Academic literature on the topic 'Polysemy, lexical semantics, teaching'

A particular status of the English language as the language of international communication and connections between the nearly related English and German languages resulted in the emergence of many interlingual borrowings in the Modern English and German language vocabularies. The paper aims to consider the functioning of borrowings (loanwords) in the English and German languages. To reach the aim of the research and to carry out the tasks assigned, the following methods were used: a descriptive method, the method of correlation, componential analysis and, comparative semantic analysis. The paper focuses on linguistic and extralinguistic factors of the German and English interaction. Special attention is paid to clarifying the notion of borrowing in modern linguistic science. The word-formative calques and half-calques (hybrids), which differ from ordinary lexical borrowings by using partially borrowed lexical material, are identified in addition to direct lexical borrowings in the language subsystem under study. The paper demonstrates the significant influence of English borrowings on the structural-semantic qualities of German words, on various semantic changes, as well as on the participation of loanwords in the lexico-semantic variation: synonymy, polysemy, homonymy, and antonymy. The results of the research can also be used in the teaching and learning of both languages, in the course of lexicology or linguistics.

Lexical ambiguity abounds in languages and multiple one-to-many form-function mappings create challenges for language learners. This study extends the theoretical approaches to the acquisition of polysemy to the Mandarin verb 打 dǎ, which is highly polysemous and among the earliest verbs in child speech. It analyzes longitudinal naturalistic data of nine children (1;05–3;10) from two Mandarin child speech corpora to explore the developmental trajectory of different senses of 打 dǎ and the role of input. The results support a continuous derivational and restricted monosemy approach: children initially extract a core feature of 打 dǎ, but only apply it in a restricted way, reflected in a small number of senses in a limited set of semantic domains and syntactic frames, revealing an early preference for initial unambiguous form-meaning mappings. Mandarin-speaking children’s production mirrors the semantic and syntactic distribution of the input, supporting the usage-based approach to the acquisition of polysemy that meaning is derived from the confluence of lexical and syntactic cues in the usage patterns in the input. Our research is the first longitudinal study of the emergence and development of polysemous verbs in Mandarin and has pedagogical implications for teaching Mandarin as a second language.

This article is dedicated to the linguistic context of functionality of the English military aviation terms in the journal “Rotor and Wing”. The goal lies in revealing the specificity of the linguistic context of functionality of the English military aviation terminology, as well as its structural, semantic and pragmatic characteristics in the journal “Rotor and Wing”. For achieving the set goal, the author aims to determine the most representative linguistic (stylistic, syntactic, grammatical, and  lexical) peculiarities of the journal; which military aviation terms are most and least common for the journal; as well as structural, semantic and pragmatic characteristics of the terms. The novelty lies in comprehensive description of the English military aviation terminology (structural, semantic and pragmatic aspects) and its linguistic context in the professional journal. The research employs the analytical, comparative, and statistical methods. The author establishes the most significant syntactic, grammatical, stylistic, and lexical peculiarities of the journal; as well as structural (most terms are two-component phrases), semantic (presence of the absolute and conditional synonymous terms, absence of polysemy, and  partial presence of antonyms), and pragmatic characteristics of military aviation terminology (terms fulfill the functions that are substantiated by the content and purpose of the journal. The acquired results can be used both in lexicographical practice (compiling the English-language dictionaries, thesauri, glossaries of military aviation terms), and in the practice of teaching the aviation English language.

Le but principal de cet article est de montrer les principaux problèmes de la lexicologie moderne aussi que d’améliorer l’enseignement de la lexicologie comme cours universitaire en tenant compte de nouvelles théories apparues à la fin du XXe siècle. L’enseignement moderne exige l’introduction de nouveaux termes comme éponymie, énantiosémie, méronymie, etc., et la révision des théories et des thèmes dits classiques comme polysémie, évolution sémantique, formation du mot, emprunt. L’auteur se propose de montrer le développement des théories et des approches lexicales au cours des XXe et XXIe siècles. On estime qu’il faut fournir aux étudiants des renseignements sur les nouvelles orientations et les différentes méthodes existant dans la linguistique contemporaine, avant tout sémiotiques, cognitives, discursives, contrastives, même si elles sont présentées sous diverses versions parfois contradictoires. En même temps, une consultation des manuels de lexicologie montre que plusieurs phénomènes connus restent en marge de leurs études, il s’agit avant tout du calque, du mot international, de l’occasionnalisme, de l’archaïsme sémantique, etc. Donc, l’emploi et la définition corrects du terme, la précision de ses particularités au sein de son paradigme sont indispensables pour l’étude lexicologique contemporaine. L’approche principale est de présenter le vocabulaire français en tant que système spécifique d’unités nominatives. Teaching FFL lexicology: opening new approaches The main aim of this paper is to show major problems of modern lexicology as well as to improve the teaching of lexicology at the university by taking into account new theories that appeared at the end of the 20th century. Modern education requires the introduction of new terminology such as eponymy, enantiosemy, meronymy, etc., and the revision of the so-called classical theories and themes such as polysemy, semantic evolution, word formation or borrowing. It is also essential to introduce several topics and approaches including, above all, field theory, connotation theory, the problem of the concept, cognitive semantics, prototype theory and stereotype theory, linguistic and cultural aspects, semantic universals, etc. We seek to identify the main problems posed by the study of French vocabulary, to show the development of theories and lexical approaches during the 20th and the 21st centuries. It is thought that students should be provided with information on the new orientations and methods existing in contemporary linguistics, primarily semiotic, cognitive, discursive and contrastive, even if presented in different or even contradictory versions. At the same time, an overview of lexicology textbooks shows that several rather well-known phenomena remain on the margins of study; these include calques, international words, occasionalisms, semantic archaisms, etc. Therefore, adequate definitions of terms and their use, precise identification of their peculiarities within relevant paradigms in contemporary studies of lexicology are indispensable. Key words: lexicology; French; teaching; approach; theory of the word.

