1

A lightly edited version of:

POLYSEMY AND HOMONYMY

FROM A COGNITIVE VIEWPOINT:

A CONTINUUM OR NOT?
by

John Richmond Mathewson, B.A. (Dunelmiensis)

A Thesis

Submitted in Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Master's Degree

Department of Linguistics

in the Graduate School

Southern Illinois University

at Carbondale

December, 1995

© John Richmond Mathewson, B.A., M.A., M.Sc. 2009

 2

Chapter 1
Introduction.
1.0 Introduction.
Bloomfield stated that we can pursue the study of language without
reference to any psychological doctrine, and that to do so safeguards
our results and makes them more significant to workers in related
fields.
(Bloomfield 1933: vii)

Bloomfield's statement resulted in the curious idea that language

production is in some way quite different from other mental
processes. An idea that has to a large extent permeated linguistic
thinking ever since Bloomfield published his book.
In fact Bloomfield would probably have discounted the very idea
of a mental process. He was primarily interested in propagating the
behaviourist idea that language is merely the outcome of external
stimuli, and in countering claims of psychologists:
The mentalists would supplement the facts of language by a
version in terms of mind, - a version which will differ in the various
schools of mentalistic psychology. The mechanists demand that the
facts be presented without any assumption of such auxiliary factors.
... an exposition which stands on its own feet is more solid and more
easily surveyed than one which is propped at various points by
another and changeable doctrine.
(Bloomfield 1933: vii-viii)

Bloomfield's language is rather loaded. Linguistics has also become as

changeable as psychology, and not as doctrinaire as the psychological
schools that prevailed in Bloomfield's time.
Bloomfield's attitude was by and large the attitude of his
generation. Philology/Linguistics (the two terms are used here
interchangeably and in a loose and sloppy fashion) was seen as a
science contributing to a unified explanation of all phenomena:
The mosaic pattern of empirical science progressively shows
more marked interconnections than in the times in which empirical
studies were relatively isolated. Scientific analysis of the sciences led
to the observation that an increase of logical intercorrelation between
statements of the same science and between statements of different
sciences is a historical fact. ... Comprehensiveness arises thus as a
scientific need and is no longer a desire for vision only. The evolving
 3

of all such logical connections and the integration of science is a new

aim of science.
(Neurath 1938: 15)
Safeguarding results may be viewed as an expression of whether the
validity of linguists' findings would stand up under the scrutiny of the
psychologists, or be found to have any psychological counterpart.
By effectively restricting linguistic exploration to language
without cross-referencing with other disciplines (particularly
psychology) Bloomfield almost guaranteed that linguists' findings,
while possibly being significant to workers in related fields, was
virtually inaccessible to them.
It is indeed dangerous to centre the study of language around
any doctrine (whether psychological, linguistic, or other) as this can
restrict the overview of the researcher by boxing him/her in with
preconceptions. But a healthy cross-referencing by researchers will
serve to validate their findings.
Rosch's publication of her findings on colour categorisation
(1975) appeared to confirm that language mirrored psychological
categories.
Languages change over time, and many linguists have studied in
what way they change. A general impression that may be gained from
examining literature on language change is that there are a large
number of catalogues of specific sound changes, specific
orthographical changes, and specific semantic changes compiled
without any reference to why these changes have come about other
than by forces internal to language, without any reference to the fact
that language is not like fungus; a free-standing entity.
Language is a surface representation of mental processes that
occur inside humans, and a means of communicating facets of those
mental processes to other humans (or other sentient beings).
Therefore an examination of language with reference to those mental
processes, or at least bearing in mind that language is symptomatic of
mental activity, would seem more productive than any "study of
language without reference to any psychological doctrine"
(Bloomfield 1933: vii).

It would therefore seem that a study of linguistic categorisation

should be deeply informative about how the human mind works.
 4

1.1 The Nature of this Thesis.

This thesis will claim that, if one views language as a series of

synchronic slices, there is no rigidly definable boundary between
complete polysemy and non-phonologically motivated homonymy,
these two terms being used to describe extremes of a continuum that
often appears fragmented and discontinuous when viewed
synchronically. The framework that most successfully accounts for
this phenomenon is prototype theory.
Homonymy and polysemy are sufficiently unclear as concepts for
some confusion to have arisen. This long-standing controversy is
unresolvable if language is viewed only synchronically.
Both polysemy and homonymy are the products of a need to
make language as efficient as possible; polysemy is concerned with
efficiency with regard to the conceptuality of language, homonymy
with the formality. We can view both phenomena as different forms
of the tendency towards the maximalisation of language efficiency.
One has to distinguish senses (shades of meaning, nuances
within prototypically clustered categories) from concepts (the
prototypically clustered categories within which the senses are
clustered). Thus we have to consider both prototypical polysemy
(within the cluster) and categorial polysemy (outside the cluster); we
might ask whether categorial polysemy and homonymy are not simply
two ways of describing the same phenomenon. More in keeping with
the view of a polysemy-homonymy continuum, we might question this
view of a strict hierarchy from senses within a radial set clustered
around a prototype, through clustered categories to full homonymy;
replacing this with a web of clustered prototypical clusters with
ever more attenuated connections between what we might term
nuclear clusters and increasingly semantically distant clusters.
This claim will be based on an analysis of some categorial
clusters of connected prototypes. The analysis will treat semantic
extensions which cross grammatical categories as part of the
polysemous clusters from which they extend. It is expected that a
more integrative picture will emerge of polysemy and homonymy as
two extremes of a continuum; a gradation from prototypical polysemy
through categorial polysemy to true homonymy. It will also involve
an examination of how phonologically convergent forms subsequent
to their achieving a state of homonymy come to be reanalysed in a
 5

variety of ways involving some degree of polysemisation, and how that

reanalysis is deeply informed by cognitive salience.
This will involve an element of rejection of the temptation to
treat synchronic 'slices' through a diachrony as rigidly bound; it
seeming that, at least to a certain extent, the past of a language is
preserved in its present.
The thesis will be illustrated with schematic representations of
the diachronic semantic development of the polysemous-homonymic
complexes of the forms pig, fork, and scale, as well as radial cluster
diagrams for various synchronic moments in the development of
these complexes.

1.2 Thesis Plan.

The thesis consists of three parts: Chapter 2 will provide a

historical overview of how linguists have defined Polysemy and
Homonymy and attempted to tackle the problems that arose out of
attempts to implement these terms.
Chapter 3 will introduce the theoretical framework of cognitive
grammar with particular reference to Prototype theory and Radial
sets.
Chapter 4 will consist of an examination of the polysemous
clusters connected to the forms pig, fork, and scale. Considerations
that arise from this examination will be used to advance some
proposals relating to the terms Polysemy and Homonymy in keeping
with the thesis statement.
 6

Chapter 2

2.0 This chapter consists of a survey of what linguists have

understood POLYSEMY and HOMONYMY to mean by way of an
examination of the concept of POLYVALENCY and its historical
division into polysemy and homonymy. It examines further
divisions of all that lies within polyvalency, and other approaches to
what has been felt to be a problem with this concept.

2.1 Types of ambiguity and how they come about.

Linguists have claimed that there are two kinds of ambiguity;

lexical and grammatical. Grammatical ambiguity occurs when a
constituent of a sentence may be interpreted as belonging to more
than one grammatical category:-

1. They are racing horses.

If racing is an adjective as part of an NP-constituent with
horses, the meaning is quite different to the situation where
racing is understood to be part of a VP with are.

2. Green eggs and ham.

Here green may refer to/modify merely eggs or it may also
refer to/modify ham.
This can be best seen by bracketing;
2a. Green [eggs and ham].; both ham and eggs are
green.
2b. [Green eggs] and ham.; the ham is not green.

Lexical ambiguity occurs because of polyvalency:-

3. The priest is always bashing his bishop.

A bishop is a functionary in certain types of Christian church, it
is also a synonym for penis.
4. Mrs Woodruff bicycles a lot.
To bicycle is either 'to ride on a bicycle', or 'to swap sexual
partners with an unseeming frequency'.
(The more metaphorical of the meanings in each of these
cases is generally confined to English Schoolboy and British
Military dialects).
 7

What is not clear is whether the polyvalent situations in sentences 3.

and 4. come about because of homonymy or polysemy.
Contrariwise, it might well be that these polyvalent situations
lead speakers of English to describe them as examples of homonymy or
polysemy. While this may appear at first glance to be nothing more
than pointing out a possible circular argument in the definition of
these two terms this is in fact not the case. What is not clear is
whether homonymy and polysemy are the cause of polyvalent
situations, or merely terms used to explain why speakers (and l
inguists) differentiate between the types of interpretation available to
them for sentences 3. and 4.
Zwicky and Sadock (1975: 2) have pointed out that ambiguity
results from underspecification; and all sentences are underspecified
as our experience of the world is infinitely richer than what we are
capable of verbalising. This can be pushed to an absurd conclusion,
where all and everything are potentially ambiguous:-

"The sentence
... My sister is the Ruritanian Secretary of State.
is unspecified4 (general, indefinite, unmarked, vague,neutral)
with respect to whether my sister is older or younger than I am,
whether she acceded to her post recently or some time ago,
whether the post is hers by birth or by merit, whether it has
indefinite tenure or will cease at some specific future time,
whether she is right-handed or left-handed, and so on."
(Zwicky and Sadock 1975: 2)

Prior to passing any judgement on the question about the

polyvalency of sentences 3. and 4. an examination of the terms
homonymy and polysemy and their possibly polysemous nature is
required.

2.2 Polysemy and Homonymy.

Traditionally homonymy and polysemy have been defined as the

phenomena “that two or more words have the same form” and “a
word may have more than one meaning” respectively (Panman 107).
One of the besetting problems of this definition is what
constitutes a word.
These definitions for both Homonymy and Polysemy are
 8

based on the assumption that they are quite different phenomena and
a vast gulf is fixed between them. Ullmann (1959: 62-63) outlines a
view held by many linguists of how polysemy comes about:-
“The frontiers of verbal significations are often fluid, even
though the core may be perfectly clear and unmistakable ... Even the
most rigidly defined terms of scientific discourse are not wholly
immune from ... minor shifts, which are completely dependent
on the context. ... By divergent semantic development these minor
shifts may crystallise into major ones. The word will then be said to
possess ‘several meanings’ the interrelatedness of which is fully
grasped, but which are so remote from each other as to make the
symbol unserviceable in isolation.”

Ullmann’s definition of homonymy that comes directly after this

definition of polysemy (intended as a contrasting state) does not
account for the formation of homonyms from polysemous senses of
one form:-
“No connection is felt here between two or more homophones,
say ‘bow - bough’ or ‘sea - see’. Without a context one cannot
even give one’s thoughts the general direction still possible with
polysemantic alternatives. In more pathological situations, even
ordinary contexts may be insufficient to keep homonyms apart:
then a ‘homonymic clash’ ensues and has to be resolved by
special remedies transcending the usual limits of
contextualisation.” (1959: 63)
"Polysemy arises when the same from has multiple but
related meanings. ... Although polysemy was addressed quite
early (cf. Bréal (1896)) it has proven almost impossible to
accommodate within structural theories of language ..."
(Deane 1975: 325)

2.3 Tackling the Question of Polysemy and Homonymy by

Establishing Meaning., and vice versa.

2.3.1 Historical Perspective.

2.3.1.1 Arbitrariness.

Ferdinand de Saussure proposed (Ullmann 1959: 68-70) that

 9

language was a system of entirely arbitrary signs, a bipolar relation

between 2 components;

Signifiant Signifié

SIGNIFIED
SIGN
SIGNIFIER

This was extended by Ogden and Richards in an effort to

answer the question of whether les signifiants referred to concepts in
the world (referents), or mental images stored inside people's heads
(thoughts/ references). Ogden and Richards (Ullmann 1959: 72)
developed this into their 'basic triangle':-

Thought/Reference

Symbol Referent

Ullmann, (Ullmann 1959: 171) following Gombocz, uses the

terms name and sense as equivalent to Ogden and Richards' symbol
and thought/ reference respectively; the majority opinion being that
names referred to objects inside people's heads. This still left the
problem of how the sense was related to something in the world (the
referent), Saussurian diagrams attempting to show this relationship
not being particularly helpful;
 10

Name / Signifiant Thing-meant /Referent

‘spider’

ΛΥΚΟΣ ΛΥΚΟΣ

Sense Sense

This purportedly shows that the relationship between the name

and the sense, and, similarly, the sense and referent is not
phonologically motivated, object-physical, or in any other way direct.
Ogden and Richards have described the symbol-referent
relation as being imputed and indirect.
The name-symbol-referent relation is further complicated by the
insistence of the Generativists that;

"if meaning falls within the purview of linguistic analysis it is

properly described by some type of formal logic based on truth
conditions." (Langacker 1990: 1)

2.3.1.2 Motivation.

Langacker, tries to circumvent the above-mentioned problem by

positing that this relation is not entirely arbitrary but motivated.

