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Why Polysemy Supports Radical Contextualism

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Modeling and Using Context (CONTEXT 2019)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 11939))

Abstract

After presenting two forms of Contextualism, I will argue that the phenomenon of polysemy supports the stronger one – so-called Radical Contextualism. My argument will be based on a comparison between indexicality and polysemy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The expression ‘basic set’ comes from Cappelen and Lepore 2005: 1–2.

  2. 2.

    On Methodological Contextualism, see Recanati 1994 and 2004: 160.

  3. 3.

    See Searle 1975 and especially Morgan 1978.

  4. 4.

    “A strict reductionist approach would seek maximum economy by positing a single structure to represent the meaning of a lexical category. However, if our goal is to properly characterize a speaker’s knowledge of linguistic convention, any such account is unworkable. From neither the category prototype alone, nor from an all-subsuming superschema (should there be one), is it possible to predict the exact array of extended or specialised values conventionally associated with a lexeme (out af all those values that are cognitively plausible). A speaker must learn specifically, for instance, that run is predicated of people, animals, engines, water, hosiery, noses, and candidates for political office; the conventions of English might well be different. Equally deficient is the atomistic approach of treating the individual senses as distinct and unrelated lexical items. The claim of massive homonymy implied by such an analysis is simply unwarranted—it is not by accident, but rather by virtue of intuitively evident relationships, that the meanings are symbolized by the same form. A network representation provides all the necessary information: an inventory of senses describing the expression’s conventional range of usage; the relationships these senses bear to one another; schemas expressing the generalizations supported by a given range of values; and specifications of distance and cognitive salience.” (Langacker 1991: 268).

References

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Collège de France, PSL, 75005, Paris, France

    François Recanati

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  1. François Recanati
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Correspondence to François Recanati .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Gábor Bella

  2. University of Trento, Trento, Italy

    Paolo Bouquet

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Recanati, F. (2019). Why Polysemy Supports Radical Contextualism. In: Bella, G., Bouquet, P. (eds) Modeling and Using Context. CONTEXT 2019. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 11939. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34974-5_18

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-34974-5_18

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-34973-8

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-34974-5

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