Regular polysemy and novel word-sense identification

Abstract

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.