the question of "having some meaning". Meaning is not quantifiable like gasoline. – John Lawler Feb 19 '12 at 17:42
  • @Kris When analysing a string of glyphs, you can recognise a repeated pattern you can decide whether that pattern, e.g. a group of letters, is a word or not in the language you are using. – ProfK Feb 19 '12 at 19:42
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    Kris would like a term for a word that can be only a single part of speech - unlike "like," "term," "word," "can," or "single."

    Hmmm...

    I try to pen a sentence /

    Free from homonyms /

    But when I count, it's just too wild /

    How many I've left in... (I'd like to know that term for "unhomophonic" as well)

     – J.R. Feb 19 '12 at 22:50
  • Heteronym? Nah. – ProfK Feb 20 '12 at 07:23
  • The word 'duck' is not the best possible example. In Etymonline [https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=duck] you will see that the two are not strictly homonymous. There is a homonymous 'duck', derived from Dutch 'doek', referring to a kind of fabric. – Tuffy Jun 27 '23 at 15:14

4 Answers4

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At http://www.thefreedictionary.com/duck, both the AHDEL and Collins claim that there are four English words 'duck'. They distinguish them by right-superscripts (which device is restricted to such analyses, of course).

The one they both choose to label duck³ (a heavy cotton fabric) is obviously not related to the other three – this is a case of convergent evolution, from different sources. Different etymologies.

Although words 1, 2 and 4 are obviously etymologically related to each other (word 4 in a punning way), they are still considered to have diverged sufficiently to be classed as three further isoformal words (same spelling; these also have the same pronunciation) - homonyms (strict definition).

However, if we delve deeper, and look, for instance, at AHDEL's treatment of duck³, we see that it lists two (closely related) senses (admittedly one existing only in the plural form and the other almost invariably in the singular) – ONE the material and TWO clothing (usually trousers) made from that material. These senses are classed as not being separate words. Different senses of the same word are known as polysemes. An obvious example: to play football, you need a football.

Sadly, I have not come across a consensus on whether polysemy is a term that is allowed to be applied to isoformal / homographic orthographic words of different word-classes (eg house (n) and house (v); round (preposition) and round (adj) etc).

Oh, and in answer to the second question – an orthographic word is 'a meaningful (within the parameters of the language being used) string of letters bounded by spaces'. The term lexeme covers 'families' of 'the same word' , so man = man & men; go = go, goes ...

Edwin Ashworth

Edwin Ashworth
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  • Nice answer. Some grammars regard polysemy as necessarily a feature of the same lexeme. So CaGEL, for example and even Aarts (if my memory serves me correctly) would regard lexemes of different categories (as opposed to ones which may or may not be of different categories) as not being polysemes but homonyms. So we get descriptions such as we would regard this as a case of homonymy not polysemy, becasue X1 is a determiner and X2 is an adjective, for example. – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '16 at 23:10
  • @Araucaria I added an answer (and got told off for giving two 'answers') below when I found the term 'intercategorial polysemy' months later. But as you say, it depends on how 'word' and 'lexeme' (which Crystal introduced to try to clear up the confusion!) are defined. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 14 '16 at 23:15
  • Can I cite you on the Crystal? I never knew that. UCL, seems to have been a hotbed for stuff like that. It never, ever ceases to amaze me. – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '16 at 23:20
  • Am about to go AFTK (newly learned newspeak), but if if you have any nice refs for either the Crystal or the intercategorial polysemes, I'd be very grateful. (can't find much doing cursory IP search on google) – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '16 at 23:24
  • Quote me? Certainly not. Andrew Moore's teaching resource site has: << Words and lexemes As a lexical unit may contain more than one word, David Crystal has coined the term lexeme. This is usually a single word, but may be a phrase in which the meaning belongs to the whole rather than its parts, as in verb phrases tune in, turn on, drop out or noun phrase[s] (a) cock up, [ship of the desert].>> You can find references for "intercategorial polysemy" in a Google search. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 14 '16 at 23:27
  • Unfortunately, I don't feel at all safe relying on Andrew Moore's teaching resource site that Crystal coined the term lexeme, especially since doing some more cursory research on it. Re intercategorial polysemy, that's a very different concept from there being intercategorial polysemes in the sense of a singe word being in several categories - as opposed to (as I understand it, though I may well be very wrong) an etymological root being the same root with the same meaning and existing in different words in different categories. But, like I said, I may well be wrong. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '16 at 02:29
  • @Araucaria This is probably the/'a more' primary source of the Crystal attribution: The Study of Language_George Yule (2006; CUP)_Semantics .... – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '16 at 09:54
  • ... As regards 'intercategorial polysemy' being used to describe words with the same etymology being used as different POSs: The sense is clear in this extract from [Conceptual integration and intercategorial polysemy_Zawada_Language Matters: Studies in the Languages of Africa