AbstractIn this paper, I examine the mechanisms responsible for enabling underspecified lexical forms to acquire a determinate and unique Interpretation in the composition of the sentence. In particular, I study the behavior of several classes of lexical items exhibiting degrees of systematic or logical polysemy. These words present an interesting challenge to conventional treatments of polysemy and füll specification in natural language semantics. Extending the analysis of these classes presented in Pustejovsky (1994, 1995), I elaborate the formal mechanisms responsible for capturing the syntactic and semantic behavior of nouns such äs

This research is conducted to reveal how humorous utterances are constructed by manipulating semantic meaning especially dealing with lexical semantics. Lexical semantics provides multiple meanings that portray their meanings’ relationship among a word and they are potentially exploited to elicit humor. This research examines utterances manipulating lexical semantics as the strategy of humor creation in Mind Your Language situation comedy. Applying a descriptive qualitative approach, the findings indicate that five types of lexical semantics are utilized as strategies of humorous utterances creation. Those types of lexical semantics are polysemy, homonymy, homophone, hyponymy, dan synonymy. Because of their multiple relation meanings, the speaker can refer to other meanings to construct different meanings with the hearer. The speaker constructs an incongruent meaning between what the hearer’s perception is and what the speaker meant. The deviation of lexical semantics between the hearer and the speaker completely illustrates the concept of incongruity theory of humor.

The paper shows how a recently introduced concept of syntaphor, which blends synecdoche with metaphor, may be used to represent semantic extensions of polysemous lexemes like paint or pin. The network semantic representations using syntaphor are both more descriptively adequate and precise. They also account for the fact that the word meanings differ in their use from vague general senses to rather specific, and yet entrenched senses. Finally, it is demonstrated that syntaphor is one of the crucial cognitive processes resulting in lexical differences between languages.

Abstract Language is a complex and dynamic system. If we consider word meaning, which is the scope of lexical semantics, we observe that some words have several meanings, thus displaying lexical polysemy. In this article, we present the first phase of a project that aims at computationally modelling Ancient Greek semantics over time. Our system is based on Bayesian learning and on the Diorisis Ancient Greek corpus, which we have built for this purpose. We illustrate preliminary results in light of expert annotation, and take this opportunity to discuss the role of computational systems and human analysis in a complex research area like historical semantics. On the one hand, computational approaches allow us to model large corpora of texts. On the other hand, a long and rich scholarly tradition in Ancient Greek has provided us with valuable insights into the mechanisms of semantic change (cf. e.g. Leiwo, M. (2012). Introduction: variation with multiple faces. In Leiwo, M., Halla-aho, H., and Vierros, M. (eds), Variation and Change in Greek and Latin, Helsinki: Suomen Ateenan-instituutin säätiö, pp. 1–11.). In this article, we show that these qualitative analyses can be leveraged to support and complement the computational modelling.

AbstractThe target article offers an analysis of the categorization of kin types and empirical evidence that cross-cultural universals may be amenable to OT explanation. Since the analysis concerns the structuring of conceptual categories rather than the use of words, it differs from previous OT analyses in lexical semantics in what is considered to be the input and output of optimization.

Although there have been various semantics studies of news reports, so far the use of lexico-semantics approach in analysing news reports has not been common. The aim of this research is analyze the lexical relations and meaning properties in news reports. It was carried out descriptive-qualitatively. Eight news reports in Okezone.com and eight news reports in Tribunnews.com were studied by using Saeed’s (2009) theory of lexical relations and Siregar (1992) and Leech’s (19981) theory of meaning properties. After completing the analysis, it was found that news news reports in Tribunnews.com are slightly different with the news reports in Okezone.com. There are six types of lexical relations in Tribunnews.com: hyponymy, polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy, and metonymy, while there are only five types of lexical relations in Okezone.com: hyponymy, polysemy, synonymy, antonymy, and metonymy. In addition, there are five types of meaning properties in Tribunnews.com: meaningfulness, ambiguity, redundancy, anomaly, and contradictory, while there are only four types of meanin properties in Okezone.com: meaningfulness, ambihuity, redundancy, and anomaly.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2007.
Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 342-374). Also available for download via the World Wide Web; free to University of Oregon users.

