Types of Polysemy in Standard Persian: A Cognitive Approach

Author
M. sabzevari
Assistant Professor of Linguistics, Payame Noor University, Tehran, Iran
Abstract
Polysemy is one of the most important, and traditional area in the semantic and lexical relations studies. Polysemy is a lexeme or word which has several meanings which are all somehow related. Regarding distinctive features of the words which are seen as polysemy cases, the study of these concepts and meanings specifically, and lexical relations in general is in the focus of the two recent decades researches in the cognitive linguistics, and also for psycholinguistics. We could find a rather rich literature in the study of polysemy in the field of lexical semantic and also cognitive semantics. In the traditional lexical semantics, collocation and the adjacent words are very important to add to the meaning of a word. In cognitive semantics, different concepts of an expression is connected to a central or proto typical concept in a network like connections which represents the fact that one concept is central, and the rest are non-central or secondary but related somehow to this primary meaning or concept. Indeed, the metaphorical extensions have no place among the actual concepts of a word. Polysemy could not include the figurative meanings of a word. Polysemy typically is a matter of nonfigurative and lexical meaning. In Persian, it has been always a tendency toward semantics and the lexical relations surveys. This tendency reveals the subject as a demanding area. In this descriptive and analytic paper, the types of polysemy of Persian with a cognitive approach, and classification of Evans' study will be considered, and discussed with the examples to testify if this classification will also be applicable to Persian or not. Evans suggests that polysemy might be one of the three kinds of conceptual, lexical and inter-lexical. What is important in Evan's approach is the semantic components of a word which could be activated in the relevant contexts, and this activation may represents some kind of conceptual polysemy. What is traditionally considered as polysemy is mostly treated as lexical polysemy in Evan's study. Conceptual polysemy with regards to the features as size, color, shape etc. of a single concept, and different activations of these features proposes a new look at the polysemy. In lexical polysemy, one meaning is central or primary from which other meanings emerge in a radial manner. Most of the polysemy cases in a language could be found as a lexical polysemy in Evan's terms. Different categories in language including nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs represent polysemy. Inter-lexical polysemy includes the possible polysemy relations between two words with different usages. A cognitive approach as Evan's consider polysemy in a language is based on a primary or central concept, selection and activation of some features of a concept, the effect of context, mental and cognitive accessibility of the speakers to a definite cognitive pattern to come to a specific interpretation. A point worth to mention here is that regarding polysemy, a word might have a figurative or metaphorical meaning in a context which is not often mentioned among the meanings in a lexical entry. This meaning is totally context- based. Polysemy is not mainly related to a special context but it is the second or third or even more actual, and inherent meaning of a word and it could be found in a dictionary. Although context plays an important role for the selection of the right meaning, metaphorical meaning is a selection which is dependent on the paradigmatic relations due to some conceptual similarities. However, this metaphorical meaning is not part of the central meaning and as a result the polysemy. This paper, with the identification of these types of polysemy in Persian, is to analyze, and evaluates a semantic subject with a cognitive approach.With evidences presented in this paper from Persian ,Evans' approach is proved to be useful for and applicable to the polysemy analysis in Persian, and more it represents a different, and innovative method for studying polysemy.


Keywords

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Language Related Research
Volume 9, Issue 3 - Serial Number 45
July and August 2018
Pages 251-271