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Article published In:
The Mental Lexicon
Vol. 18:1 (2023) ► pp.94–119

Regular polysemy and novel word-sense identification

ORCID logo | University of Fribourg
ORCID logo | University of Fribourg
ORCID logo | Université Sorbonne Paris Nord | LLF, CNRS
ORCID logo | Université Paris Cité | LLF, CNRS

This study examines speakers’ intuitions about novel word senses created through regular polysemy patterns. We investigate the effect of scalar regularity and lexical figure (metaphor vs. metonymy) on the identification of novel word senses, based on a detection experiment. It is shown that the more regular a polysemy pattern is, the less salient are the novel senses it produces, and that metaphorical patterns derive more salient novel senses than metonymic patterns. These results provide insights into the processing of novel word senses and support a non-homogeneous mental representation of regular polysemous words.

Keywords: novel word sense, neological intuition, regular polysemy, metonymy, metaphor
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Background
    • Ambiguous words in the mental lexicon
    • Processing novel word senses
    • Measuring the regularity of polysemy patterns
  • Selection and evaluation of polysemy patterns
  • Preliminary study
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
    • Results
  • Neologism detection experiment
    • Participants
    • Materials
    • Procedure
    • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Supplementary material
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 30 March 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ml.21002.lom
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Vicente, Agustín
2024. Polysemies and the one representation hypothesis. The Mental Lexicon DOI logo

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