The process of learning a foreign language can be exhausting for almost all language learners. In this study, it is aimed at providing students an accessible way to reducing commitment of errors while speaking or learning English as a second language (L2) in the most relevant and practical way, too. The Second Language Acquisition is defined as a subject which is concerned with how a language is learned and has the learner in its focus including the learner’s developing language. The main issues presented throughout the chapters were concentrated on language transfer, semantics and ambiguity. Prepositions were the most concerning analytical headline of all chapters because they are the most vulnerable part of speech students or learners of English (L2) face difficulty with. Many linguists or scholars have been working on the above scopes in order to clarify and recommend learners of English that committing errors depends on the amount of language scientific information they might have.
La adquisición de un idioma, especialmente el inglés, ha sido una pasión no solo para los estudiantes de diferentes instituciones educativas en Albania sino también para otras personas de diferentes capas sociales. Por supuesto, su adquisición no es fácil debido a los cambios estructurales léxicos y morfológicos y sintácticos que, generalmente, tienen las lenguas. Dadas las dificultades que enfrentan los estudiantes albaneses o incluso otras personas comunes en la sociedad, centré mi tesis doctoral en algunas áreas específicas de la lingüística, lo que sin duda mejorará el nivel de su adquisición, reduciendo, donde sea posible, la cantidad de errores causados por la falta de información lingüística que pueda existir en ambos idiomas Me he centrado en las áreas de interferencia (transferencia de la lengua), semántica, ambigüedad, así como en oraciones con -ing como complementos preposicionales. Cabe señalar que el estudio de la preposición es el foco principal de la tesis doctoral, ya que esta clase lingüística presenta mayores dificultades en los campos antes mencionados, debido a su frecuencia en la oración.

Thesis (MA (Afrikaans Language))--University of Stellenbosch, 1990.
199 leaves single sided printed, preliminary pages and numbered pages 1-187. Includes bibliography. Digitized using a Bizhub 250 Scanner to pdf format (OCR).
ENGLISH ABSTRACT: An evaluation of semantic information in a dictionary must take into account all aspects of meaning of lexical items. Therefore the different homonyms and polysemous senses of lexical items and the underlying semantic relations between lexical items are accounted for. A description should be given of the lexical items which form the macrostructure of HAT. These lexical items include sublexical, multilexical and free lexical items. The treatment of multilexical items in HAT is not satisfactory at present and suggestions are made for the improvement of the situation. Possible solutions for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy are given. Suggestions to determine the possible polysemous senses of a lexical item are also made. The ordering of polysemous senses and different homonyms are discussed. It is essential to make use of a synchronic criterion to distinguish between homonymy and polysemy. The HAT's treatment of semantic relations between lexical items is not always very succesfull. The semantic relation which receives the most substantial treatment is that of semantic inclusion between lexical items. The HAT's treatment of synonyms is not without problems. More attention should be given to semantic linking and semantic opposition between lexical items. An evaluation of the system of cross-references in HAT is given, with special reference to the function of cross-references. Sometimes indistinct typographical conventions are used and they confuse the user of the dictionary. The indistinct use of typographical conventions has a detrimental influence on the transfer of information. The cross-reference system of HAT can be improved by an informative explanation in the general introduction, focusing on ways and means to use it more specifically, unambiguously and consistently. A distinction is made between various types of definitions used to define lemmas. Well known lexicographic definitions such as definitions per genus et differentia, synonymdefinitions, example definitions, circular definitions and descriptive definitions are discussed. The usage definition and two definitions which explicate a semantic plus value, the contrast and diminutive definitions, are identified. Attention is also given to the role of the general introduction in a standard synchronic dictionary. Suggestions are made to improve the general introduction of HAT.
AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Wanneer semantiese inligting in 'n woordeboek ondersoek word, word alle aspekte van leksikale items se betekenis in ag geneem. Dit sluit homonimiese vorme en polisemiese onderskeidinge van leksikale items in, asook die semantiese betrekkinge wat leksikale items onderling met mekaar aangaan. Die leksikale items wat die makrostruktuur van die HAT vorm, word beskryf. Dit sluit subleksikale, multileksikale en vrye leksikale items in. Verskillende tipes multileksikale en subleksikale items word onderskei. Tans word multileksikale items in HAT nie na wense hanteer nie en voorstelle word aan die hand gedoen hoe die stelsel verbeter kan word. Moontlike oplossings vir die onderskeidingsprobleem tussen homonimie en polisemie, asook maniere waarop 'n leksikale item se polisemiese onderskeidinge vasgestel kan word, word verskaf. Aandag word ook aan die ordening van polisemiese onderskeidinge en homonimiese vorme gegee. Dit is belangrik dat 'n sinchroniese maatstaf gebruik word om tussen homonimie en polisemie te onderskei. Semantiese betrekkinge tussen leksikale items word met 'n wisselende mate van sukses deur HAT hanteer. Semantiese insluiting tussen leksikale items word die meeste beskryf. Daar bestaan egter probleme by die hantering van sinonimie tussen leksikale items. Semantiese aansluiting tussen leksikale items word min deur die woordeboek aangedui. Semantiese opposisie tussen leksikale items kan ook meer deur die HAT aangedui word. Die kruisverwysingstelsel van die HAT word ondersoek. Funksies van kruisverwysings word beskryf. Kruisverwysings word wel deur die HAT redaksie gebruik, maar hulle kan nog meer gebruik word. Soms word onduidelike tipografiese konvensies gebruik en dit het swak inligtingsoordrag tot gevolg. Die kruisverwysingstelsel van die HAT kan verbeter word deur dit in die toeligtende aantekeninge te verduidelik, spesifiek en ondubbelsinnig toe te pas en deur dit konsekwent te gebruik. Verskillende tipes definisies waarmee leksikale items gedefinieer word, word onderskei. Bekende leksikografiese definisies soos genus-differentia-definisies, sinoniemdefinisies, voorbeelddefinisies, sirkeldefinisies en deskriptiewe definisies word bespreek. Die gebruiksdefinisie en twee definsies wat semantiese pluswaardes ekspliseer, naamlik die teenstellingsdefinisie en die verkleiningsdefinisie,word geidentifiseer. Die rol van toeligtende aantekeninge in 'n handwoordeboek word bespreek. Daar word gewys op die swak toeligtende aantekeninge van die HAT. Voorstelle word gedoen oor hoe die hantering van semantiese inligting in die toeligtende aantekeninge verduidelik moet.

