Managing polysemy in terminological resources*

Abstract

Polysemy, even when it is considered within specialized domains, is a recurrent phenomenon and the topic is debated from time to time in terminology literature. Part of this literature still advocates ways to prevent polysemy. Another portion recognizes the prevalence of polysemy, especially in specialized corpora, but considers it from the perspective of other phenomena, such as ambiguity, indeterminacy, categorization or variation. Although the number of perspectives on meaning have increased over the years, the treatment of polysemy in terminological resources is still unsatisfactory. This article first shows that polysemy is an integral part of specialized communication and that there are different kinds of domain-specific polysemy. Then, it reviews selected perspectives that have been taken on polysemy in terminology literature. The treatment of 45 polysemous lexical items in four specialized resources is then analysed. Finally, different methods based on lexical semantics are proposed to account for polysemy in terminological resources.