RE: polysemous concept

Pete Phillips (p.m.phillips@cliff.shef.ac.uk)
Thu, 4 Jun 1998 09:30:59 +0100

Loose language gets us nowhere I suppose. I have been attempting to bridge
the gap between Rolf's psycholinguistics, Silva's lexical semantics and my
own nascent understanding of cognitive linguistics by using some words in a
pretty loose fashion. As I understand it Rolf's *concept* = Silva's
*sense* = cognitive linguistics' *category*. A category can have any
number of lexemes within it differentiated by different attributes. Hence
my idea that a category/concept/sense can have different meanings
(polysemous) depending on the person doing the conceptualizing, the
presupposition pool they are using, the context for which a lexeme is
needed - and so I suppose I have also introduced the whole realm of
sociolinguistics as well!

Anyhow if my later post to Rolf helped, I hope this even later post does
not obfuscate!

Pete Phillips,
Lecturer in NT,
Cliff College, Calver, Derbyshire, UK
Tel: 01246 582321
Fax: 01246 583739
http://champness.shef.ac.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: clayton stirling bartholomew [SMTP:c.s.bartholomew@worldnet.att.net]
Sent: Wednesday, June 03, 1998 9:31 AM
To: Pete Phillips; b-greek
Subject: Re: polysemous concept

Pete Phillips wrote:
> Hence, to use an example from
> my research but one which may cause problems if any one takes it up, the
> Greek lexeme LOGOS refers to a polysemous concept involving ideas, words,
> communication, reasoning, numeracy, philosophy, wisdom......etc.

Pete,

Could you explain what a polysemous concept is? Sounds like an oxymoron.
Are
you arguing that all the different senses that are indicated by symbol
LOGOS
in various contexts are all tied together some how? If this is the case
then
you and Rolf are closer together than I had previously thought and also
very
far away from Louw and Nida and Silva and others who use the "symbol, sense
and referent" model and do not support the word:concept model that Rolf is
advocating.

Clay

--
Clayton Stirling Bartholomew
Three Tree Point
P.O. Box 255 Seahurst WA 98062