La tesi, en el marc de la Teoria Comunicativa de la Terminologia (TCT), es proposa observar els elements d'activació del valor terminològic en els verbs fraseològics del discurs especialitzat. Es descriuen, a diferents nivells, la sintaxi i la semàntica de verbs fraseològics d'ús comú i freqüents en textos d'economia i de genòmica, i es detecten diferències i semblances en el seu comportament en ambdós discursos d'especialitat per establir tendències.

A partir de les anàlisis, identifiquem les construccions verbals mínimes que són unitats de coneixement especialitzat (UCE) i observem si els verbs que fan de nucli sintàctic d'aquests sintagmes sofreixen canvis semàntics en els contextos especialitzats. Alhora, reinterpretem la proposta de factors d'activació d'Adelstein (2007) per als verbs, i confirmem empíricament diversos supòsits de la TCT sobre la polisèmia.

La tesi consta de tres parts: els fonaments de la recerca, l'anàlisi sintacticosemàntica del corpus, i els resultats i conclusions.
La tesis, en el marco de la Teoría Comunicativa de la Terminología (TCT), se propone observar los elementos de activación del valor terminológico en los verbos fraseológicos del discurso especializado. Se describe, a distintos niveles, la sintaxis y la semántica de los verbos fraseológicos de uso común y frecuentes en textos de economía y de genómica, y se detectan diferencias y similitudes en su comportamiento en ambos discursos de especialidad para establecer tendencias.

A partir de los análisis, identificamos las construcciones verbales mínimas que son unidades de conocimiento especializado (UCE) y observamos si los verbos que funcionan como núcleo sintáctico de estos sintagmas sufren cambios semánticos en los contextos especializados. Asimismo, reinterpretamos la propuesta de factores de activación de Adelstein (2007) para los verbos, y confirmamos empíricamente distintos supuestos de la TCT sobre la polisemia.

La tesis consta de tres partes: los fundamentos de la investigación, el análisis sintacticosemántico del corpus, i los resultados y conclusiones.
This thesis, within the frame of the Communicative Theory of Terminology (CTT), aims at observing the terminological-value activating elements of phraseological verbs in specialized discourse. Syntax and Semantics of common use and frequent phraseological verbs in Economy and Genomic texts are described at different levels, and differences and similarities in their behavior in both domain discourses are detected to establish tendencies.

From the analysis, we identify the minimal verbal constructions working as specialized knowledge units (SKU) and we observe if the verbs being the syntactic core of these groups suffer semantic changes in specialized contexts. Moreover, we reinterpret for verbs the activation factors proposal by Adelstein (2007, and we empirically confirm different assumptions of CTT on polysemy.

The thesis has three parts: the basis of the research, the syntax-semantic analysis of the corpus, and the results and conclusions

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2002.
Title from first page of PDF file. Document formatted into pages; contains xii, 320 p., also contains graphics. Includes abstract and vita. Advisor: David R. Dowty, Dept. of Linguistics. Includes bibliographical references (p. 315-320).

In Norstedts Comprehensive English-Swedish Dictionary (2000) it is said that the numbered list of senses under each headword is frequency ordered. Thus, the aim of this study is to see whether this frequency order of senses agrees with the frequencies appearing in the British National Corpus (BNC). Five English, polysemous verbs were studied. For each verb, a simple search in the corpus was carried out, displaying 50 random occurrences. Each collocate was encoded with the most compatible sense from the numbered list of senses in the dictionary. The encoded tokens were compiled and listed in frequency order. This list was compared to the dictionary's list of senses. Only two of the verbs reached agreement between the highest ranked dictionary sense and the most frequent sense in the BNC simple search. None of the verbs' dictionary orders agreed completely with the emerged frequency order of the corpus occurrences, why complementary collocational learning is advocated.

