30
This study will use the same distinction. Thus, a polysemous word has a single lexical entry in the dictionaries Apresjan, 2000; Murphy, 2003.
c. Types of Polysemy
Geeraerts 2010 cites a type of polysemy from Apresjan 1973. The type is called regular polysemy. In this type of polysemy, the relation between the
meanings is predictable or the meanings are part of a larger pattern Cruse, 2000. Furthermore, Geeraerts 2010, p. 148 gives some examples that show the
patterns of predictable meanings. The examples include the relationships between product and producer the journal lies on the tablethe journal was taken over by
Rupert Murdoch, between process and result my purchases took me just under an hourthe purchases are still in the trunk of the car, and between contents and
container the whole lecture hall laughedthe lecture hall is at the end of the corridor.
Pustejovsky 1996 adapts the types of polysemy from Weinrich 1964 as contrastive polysemy and complementary polysemy. Contrastive polysemy
happens when a single lexical item has two distinct and unrelated meanings. The example of contrastive polysemy is the word bank which occurs in the sentences:
Mary walked along the bank of the river and Harborbank is the richest bank in the city. This contrastive polysemy is what nowadays termed as homonymy.
Complementary polysemy is the phenomenon where the senses of a lexical item manifest the same basic meanings when used in different contexts. Pustejovsky
calls complementary polysemy as logical polysemy because there is a sense alteration where the senses are related systematically. There are seven alterations
31
proposed by Pustejovsky, namely countmass alterations, containercontainee alterations, figureground reversals, productproducer alteration, plantfood
alterations, processresult alteration, and placepeople alteration. For example, in plantfood alterations, the word apple can refer to the fruit and the tree of the fruit
as shown in the sentences: James ate an apple for lunch and James watered the apples in the garden. Complementary polysemy is what nowadays referred to
polysemy. Falkum 2011 proposes two traditional approaches for polysemy in his
research. The first approach “tend to regard polysemy as a matter of different
senses being listed und er a single lexical entry,…” p. 9. The second approach
regards a polysemy as a word that has a representation of a maximally general meaning or core meaning. The first approach is the theory which is developed by
Pustejovsky 1996 named Sense Enumeration Lexicon SEL. The main idea of this theory is the multiple related meanings of a single word complementary
polysemy are listed in a single lexical entry in the dictionary or lexicon. Thus, SEL also indicates the presence of homonyms contrastive polysemy are listed in
different lexical entries.
d. Levels of Polysemy
