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6 - Polysemy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 February 2024

Shu-Ling Wu
Affiliation:
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Lihong Huang
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Carl Polley
Affiliation:
University of Hawaii
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Summary

Chapter 6 focuses on polysemy, a common linguistic phenomenon in which a single form is associated with two or more distinct but related senses, as shown in the relatedness of baseball cap and pen cap. Polysemy is a result of meaning extension, which can be triggered by mechanisms such as metaphorical mappings, experiential correlation, or inference. The principled polysemy model proposed by Tyler and Evans (2003) posits that the distinct senses associated with a particular lexical form are related to each other in a systematic and motivated way and are organized around a central or primary sense. Because polysemy is pervasive, the fact that many words have a large number of different senses magnifies the challenge of vocabulary learning. The chapter advocates for L2 instructional approaches that introduce the different senses of a word not in a piecemeal fashion but as a sequence of related meanings starting from the primary sense and continuing to extended senses. Different CL-based pedagogical methods and tasks are presented to showcase how to enable learners to attend to the systematic relationships that exist among the various senses of a lexical form.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

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  • Polysemy
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.007
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  • Polysemy
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.007
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Polysemy
  • Shu-Ling Wu, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Lihong Huang, Georgetown University, Washington DC, Carl Polley, University of Hawaii
  • Book: Cognitive Linguistics and Second Language Acquisition of Chinese
  • Online publication: 01 February 2024
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009186711.007
Available formats
×