“Human thought has two complementary characteristics. While

it displays flexible responses to novel situations, it is also highly
structured, incorporating detailed information about the
world.”
(Deane 1975: 325)

Examples of motivation for signs are such words as splash

(supposed connection with the noise the word signifies;
onomatopoeia),and green 'new' (connection drawn between the
colour of new leaves and other things that are new).
 11

Types of extension that may be driven by motivation include

metaphor, metonymy, kenning, putative synæsthetic processes,
parallelism/analogy, morphological similarity, and so on.
Ullmann and others have replaced Saussure's arbitrariness (the
arbitrary relation between sense and reference) with conventional,
and ideas of the conventionality of the sign, defining this as meaning
that there is no intrinsic justification for why a language possesses
signs of the shape it does. We might just as well term a foot, *gnick,
*svatlo, or foot for there is no evidence that the phonetic nature of
the sign is somehow determined by the signified. There is however an
intrinsic reason for the existence in English of a term for foot
because of the existence of feet in our environment, and a perceived
psychological need to refer to them. This may also be termed
cognitive salience.
An extrinsic reason for the phonetic form of the sign is that we
do not normally design our own signs, but have then imposed upon us
by external forces. This is certainly one way of accounting for the
difficulty monoglots have in accepting the arbitrary nature of the sign;
the sign appears to him/her to be connected by an object-physical
relation with the signified, a necessary connection.
What is clear is that, owing to the way in which terms are
apparently 'given' within a speech community, polysemous extension,
and the coining of morphologically and/or phonologically related
forms are motivated and not arbitrary. The adjective bready [b®´di],
coined to describe the smell that pervades a kitchen when bread is
being baked, can hardly be described as arbitrary; its motivations are
visible in its form. Speakers do not, under normal circumstances,
coin terms on an arbitrary basis; because, as Deane (1975: 325)
points out, the human mind is highly structured; it, by its very nature,
makes connections. The speaker attempts to make sense of some new
experience by integrating it into his/her already existing conceptual
system. One salient reason for this is that the speaker’s existing
conceptual system is normally congruent, to a large extent, with the
conceptual systems of his/her fellow speakers within his/her speech
community; a random coining would then call for a tedious amount of
contextualisation and explanation every time the term was used:-

"Prototypical categories are cognitively efficient because they

allow us to interpret new experiences in terms of existing knowledge,
even if the new phenomena are slightly distinct from the concepts
 12

already available. The incorporation of slightly deviant cases into the

periphery of the prototypical cluster is a structural reflection of the
interpretative processes guiding concept formation: existing
knowledge functions as a guideline for the interpretation of new data,
even if the goodness of fit is not 100%." (Geeraerts 1990: 71)

2.3.1.3 Meaning Determined by Function.

The functionalists then described the meaning of lexemes in

terms of their function (that of the lexemes, not the functionalists):-
Let us consider, as an example the lexeme COW (sb), at the risk
of appearing partisan the author gives his own functions;

Denotative/Referential function; the animal in the real world that goes

'MOO'
Connotative function; milk, sweet-breath, beef, leather, countryside

Emotive/Affective/(Poetic) function; summer holidays in the Rhinns of

Galloway.
Communicative/Functional function; e.g. utterances such as 'Hi, you
old cow', 'Hello, how’s the cows', 'What stupid cows' as
Conversational Initiators / Terminators.

"Wittgenstein, . . . , later came to renounce the simplistic

distinction of the descriptive [= denotative] and the emotive [=
connotative] functions of language, emphasizing the functional
diversity of language- utterances." (Lyons 1977: 727) bracketed
inserts mine.

While I am inclined to agree with Wittgenstein, I find these

distinctions useful, while bearing in mind that they are not really
sharply defined and delimited categories; more a continuum of
functions. considering these terms as 'milestones' along a continuum
tends to ameliorate their simplicity.
I think Wittgenstein's point is best seen in his own words:-

"The tendency to look for something in common to all the entities

which we commonly subsume under a general term.— We are inclined
to think that there must be something in common to all games, say,
and that this common property is the justification for applying the
 13

general term "game" to the various games: whereas games form a

family the members of which have family likenesses. Some of them
have the same nose, others the same eyebrows and others again the
same way of walking; and these likenesses overlap. The idea of a
general concept being a common property of its particular instances
connects up with other primitive, too simple, ideas of the structure of
language. It is comparable to the idea that properties are ingredients
of the things which have the properties; e.g. that beauty is an
ingredient of all beautiful things as alcohol is of beer and wine, and
that we therefore could have pure beauty, unadulterated by anything
that is beautiful." (Wittgenstein 1960: 17)

2.4 What the words and lexemes are, and how this is useful for a
consideration of polysemy and homonymy.

What constitutes a word and what constitutes a lexeme has itself

proven a besetting problem.
Sapir defined a word as "'one of the smallest, completely
satisfying bits of isolated "meaning" into which the sentence resolves
itself' (Ullmann 1959: 51).
“A free form which consists entirely of two or more lesser free
forms, as, for instance, poor John or John ran away or yes, sir, is a
phrase. A free form which is not a phrase, is a word. A word, then, is
a free form which does not consist entirely of (two or more) lesser
free forms; in brief, a word is a minimum free form.”
(Bloomfield 1933: 178)

Presumably Bloomfield meant that a word is an indivisible free

form (a minimum free form), rather than a free form that consists of
two or more free forms and something in addition. There is some
doubt as the last sentence quoted here contradicts itself.
Jesperson points out the linguistic relativism of such a view,
dwelling on polysynthetic languages and similar problems with
languages such as French (where division may be no more than a
product of a written convention) (Jesperson 1922: 422); he might
well have also dwelt on the question of agglutinative languages.
While the idea of a word as a minimum free form may well be
linguistically relative this does not necessarily lessen its usefulness
when considering polysemy and homonymy in languages which have
identifiable minimum free forms. Units of language other than words
 14

may be considered polysemous; a sentence may be understood to be

polysemous if it has more than one possible interpretation which is
not dependent on multiple meanings of one or more of its constituent
units or on more than one way for it to be parsed. That this is almost
inconceivable in English does not necessarily mean that this is not
possible; a researcher in this field might examine multiple
interpretations of the type of 'word-sentences' found in polysynthetic
languages (c.f. Jesperson's remarks above).
That the above makes sense is seen if one considers English
words which consist of a free morpheme and a bound morpheme; the
addition of the bound morpheme often so changes/modifies the
meanings of a free morpheme that the unit formed must be
considered as signifying a polysemous cluster in which a number of
the possible interpretations are not dependent on the interpretations
of the free morpheme, nor for that matter on the bound morpheme
(English possesses some bound morphemes that appear to be so
bleached of meaning that they have totally unconnected effects on the
free morphemes they are bound to). One could consider words such
as clockwise, thrashing (n.), and driverly as units consisting of a
Bloomfield-like minimum free form and a bound form.
There is a distinction to be made between the terms word and
lexeme; The latter being somewhat more restricted than the former.
A word may be viewed as a cluster of letters (or ideographs) bounded
by spaces, or an utterance bounded by silence; both essentially non-
linguistic concepts. A lexeme should be considered a word that has
more than simply a grammatical function; that is to say, it carries a
semantic load: The smallest abstract unit of the meaning system in a
language that can be differentiated from similar types of units. This
may be viewed as problematic as bound morphemes can be
differentiated from other morphemes; or, alternatively bound
morphemes may just be regarded as inflexional features of a
language. If a bound morpheme is viewed as something other than
simply an inflexional feature then it may be viewed as carrying more
of a semantic load than simple inflexion.
This works reasonably well from a synchronic perspective; as
soon as one starts to examine lexica from a diachronic viewpoint
(whether atomistically, or as parts of a system) one encounters
difficulties.
From a synchronic perspective gave, given, give, giving, and
gives are likely to be regarded as all forms of the lexeme 'give'.
 15

Whether the noun giving, or, even more problematically, the series
gift (both noun and verb), gifted, are perceived as belonging to the
same lexeme or more than one depends on how the individual speaker
decides they have been derived.
Word-forms are assigned to the same lexemes on the basis of
morphological linkage; whether by dint of their connectedness by
inflexional (as per above) and/or morphological means. The set
gave, given, give, giving, and gives is formed inflectionally with the
inflexional suffixes/infixes, or by suppletion; -a-, -n, ø, -ing, and -s
respectively.
A diachronic understanding of this problem is that pronouns,
auxiliary verbs, and other grammatical markers having been bleached
of meaning by grammaticalisation, cease "to reflect external relations"
(Ullmann 1959: 36), are therefore non-lexemes. This is where the
distinction between words and lexemes can be seen to be useful,
insofar as we may state that pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and other
grammatical markers are still words, but they, being partially or fully
bleached of semantic content are not complete lexemes and are at
least partly de-lexicalised, having largely formal, i.e. syntactic
function.
This has not been satisfactorily resolved as these definitions rely
upon the idea of sufficient characteristics. Even an apparently easily
definable word such as ‘chair’ is problematic when we look for
features shared between pouffes, ladder-back stools, Orkney basket
seats, and pillows stuffed with beans. We might get away with a
functional definition of of ‘chair’; even this might prove impossible
with pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and other grammatical markers.
A more satisfactory way to resolve this is to consider words in terms
of degrees of prototypicality. Pronouns, auxiliary verbs, and other
grammatical markers may be considered as approximating less closely
to the prototype of a semantically rich word than a word such as 'chair'.
One distinction that needs to be made, but is often overlooked,
in connection with studies of what forms constitute forms of a
lexeme, is the distinction between morphological and/or phonological
change and semantic change. The coining of a verb from a noun may
require the development of inflected forms to fulfill all the
requirements of a verb paradigm; therefore both morphological
and/or phonological change and semantic change take place.
Diachronic phonological change, often reflected in orthography, does
not of necessity indicate semantic change. Diachronic morphological
 16

and/or phonological change also does not of necessity indicate

semantic change; the change of the English suffix -nysse to -ness
([ nˆs´] > [n\s]) did not involve a change in semantic function of
the suffix. Nevertheless there are terms which have undergone no
apparent morphological and/or phonological change that have
undergone semantic change.
Another way of viewing this type of situation is to examine the
terms lexeme, word, word-form, and word-token. It is worth
considering whether these are useful distinctions; at least as far as an
understanding of polysemy and homonymy are concerned, and
whether a richer explanation of these phenomena than can be arrived
at by restricting oneself to simply word and lexeme. If we examine
the following pair of lists:-

List A List B
1. give 1. gift
2. give 2. gift
3. gave 3. gifts

(1. and 2.,in both lists, are distinct occurrences of phonologically

identical forms ( they are also homographs))it could be quite reasonably
(using the judgement of the average non-linguist) stated that each of
these lists contains three words; or that they each contain two words; or
that they contain only one. (c.f. Panman 1982).
If it is held that each list contains three words then words are
being equated with word-tokens. Word-tokens are discrete, spatio-
temporally restricted entities; it is quite possible (as in the two lists)
that word-tokens can be formally identical both phonologically and
graphically. For that matter it is perfectly possible to have two word-
tokens that are phonically formally identical only; that is homophones.
Similarly it is possible to have graphically formally identical word-tokens
that are phonically dissimilar; homographs.

For example:-
Homophones;
dyer [daˆ.|], and dire [daˆ.|], (in some dialects,
and/or when spoken at certain speeds)
Homographs;
read [®id], and read [®´d] ,
 17

If it is held that each list contains two words then words are being
equated with word-types (formally identical word-tokens; whether
phonologically and/or graphically are similar tokens); members 1.
and 2. of both lists being formally identical both phonologically and
graphically.

