POLYSEMY – AN IMPORTANT SOURCE OF LEXICON ENRICHMENT

Tatiana BABIN-RUSU Universitatea de Stat din Moldova

Аннотация

The present article studies one of the most controversial issues of modern linguistics, i. e. polysemy. Polysemy is a quality of the natural language signs by means of which they differ from the artificial codes constructed according to the principle ″a single sign – a single meaning”. The ability to name more things or to render different information can be found with all the meaningful utits of the language first of all with those that belong to the common vocabulary of a certain language. Different papers on modern semantics treat polysemy as an ambiguity. Some linguists consider that polysemy allows us to exploit rationally the potential of words by giving them more distinct meanings. The price of this rationalization though heads to ambiguity, to pathologic confusion which necessitate the intervention of a “physician”. It is due to this fact that the principle of semantic and contextual disambiguation was introduced and all the polysemantic words are analyzed by means of it. The given principle begins with the practical necessity to differenciate the meanings of polysemantic words, especially if these are found in a big number. More often the differences are established, semantically by identifying the meaningful components or the semes. The distinctive character of the semes are checked contextually, i. e. by revealing the specific combinations of meanings. As a fundamental principle of a modern semantic analysis, disambiguation supposes the fact that a word enters a lexical paradigmatic class bearing only one meaning of itself. Keywords: polysemy, disambiguation, semantics, context, monosemy, seme.