Polysemy and English Learning

Polysemy and English Learning

The polysemy is of Greek origin, meaning the coexistence of many meanings of a word and phrase. That is to say a same word or phrase has different meanings in different situation, and what I want to say is that it has no change of its word class, pronunciation, spelling and so forth. For example, the word “flight ”may mean “passing through the air”, “power of flying ”, “air of journey”, etc. According to Crystal(1980:274), polysemy refer to a lexical term which has a large number of meanings used in semantic analyze.”

A word when it is first coined, its meanings are always unique. However, as the development of society, especially the development of linguistics, meanings are added to a word and polysemy is commonly seen and used in our English learning. Therefore it has been closely connected with our English learning now. Then here comes our thinking, how can we combine it with our learning and make full use of them? How can we make us benefit as many as possible from it? What should we pay attention to when we come across with it? So let’s see sth. together!

There are two processes leading to polysemy. One is radiation, which is process in which the primary or meaning occupy the center while secondary meanings radiates from it in different direction like rays. The meanings are independent respectively from each other, but can be all linked to the central meaning. Take “neck”for example.

1) the part of a man or animal joining the head to body

2) the part of the garments

3) the neck of animal used as food

4) the part of anything

Of the five meanings, 1) is primary and the rest are derived, but other are directly related to 1). As a result, we can see that the word “neck has developed through the process of radiation.

The other is concatenation which means linking together. As change happens, the later meaning of the word has no connection with the first meaning mostly. The meaning of a word moves away from its first meaning gradually, in other word, for example, the word “candidate”:

1)White-robed

2) office seeker in white gouns

3) a person who seeks an office

4) a person proposed for a place, award, etc.

Of the four meanings, 1) is the primary meaning, the others are derived. However, there is no directly connection between 1) and 4). They only have relations with the preceding one. We can easily see the word “candidate”has developed from the process of concatenation.

Now that we have made clear the processes of polysemy, we obviously should relate it to our English learning. We will meet such kind of situation, we grasp a certain meaning of a word firmly, while at the time we come across the same word in a totally different content, sometimes we can not catch its correct meaning for we did

not really master its practical use in the various occasions or remember its primary meanings. Consequently, there are some attentions we should bear in mind when are learning polysemy in English. First of all, we should pay attention to the time period that we learn different words as well as learn to summarize the word that we are leaning. During different period of our learning, we should draw our attention to the different important points. That is to say when we are beginners, it is apparent that we can only know some of the meanings, even one meaning, don’t worry later we will know more. Now what you should do is try your best to be sure the meaning know, and then when we know more, it’s time for us to learn to compare and summary these sameness, difference, and connections actively. Make sure that you learn them in a effective way and easy way. Then we will master their different meanings accurately. Secondly, we need attack our attention more on the central meanings or original meaning for the radiations. It is a good method to imagine the other meanings of a word according its central meaning. This will improve your efficiency of memorizing the meaning of the word. So try to catch the central one. In the end, I think we should direct ourselves in the various context, avoiding grasping the meanings mechanically, because the polysematic words appearing in articles offer us a easier way to remember the unfamiliar meanings. Don’t just stare at the dictionary as dumb as an ox.

So we can recognize that polysemy is a common phenomenon of linguistics, particularly in English learning. It plays an indispensable role in English learning. Therefore we should combine it in our learning. Bear in mind the attentions I offered. If you can fully understand polysemy and make the best use of them acutely, you will certainly benefit a lot.