Sense discrimination

1. Sense discrimination How to decide when a word has more than one meaning.

2. Look at the collocates • For each lexical relation: • Do the collocates belong to the same category or different categories? man/dog runs machine/car runs run a race/100 yard dash run a meeting/organization/country

3. Look at the semantic domain • Different senses usually (but not always) belong to different domains. We were shooting at the crows. (Gun) We were shooting the breeze. (Say) We were shooting the rapids. (Travel) He shot my argument full of holes. (Argue)

4. Look at the lexical relations • If you suspect you have two senses, for each example ask: • What is a synonym of this? a big (large) house, a big (real) fool • What is the antonym of this? freeze (release) assets, freeze (thaw) meat • What is the generic term?

5. Look at the case frame • Is the case frame different? I walked to school today. I walked the dog. The vase broke. I broke the vase.

6. Look for differences in the paradigm • Occasionally different senses will take a different set of affixes. We are having fruit (*fruits) for lunch. A healthy diet includes fruits (i.e. different kinds of fruit) and vegetables.

7. Look for idioms • Idioms have to be analyzed as a whole. We ran up the hill. We ran up the flag.

8. Look for variants • Occasionally you will find that one sense has a variant that another sense doesn’t. I have a friend who… I’ve a friend who… I’ve got a friend who… *I have got a friend who…

9. Look for puns and ambiguous sentences • Occasionally you will encounter an ambiguous sentence. She couldn’t bear children. Pilots have the highest calling.

10. Look for a change in part of speech • A change in part of speech may indicate a change in meaning, but sometimes the difference is not one of meaning, but merely grammar. I’ve got to work. I’ve got work to do. My work is building houses.

11. Caution! Watch out for homonyms.

12. What’s a homonym? • If two words have the same form, but their meanings are unrelated, we call them homonyms. • ‘Bear’ (the animal) and ‘bear’ (to carry) are homonyms.

13. What’s a homophone? • A type of homonym. • If two words are pronounced the same, we call them homophones. • ‘Two’ (2) and ‘too’ (also) are homophones.

14. What’s a homograph? • A type of homonym. • If two words are spelled the same, we call them homographs. • ‘Sow’ (to plant) and ‘sow’ (female pig) are homographs, but not homophones. • ‘Sow’ (to plant), ‘so’, and ‘sew’ are homophones, but not homographs.

15. Homonyms How to decide when a word has two unrelated meanings.

16. Intuition • Ask several native speakers to explain the relationship between two senses. • If none of them can give a plausible link, assume the two are homonyms.

17. Historical evidence • Some lexicographers list senses of a word as homonyms, if it can be shown historically that they derive from the same proto form. (crane—bird vs. machine) • If a dictionary is a record of the mental lexicon, then etymological evidence is irrelevant. If people are no longer aware of the historical link, then the senses can be considered homonyms.

18. Orthography and homographs • If your orthography under-differentiates phonemic contrasts, you will have many homographs. • This is true of segmental contrasts as well as suprasegmentals such as stress and tone. The judge was just [ju’st] and fair. John’s just [jist] arrived.