How concepts and conventions structure the lexicon: Cross-linguistic evidence from polysemy

摘要: Words often have multiple distinct but related senses, a phenomenon called polysemy. For instance, in English, words like chicken and lamb can label animals their meats while glass tin materials artifacts derived from those materials. In this paper, we ask why some senses not others, thus what constrains the structure of Previous work has pointed to two different sources constraints. First, polysemy could reflect conceptual structure: word be based on how ideas are associated mind. Second, set arbitrary, language-specific conventions: difficult derive might memorized stored. We used large-scale cross-linguistic survey elucidate relative contributions concepts conventions explored whether 27 patterns found English also present 14 other languages. Consistent with idea that is constrained by structure, almost all surveyed (e.g., animal for meat, material artifact) were across However, consistent reflects conventions, variation languages instantiated specific languages). argue these results best explained “conventions-constrained-by-concepts” model, which learned makes types relations between easier grasp than such same evolve This opens new view lexical linguistic adaptation it children learn meanings build lexicon.