La información de clase semántica de los nombres es fundamental para una amplia variedad de tareas del procesamiento del lenguaje natural (PLN), como la traducción automática, la discriminación de referentes en tareas como la detección y el seguimiento de eventos, la búsqueda de respuestas, el reconocimiento y la clasificación de nombres de entidades, la construcción y ampliación automática de ontologías, la inferencia textual, etc. Una aproximación para resolver la construcción y el mantenimiento de los léxicos de gran cobertura que alimentan los sistemas de PNL, una tarea muy costosa y lenta, es la adquisición automática de información léxica, que consiste en la inducción de una clase semántica relacionada con una palabra en concreto a partir de datos de su distribución obtenidos de un corpus. Precisamente, por esta razón, se espera que la investigación actual sobre los métodos para la producción automática de léxicos de alta calidad, con gran cantidad de información y con anotación de clase como el trabajo que aquí presentamos, tenga un gran impacto en el rendimiento de la mayoría de las aplicaciones de PNL. En esta tesis, tratamos la adquisición automática de información léxica como un problema de clasificación. Con este propósito, adoptamos métodos de aprendizaje automático para generar un modelo que represente los datos de distribución vectorial que, basados en ejemplos conocidos, permitan hacer predicciones de otras palabras desconocidas. Las principales preguntas de investigación que planteamos en esta tesis son: (i) si los datos de corpus proporcionan suficiente información para construir representaciones de palabras de forma eficiente y que resulten en decisiones de clasificación precisas y sólidas, y (ii) si la adquisición automática puede gestionar, también, los nombres polisémicos. Para hacer frente a estos problemas, realizamos una serie de validaciones empíricas sobre nombres en inglés. Nuestros resultados confirman que la información obtenida a partir de la distribución de los datos de corpus es suficiente para adquirir automáticamente clases semánticas, como lo demuestra un valor-F global promedio de 0,80 aproximadamente utilizando varios modelos de recuento de contextos y en datos de corpus de distintos tamaños. No obstante, tanto el estado de la cuestión como los experimentos que realizamos destacaron una serie de retos para este tipo de modelos, que son reducir la escasez de datos del vector y dar cuenta de la polisemia nominal en las representaciones distribucionales de las palabras. En este contexto, los modelos de word embedding (WE) mantienen la “semántica” subyacente en las ocurrencias de un nombre en los datos de corpus asignándole un vector. Con esta elección, hemos sido capaces de superar el problema de la escasez de datos, como lo demuestra un valor-F general promedio de 0,91 para las clases semánticas de nombres de sentido único, a través de una combinación de la reducción de la dimensionalidad y de números reales. Además, las representaciones de WE obtuvieron un rendimiento superior en la gestión de las ocurrencias asimétricas de cada sentido de los nombres de tipo complejo polisémicos regulares en datos de corpus. Como resultado, hemos podido clasificar directamente esos nombres en su propia clase semántica con un valor-F global promedio de 0,85. La principal aportación de esta tesis consiste en una validación empírica de diferentes representaciones de distribución utilizadas para la clasificación semántica de nombres junto con una posterior expansión del trabajo anterior, lo que se traduce en recursos léxicos y conjuntos de datos innovadores que están disponibles de forma gratuita para su descarga y uso.
La información de clase semántica de los nombres es fundamental para una amplia variedad de tareas del procesamiento del lenguaje natural (PLN), como la traducción automática, la discriminación de referentes en tareas como la detección y el seguimiento de eventos, la búsqueda de respuestas, el reconocimiento y la clasificación de nombres de entidades, la construcción y ampliación automática de ontologías, la inferencia textual, etc. Una aproximación para resolver la construcción y el mantenimiento de los léxicos de gran cobertura que alimentan los sistemas de PNL, una tarea muy costosa y lenta, es la adquisición automática de información léxica, que consiste en la inducción de una clase semántica relacionada con una palabra en concreto a partir de datos de su distribución obtenidos de un corpus. Precisamente, por esta razón, se espera que la investigación actual sobre los métodos para la producción automática de léxicos de alta calidad, con gran cantidad de información y con anotación de clase como el trabajo que aquí presentamos, tenga un gran impacto en el rendimiento de la mayoría de las aplicaciones de PNL. En esta tesis, tratamos la adquisición automática de información léxica como un problema de clasificación. Con este propósito, adoptamos métodos de aprendizaje automático para generar un modelo que represente los datos de distribución vectorial que, basados en ejemplos conocidos, permitan hacer predicciones de otras palabras desconocidas. Las principales preguntas de investigación que planteamos en esta tesis son: (i) si los datos de corpus proporcionan suficiente información para construir representaciones de palabras de forma eficiente y que resulten en decisiones de clasificación precisas y sólidas, y (ii) si la adquisición automática puede gestionar, también, los nombres polisémicos. Para hacer frente a estos problemas, realizamos una serie de validaciones empíricas sobre nombres en inglés. Nuestros resultados confirman que la información obtenida a partir de la distribución de los datos de corpus es suficiente para adquirir automáticamente clases semánticas, como lo demuestra un valor-F global promedio de 0,80 aproximadamente utilizando varios modelos de recuento de contextos y en datos de corpus de distintos tamaños. No obstante, tanto el estado de la cuestión como los experimentos que realizamos destacaron una serie de retos para este tipo de modelos, que son reducir la escasez de datos del vector y dar cuenta de la polisemia nominal en las representaciones distribucionales de las palabras. En este contexto, los modelos de word embedding (WE) mantienen la “semántica” subyacente en las ocurrencias de un nombre en los datos de corpus asignándole un vector. Con esta elección, hemos sido capaces de superar el problema de la escasez de datos, como lo demuestra un valor-F general promedio de 0,91 para las clases semánticas de nombres de sentido único, a través de una combinación de la reducción de la dimensionalidad y de números reales. Además, las representaciones de WE obtuvieron un rendimiento superior en la gestión de las ocurrencias asimétricas de cada sentido de los nombres de tipo complejo polisémicos regulares en datos de corpus. Como resultado, hemos podido clasificar directamente esos nombres en su propia clase semántica con un valor-F global promedio de 0,85. La principal aportación de esta tesis consiste en una validación empírica de diferentes representaciones de distribución utilizadas para la clasificación semántica de nombres junto con una posterior expansión del trabajo anterior, lo que se traduce en recursos léxicos y conjuntos de datos innovadores que están disponibles de forma gratuita para su descarga y uso.
Lexical semantic class information for nouns is critical for a broad variety of Natural Language Processing (NLP) tasks including, but not limited to, machine translation, discrimination of referents in tasks such as event detection and tracking, question answering, named entity recognition and classification, automatic construction and extension of ontologies, textual inference, etc. One approach to solve the costly and time-consuming manual construction and maintenance of large-coverage lexica to feed NLP systems is the Automatic Acquisition of Lexical Information, which involves the induction of a semantic class related to a particular word from distributional data gathered within a corpus. This is precisely why current research on methods for the automatic production of high- quality information-rich class-annotated lexica, such as the work presented here, is expected to have a high impact on the performance of most NLP applications. In this thesis, we address the automatic acquisition of lexical information as a classification problem. For this reason, we adopt machine learning methods to generate a model representing vectorial distributional data which, grounded on known examples, allows for the predictions of other unknown words. The main research questions we investigate in this thesis are: (i) whether corpus data provides sufficient distributional information to build efficient word representations that result in accurate and robust classification decisions and (ii) whether automatic acquisition can handle also polysemous nouns. To tackle these problems, we conducted a number of empirical validations on English nouns. Our results confirmed that the distributional information obtained from corpus data is indeed sufficient to automatically acquire lexical semantic classes, demonstrated by an average overall F1-Score of almost 0.80 using diverse count-context models and on different sized corpus data. Nonetheless, both the State of the Art and the experiments we conducted highlighted a number of challenges of this type of model such as reducing vector sparsity and accounting for nominal polysemy in distributional word representations. In this context, Word Embeddings (WE) models maintain the “semantics” underlying the occurrences of a noun in corpus data by mapping it to a feature vector. With this choice, we were able to overcome the sparse data problem, demonstrated by an average overall F1-Score of 0.91 for single-sense lexical semantic noun classes, through a combination of reduced dimensionality and “real” numbers. In addition, the WE representations obtained a higher performance in handling the asymmetrical occurrences of each sense of regular polysemous complex-type nouns in corpus data. As a result, we were able to directly classify such nouns into their own lexical-semantic class with an average overall F1-Score of 0.85. The main contribution of this dissertation consists of an empirical validation of different distributional representations used for nominal lexical semantic classification along with a subsequent expansion of previous work, which results in novel lexical resources and data sets that have been made freely available for download and use.