Panman states that there

“is yet another useful approach to formal identity in connection
with polysemy and homonymy. In this approach both phonetic
and graphetic identity are required. In other words, we only
speak of polyvalency in this case if the words concerned
show complete formal identity.”
(Panman 1982:111)

This brings up all sorts of questions about the concept of formal

identity. If formal identity is only confined to languages spoken and
written then it is rather limited in its application; if one is unable to
distinguish homonymy from polysemy in illiterate speech
communities then one is forced to conclude that they are merely
creatures grown out of the whims of the arbiters of style (those who
decide on a regular set of spellings for a standardised form of a
language); which, while quite possibly tickling the egos of the
members of various language-planning institutes, is not true.
“It is, however, important to realize that formal identity is a
medium-dependent notion...” (Panman 1982: 111)

Formal identity is medium-dependent, if one accepts that

homography is really a necessary constituent; nevertheless as the
phenomena of polysemy and homonymy are differentiated by
illiterate speakers of a language this seems churlish. The writer of
American English who uses the word pronounced [skeptîk\l] (which
s/he spells skeptical ) and the writer of British English who uses the
word pronounced [skeptîk\l] (which s/he spells sceptical ) may have
entirely congruent meanings in mind when they use this word.
Ullmann trots out rather hackneyed examples (no doubt
having become hackneyed just because they are such prototypical
examples) where formal identity is not really informative (although
that is not how Ullmann puts it) in terms of graphemic convergence
and divergence:-
 18

flower 'flos; farina' ear 'auris' ear 'acus'

flower 'flos' flour 'farina' ear 'auris; acus'

(Ullmann. 1959. 128)

If it is held that each list contains only one word then no

distinction between lexemes and word-forms is being made; and
similarly, a distinction between word-types and word-forms. These
are really complicated distinctions, which may point to certain real
differences between polysemy and homonymy; or, counteractively,
remove that distinction.
Expressions of differing senses of a single form can be said to be
formally identical word-tokens phonologically and graphically; they
are not semantically identical (if a word-form can be said to have a
semantic form). Therefore these differing senses of a single form are
similar word-types, but they are not similar word-forms. How closely
related meanings of differing senses must be to be held to be similar
word-forms is a matter which when considered closely devolves to the
same controversy over when a case of polysemy or a case of
homonymy is present.

2.5 Methods of Coping with Polysemy and Homonymy.

Traditionalists have insisted that languages tend to avoid
pathological polysemy (the situation that arises when senses of a form
prove undisambiguatable in a context in which they occur together).
(Ullmann 1959:122) What homonymy and polysemy are is
sufficiently unclear for some confusion to have arisen about what
constitutes homonymy and polysemy and what differentiates them.
Both polysemy and homonymy are the products of a need to
make language as efficient as possible; polysemy is concerned with
efficiency with regard to the conceptuality of language, (how one
categorises the world) homonymy with the formality (how these ideas
are represented). We might like to view these as different forms of
the tendency towards the maximalisation of language efficiency. What
constitutes efficiency in language?
 19

The world bombards one with a constant barrage of stimuli

which it behooves one to understand, to store the information
garnered from these stimuli and use it for cognitive purposes. It
makes good cognitive sense to make categories as informatively rich
as one can; the limit is reached when the ability to differentiate
between differing senses is lost (i.e. pathological polysemy). The
solution to pathological polysemy need not be simple lexical
substitution, or adjectival clarification:-
“Funny peculiar, rather than funny ridiculous.” that seem to be
the only alternatives offered by the functionalists.

2.6 The value of an object-physical relationship.

While objective truth-conditions are not the only reasons

for ascribing meaning to words or sentences, they are still useful. The
fact that objective truth-conditions are useful is that were we only to
refer to the experiential world of speakers we would never conclude
that some people were crazy; not having any objective, or quasi-
objective set of criteria against which to measure human activities,
including linguistic utterances. It is also difficult to see how languages
could exist without some shared core experience, and as mental
phenomena are private, the only public phenomena available
to us are those in the world. As all human minds do seem to
work in the same way, it is relatively easy to extend (by
metaphor, metonymy, and so on) meanings from the external
world into individual, internal, private worlds; and this is done
repeatedly using exactly the same metaphorical pathways.
While ethical codes may be solely sociologically determined,
certain physical facts (for example, whether salt dissolves in
water at room temperature) are objective insofar as they are
empirically verifiable.
What is not true is the equation that states that what is
not true is meaningless; all this does is reduce meaning to
truth, a simple bi-polar condition. We can say that the first
arbitrary decision defines the semantic domain within which
one apply forms and derivatives of the lexeme.
 20

Chapter 3
3.0 This chapter consists of an introduction to some of the basic
concepts of Cognitive Grammar, with special reference to Polysemy
and Homonymy. It also examines how specific Cognitive linguists
have tackled the concepts of Polysemy and Homonymy.

3.1 As stated in the Introduction, a study of linguistic categorisation

should be deeply informative about how the human mind works.
Such a study should lead to a topology of human conceptual
structure.
"I believe that mental experience is real, that it is susceptible to
empirical investigation and principled description, and that it
constitutes the natural subject matter of semantics."
(Langacker 1987: 99)

"In placing language in the larger context of cognition in

general, CG [Cognitive Grammar] espouses a non-modular, integrative
theory. In this model, all knowledge is available to cognitive
processing, and general cognitive functions may be directed to any
part of the stock of knowledge." (Rubba 1986: 28)

I differ only from Langacker in respect to the susceptibility of

mental experience to empirical investigation, but before continuing
this requires some elucidation. My disagreement rests on the
principle stated in the Introduction, that language is symptomatic of
mental activity.
Language admits of empirical investigation because it is very
easy to collect data; it is also directly observable, therefore we know
that language exists. Mental activity is never directly observable as
we cannot climb inside other people's minds. Contrary to the
prevailing mechanistic trend, observing the firing of neurons and
measuring levels of activity at synapses is not observing mental
activity in its fullness. There is also the unanswered question as to
whether there is a one-to-one correspondence between certain mental
processes (thoughts) and certain electrical configurations in the
brain; I am not particularly inclined to believe this as individuals
differ in brain size and shape just as they differ in intelligence, but
with no measurable correlation between the two.
Language, foot-tapping, scratching, and so on, are symptomatic
of mental activity (although on different levels), but, like the
 21

appearance of a patient, can only guide the doctor so far as to the

inner state of the patient.
This does not mean that the important position that Langacker
ascribes to language should be degraded, far from it. It seems that
language is the best guide to mental activity that is available to us, but
as it is not mental activity itself students of language should always
proceed with caution.

Language is rather like a high-level computer language such as

Basic, Pascal, or Fortran; it must be compiled first into Hexadecimal
machine-code and then into binary code (does the electron jump
across the synapse or not?) - the stuff of mental processes. Binary
code is, however, rather uninteresting; it is also unobservable, being
buried in the mysterious depths of the microprocessors. On the
market there are a wide variety of languages with a variety of ways of
achieving the same binary encoding; how these different languages are
organised so as to effect this encoding is the subject of the linguists'
studies. Therefore it does not really matter that one cannot observe
the binary code; it would be almost completely uninformative about
languages and conceptualisation.
The high-level computer language is not an end in itself, nor is a
description of a program written in that language, nor is the program.
A computer program is written to achieve certain ends, and a
computer program only has any reality when it is running.
A similar point should be made about all the subroutines of
which a computer program consists.
While comparing both human language with computer
languages and human minds with computer programs is ultimately
rather counter-productive and misleading, insofar as this simile goes
it is fairly informative.
Terms such as idea, concept, and thought can be as
misleading if taken as literally as the computer game in that what
these concrete-sounding nouns represent are fluid processes. It is
useful to think of mental phenomena in terms of subroutines in one
enormous program called Mind. Just as in electronic circuitry, these
routines can be activated by the satisfaction of various logical
parameters (AND, NAND, NOR gates, and so on). A cognitive event
takes place when one of these mental subroutines is activated.
For these logical parameters to be satisfied (or not, as the case
may be) there has to be a set of constant checking and comparing
 22

procedures running. This, of course, involves all the concepts

familiar to computer programmers; scanning data sets, measuring to
an internally established standard (perhaps, but not necessarily a
target), selection based on these measurements, and so on.
Data can come through a variety of input devices (ears, eyes,
nose, and so no), from a variety of sources (other speakers, books,
paintings, and so on.
"In language, for example, no cognitive processes are posited
which are peculiar to the 'language faculty'; general problem-solving
strategies are assumed to be employed in solving communication
problems." (Rubba 1986: 29)

The idea of a language faculty would seem misleading in that it

might prevent one from contextualising language as part of a greater
whole from which it is not rigidly demarcated. This fact would seem
to be felt by speakers to have psychological pertinency in the
metaphorically extended meanings of the words language, and speak
as in, for instance, "body language", "that picture speaks to me",
"mime can be a potent language", and so on.
Where the image of the computer breaks down is the fact that
the human mind is continually modifying itself on the basis of input
and its own output. While the mind is continually recreating itself it
remains coherent owing to its structured nature. Whether this
structuring comes from outside or is an internal (innate) force is
unclear; but as the mind is continually changing so it is continually
having to restructure itself.
The mind is affected by being exposed to a new event, either
temporarily, or indelibly, depending upon the intensity of the event,
and whether the mind is particularly receptive to that type of event on
the basis of prior events to which it has been exposed. Such exposure
leaves a trace which aids in the recognition of further similar events;
it being adopted as the interim standard against which to measure like
events. Events that are measured against the primary event and found
to resemble it in some way, but not in its entirety, will leave a trace
that, while not coinciding with the first, will be in some way linked to
it. Further events may be linked either directly to the primary trace,
or to that of a related one; this resulting in a web of connected traces
that are perceived by the mind to be in some way related. What
happens is that there develops in the mind sets of related meanings
connected either directly to meanings they are intimately connected
 23

with, or via other meanings with those with which they are more
distantly related.
Lakoff (1986: 79) points out that stereotyping is also a source
of prototypicalisation through a process of metonymy. One of a
number of senses of a form (a subcategory of the categorial cluster of
meanings attached by speakers to that form) becomes recognised
within a speech community as the prototypical sense; the sense that
over-arches all other senses of the form, that are perceived, in some
way, to be subordinate to it. This does not necessarily mean that the
sense that is socially determined as the prototype is in any way the
direct diachronic descendent of the archetypical sense.
Cognitive Grammar, while superficially appearing to be about
language alone, is staking a claim to an overarching account of the
whole of human cognition; an encyclopaedic view of meaning that
needs involve all sorts of areas that have for some time been excluded
from the study of semantics - social setting for one.

3.2 Radial Categories.

"One of the crucial notions developed in this work is the radial

category. This is the idea that the senses of a word are
arranged much like the spokes on a wheel, with the
prototypical meaning corresponding to the hub of the wheel.
One can travel along a path among related senses outwards in
any direction, where each sense is linked to the previous one by
relationships of metaphor and metonymy. However, especially
at the ends of each spoke, there may be no apparent
relationships between the senses on adjacent spokes. The only
relationship is through the center. We should not leave the
image of the spokes of a wheel without adding that it may be
partially misleading, since spokes of a wheel extend uniformly
from the hub." (Winters and Nathan 1992: 359)

While the radial category as an uneven-spoked wheel is a useful

image it is perhaps a bit more misleading than Winters and Nathan would
have us believe. The reason that the wheel image is misleading is that it
seems to be an oversimplification. Winters and Nathan's article deals
with an attempt to establish a prototype structure (a radial set) for the
term Philology, and they present what they feel to be an adequate
representation of this in the form of a radial set diagram; and it does
 24

seem to be that Philology fits this model.

For the purposes of this argument an arbitrary set of related senses
of a single word will be used: A1, A2, A3, A4, A5, A6, A7, and A8 which
we could imagine constituting a tidy radial prototype structure as
follows (where A1 is the prototypical sense):-
A4 A5

A6
A2
A3
A1
A8

A7
A primary objection to this model relates to the chirality of the
spokes of the prototype wheel; they appear to be determined quite
arbitrarily by the linguist who draws up the diagram.

One could, apparently, have a radial structure as follows:-

A4 A5

A7
A2
A8 A3
A1

A6
If one assumes that the structure of the radial set extends into
three dimensions this poses the problem of multiple isomers. But, as
 25

with organic chemistry, the cis-isomer of a given molecule may

behave in quite a different fashion to the trans-isomer. If radial sets
have some psychological reality it does not seem unreasonable to
assume that the orientation of the spokes is also significant. It is hard
to see how a linguist compiling radial set diagrams would justify A6
being in some sense nearer to A4 than A8, unless the proximity of
certain spokes to one another signifies degrees of semantic
relatedness.
What is also true is that while linguists talk of forms developing
radial categories of senses around them they do not; speakers develop
radial categories in their heads, and are constantly reanalysing them
in terms of new information. Many speakers, of course, adopt
categories wholesale from other speakers, either individuals or from
the speech community of which they are citizens.
Speakers may find it convenient to restructure the radial sets
they have acquired in their own terms, making them more easily
comprehensible to themselves. As well as homonymisation this can
involve all sorts of new connections being made. This might mean
that while a strong connection is felt between A8 and A7, a weaker
one may be elucidated between A8 and A6:-
A4 A5

A6
A2
A3
A1
A8

A7
The possibilities for analysis by individuals are endless, and
owing to the possibility that each sense of a term might have multiple
connections (even between what, under other circumstances, are felt
to be two distinct prototypical meanings of homonyms), an idea dealt
with in the section on pathological homonymy. Therefore it would
seem that in some cases one could travel along a multiplicity of paths
 26

of linked senses that all, ultimately arrive at the same sense.

