Making Sense of Polysemous Words

Abstract

Although it may be true that most vocabulary is acquired through incidental learning, acquiring words through inferring from context is not necessarily the most effective or efficient method in instructional settings. The guessing method has been advocated, but this method can be made more efficient and effective with insights from cognitive linguistics. In this article we argue that abstract, figurative senses of polysemous words are better retained when learners are given core senses as cues, because providing a core sense helps learners develop a ''precise elaboration.'' Results of a series of vocabulary experiments involving Dutch learners of English show that providing a core sense results in better guessing and long-term retention of figurative senses of polysemous words than not providing any cues or providing cues involving nonliteral senses.

Quantitative and Qualitative Aspects of Advanced Learners’ L1 and L2 Mastery of Polysemous Words

“…This lexical item is based on the core meaning of the word and allows for semantic extensions of that core meaning to remain within the confi nes of that single lexical item instead of being dispersed into individual lexical items for each related sense.' (Crossley et al 2010: 576-577 (from Langacker 2002and Verspoor/Lowie 2003 This tallies well with earlier research, as described in Section 1.…”

“…Such models suggest that separate entries for related word senses would be uneconomical because they would take up more storage space and would fail to capture the sense connections in the word's uses.' (Crossley et al 2010: 576 (from Nunberg 1979Pustejovsky 1995;Verspoor/Lowie 2003)) Instead, such lexical networks 'allow learners to recognize meaning relationships between a word's senses because the word's senses are located within a single lexical item. This lexical item is based on the core meaning of the word and allows for semantic extensions of that core meaning to remain within the confi nes of that single lexical item instead of being dispersed into individual lexical items for each related sense.'…”

“…The fi nding that students fi rst learn core senses of polysemous words and not until these senses have been processed move on to extended senses as discussed in Subsection 2.2 is substantiated by Verspoor/Lowie (2003). Their investigation is based on the notion that when trying to learn the various meanings of polysemous words, it might be useful to defi ne the polysemous word with the help of the concept that runs through all the word's senses (Nation 2000: 51).…”

“…(Verspoor/Lowie 2003: 556) The links exemplifi ed here 'are not limited to the ones that occur between a core sense and a noncore sense, but the senses are all interrelated, as one peripheral sense may form the base for an even more peripheral sense. However, there may not be any direct conceptual links between all peripheral senses' (Verspoor/Lowie 2003: 556, see also Lakoff 1987. This means for example that there may not necessarily be a clear link between a polysemous word's core sense and its most frequent meaning.…”

Effects of Learners’ English Proficiency Level in Learning English Prepositions through the Schema-Based Instruction

“…CL holds that metaphorization is a natural feature of language, and thus conceptual metaphor proposed by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) (e.g., HAPPY IS UP, SAD IS DOWN) or conceptual manipulations including metaphor or metonymy have been applied to explain the reasonableness of the collocation of words or the existence of some word formation (e.g., Azuma & Littlemore, 2010, Boers, 2000a, 2000bDeignan, Gabryś & Solska, 1997;Gao, 2011;Lazar, 1996;Yasuda, 2010;Zoltán & Szabó, 1996). The other group uses the core meaning or core schema 1) (e.g., Akamatsu, 2010aAkamatsu, , 2010bCho & Kawase, 2011, 2012Fujii, 2011Fujii, , 2016aFujii, , 2016bSato, 2015;Strong, 2013;Verspoor & Lowie, 2003;Wijaya, 2014). The research results from these two groups seem rather contrastive.…”