Polysemy

The present paper aims to investigate the polysemy of the Persian word /šax/ from the perspective of cognitive sociolinguistics. The study begins with introducing the tenets of cognitive sociolinguistics, and then goes on to investigate the polysemy of the Persian adjective /šax/ within this framework. In cognitive sociolinguistics, it is believed that polysemy cannot be reduced to a static state, one and the same for all speakers of a language. Rather, social variables like age and gender of speakers affect the way they perceive different senses of the polysemous words. This paper, in line with cognitive sociolinguistic, studies on polysemy, specifically those of Robinson (2010, 2012a, 2012b, and 2014), employed advanced statistical methods of Logistic Regression and Cross Tab to study the polysemy of Persian adjective /šax/ among 200 Persian speakers, both male and female, of different ages, selected from the Narmak neighborhood, Tehran, Iran, within the time span of spring and summer 2018. The results show that the cognitive sociolinguistic approach works desirably in lexical polysemy studies. In addition, the use of advanced statistical methods revealed a number of important facts about different senses of /šax/ in terms of age and gender, which provide a better description of polysemy in Persian language.

The present study aims at investigating English lexicon polysemy within the cognitive approach to study the way based on which Persian language learners learn English lexicon with the concepts used in cognitive linguistics such as, prototype, polysemy, categorization, etc. The nature of the methodology used in this qualitative research for studying the meanings of English lexicon is a descriptive-analytic method. After the semantic analysis of the English lexicon based on the model of Dirven & Verspoor (2004), it was found that the meanings of the lexicon are classifiable based on theoretical procedures on cognitive semantics. The authors are trying to show the cognitive concepts in cognitive linguistics can be used for teaching English lexicon. The findings, generally, showed that the unconscious knowledge of learners in learning the cognitive structure of the meanings of the lexicon has a meaningful relationship with learning. The results also revealed that the lexicon has a semantic network semantically, in which the notion of core or prototype is located in the center of the semantic network and the rest of the meanings can be examined as the peripheral meanings of a lexicon.

The polysemy is one of the inevitable phenomena in inter-lingual translation.The collocation relation in polysemous phenomenon is assumed as one of key concepts at this phenomenon and this image has caused many researchers of Islamic studies to consider it as a kind of figures of speech and similar cases in Quran. Arabic term ‘توفی’ in this Quranic phrase: ‘إِنِّی مُتَوَفِّیکَ وَرَافِعُکَ إِلَیَّ: I am going to terminate the period of your stay (on earth) and cause you to ascend unto Me’ may include some concepts.death, sleep, perfect capture and seizure of soul etcTranslation of this phrase of Quranic verse in inter-lingual translation from Arabic to English has led to some challenges in estimation of the closest and most precise equivalent for it in contemporary translations from Holy Quran. In addition to citation from ten translated versions from contemporary translations of Holy Quran in the present paper, and by using descriptive analytical methodology and taking approach toward votes of Quranic exegetes, it is inferred that in comparison with other translation versions, Shakir’s translation may reflect context of this verse more clearly; while, other translation versions . Irving, Pickthall and Sarvar have presented free translation of this verse and translation works such as Saffarzadeh, Qara’i, Progressive Muslims and Arberry remained committed to lexicons at this verse and they represented literal translation from this Quranic verse. Similarly, translation versions from Muhamed and Samira have inversed fact of magic adventure of this verse rather than presentation of an image of death of Jesus Christ

This paper aims to study 7 to 12-year-old Persian-speaking children’s comprehension of polysemy through semantics. The research method is descriptive-analytic, and two kinds of methodology in data collection such as documentary resources and fieldwork have been applied. For collecting data, each of the six elementary school grades course books ‘Farsi’ (2018) has been studied and all polysemous words within each of these course books have been extracted. Accordingly, to evaluate polysemy comprehension in children, a multiple-choice test containing two questions was prepared for each grade and asked 25 participants to answer in each grade and each gender from among elementary schools in Tehran. In each grade, 100 answers were received and based on the number of correct answers children’s polysemy comprehension was evaluated. These tests were administered under school authorities’ control and children had to answer in 15 minutes. The results show that most children found the polysemous words without problem only within a context and in relation to the collocated words. Also, children can comprehend the exact meaning of polysemous words based on the encyclopedic viewpoint of meaning which is rooted in human social and physical experience. Moreover, children based on their background knowledge differentiate between multiple meanings of polysemous words.

In the present study, we analyze the semantic fragmentation and conventionalization in Persian compound nouns ending in the verbal stems –andāz ‘throw’, -band ‘fasten/close,’ -foruš ‘sell’, -gir ‘catch’, -keš ‘pull’, -paz ‘cook’, -yāb ‘find’, and -zan ‘hit’ from the usage-based perspective. The analysis is based on a 800 data set extracted from diachronic and synchronic corpora. The words produced from the general compounding pattern [XV PRS]N can be categorized in a range of semantic categories, including agent, instrument, location, and object. In describing the semantic fragmentation of [XV PRS]N, we propose the human agent as the starting meaning, from which the instrument sub-pattern is derived by the mechanism of metaphorical extension. However, to justify the object and location meanings, we consider the metonymic extension mechanism to be involved. The sense extension mechanisms do not only apply to the individual words but can happen on the pattern level. It is also argued that these mechanisms are not mechanically applied to all the patterns ending in the verbal stems, instead, it is the usage and the communicative needs of the speakers that determine the semantic fragmentation of any patterns. To illustrate this point, as a case study, we focus on the development of instrument meaning in the pattern [X-paz PRS]N. We show that the instrument sub-pattern is a recent linguistic phenomenon that coincides with the introduction of modern cooking equipment with mostly English names to Iranian society. The increasing use of these types of equipment has led to a new communicative need for naming such instruments. This extra-linguistic factor has motivated the pattern [X-paz PRS]N to be extended through analogy with English compound instrument nouns. The findings of this study may contribute to the understanding of word-formation patterns in general and compounding patterns in particular.