As the simple tree-like model of the diachronic development of l
anguages (the Stammbaum) within a language family from a parent
language was found to be an insufficient explanation:-
Italic (Latin)

Iberian

Portuguese Castilian French Italian

because it became obvious that there was not a distinct moment that,
say, Iberian, suddenly split into two distinct and mutually
incomprehensible dialects/languages, and that there was considerable
evidence that Castilian Spanish and Portuguese kept informing one
another well after they had become sufficiently different forms to
warrant separate names.
Similarly, as languages as distinct, rigidly demarcated
phenomena are largely political inventions, one might be tempted to
ask if a speaker really makes rigid distinctions between all the senses
of a form, and whether they all are exactly congruent with the senses
in the next person's mind.
"A look at actual speech situations, however, shows why these
criteria fail [degree of mutual intelligibility, shared
vocabulary, and so on]. Take as an example two modern
European cities where Germanic languages are still
spoken, The Hague in the Netherlands and Bern in
Switzerland. Now we know that these two cities speak
languages quite different from one another, and in fact that
people would characterize what is spoken in The Hague as a
dialect of Dutch, and what is spoken in Bern as a dialect of
German. Although the two dialects have quite a bit in common
(they are both Germanic dialects, after all), they are also
mutually incomprehensible: people from these two areas
speaking their own dialects cannot understand each other.
 27

But observe what happens when one tries to characterize all

the intermediate dialects along a line drawn between the two
cities. The dialects at any two adjacent points along the way
turn out to be very similar, and almost perfectly
comprehensible to each other. So where does one draw the
absolute boundary line that would segregate the Dutch dialects
from the German dialects?"
(Robinson 1992 :19) [square bracket insert mine]

Diagrams of consensus radial sets may be like standard languages;

very useful for communicating, but not what one speaks at home.
One can imagine two speakers from distinct dialect communities
(say, for the sake of argument, a speaker of Hague Dutch and a speaker
of Bern German) that have two phonologically identical forms, and these
items share a common ancestor in the mother-tongue from which these
two dialects are descended. These two forms may now have totally
incongruent radial sets of senses, even so far as to have totally different
prototypical meanings.
If, like Robinson, we attempt to characterise all the intermediate
radial sets for this form existing in the minds of all the speakers along a
dialect continuum between the two speech communities we will have just
the same difficulties drawing boundaries between radial categories that
approximate to that used by our speaker of Hague Dutch and those that
approximate to that used by our speaker from the Bear pits of
Switzerland.

Wave theory, with its successive waves of multi-level influence

came to replace the Stammbaum model (Pulgram 1972: 236-237).
It might be that the radial set with distinct spokes may have to be
reassessed on the similar grounds that connections between senses of
words, even when those senses are heavily contextualised, are not
simply the one-route-only relationships that the radial set model
suggests.
Another problem is with the concept of a hub. Usually the hub
of a wheel is a fairly uniform, undifferentiated mass of wood or metal.
The image of a prototype sitting hub-like at the centre of a radial set
(or, similarly, the image of a spider at the centre of its web) is
misleading insofar as many prototypes consist of a cluster of senses of
which no one can be said to be more prototypical than another. It is
often impossible even to compile an ideal prototype by drawing on
 28

features of the component senses within the prototype cluster, they

being often connected by cognitive salience rather than shared features.
What Winters and Nathan attempted to do in their paper is
arrive at a consensus radial set for the term Philologist; achieving this
through analysing returned questionnaires. While their consensus
diagram represents their interpretation of the data returned to them
it might be that the senses they list are not nearly so tidily arranged in
the minds of their respondents; and what they have arrived at is a
two-dimensional map of a mean of the dominant ways in which the
senses of the term are linked up, without reference to the more subtle
nuancing of senses that makes secondary connections that may have as
much relevance to our understanding of conceptualisation as those
primary connections they have listed.

Unfortunately the exploration of the concept of the radial set has

manifested itself as an examination of the work of Winters and Nathan;
but it should be stressed that this is not meant as an attack on their
method, more a healthy, and hopefully constructive demonstration of
what are felt to be the limitations of the model they present.
Further to this it should also be observed that not all categories
conform to a radial structure (Lakoff 1987: 84), indeed, most of the
objections raised may be viewed as demonstrating that the
prototypical radial structure is at the centre of a categorial cluster of
a variety of categorial clusters that conform to a lesser or greater degree
to that prototype; whether that cluster is radially structure or not is a
meta-question.

Similar criticisms to those that have been levelled against an

oversimplified view of radial categories may also be used against
schematic tree diagrams of the diachronic development of polysemous
clusters and the shifting of prototypes over time. Such trees are
comparatively easy to compile on the basis of surviving textual uses of a
form, and fairly realistic sounding explanations of the types of
metaphoric and metonymic extension involved can be readily arrived at.
Whether the senses of a form developed in such a simplistic
Stammbaum-like way, and whether these senses were arrived at in the
way a latter-day linguist would derive them is a trenchant question.
Compiling radial set diagrams by, so to speak, sectioning a
diachronic derivational tree at a set time, is similarly fraught with the
risk of laying oneself open to all the criticisms listed above.
 29

Nevertheless, while acknowledging these criticisms, it is difficult to

see how one could do anything else with historical data sets composed of
senses of nouns; there not being any way of asking a speaker of Anglo-
Saxon how s/he relates meaning #1 of hlæf with meaning #2. One has
to assume, where all senses are derived from one archetype, that
speakers' radial sets were patterned after the diachronic formation of
these senses. When one comes to analyse senses derived from other
senses which are at the time of the derivation considered homonyms
(even if those homonyms have come about by either reanalysis of diffuse
categorial clusters or by language splitting) the shortcomings of this
assumption becomes clear.

3.3 Prototypicality.

Geeraerts, Grondelaers and Bakem (1994: 45-46) list four central

characteristics as typical of prototypicality (and which in many ways
serve to differentiate the theory of prototypicality from various feature-
based theories of semantics):-
“(i) Prototypical categories cannot be defined by means of
a single set of criterial (necessary and sufficient) attributes ”
“(ii) Prototypical categories exhibit a family resemblance
structure, or more generally, their semantic structure takes the
form of a radial set of clustered and overlapping meanings”

This of course means that it is quite feasible to have members of

one prototypical category that share no characteristics in common
whatsoever, but belong to the same category by dint of the fact that
they share characteristics with other members of that category which
share characteristics with one another.
A B C D E F

(Where letters A-F refer to senses within a category)

Sense A shares no characteristics with sense C, yet they are

members of a common category. This type of situation is what Lakoff
terms a CHAINING (1987: 95, 108-9, 418-61) It is also possible to
 30

have quite unrelated senses with many shared features. What is

important is not the shared features but their cognitive salience. This
allows senses to have relations formed through conceptual
connections rather than shared properties. That conceptually
disconnected senses have many shared features does not put them in
the same cognitive category. People seem to possess a shared minimal
core set of basic conceptual structures which they use to relate senses
by tying them into the shared world view. It is this relation of senses
that forms polysemous clusters of meanings.
Extension within prototype categories by metonymy, and
metaphor often produce such situations. Metonymic sense-linkages
are based on conceptual connections and not shared properties.
Types of relatedness and the degree of relatedness of a pair of
senses are important considerations with regard to polysemy; without
relatedness all we have is a pair of homonyms.
“The frontiers of verbal significations are often fluid, even
though the core may be perfectly clear and unmistakable.”
(Ullmann 1959: 63)

"The frontiers of verbal significations" are always fluid,

however limiting oneself to either a strictly synchronic, or a
restrictedly diachronic viewpoint often results in this not being seen.
It is strange that Ullmann having written ‘often’ in one paragraph then
states that “the most rigidly defined terms of scientific discourse are
not wholly immune from ... minor shifts” (Ullmann 1959: 63).
While the question of a "core" is extremely problematic, for, as
has been noted above, it is quite possible to have categorial clusters
and prototypical clusters that contain members that have nothing in
common beyond that they both have something in common with a
third member of that cluster. It could be quite reasonably said that
under these conditions a category has no core, certainly one that is
"clear and unmistakable". It would be reasonable to say that a cluster
has a core of terms that were in some way more representative of the
cluster than others; although the constituents of this core might be
related solely in the Wittgensteinian way described above.
All core terms of clusters from an entirely synchronic viewpoint
might be "clear and unmistakable" insofar as to speakers they may
appear invariant; but diachronically they are capable of the whole gamut
of semantic changes, as well as loss of some meanings through
obsolescence.
 31

“(iii) Prototypical categories exhibit degrees of category

membership; not every member is equally representative for a
category”
“(iv) Prototypical categories are blurred at the edges”

Individual speakers (non-linguists) are capable of producing

words (lexemes) which they can fit into more than one prototypical
category, and will even express some confusion about whether it
belongs to a category or not. This is an unanswerable problem from
an objective point of view as Cognitive categories are not extra-mental
objective realities in the sense of Aristotelian categories. There is no
reason to suppose that how speakers of a language choose to
categorise the world has an bearing upon any ‘real’, i.e. objective
categories that may or may not exist outside the minds of those
speakers. Cognitive categories are only fixed from a synchronic
point of view (i.e. momentarily); their role as mediators between the
mind and the ‘cruel, hard, naked reality of the world’ means that they
must by their very premise be adaptable, extensible, and revisable.
This in turn entails that a denotative boundary of a category is not
fixed, and may not even be a very useful term.
The most salient feature about prototypicality is its
vagueness relative to the dogmatic certainties propagated by some
other schools of thought:-
Attempting to describe the semantics of lexemes in terms of
features is problematic (rather as has been done with phonemes in
phonology); a boy, for instance, would be described as +human,
+male, -18 years, and so on. One of the problems with this is that the
categories of human, and boy are not as easily measurable as
positions of the tongue within the mouth, and age is not a bi-polar
concept. We do not conceptualise in bi-polar oppositions, or with
systematic taxonomies that stand up to much logical scrutiny and/or
empirical testing.
The other main problem with feature-based semantic
descriptions is their dependence on object-physical data to supply
their feature inventories. This means that "meaning is thought of as
basically a relationship between word and world - i.e, between a
linguistic form and an object or state of affairs referred to or
described by that form" an "objectivist semantic theory" (Sweetser
1990: 1). With a feature-based model of polysemy the logical
conclusion is that polysemy does not really exist in the sense that a
 32

symbol is pointing (rather like Saussure's relation between Signifiant

and Signifié) at a multiplicity of referents (or, for that matter, a
multiplicity of mental references). The symbol always points at one
invariant phenomenon, either the presence of a single feature, or a
congeries of features. It is only the naive observer, not being aware of
the phenomenon pointed at that develops a theory of polysemous
reference.
However, returning to Ogden and Richards' basic triangle, it is
not immediately obvious that there is any significant correspondence
between symbol and referent (where the referent is conceived of as
having some objective reality). It is not completely unreasonable to
be solipsistic and propose that the only referents to which
symbols/signs refer are psychological. That symbols refer to mental
phenomena rather than directly to objective ones is the guarantee
that there is constant semantic change; ideas themselves always being
subject to modification and improvement. Objects in the world
(even though they are subject to change) are normally perceived as
either immutable, or as changing into something else, rather than
changing while maintaining their identity. This is, by necessity, a
fairly crude oversimplification; nevertheless it is generally true that
minor changes go unnoticed (or at least until the long term effects of
accreted changes are observed), and major changes are regarded as
stative changes.
Prototypical categories have no fixed boundaries; they possess
extensionality. In a feature-based semantic classification a sense that
does not possess the necessary and sufficient features required for
membership of a category is beyond a rigid pale; the type of situation
mentioned above (the family resemblance (ii)) is not possible in a
feature-based category as all members partake of central features.
While the idea of binary features is felt to be untenable in
Prototypicality theory, senses within a prototypical cluster may be
said to represent a category to a lesser or greater degree.
This vagueness, of course, presents difficulties if one is
searching for the traditional type of definition of what includes a
sense within a class (“Tell me the one thing that all ungulates have in
common.”). Overlapping senses form clusters (with what we might
like to term degrees of tightness); sometimes resulting in some
difficulty in teasing out these senses.
This vagueness, insofar as there are no hard and fast
boundaries between senses, clusters (and one might even choose to
 33

add categories) befits a holistic approach to language having

something in common with gestalt psychology.

