Polysemy in Cognitive Linguistics (review)

The Fifth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference (Amsterdam, 1997) has already provided material for three other thematic publications, the present collection of articles being devoted to polysemy. In the ‘Introduction’ (ix–xxvii), the editors present an overview of the treatment of polysemy in linguistics which serves as a convenient background for the specific analyses that follow.

The first of these is Birgitta Meex’s (1–35) corpus-based analysis of the German preposition über as a continuum of usages or extensions in spatial and nonspatial domains. Next is Tuomas Huumo’s (37–56) account of three Finnish polysemous scalar particles with an underlying temporal meaning, followed by Willy Martin’s (57–81) discussion of frames in representing polysemy, the role of frame slots and fillers, and the power of frames to generate sense entensions. Eugene H. Casad (83–114), in turn, analyzes the polysemy of the Cora locative prefix va’a- as deriving from two different verbs, responsible for the two distinct mental models associated with the prefix. The notion of polysemy, and a cognitive linguistic treatment of it, is then employed by Michael B. Smith (115–59) in an account of quirky case in Icelandic, where different cases are held to reflect different construals of a situation.

The next two articles deal with Bantu languages. First, Kari-Anne Selvik (161–84) investigates three Setswana noun classes, the semantics of which can be represented by means of networks of specific and abstract conceptual schemas. Then, A. P. Hendrikse (185–212) looks at Southern Bantu noun class prefixes showing patterns of polysemy within individual noun classes. Polysemous relationships, however, can also be recognized intercategorially, that is, for the whole class prefix system.

The last three contributions to the volume involve experimental studies. Two of the three are also specifically concerned with psycholinguistic issues. First, Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. and Teenie Matlock (213–39) discuss the problems of the psychological validity of cognitive linguistic accounts of polysemy and report on experiments designed to discover speakers’ intuitions about the meanings of polysemous items. On-line experiments relating to the processing of adjectives have been used by Frank Brisard, Gert van Rillaer, and Dominiek Sandra (261–84) to test three conceptions of the representational status of polysemy in the mental lexicon. Separating these two articles is Dinara A. Beitel, Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr., and Paul Sanders’s (241–60) account of the polysemy of the English preposition on. Experiments suggest, in accordance with the precepts of cognitive linguistics, that the word’s meanings are grounded in and related to one another via embodied image schemas.

Throughout the volume, polysemy is viewed in its various aspects, not only as a phenomenon in lexical semantics but also as a categorizing relationship evidenced in other areas of linguistic analysis. It seems that the reformulation of the notion and the extension of its applicability is amajor step in cognitive linguistics towards a unified account of language.