Cette thèse se consacre aux enjeux de la polysémie verbale pour l’acquisition des langues secondes. Nous nous intéressons plus particulièrement à la polysémie du verbe prendre. Cette thèse poursuit deux objectifs complémentaires. D’une part, notre premier objectif est de décrire la polysémie du verbe prendre au moyen d’une analyse en sémantique lexicale dans une approche cognitive. D’autre part, notre second objectif est d’évaluer l’incidence de la polysémie du verbe prendre sur les connaissances qu’ont les apprenants de ce verbe et d’isoler les différentes acceptions de prendre mises au jour par notre analyse sémantique, qui s’avèrent problématiques pour les apprenants du français L2. Par ailleurs, nous cherchons également à savoir si les problèmes liés à la polysémie chez les anglophones peuvent être liés à l’influence translangagière.L’analyse sémantique du verbe prendre porte sur l’ensemble des acceptions prédicatives du verbe. Notre corpus d’analyse provient de données lexicales issues de plusieurs dictionnaires de référence. Afin de délimiter le corpus d’acceptions soumis à l’analyse sémantique, nous avons effectué une analyse syntaxique permettant de départager les différents emplois du verbe prendre : les constructions à verbe support, les locutions verbales et les acceptions prédicatives. Puis, nous proposons une analyse sémantique monosémique des acceptions prédicatives du verbe prendre qui s’articule autour d’un noyau de sens tripartite qui ne correspond à aucune des acceptions spécifiques du verbe, mais qui est présent dans l’ensemble de ces acceptions. Chacune des parties du noyau de sens peut faire l’objet d’un fenêtrage de l’attention, qui nous permet de mettre au jour les différents sens du verbe. Nous avons également émis des hypothèses sur les différences entre le verbe prendre et ses équivalents en anglais. Pour atteindre le second objectif de notre travail, nous avons mené une expérimentation auprès de 191 apprenants du français langue seconde. Tous les participants ont complété trois tâches expérimentales : un test de closure afin de mesurer leur niveau de compétence langagière en français, une tâche de production écrite et une tâche de jugement d’acceptabilité. Les résultats des analyses de régression logistique et multinomiale montrent non seulement que l’analyse sémantique que nous avons proposée permet de prédire la connaissance des différentes acceptions du verbe par les apprenants du français L2, mais aussi que les apprenants anglophones et allophones ont un comportement différent par rapport aux types d’acceptions du verbe prendre, comportement que nous avons pu expliquer par l’influence translangagière chez les participants anglophones
The present dissertation focuses on the acquisition of highly polysemous verbs by French as a second language learners. I am particularly interested in the polysemy of the verb prendre. This dissertation has two complementary objectives. On the one hand, the first objective is to describe the polysemy of prendre through a lexical semantic analysis within a cognitive framework. On the other hand, the second objective is to evaluate the impact of this polysemy on learners' knowledge of the verb’s different senses in order to isolate those which are the most problematic for French L2 learners. Furthermore, I also investigate whether the problems associated with polysemy for Anglophone learners can be explained through cross-linguistic influence. The semantic analysis of the verb prendre describes all the predicative uses of the verb and is based on lexical data from several dictionnaires. Prior to carrying out the semantic analysis, a battery of syntactic tests was used in order to categorize the different uses of the verb prendre into the following categories: support verb constructions, idiomatic expressions and predicative uses. I propose that the verb prendre has an abstract core meaning which can be divided into three parts. While this abstract core meaning does not correspond to any of the specific senses of the verb, it is present in all of them. I use the cognitive semantic concept of the windowing of attention in order to explain how each of the parts of the core meaning can be windowed in order to obtain the different senses of the verb. Moreover, this analysis allowed me to formulated hypotheses about the differences between the verb prendre and its equivalents in English.In order to meet the second objective of this dissertation, I conducted an experiment on 191 learners of French as a second language. All participants completed three tasks: a cloze test to measure their proficiency level in French, a guided written production task and an acceptability judgement task. The results of the logistic and multinomial regression analyses show not only that the semantic analysis proposed can predict participants’ knowledge of the different senses of the verb, but also that participants whose first language is English behave differently from those whose first language is another language, confirming the presence of cross-linguistic influence for the English-speaking participants