Another problem besetting a diachronic criterion for

relatedness of meaning rests in so-called loanwords and polysemous
senses of words in their language of origin that have entered the
language under consideration (here English) at different times as
different words (formally identical homonyms).

An example of this would seem to be the word fork

(according to the entry in the Second Oxford English Dictionary); the
entry in the Dictionary cites senses deriving from the Old English
forca (= ‘agricultural implement’), from the Old Northern French
fourque, and the Latin furca . Both the Old English forca and the Old
Northern French fourque are derived from the Latin furca, but senses
derived from the three forms entered English at different times. From
a synchronic viewpoint speakers will describe the daughter senses
formed from these words as multiple meanings attached to one word
(i.e. a polysemous cluster); etymologists will describe them as
cognates.

Senses of the noun fork.

N1 a pronged, agricultural instrument 1000
N2 a pronged weapon 1300
N3 the tongue of a snake 1603
N4 pronged eating instrument 1463
N5 fingers 1812
N6 tuning instrument 1799
N7 a gallows 1205
N8 a yoke (used as a translation for Latin furca ) 1616
N9 a prop for a vine 1389
N10 a prop for a musket 1591
N11 building props 1420
N12 sternal bone in the neck 1400
N13 head of an arrow (barbs) 1605
N14 projection on a saddle 1833
N15 part of a bicycle 1871
N16 a bifurcation “from the verb” (OED) 1389
N17 division in a road 1839
N18 a Y-division in a plant/tree 1776
 34

N19 a bifurcation of lightening 1859

N20 an attack in the game of chess 1656

From a linguistic perspective it is equally reasonable to

describe French, Italian, and Spanish as different dialects of modern
Latin (Italic), or as distinct languages. There is nothing wrong in
viewing Old English, Old Northern French, Latin, and Modern English as
dialects of Indo-European; which leaves us free to describe a vast
polysemous cluster which can be termed forca-fourque-furca-fork
(for want of a more compact title), each dialect having some of the
senses within this cluster. This may be expressed diagrammatically:-

c b

d forca-fourque-furca-fork a

b c

a d
Where the circle represents (rather badly; it should have vague and
indefinable boundaries rather than a sharp, black line)) the domain of
the polysemous cluster forca-fourque-furca-fork , and the segments
represent the intersection of the four dialect/languages’ individual
 35

polysemous clusters, which all overlap, having a shared core of

prototypes.
Let the segments a-a, b-b, c-c, d-d represent Old English, Old
Northern French, Latin, and Modern English respectively. It is now
quite reasonable to allow that while (as the Second Oxford Dictionary
claims) the modern English sense fork = ‘a yoke that captured
prisoners are made to pass beneath’ may be derived from Latin furca,
and the sense fork = ‘a pronged agricultural instrument’ may be
derived from Old English, they are both extensions of a polysemous
cluster that pervades all these dialects/languages.
The forca-fourque-furca-fork diagram is faulty (but not
pointless) in that it shows four languages separated in both time and
space overlapping one with another with no respect for either of these
factors.

An objection that will be raised against claims like this is that

cognitive categories are individual mental phenomena that differ
slightly from individual to individual, there being shared core
categories between members of speech communities that may or may
not in some way be connected diachronically with related speech
communities. The counter claim must be based on the fact that when
individual speakers speak of a word having a multiplicity of
meanings/senses they believe that these senses adhere to a word in a
way that is somehow external to the individual speaker; derived from
a belief that other people, to a large extent, use words the same way
they themselves use them.
Philosophers (such as Hume) who have dug solipsistic holes for
themselves have dug themselves out again by developing theories of
what we might choose to term social objectivity. While there are very
few linguists who would argue against the idea that signs are, at least
initially, arbitrary, there are also very few who would argue that, once
arbitrarily decided on, signs develop lives of their own through
psychological motivation and all sorts of ways in which the meanings
attached to them are extended and added to.
There is also the frightening fact (insofar as it can make the
individual feel belittled by powers outside itself) that even though
individual members of speech communities die the languages they
speak do not. Individuals try to change language; very rarely do they
succeed in any but the most trivial of ways, languages developing
internal forces of their own.
 36

Without speakers there would be no language; but it really does

not matter who the speakers are-language will invade them and take
possession as surely as water fills the lungs of a drowning man. It
does not seem unreasonable to describe language as external to the
individual speaker; therefore polyvalency must have a life external to
the individual as well.
Ullmann uses an argument based on his examples of convergent
and divergent homography to state that the “gulf between synchronistic
and diachronistic conceptions is particularly evident in the case of
homonymy. The very term is meaningless in a diachronistic context.”
(Ullmann 1959. 129)

Obviously a decision on possible homonymy, homography, or

homophony is restricted to one synchronic moment in a language’s
development. But considerations regarding polysemy (if polysemy is
merely a subjective individual judgement) are restricted to
considerations of synchronic moments. What is also clear is that,
with very few exceptions, it is only possible to make binding
judgements on what goes on linguistically inside people’s heads by
asking them. As speakers of non-contemporary stages of a language
are dead this type of exercise would not be very informative in terms
of how polysemy and homonymy come about.
Further to this is the problem of written materials; how many
surviving English texts represent a stage in the development of the
spoken language is not clear, but on the basis of modern English texts
the answer is probably few if any1.
These texts along with comparative evidence based on
synchronic cognates are all that compilers of etymological
dictionaries and historical linguists have to base their arguments
upon; obviously their conclusions can only be tentative at best.

3.4 The Value of Diachronic Considerations with regard to

Polysemy and Homonymy.

Without the benefit of hindsight, that is to say, a diachronic

viewpoint, ascriptions of polysemy or homonymy are likely to be
driven by naive considerations, having little or no necessary
grounding in diachronic reality. Considered diachronically, one may
conclude that once upon a time all these forms were variations on a
lexeme, but various diachronic processes have separated them.
 37

A problem facing anyone making decisions as to polysemy and

homonymy is whether to use historical relatedness (diachronic), or
psychological relatedness. Psychological relatedness is virtually
synonymous with a synchronic consideration of whether forms are
related or not, and in what way. Psychological considerations would
certainly rule out a sharp dichotomy between homonymy and
polysemy; and componential analysis fails to assist in a division
because of the subjective nature of decision making re what
components of designata are relevant to homonymic / polysemous
considerations.
If we view language as a series of synchronic slices, there is no
rigidly definable boundary between polysemy and
non-phonologically motivated homonymy (i.e. homonymy that has
not resulted as a product of phonological convergence); these two
terms being used to describe two extremes of a continuum that often
appears fragmented and discontinuous when viewed synchronically.
The framework that most successfully accounts for this phenomenon
is prototype theory.
Prototype theory is a subset of cognitive theory which is best
described as a happy marriage between cognitive psychology and
linguistics; starting (or at least gathering momentum) with the
experimental work on colour terms by Rosch (Rosch 1975, and so
on). Rosch2 developed the prototypical view of categorisation which
was adopted by Brugman, Fillmore, Lakoff, Langacker and Lindner as a
framework for describing natural language. Along with the
predominant linguistic trend these linguists confined themselves to a
synchronic view of language. Geeraerts (1985) showed that prototype
theory can also be used to characterise the structure of the
diachronic dimension of language. Geeraerts (1985:127) points out
that the central tenet of prototype theory is its “rejection of absolute
dichotomies” and that “diachrony and synchrony” are
“much more intimately entwined than is usually assumed by
(neo)structuralist conceptions of language ... as an immediate
consequence of the cognitive function of language.”
(Geeraerts 1985:127)
3.5 Homonymy.

Just as the term pathological polysemy has been used to

describe the situation where so many senses are clustered around a
form that utterances employing that form are contextually
 38

disambiguatable, the countervailing situation is pathological

homonymy.
Traditionally pathological homonymy (the situation where two
forms have become phonologically identical and contextually
disambiguatable) has been dealt with by proposing lexical
substitution; the symbol that points at the reference is changed.
Geeraerts has pointed out (1990) that this may not always be
the case, and that there could be a rearrangement of the references
pointed at by the symbol/s working to counteract pathological
homonymy either on its own or in conjunction with lexical
substitution. Geeraerts lists three ways in which homonymic
configurations can develop:-
"Instead of a choice between maintaining the homonymy or
therapeutically substituting one of the homonymic forms, the
choice consists of conceptual reorganization (merger), lexical
reorganization (substitution), and status quo (extant
homonymy)." (Geeraerts 1990: 49)

A conceptual merger involves two or more polysemous clusters

joining together as a result of synchronic reanalysis.
This may in fact be an over-simplification. What should be
questioned is the integrity of a prototypical cluster. The view of a
prototypical cluster consisting of a set of senses radiating out from
some prototypical centre appears sound, but it would seem that as
senses are formed further and further from the centre of the
prototypical cluster (or, for that matter, move further and further
from the centre of the cluster due to semantic modification) the links
between them and the centre (by dint of metonymic or metaphoric
extension) become increasingly tenuous until they may be so dimly
perceived that they break away to form homonymic clusters. It is
quite reasonable to assume that as conceptually distant senses within
prototypical clusters break away to form new clusters instead they
may attach to other clusters formed round homonymous forms and
therefore be reanalysed as being connected to another prototype.
This may be illustrated diagrammatically:-
 39

Consider two prototypical clusters that enjoy complete homonymy;

Cluster A and Cluster B

B2
A2
A4
B6
B3
A1 A3 B5 B1

A5 B7 B4

At time ø.
As speakers face increasing difficulty analysing:-
1. Which cluster senses A3, A5, and B4 belong to, (because
"etymologically related concepts are too far apart to be
recognized as nuances of a single prototypical category"
(Geeraerts 1990: 50))they may;

1.1 mismatch them and place them in the incorrect clusters,

A B
B2
A2
A4
B3 B 6
B4
A1 B5 B1
A5
B7 A 3

1.2 create a new cluster(s) (i.e. a new homonymous form) in

which to place them, and reanalyse one (or more) of the
senses as the prototypical sense of that new cluster,
 40

A B
B2
A2
A4
B6
B3
A1 B5 B1
B7
C

A3
B
A5 4

1.3 Merge the two clusters together, (because what were once
senses of "distinct categories are now seen as nuances of a
single category" (Geeraerts 1990: 50))

A2
A1
A4 B3

B2 B5
B7
A3
B4
B1
A5
B6

1.4 Analyse them as belonging to a merged cluster as per 1.3,

but analyse other senses as senses of distinct homonyms
yet connected in meaning to senses A3, A5, and B4,
 41

B2
A2
A4 B6
B3
A1 B5 1

B7

A3
A 5 B4

(this means that some senses of form A will be analysed as

senses of form A alone, some senses of form B will be viewed as
senses of B alone, while some senses of both A and B (A3, A5,
and B4) will be analysed as senses belonging to a single
prototypical cluster as per 1.3)

2. Which cluster any senses belong to, they may;

2.1 merge them completely as per 1.3; especially if they are

no longer aware that there are indeed two homonyms,

2.2 rearrange them so that while they are still in two

prototypical clusters they bear no relation to the previous
clusters from which they have been derived,

B2
A2
A4
B6
B4 A 1 B7 B3 B1
A5
B5 A3

If the end result of this kind of reanalysis results in a

homonymic clash lexical reorganisation may still occur. Synchronic
reanalysis of words that have become homonymic through
phonological change seems to show that there is precedence for this.
 42

For example; there are two words pig, one descended from Old
English *pigga/*picga (='a swine') and the other from Old English *pyg
(='an earthenware pot/jar'). It is seemingly logical to assume that the
latter word is somehow connected with the word pig used for a lump
of metal (they are similarly shaped), when in fact, diachronically they
are derived from totally different roots.
An examination of the cluster/clusters fork in chapter 4
attempts to explain the data available in terms of these types of
reanalysis.
Reanalyses of the types 1.3 and 2.1 involve processes of
polysemisation which appear to run counter to the tendency to avoid
pathological polysemy.

