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Polysemy

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640 views1 page

Polysemy

exercises

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Ina
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Polysemy Polysemy is concerned with the way words often have a number of different meat ings. Look at these sentences and think about how you would translate the words in italies into your own language. Ie’s only fair that we should share the housework. The Frankfurt Book Fair is a very important event for most publishers. Our caravan gives us shelter through fair weather or foul Pve got fair eyelashes and my eyes look awful without mascara. His marks in his final exams were fair to disappointing. The firefighters managed to save the children from the burning third-floor flat. The countryside round here is terribly flat and boring. To join the Fitness Club you pay a flat fee of £500. The tune is in B flat minor. He erected the shed in five minutes flat. You probably need a different word to translate fair and flat in each sentence. These sentences illustrate what linguists call polysemy, i.e. the fact that many words in English have more than one meaning. Sometimes the meanings are clearly related ~ flat as in countryside has a connection with flat as in apartment in that they both include an idea of being on one level. Sometimes, however, there is no connection at all For example, the meaning of fair as in Book Fair does not seem to be connected in any way with any of the other meanings of fair. Words like this can also be called homogeaphs (same spellings but different meanings). Here is another example. Which polysemous word can fill the gaps in all these sentences? He struck a and we slowly began to look around the dark cave. The teenage cooks in the competition were a for any of the adults. Their marriage has been called a made in heaven. ‘One element of polysemy in English is that the language is very flexible and words can sometimes be used as different parts of speech. Flat with its apartment meaning, for instance, can become an adjective, e.g. a set of flat keys. Ic is useful to be aware of polysemy in English for two main reasons. * You need to be aware that the meaning you first learnt for a word may not be the one thar it has in a new context. ‘+ Learning about the range of meanings that a word can have can help you, as it were, to learn several meanings for the price of one. The context of a word with multiple meanings will usually make it absolutely clear which of the word’s possible meanings is intended. What, for example, would the noun drill probably mean in (a) a dental context, (b) an army context, (c) a road-building context? We shall deal with some examples of polysemy at different places in this book. However, you should also be aware of it when you are using your dictionary and should nore down any useful additional meanings for words that you have looked up.

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