    Volume 38, Issue 1, 2007](http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10228190701640124?journalCode=rlms20): '... a variety of instances of intercategorial polysemy, ...

     – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '16 at 10:00
  • for example in N–V alternations such as sail and ache, as well as an example of A–N–V alternation, namely wide.' [I had to think about wide used as a verb: as per cricket umpires.] This debate essentially boils down to the 'What is a word?' (and now the 'What is a lexeme?') debate. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '16 at 10:03
  • Thanks!!! I'm going to stick that Crystal bit into the piece I'm working on. Right now. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '16 at 10:31
  • Glad to Clear that up. – Edwin Ashworth Mar 15 '16 at 10:34
  • Is your sign-off at the end of this post there for a special reason? – Heartspring Jun 21 '23 at 19:51
  • I think I thought I'd better show that the overview is my own attempt to make sense of the situation, messy as that situation is – not from someone with real clout. – Edwin Ashworth Jun 22 '23 at 14:00
  • Sorry I didn't see your reply. (Hence the late response) I'd consider you as someone with real clout, but okay. – Heartspring Jun 26 '23 at 22:38
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In linguistics, a homonym is, in the strict sense, one of a group of words that share the same spelling and the same pronunciation but have different meanings

jimjim
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I've come across the term "intercategorial polysemy" used in lexicography and cognitive linguistics for the form of polysemy where the same orthographic word (and with the same etymology - not a homonym) is used in different word-class usages.

Thus bank (your money) and bank (where you bank it) ... but not bank (a steep natural incline).

Or bank (a steep natural incline) and bank (to border or protect with a ridge or embankment) ... but not bank (where you put your money).

This would make lecture (n) and lecture (v) say intercategorial polysemes.

Edwin Ashworth
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  • Did you forget that you already answered almost exactly this? – Mitch Jan 08 '13 at 00:23
  • Intercategorial polysemy is a compound. Are you saying that wolf and werewolf don't warrant different entries in a dictionary? And it does look like it is the correct answer, after all. – Edwin Ashworth Jan 08 '13 at 14:09
  • You have multiple much more distinct words in your first answer. Adding a modifier to one of them doesn't warrant a full separate entry. Unless of course you want to do the work to separate your other answer. Just move this to the 'polysemy' paragraph in your other answer. – Mitch Jan 08 '13 at 15:49
  • @Mitch I couldn't disagree more. – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '16 at 23:16
  • Do you have a source I could use in relation to this? – Araucaria - Him Mar 14 '16 at 23:16
  • @Araucaria In what way do you disagree? (its hard to know what given that I said multiple things). – Mitch Mar 15 '16 at 02:36
  • @Mitch The source request was for the author of the post--which was worth reading. – Araucaria - Him Mar 15 '16 at 02:37
  • @Araucaria Oh. My mistake. that part deleted from my comment (as will this comment soon) – Mitch Mar 15 '16 at 02:40
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Homophony - words sound the same but have different meanings Homography - words are written the same but have different meanings Polysemy - more than one sense to a word or sentence

"I'll not be the first president of the United States to lose the war" Is polysemic, has 2 meanings, even though there's no homophony of homography

"Fan" Homography - a ventilator or an admirer?

Sorry I can't give you and example of homophony, I only have exemples in Portuguese.

Whenever a signifier has more than one possible sense, it is polysemic (so it would apply to homophony and homography), but polysemy doesn't require homophony and homography to happen

Tames
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