3.6 Lexical Reorganisation.

Another way to deal with this is by simple lexical substitution

with new formations or forms that are synonymous with the meanings
that require differentiation. It would be extremely difficult to justify
describing the meanings of words that are the lexical substitutes for
earlier identical forms as all being merged into a single prototypical
category.
One has to distinguish senses (shades of meaning, nuances
within prototypically clustered categories)and concepts (the
prototypically clustered categories within which the senses are
clustered). This means that we really have to consider both
prototypical polysemy (within the cluster) and categorial polysemy
(outside the cluster); we might ask whether categorial polysemy and
homonymy are not simply two ways of describing the same
phenomenon. More in keeping with the view of a polysemy-
homonymy continuum we might question this view of a strict
hierarchy from senses within a radial set clustered around a prototype
through clustered categories to full homonymy; replacing this with a
web of clustered prototypical clusters with ever more attenuated
connections between what we might term nuclear clusters and
increasingly semantically distant clusters. There would seem to be
some common ground here and the connectionist model of speech
perception.
 43

3.7 Sweetser's viewpoint of Polysemy.

Sweetser differentiates between polysemy, and pragmatic

ambiguity (Sweetser 1990: 1-2); claiming that a term may have
multiple functions, yet only one semantic value. This is hard to take,
as meaning would seem to reside in the usage of a term, which is
identical to its pragmatics. The meaning is in some way correlated
with function; the former being, to a great extent dependent on the
latter. Sweetser's differentiation appears comprehensible if we are to
understand semantic value as defined in some direct object-physical
manner (the relation between a sense and a referent that resides in
the world), and pragmatic value as a relation between a sense and a
thought/reference that resides inside a person's mind. We might also
choose to take Sweetser's "one semantic value" as some sort of a core
meaning which by contextualisation is extended into a polysemy of
references. Both object-physical semantics and terms that have a
solitary meaning are problematic.
Sweetser (1990: 4-5) deals with the problems associated with
using truth-conditionality as a basis for establishing meaning:-
"By viewing meaning as the relationship between words and the
world, truth-conditional semantics eliminates cognitive organization
from the linguistic system."
(Sweetser 1990: 4)
3.8 Monosemy.

Attempting to find either terms that have a single meaning, or a

category that has single member is probably impossible: Forster
(1989) writes about loose and tight categories; defining them as:-
"Tight categories are represented by precompiled lists that are
well-defined, are highly integrated, have all their members listed, and
can be searched rapidly and accurately. Loose categories ... are
represented by lists that are ill-defined, are loosely integrated, may
not have all members listed, and can only be searched slowly and
unreliably." (Forster 1989: 129)

Forster admits some difficulty in coming up with a tight category;

by which it should be understood he means a category which is almost
monosemous (a condition which, by the very nature of the mind would
appear impossible):-
"...we attempted to define a boundary condition that would
 44

specify when the lexical route should be the fastest [i.e. ease of
categorisation]. The condition we chose was how tightly
clustered the category was. This notion is far from being
rigorously defined, but the intuitive idea seemed fairly clear ...
Initially, it seemed that the category parts of the body was
fairly well defined. But when we started to consider whether
the liver, a fingernail, or an eyebrow was a part of the body,
we began to realize that it was not so clear cut. So it might be
the case that only a fairly standard set of "core" items would be
listed as members of this category, with items such as liver not
being listed at all..." (Forster 1989: 129) [Forster's emphasis]

Forster is writing about how speakers make lexical decisions,

and his conclusions are based on key-pressing reaction time exercises
performed by subjects faced with categorisation choices. This is
interesting, but not really what concerns us; what does are his loose
and tight categories. We can use these ideas in conjunction with those
of radial sets, polysemous clusters, and categorial clusters to enhance
our view of the homonymy-polysemy continuum.
If we accept that polysemous clusters are saved as radial sets in
the long-term memory in the way that Forster would have
'precompiled lists' stored (it is not clear from his paper whether these
lists are mental or written), we do not need to differentiate rigidly
between prototypical polysemy and categorial polysemy. What we
must do instead is think in terms of how tight categories are, and
sub-categories within them. Setting up quantifiable divisions between
the senses within the prototypical clusters and the larger categorial
clusters, with an apparent leap from one level to another seems
misleading; cognitive categories are often vague, their boundaries are
sometimes vague. On the basis premise of vagueness (which is one of
the fundamental differences between cognitive categorisation and
other models) it seems unwise to erect such hard and fast divisions.
Radial sets of senses are extended by speakers through
extension, analogy, metonymy, and metaphor; hence the
development of extensively webbed radial sets with senses often being
linked in a variety of ways with a variety of prototypes within a
categorial cluster. This webbing can be loose or tight, depending on
how closely integrated the set of interlinked meanings is within the
mind of the speaker, or the overmind of the speech community. It is
just how “rapidly and accurately” (Forster 1989: 129) connections
 45

between senses can be recalled to the short-term memory that

determines whether speakers within a speech-community will adjudge
two forms homonymous or polysemous. Categories that, over time,
undergo a process of loosening, may eventually become only
searchable “slowly and unreliably” (Forster 1989: 129); giving rise to
forms that are held to be homonyms by speakers. Similarly, words
that have become homonymous through phonological convergence
may have also undergone semantic convergence.
It is quite reasonable to suppose that phonological and
semantic convergence may drive each other. If homonyms that have
formed through phonological convergence converge semantically they
may, at a certain point become part of a single category that allows
relatively rapid searching; at this point they will be forms that are
judged polysemous by speakers.
While cognitivists spend some time pointing out how vague the
boundaries and the memberships of mental categories must be
(rather than the highly artificial Aristotelian categories), when they
settle down to try and show this is so they have a tendency to try to
introduce rather sharply defined boundaries that in many cases may
be just as suspect as those type of categorisation theories they
criticise. Forster's proposed attempts at circumscribing the category
parts of the body is just the type of theory fitting that runs counter to
the initial vagueness premise. Forster only toys with this and rather
pragmatically settles for "number names such as four, thirteen, etc."
which he describes as "obviously a fairly tight category ..." that "...is
certainly well-defined in that it seems hard to imagine anyone coming
across a previously unrecognized exemplar of this category."
(Forster 1989: 129) It is difficult to see which number name could be
described as the prototype within the categorial cluster of
numbers names, and what is more difficult is that while the
category may be fairly tight, it is not clear how tight are the radial sets
clustered around each term within the category.
Forster describes an experiment where certain aspects of the
number name category are compared with that of the category of
colour names. Forster describes the category of colour names as
reasonably loose:-
"The reason for considering color names to be a loose
category is that almost any object or substance that has a
distinctive color can be thought of as a color name but
would never be included on a list of standard color names, e.g.,
 46

ivory, peach, apricot, coffee, chocolate, lemon, etc."

(Forster 1989: 130)

It seems that Forster is missing the point here. There is an

English-language standard colour list:-

Black, White, Blue, Yellow, Red, Green, Brown, +/- Grey, Purple, Orange.

After which there is a highly variable secondary colour list:-

Beige, Fawn, Violet, Scarlet, Azure,..... and so on.

Outwith which there is the sort of vague, fuzzy boundary one expects
at the edge of a cognitive category, inhabited by the ivory, peach,
apricot, coffee colours of Forster, as well as the more-or-less nonce
terms such as squashed-parrot-green, upchucked-cheese, and so on.
Almost all of the types of terms mentioned by Forster carry with them
an implicit standard colour which they are merely adjectivally
modifying. The category of standard colours would seem very tight,
that category that includes the category of standard colours and the
secondary colours is looser, and so on. Forster is setting the
boundaries on his number names and his colour names categories
which may not be psychologically universal, and appear highly
subjective. It would be instructive to know whether Forster includes
terms such as score, dozen, baker's dozen, long-hundred, and
milliard in his number names category.
Forster falls to pieces over his core terms; attempting to use this
as a scientifically verifiable way of setting boundaries. Forster's
choices about what are, and what are not, core terms can be seen to
be highly pragmatic (that is, pragmatic insofar as they make his work
appear somewhat neater and tidier than it really is) and subjective.
This is no reason to belittle Forster's work, but rather a reason to
realise just how vague and ill-defined cognitive categories are, and the
perils of trying to crystallise them in some way.
The long-standing controversy is unresolvable if language is
viewed only synchronically. If we are happy to accept naive native-
speaker intuition (instant folk etymology) as the only test of whether
two words are homonyms or parts of a polysemic cluster, this will
result in us only ascribing homonymy to phonologically convergent
forms; rather than semantically divergent forms.
One response (advanced but not supported by Geeraerts
 47

(1985)) to this is to ask whether the implication stemming from

prototype theory that languages tend towards maximal polysemy and
a tendency away from pathological polysemy can coexist; and
whether the claim advanced by Ullmann and the other structuralists is
sufficient to weaken or even destroy prototype theory. Both
polysemic cluster formation and its avoidance/breakdown may be
viewed as a continuous tug between two opposing forces.

3.4 The Criteria for Inclusion in a Category.

"Perhaps the most striking of Dixon's discoveries, and the one

that accounts for most of the apparently aberrant cases, is what
I will refer to as the myth-and-belief principle:

If some noun has characteristic X (on the basis of which its

class membership is expected to be decided) but is, through
belief or myth, connected with characteristic Y, then generally
it will belong to the class corresponding to Y and not that
corresponding to X.

Though birds are animate, they are not in class I with other
animate beings. Birds are believed to be spirits of dead human
females, and so are in class II."
(Lakoff 1987: 94)

Lakoff is writing about Dixon's finding with Dyirbal (a

language spoken in Australia), but there are myth-and-belief
examples in English. While Modern English does not mark gender
grammatically most inanimate objects (e.g. stones, pencils, books)
are treated as neuter (e.g. "It is a hard stone."); this may be largely
because gender has become identified with sexuality. A variety of
inanimate object words are assigned other genders; the moon is
feminine, a ship is feminine (e.g. "She's a seaworthy vessel.").
Diachronically there is no obvious reason for treating these words as
feminine; in Old English the cognates scip (='ship') and mona
(='moon') are grammatically marked as neuter and masculine
respectively. However, the moon is held in popular mythology to
possess a romantic quality, a quality connected with femininity.
Similarly, sailors have described themselves as being wedded to their
ship (and after long weeks at sea one might find it hard to object to
 48

the image), every creak and groan of the ship affecting them
emotionally as might the rheumatism of a wife.
Bulgarians find this ascription of femininity to what to them
appear distinctly unfeminine objects as distinctly odd (Snezha
Tsoneva-Mathewson Personal Communication).
These words are categorised as feminine because of
relationships with the speakers that are felt to be different to those
of, say, a chair, a stone, or a pencil; that is to say that cognitively they
are regarded as different. It seems that speakers include things in
categories less by dint of obvious, concrete features, than by
reference to how they affect the speaker; how immediate, how
relevant they are to the speaker, how cognitively salient.
A point that is worth making here is with regard to a diachronic
element to categorial inclusion. While many English speakers still
speak of ships as 'she' very few have the type of relation with a ship
that gave rise to its categorisation as feminine. While the cognitive
salience for ascribing femininity to ships may have been lost the habit
persists; there being no pressing reason to recategorise ship.
Nevertheless recategorisation of 'ship' is going on; predictably as a
neuter object - just as with the trend to regularise verbs that do not
conform to the ø, -ed, -ed pattern of tense formation - there is no
longer a justification for making an exception of it.
This may account for a lots of the apparent examples of
NO COMMON PROPERTY categories; the speakers of a language have
forgotten why their ancestors classified things thus but felt no reason
to reanalyse the state of affairs. What was cognitively salient to our
grandparents may have no significance at all to us.
Lakoff (1987: 95-7) outlines ways in which categorisation is
organised in human language in terms of CENTRALITY, CHAINING,
EXPERIENTIAL DOMAINS, IDEALISED MODELS, SPECIFIC KNOWLEDGE (SPECIALISED
is a better way to put this), THE OTHER (a category for that what does
not fit in all the other categories), NO COMMON PROPERTIES, and
MOTIVATION.

Endnotes.

