The new semantic pointers which is from the item next-door neighbor when you look at the the fresh new lexicon doesn’t, to phrase it differently, incorporate a requirements away from intercourse; next-door neighbor are vague (or standard, or unspecified) as to what measurement out of gender
Polysemy ‘s the preferred term into the condition where a great lexical items has actually one or more meaning, eg when later often means ‘following the usual, asked, otherwise decided time’ (I’m later once again), ‘state-of-the-art into the time or night’ (a belated restaurants), or ‘don’t alive’ (my later sis Polly). Terminologically speaking, polysemy should be in comparison with homonymy and you will, more to the point, vagueness. Whenever a couple of (or higher) conditions have the same figure, for example lender (‘mountain, height during the sea or lake bed’) and you will lender (‘financial institution’), they are homonyms; while polysemy describes multiplicity regarding definition contained in this one word, the newest multiplicity is sent over various terminology when it comes to homonymy. As such, and come up with an improvement ranging from polysemy and you may homonymy relates to deciding whether or not we are speaking about one while the same word or that have a couple different ones. This new difference in vagueness and you may polysemy requires the matter of if a specific bit of semantic info is the main underlying semantic design of your product or is caused by an excellent contextual (thus practical) specification. Including, neighbors isn’t polysemous amongst the indication ‘men dweller second door’ and you can ‘girls dweller nearby,’ in the same manner that the utterance my neighbor are an excellent civil slave won’t be seen as requiring disambiguation on the method in which this woman is smart you will (Could you imply ‘bright’ or ‘stylish’?).
To choose ranging from polysemy and you may vagueness, loads of testing might be invoked. The three chief of those are the following. Earliest, regarding a truth-theoretical viewpoint, a beneficial lexical goods is polysemous when it normally while doing so be obviously true and you can certainly not true of the identical referent. Considering the readings ‘harbor’ and you will ‘strengthened nice drink regarding Portugal’ from port, brand new polysemy of these goods is created because of the phrases such Sandeman is actually a port (from inside the a bottle), but not a port (having boats). That it traditional fundamentally grabs a semantic intuition: are a couple of perceptions regarding confirmed phrase intuitively well enough different thus that one can end up being said to apply therefore the most other maybe not?
Especially, he is based on acceptability judgments about phrases containing one 
or two relevant occurrences of your own item concerned (certainly one of and this matical relationship anywhere between both situations requires its semantic title, the fresh new resulting phrase tends to be an indication on the polysemy away from the object
Next, linguistic evaluation encompass syntactic as opposed to semantic intuitions. Such as, the latest therefore-called label sample relates to ‘identity-of-sense anaphora.’ Hence, at midnight the latest ship enacted the latest vent, and therefore did the fresh new bartender try embarrassing in case your several lexical meanings regarding vent is located at risk. Overlooking puns, it will simply signify new vessel additionally the bartender the same passed brand new harbor, otherwise however you to one another went a specific sort of wines out of one destination to various other. A mixed reading, where very first occurrence out-of vent refers to the harbor and second in order to wines, might be excluded. By comparison, the point that the notions ‘classic sweet drink away from Portugal’ and you will ‘mixed sweet wine out of Portugal’ will be mutual within the Vintage Noval is a slot, and thus try combined Sandeman implies that vent try unclear rather than simply polysemous regarding new difference in mixed and you will antique drink.
Third, the definitional standards specifies you to definitely a product keeps multiple lexical meaning if there’s zero minimally certain meaning covering the extension of item general, and this does not have any way more lexical meanings than simply discover maximally standard definitions had a need to identify their expansion. Meanings off lexical items are going to be maximally general in the sense that they should defense once the large a good subset of your extension out of a product or service that you could. Therefore, independent definitions to have ‘combined nice strengthened wines of Portugal’ and you will ‘antique nice strengthened wine out-of Portugal’ couldn’t meet the requirements definitions regarding lexical definitions, because they can be brought with her within the definition ‘nice fortified drink from A holiday in greece.’ At exactly the same time, significance shall be minimally particular in the same way that they will be be enough to recognize the item off their nonsynonymous situations. A beneficial maximally standard definition coating both port ‘harbor’ and you can port ‘types of wine’ under the meaning ‘thing, entity’ is actually excluded because doesn’t take the specificity off vent since the not the same as almost every other terms.