Les verbes de position sont décrits du point de vue d'une invariance mise au point pour chacun d'entre eux en fonction de la diversité des contextes dans laquelle on les trouve. Cela conduit d'une part à considérer que dans certains contextes leur sens n'est pas inutile au contenu informatif de l'énoncé et qu'il n'est pas équivalent à celui d'un verbe d'existence. Au contraire, l'emploi d'un verbe de position par un locuteur correspond à un choix motivé par la désignation de quelque chose de plus que l'être ou la présence du sujet. D'autre part, cette invariance mène à distinguer clairement le fonctionnement sémantique de chacun de ces verbes alors qu'ils semblent entrer en concurrence lorsqu'ils apparaissent dans des contextes visiblement similaires
Posture verbs are described from the perspective of an invariance developed for each of them according to the diversity of the contexts where they can be found. It conduces, on the one hand, to consider that in some contexts their meaning is not ancillary to the informative content of the statement, and that it is not equivalent to the meaning of a being verb. In fact, the use of a posture verb by a speaker refers to a choice motivated by something more than the being or the presence of the subject. On the other hand, this invariance facilitates clear distinction of the semantical function of each of these verbs, while they may seem to have the same meaning, when they occur in contexts which seem similar at first glance

This chapter addresses teaching the History of English from a construction grammar perspective, one in which language is viewed as comprised of form-meaning pairings on a gradient between lexical and grammatical constructions and language change is viewed as a series of micro-steps that involve closely related changes in syntax, morphology, phonology, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse functions. It considers the creation of new constructions, changes to existing constructions, and the relationship between individual words and the constructions in which they frequently appear. The chapter provides specific examples, drawn from all periods of English, from Old to contemporary English, to demonstrate to students this new and productive approach to historical linguistics.