1. It is hard to believe there was a linguistic uniformity in the

England of the Eighteenth century quite unlike the linguistic diversity
in the England of today. Further to this, Eighteenth century writers
have described diverse forms of spoken English extant at the time.
 49

Nevertheless Ambrose Philips’ shepherds and shepherdesses converse

in the same English as Alexander Pope used in his argument with Lady
Wortley Montague; a fact used by John Gay in his pillorying of
Philips in his “Shepherd’s Week”:-
“Great marvell hath it been, (and that not unworthily to
diverse worthy wits, that in this Island of Britain, in all rare
sciences so greatly abounding, more especially in all kinds of
Poesie highly flourishing, no Poet (though otherways of notable
cunning in roundelays) hath hit on the right simple Eclogue
after the true ancient guise of Theocritus, before this mine
attempt.
Other Poet travailing in this plain highway of Pastoral
know I none. Yet, certes, such it behoveth a Pastoral to be, as
nature in the country affordeth; and the manners also meetly
copied from the rustical folk therein. In this also my love to my
native Britain much pricketh me forward, to describe aright
the manners of our own honest and laborious plough-men, in
no wise sure more unworthy a British Poet’s imitation, than
those of Sicily or Arcadie; albeit, not ignorant I am, what a
rout and rabblement of critical gallimawfrey hath been made of
late days by certain young men of insipid delicacy, concerning,
I wist not what, Golden Age, and other outragious conceits, to
which they would confine Pastoral. Whereof, I avow, I account
nought at all, knowing no age so justly to be instiled Golden, as
this of our Sovereign Lady Queen ANNE.
This idle trumpery (only fit for schools and schoolboys)
unto that ancient Dorick Shepherd Theocritus, or his mates,
was never known; he rightly, throughout his fifth Idyll, maketh
his louts give foul language, and behold their goats at rut in all
simplicity.

^Vp`ly Ðkk& \sorÇ túw mhkÆdaw oåa bateânzi

Takez ¥fyalm½w Ðti g tr‡gy a[t¥w Ágguzo Theoc.

Verily, as little pleasance receiveth a true homebred tast, from

all the fine finical new-fangled fooleries of this gay Gothic
garniture, wherewith they so nicely bedeck their court clowns,
or clown courtiers, (for, which to call them rightly, I wot not) as
would a prudent citizen journeying to his country farms, should
 50

he find them occupied by people of this motley make, instead of

plain downright hearty cleanly folk, such as now remains to the
Burgesses of this realm.”
(Gay, 1731: Proeme)

Notwithstanding Gay’s criticisms (which prate on in similar

garnitures for another four pages), he himself, in his parody, merely
ornaments a style of English very close to Philips’ with selected words
that are either real rural dialect terms from the start of the Eighteenth
century, or he believed would be perceived as such by his readership:-

“I whilom by that ribbon had been known.

Ah, well-a-day! I’m shent with baneful smart,
For with the ribbon he bestow’d his heart.”

“33. Shent, an old word signifying Hurt or harmed.”

(Gay, 1731: lines 32-34 and footnote)

Gay seems to be well aware that his (predominantly urban)

readership are likely to be little acquainted with rural dialect;
footnoting all his ruralisms. It is worth noting that the Oxford English
Dictionary lists uses of shend (past form shent ) as late as 1905 in
mainstream English publications, so Gay may have been a bit
disingenuous here. Gay does use forms that were not part of the
standard urban dialect, such as Kee (=Cows), and Clouted Cream
(=Clotted Cream); but it this is unsurprising as these are terms for
objects that are essentially rural anyway.
There is a vast body of literature surviving from the
Eighteenth century which employs words that are apparently
non-standard (and are not in Johnson’s Dictionary); but almost all
works use these lexical forms in syntactically similar sentences to
those used by Eighteenth century writers to describe government
proceedings and social events.
Similar observations may be made about Robert Burns; who,
knowing his London market well (as well as posing as a country hick)
wrote in English decorated with Lowland Scots lexica explained in the
glossary his publisher thoughtfully placed at the back of the book.
James Hogg (a genuine long-haired shepherd from the Scottish
Borders), writing in something closely diachronically related to Doric
Scots, did not fair so well as Burns; not that many people (even in
 51

Scotland) being bothered to wrestle with the intricacies of a despised

lexicon and syntax. Later writers in non-standard forms of English
and/or Scots (such as William Barnes) have written for (and been
received by) a coterie following.
The same point may be made about any period in the
development of English. There have been attempts at
representation of non-standard forms (such as Stevenson’s
“Thrawn Janet”, George MacDonald’s “Sir Gibbie”.) which have
depended heavily upon glossaries and/or textual annotation; and,
insofar as they represent some perception of non-standard dialect
(usually perceived by a speaker of a comparatively standardised
form), they are useful. What is not clear though is how accurately
these non-standard forms are represented, if they be representations
of genuine spoken forms, or whether they are dialects composed of
bits and pieces from real dialects by the writers for the effect they
have in their works of literature.

2. Rosch (1978) states that bases for categorisation are:-

Motor Movements,
"Inseparable from the perceived attributes of objects are
the ways in which humans habitually use or interact with
those objects." (33)

Similarity in Shapes, and Identifiability of Averaged Shapes (33-4),

and that they have implications for areas outside the traditional
perview of linguistics:
"The foregoing theory of categorization and basic subjects
has implications for several traditional areas of study in
psychology; some of these have been tested." (34)
Chapter 4

4.0 Introduction.

This claim will be based on an analysis of categorial clusters of

connected prototypes. This analysis will treat semantic extensions
which cross grammatical categories as part of the polysemous clusters
from which they extend.
Before facing the paradoxes and complexities connected with
this approach a model is presented into which I had initially hoped all
 52

words would conveniently slot. For the sake of clarity a concrete

example is presented; the polysemic cluster pig:-

4.1 Examination of the Form Pig.

4.1.1 Schematic Chart of Diachronic Derivation of Senses.

Starting with a schematic chart of the semantic development of

pig (some of the short-comings of this type of chart have been
discussed earlier). The numerals correspond with the senses listed
below the chart; those labelled N are senses of the noun pig, those
labelled V are senses of the verb pig.
The historical continuum is divided into synchronic sections
consisting arbitrarily of twenty-five year stretches; these are not
really synchronic periods of the type advocated by structuralists.
Each new meaning is shown arising from a prior meaning; for reasons
of convenience the date of each sense’s coining is taken as the first
recorded citation (in the Oxford English Dictionary) of the sense.
Vertical lines indicate historical continuity of a sense.
For reasons which will become clear later this term will be
henceforward refered to as pig 1.
 53

800 *picga/*pigga SOURCE (sense undetermined)

1225 N1
1250
1275
1300
1325
1350
1375
1400
1425 N4
1450
1475
1500
1525 N2
1550 N5 V1
1575 N3
1600 N8
1625 N6 N7
1650 N9 V3
1675 V4
1700 N10 V5
1725
1750
1775
1800 N11
1825 N12
1850 N13
1875 N15 N14 N16
1900
1925
1950
1975 N17

4.1.2 Legend.

N1 a young swine 1225

N2 a swine of any age 1526
N3 young badger 1575
N4 flesh of young swine 1430
N5 applied pejoratively to a person 1546
N6 a sixpenny coin 1622
N7 a billet/lump of (unspecified) metal 1630
N8 a billet/lump of lead 1589
N9 a billet/lump of iron 1647
N10 a mould for metal billets 1686
 54

N11 a police officer 1811

N12 a block of salt 1825
N13 a piece of fruit 1843
N14 a 21/2 lb bundle of hemp 1860
N15 an informer 1874
N16 a wild swine 1889
N17 applied pejoratively to something 1975

V1 to farrow 1532
V3 to give birth (of humans) 1660
“The bed that Pope Joan pigged in” (OED)
V4 to huddle together in a disorderly fashion 1675
V5 to hang many skins together (gloving jargon) 1688

4.1.3 Hypothetical Explanation of How these Senses are Derived

from their Predecessors.

The Old English word *pigga/*picga is a reconstructed form; the

first meaning of the noun pig (N1, 1225)) being used to differentiate
between a sow and her offspring. Whether N1 is an arbitrary coining,
a motivated shift from another related meaning of which we have no
written record, or a loan word from a neighbouring language, we will
probably never know.
N2 (1526) is an extension of N1 that follows a pattern
common in English of the name for the juvenile animal coming to be
used for the adult; this may have been due to more determined
domestication of animals, resulting (in many cases) in the animals
sharing the house with their owners. An animal that you have grown
up with is less likely to be viewed impersonally than swine rooting in
the forest; it will stay “piggy-wig”, or “pig” when it grows up.
Pig was extended to describe a baby Brock (=Badger),
N3 (1575); this is a result of reasoning by analogy, and a lack of
diminutive suffixes in Early Middle English (c.f. later coining piglet
(1883) replacing N1).
Pig was used to describe the flesh of the juvenile swine
(N4, 1430), no doubt to differentiate it from pork, the flesh of the
adult animal (c.f. lamb ='juvenile sheep flesh', 1620).
N5 (1546), a disgusting person, is an analogous coining based
on the living conditions in which swine were kept, or popular
perceptions of the behaviour/habits of swine; the extension of this,
 55

N11 (a police officer, 1800), reflects how criminals feel about people
who stand in the way of them. The short-lived form, N15 (an
informer, 1874), expresses similar sentiments to N11.
N6, a sixpenny bit (1622) would seem to be a pejorative
extension.
N7, N8, and N9 (a billet of unspecified metal, lead, and iron
respectively (1589-1647) are forms used as technical terms in the
foundry trade, formed by a supposed resemblance between these
metal lumps and swine.
N12, a block of salt (1825), is formed on the same basis as N7,
N8, and N9; as was N14, a bundle of hemp (1860).
N13, a piece of fruit (1843) can only be explained with respect
to the fact that swine have been traditionally fed on left-over scraps
from their owners’ tables; including, no doubt, bits of apples and so
on.
N16, a wild swine (1889) is a simple extension of the term to
embrace non-domesticated swine.
N17, used pejoratively of something (1975) is an extension from
its use as a pejorative term for humans.

4.1.4 Synchronic Radial Set Diagrams.

From this we can assemble diagrams of SYNCHRONIC RADIAL SETS

of the meanings of the word pig 1:-

pig1 1550
N2 N4

V1 N1

The prototypical meaning of pig 1 (N1) in 1550 was essentially

the only meaning up until the coinings of N2 (1525), N4 (1425), and
V1 (1550); its use thereafter died out and by 1750 N2 had taken over
the prototypical role:-
 56

N10

pig1 1750 N7
N5 N6
N9
N8

N2
V1

V3
V4

V5

What is difficult to establish is how obviously meanings N11,

N15, and N17 were associated with N2 by 1975; especially as N11 and
N17 are essentially confined to urban use. The same question arises
with regard to N7, N8, N9, and N10. The intense urbanisation arising
as a result of the industrial revolution cut many people off from their
rural roots, in a single generation. We might reasonably construct a
synchronic radial set diagram where the centralised prototype has
given way to a categorially polysemous situation:-

N16
N11
N10

N5
N9

N2
V1
V3
pig1
V4
V5 present
 57

What is not clear is whether N2, N5, and N9 are perceived as

prototypes of three homonyms within a categorial cluster, chained
senses within a prototypical cluster, or something intermediate. The
likelihood is that in the minds of individual speakers they enjoy all
these positions depending on the individual speaker's relation to
different types of pig.
Lexical replacement (c.f. Winters 1989:707) has not taken place
because the three prototypes within the categorial cluster are
contextually individuated sufficiently for this not to be necessary.
N5 and its radial set are centred around the idea of humanness, N2
around the ideas central to the 1550 radial set, and N9 and its
(admittedly small) radial set exists within foundry jargon.

4.1.5 A Possible Homonym.

Apparently all of the senses of pig 1 in the Present diagram are
included within the same categorial cluster, (and insofar as that goes
are to be perceived as tenuously connected). Even this is not clear.
This may be illustrated if we consider the form pig (='an earthenware
pot') which has an entirely separate etymology from pig (='porcus ')
at least as far back as 1440 (earliest recorded citation). In the light of
the nature of written texts it seems reasonable to hold out for an
Old English progenitor. For the sake of clarity this form will be
termed pig 2 .
 58

1350
1375
1400
1425 pig2
1450 N1
1475
1500 N2
1525 N4
1550
1575
1600
1625
1650
1675
1700
1725
1750
1775
1800
1825 N6 N3 N5
1850

N1 a jug, pitcher 1440

N2 a tin/'pyne' vessel 1488
N3 a container for butter 1818
N4 a cinerary urn (where ashes are kept) 1535
N5 a chimney-pot 1822
N6 broken bits of pot used in children's games 1808
A synchronic radial set diagram for 1880 can be constructed:-

N3
pig2 1880
N5
N2
N1
N6

N4

Where this diagram singularly fails is that it gives no

intimation that speakers, being on the whole unaware of the
 59

diachronic development of senses, may have reanalysed pig 1 and pig 2

into some other arrangement of semantic connections at some time
between 1440 and 1880 (these dates are chosen arbitrarily). What
determines whether senses of a pair of homonymous terms are
reanalysed as part of a single cluster (or otherwise - c.f. discussion of
pathological homonymy) is how conceptually close they are felt to be
by speakers, coupled with a lack of knowledge as to the etymology of
those senses.
The conceptual distance between pig 1 N10 (= a mould for
metal billets) and pig 2 N2 (= a tin vessel) would seem sufficiently
close for them to be reanalysed so that one of them is seen as deriving
from the other.

An interesting sidelight relates to lexicographers' method. One

wonders on what basis pig 2 N4 was established as sense of pig 2 with
prototypical N1 (unless the sources supplied its etymology) at all;
rather than, say, proposing a number of homonymous terms.

4.2 Observations Relating to Apparent Increasing Polysemisation,

the Written Record and Reapplication of Terms.

4.2.1 How Monosemous was the Term Pig 1 in the Tenth Century?

One of the most glaring problems with this is the written record;
there is no particularly good reason to suppose that pig 1 circa 1970
had any more senses ascribed to it than*pigga circa 970 beyond the
written usages that have survived.
At the price of appearing pedantic it should be pointed out that
the animal central to our cluster has changed significantly since 970
(this can be validated by inspection of illustrations of pigs in
illuminated manuscripts); today's English pigs do not have backward
curving tusks that project above the lip, to pick only the most glaring
difference. Even the prototypical sense of the word pig (pig 1 N2) has
a number of contemporary applications; it being applied without
discrimination to a Gloucester Old-Spots and a Tamworth (breeds of
porcus ).
It may also be that pig 2 is ultimately derived from pig 1.

4.3 Conservative Nature of Language in Written Records.

 60

There is every good reason in the light of the inherently

conservative nature of written forms to suppose that a lot of the
senses of a form that appear in a written record have been current in
a speech community for some considerable time; how long is
impossible to estimate except by inductive generalisations based on
the current situation. It is well known that as the environment of a
speech community changes so does its vocabulary and the uses to
which lexica are applied.

4.3.1 An Example of Reapplication of a Term.

In Britain there is a small solitary bird of the turdus genus

popularly called a Robin that has a reddish breast. When British
colonists went to the American colonies they found birds with red
breasts (and, quite incidently also of the genus turdus ); beyond that
the resemblance ends (they are quite differently shaped flocking
birds) - the colonists called them Robins. This has subsequently given
rise to some cognitive confusion. In the Disney film of the book
"Mary Poppins", which is set in London, there are American robins;
this gave rise to some fairly strong sentiment in Britain at the time of
its release.

4.4 Examination of Senses of the Form(s) Fork.

As pointed out previously a problem besetting a diachronic

criterion for relatedness of meaning rests in so-called loanwords and
polysemous senses of words in their language of origin that have
entered the language under consideration (English) at different times
as formally identical homonyms. Reference was made to the word/s
fork and how various senses which might be ascribed by a speaker
within the English speech community to a polysemous cluster are
(supposedly) derived from differing loanwords (which all are
derived from a common root word).

4.4.1 An Attempt at a Schematic Chart of Diachronic Derivation

of Senses.

If an attempt at constructing a simple diachronic derivational

tree for senses of fork (noun) is made (based on an (unwarranted)
 61

assumption that all of the senses are derived from a common form
within English) it is beset with problems:-

1000 N1
1025
1050
1075
1100
1125
1150
1175
1200 N7
1225
1250
1275
1300 N2
1325
1350
1375 N9
1400 N16* N12
1425 N11
1450 N4
1475
1500
1525
1550
1575
1600 N3 N13 N10
1625 N8
1650 N20
1675
1700
1725
1750
1775 N18¶
1800 N5 N6
1825
1850 N14 N19 N17
1875 N15
1900
1925
1950
1975
2000

N1 a pronged, agricultural instrument 1000

N2 a pronged weapon 1300
N3 the tongue of a snake 1603
N4 pronged eating instrument 1463
N5 fingers 1812
 62

N6 tuning instrument 1799

N7 a gallows (from Latin furca via OF fourche ) 1205
N8 a yoke •(used as a translation for Latin furca ) 1616
N9 a prop for a vine 1389
N10 a prop for a musket 1591
N11 a building prop 1420
N12 sternal bone in the neck 1400
N13 head of an arrow (barbs) 1605
N14 projection on a saddle 1833
N15 part of a bicycle 1871
N16 a bifurcation * “from the verb” (OED) 1389
N17 division in a road 1839
N18 a Y-division in a plant/tree 1776
N19 a bifurcation of lightening 1859
N20 an attack in the game of chess 1656

4.4.2 Elucidation of the sense N8.

The sense of fork as a 'yoke' (N8) is found only as a

translation of the Latin furca . A number of possible situations
present themselves for consideration:-

1. Fork ='yoke' is a homonym of fork = 'agricultural instrument'.

2. Fork ='yoke' is a polysemous sense within a polysemous cluster
with prototypical fork = 'agricultural instrument'.

Neither of these possibilities seem entirely satisfactory;

especially when we realise the specialised usage of fork ='yoke'. It is
extremely unlikely that fork ='yoke' was ever part of a speaker's
active vocabulary; the specialised 'yoke' of submission under which
Roman prisoners had to pass not being a feature of English society.
The instrument that milkmaids used slung across their shoulders to
carry milk buckets, just as the frame worn by oxen or horses for
ploughing was called a yoke with very clear semantic and
phonological derivation (c.f. Sanskrit yukta ='yoke'). The translator
who first decided to translate furca as fork must have been well
aware of both the conceptual/cognitive connections between furca
and fork, and the phonological similarity; hence his decision to
translate to fork rather than yoke.
There is an obvious conceptual link between a Roman gallows
 63

and a Roman yoke of submission, both of them being √ shaped; and

in the sense of a bifurcated object the connection with prototypical
English fork is not too hard to find. There was also the secondary
conceptual link of a sense of shame connecting the gallows and the
Roman yoke.
It is perfectly reasonable to believe that while fork (='a gallows')
and fork (='a yoke of submission') may have come into English not as
extensions of the senses of the already extant English word fork, but
were subsequently reanalysed as two of its extensions; mainly owing
to their ultimately being extensions of an Indo-European prototype
which had got separated by time and distance - the sense (N1) from
which the senses N2-6 and so on were derived being borrowed into
Old English at a much earlier date.

4.4.3 Elucidation of sense N16.

Similar problems are associated with sense N16 which is

supposedly derived from a verb; yet the earliest recorded citation for
a verb is 1598, two hundred years after the citation for N16. It might
be derived from the Old English verb forceorfan (=to carve out, cut
down, cut off, cut through, divide), which has no etymological
connection with Old English forca (=fork) being formed by
prefixation from the verb ceorfan (=to cut); although this seems
unlikely. What is likely is that at least one sense of a verb to fork was
in parlance prior to 1380.

4.5 Examination of the Senses of the Form(s) Scale.

4.5.1 Bypassing Homonymisation on the way to Lexical

Differentiation.

The Oxford English Dictionary lists seven nouns scale, all of

which seem to be descended (by various routes) from a proto-Indo-
European root *skal- via Old Germanic *skala and Italic/Latin scâla.
The Oxford English Dictionary claims of the Old English scealu:-
"... it is probable that in Du. as in Ger. two original forms,
skâla cup, scales, and skala husk, shell, have become
phonetically coincident."
 64

Although it might be more likely that pathological polysemy

resulted in lengthening of the first vowel as a means of lexical
differentiation, resulting in two forms which possibly at a later date
became phonetically coincident. The fact is that there are very
obvious conceptual links between cup, scale, husk, and shell.
It should also be observed at this point that a process of
homonymisation would have been totally ineffective, if the senses
clustered around the prototype that became the form skâla had
merely been analysed by speakers as senses attached to a form skala
(=cup, scales) that was a homonym of skala (=husk) matter would
have been no clearer to speakers than before. It is almost impossible
to see how pathological polysemy and pathological homonymy differ,
and how one is able to differentiate them. What is also probably the
case is that in cases of pathological polysemy/homonymy it is exactly
this confusion that results in the type of reanalysis that occurs in
these situations.

4.4.2 Seven routes for Scale in English.

The seven forms listed by the Oxford English Dictionary are as

follows:-

Scale 1 (=a drinking bowl, a pan of a balance),

apparently derived from Old English scealu.

Scale 2 (=a fish/reptile scale, husk, flake),

apparently derived from Old Teutonic *skaljâ.

Scale 3 (=a ladder, rung of ladder, musical gradation,

proportion), apparently derived from
Old French eschielle (in turn from Latin scâla)

Scale 4 (=a hut, shieling),

apparently derived from Old Teutonic *skal-
(=to separate)

Scale 5 (=a battalion),

apparently from Old French eschielle
 65

Scale 6 (=an escalade, amount of an estimate),

apparently from a verb scale (=to climb over)

Scale 7 (=a landing-place, seaport, custom-house),

apparently from Old French scal(l)e / escal(l)e

Conclusion

There is considerable confusion about terms Polysemy and

Homonymy because they are imprecise. When examined from a
diachronic viewpoint these terms, if they are confined to mean
categorisation states within the mind, are nothing more than that and
highly subjective. If these terms are to have any external validity at all
it must be in the case of Homonymy as a statement of etymology, or
in the case of Polysemy as a statement of how a speech community
treats senses. As has been shown, there are a number of ways the
individual can reanalyse conceptually diversified polysemous clusters
of meanings and conceptually convergent homonyms. The two terms
Polysemy and Homonymy can be seen insufficient to describe this
plethora of states, therefore their value must be called into question.
It may be that only with substantial qualification that the terms
Homonymy and Polysemy can remain within the linguist’s technical
lexicon; without that they are largely uninformative.
Full Homonymy and Full Polysemy are two ends of a
psychological continuum that consists of interim states and many
ways of getting from one extreme to the other.

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___________________________________________________________

Definition of Terms

Throughout this thesis the term ENGLISH is to be taken (unless

otherwise stated) to mean:-

1. When referring to a contemporary language (1995) to a dialect

approximating to British Received Pronunciation spoken in
England.

2. When referring to various stages in the development of the

ancestor of the language defined in 1. to forms of the
 68

written extant in manuscripts that were written within the

modern political borders of England (as distinct from the United
Kingdom).

3. When referring to individual LEXICA to those not overtly

marked as originating outside the modern political borders of
England in the Second Oxford English Dictionary.

The terms U.S. ENGLISH, AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH, NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH, and other
non-English types of ENGLISH are dependent for their definition on the
Second Oxford English Dictionary.

The term SCOTS is to be taken (unless otherwise stated) to mean:-

1. When referring to a contemporary language (1995) to the

language spoken in the Scottish lowlands that is descended from
kindred Germanic dialects to ENGLISH and which has developed
alongside English since the settlement of the British Isles by
Germanic tribesmen from Europe.

2. When referring to various stages in the development of the

ancestor of the language defined in 1. to forms of the written
extant in manuscripts that were written within the modern
political borders of Scotland (as distinct from the United
Kingdom).
3. When referring to individual LEXICA to those not overtly
marked as originating inside the modern political borders of
Scotland in the Second Oxford English Dictionary, or those cited
in Chambers Scots Dictionary (Warrack) and the Scots Word
Book (Graham).

In the context of this thesis (which concerns itself with Polyvalency in

English) U.S. ENGLISH, AUSTRALIAN ENGLISH, NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH, other non-
English types of ENGLISH, and SCOTS will only be considered with regard
to how lexical ambiguities have been resolved in ENGLISH.

has been used as a catch-all term to cover all forms of non-

OLD ENGLISH
Gaelic and non-French language spoken in the British Isles prior to the
Norman French invasion of England. The term Anglo-Saxon has been
eschewed as it seems to have two meanings;
 69

1. The written form of the Old English dialect spoken in the

Wessex of King Ælfred the Great,

2. An artificially constructed form of Old English, with regularised

orthography and a standardised grammar developed by Henry
Sweet and others to make Early English texts more accessible to
undergraduate students.

The famous hymn by Cædmon survives in at least two recensions, both

of which are Old English in the broad sense of the term; whether they are both
Anglo-Saxon is a moot point, one of them being written in the language spoken
at the time in Whitby, part of Northumbria. Similarly, documents written in
the region that is now Scotland in what the Scots came to term Inglis (prior to
their patriotic rechristening of it) can be said to be written in Old English; very
Anglo, but little Saxon so to speak.