In this research a linguistic study has been carried out from the perspective of cognitive semantics on the mechanisms of categorization and semasiological lexical generation of popular plant names (phytonyms). More specifically, of the mechanisms of categorization and semasiological lexical generation: metaphor and metonymy with which polysemy is achieved. Thus, some theoretical tools of cognitive semantics such as Geeraerts' Prototype Theory (1997 and 2010) will be used. In short, cultural history and experience are the basis for the creation of phytonyms and most of them have originated from changes 3) Ephemeral semantic changes: semantic polygenesis and 4) Encyclopedic nature of semantic change.

This chapter moves on to the routinization of symbolic associations, which, again in cooperation with paradigmatic associations, subserve the cognitive representation of lexical form-meaning and meaning-form links. It is shown that long-standing insights from cognitive semantics and lexicology, including the prototype structures of categories and the prominence of basic-level categories, derive from the routinization of symbolic associations as controlled by frequency of use, basic experiences, salience, and other factors. Two strengthening principles are formulated: semasiological strengthening, dealing with polysemy and prototype effects, and onomasiological strengthening, related to basic-level and synonym-preference and hyponym-preference effects. With regard to the context-dependence of meaning it is argued that symbolic associations are always influenced by syntagmatic and pragmatic associations reflecting combinatorial and contextual experience.

The object of this study is to analyze German lexical units/borrowings functioning in the central part of the Boyko dialect of the south­western Ukrainian dialect group. Lexical germanisms, in particular the names of phenomena and things, features and actions, as well as phraseology, paremiology and other sayings related to life and ac­tivities (crafts, agriculture, construction) of the inhabitants of the Eastern Carpathians, were mainly subject to phonetic and word­forming substitutions, they narrowed or changed their semantics. A small part of foreign language elements remains unchanged in the Boyko dialect. Changes in the lexical meaning of words within one action have been revealed in borrowings, polysemy and, less frequently, homonymy have been recorded, and duplication of German words by Ukrainian language units in lexicalized combinations has been observed. As a result of the interaction of the Boyko dialect with the German language (di­alects) due to long­term contacts, there is a fairly large number of foreign words reg­istered in the speech of the Boykos; having lost touch with the source language, they are perceived as an integral part of the Ukrainian national language by the indigenous inhabitants of the mountains. Part of the dialectal lexicon (borrowings with narrowed or changed semantics, etc.), collected by the author for three decades using the method of stationary obser­vation in the mode of free narratives (provoked by questions) from representatives of different generations in 30 different settlements (Skole district, Lviv region, Ukraine) served as the material for this study.

Ambiguity is one of fundamental properties of any language. The emergence of polysemy is connected with the result of the natural language development and the conditions for its functioning as a means of communication. Existing at various linguistic levels: lexical, grammatical, syntactic, homonymy can be the basis of ambiguity. Lexical and grammatical homonyms appearing in the process of the his-torical development of the language reduce the number of linguistic forms, give the expressiveness to the utterance and can be the basis for creating texts based on a play on words. However, semantic homonymy can make it difficult to understand state-ments, especially when translating jokes into another language. Recreating a pun, translators can make typical mistakes reproducing literally the semantics of the core elements, then it can lead to a violation of the norms of the target language, and the creation of texts that are beyond the understanding of the recipients. The ambiguity arising at the syntactic level is the implementation of such a non-standard connection of words in a sentence as a two-way communication, in which a word or phrase is subordinate not to one, but several dominants simultane-ously. This type of homonymy is presented in two varieties of homonyms: structural homonyms, which, being subordinate to any of several possible dominants, not only do not change the meaning of the utterance, but also give the speech more expressiveness, and syntactic homonyms, which make the addressee choose one of several possible meanings of the utterance. It is this kind of syntactic homonymy that is a negative phenomenon that impedes the process of communication, and, therefore, in need of elimination. This article examines the influence of syntactic and semantic homonymy on the process of speech perception. The paper points out the positive and negative as-pects of semantic ambiguity that affects the understanding of statements when creat-ing puns and translating them from Russian into English, examines the reasons for the emergence of syntactic homonyms in the Russian language, proves the patterns functionality of the text initial perception based on the rules of semantic combination of words.

The article is devoted to the problem of mastering the semantics of secondary names by primary schoolchildren with impaired speech development. The publication presents the results of an empirical study of the polysemy of lexical units in the speech of schoolchildren with general speech underdevelopment. The author defines the methodological aspects of vocabulary-semantic work on words with a figurative meaning and provides sets of exercises for their semantisation, interpretation and contextualization

Exploring the shift in meanings of translating the preposition “on” from English to Vietnamese, the study, besides analyzing the cases of the changes in meanings of the preposition, aims at explaining the cases where the preposition “on” is not translated as “trên” and its Vietnamese equivalents under the cognitive semantics approach. The methods of analysis and synthesis of theories from the available data on the preposition “on” as well as the methods of classifying and systematizing prepositions are applied to English-Vietnamese translation. From the collected data, this study reveals the cases of the shift in meanings of “on” and the characteristics of multiple meanings of the preposition under the cognitive semantics approach. In the course of translation, contextual meanings are used in order to convey the meanings appropriately in the Vietnamese style. The research paper can make some contribution to the teaching of translation and make it a reference material for English learners.