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Polysemy (/ p ə ˈ l ɪ s ɪ m i / or / ˈ p ɒ l ɪ ˌ s iː m i /; [1] [2] from Ancient Greek πολύ-(polý-) 'many' and σῆμα (sêma) 'sign') is the capacity for a sign (e.g. a symbol, a morpheme, a word, or a phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. [3]
If separating words using spaces is also permitted, the total number of known possible meanings rises to 58. [38] Czech has the syllabic consonants [r] and [l], which can stand in for vowels. A well-known example of a sentence that does not contain a vowel is Strč prst skrz krk, meaning "stick your finger through the neck."
The Ainu language of Japan has a closed class of 'count verbs'. The majority of these end in -pa, an iterative suffix that has become lexicalized on some verbs. For example, kor means 'to have something or a few things', and kor-pa 'to have many things'; there are also causative forms of the latter, kor-pa-re 'to give (one person) many things', kor-pa-yar 'to give (several people) many things'.
In linguistics, an expression is semantically ambiguous when it can have multiple meanings. The higher the number of synonyms a word has, the higher the degree of ambiguity. [ 1 ] Like other kinds of ambiguity , semantic ambiguities are often clarified by context or by prosody .
For example, in the word quirkiness, the root is quirk, but the stem is quirky, which has two morphemes. Moreover, some pairs of affixes have identical phonological form but different meanings. For example, the suffix -er can be either derivational (e.g. sell ⇒ seller) or inflectional (e.g. small ⇒ smaller). Such morphemes are called ...
For example, Trudgill suggests the following sentence as an example of a nonstandard dialect that is used with the technical register of physical geography: There was two eskers what we saw in them U-shaped valleys. [16] Most speakers command a range of registers, which they use in different situations.
A common definition of metaphor can be described as a comparison that shows how two things, which are not alike in most ways, are similar in another important way. In this context, metaphors contribute to the creation of multiple meanings within polysemic complexes across different languages. [33]
(v.) to bathe, or give a bath to, example have a bath (US: take a bath meaning bathe) (n.) plumbing fixture for bathing *(US: bathtub) (n.) the act of bathing (n.) a bathroom (esp. a half bath which has a sink and toilet but no shower stall or bathtub, or a 3/4 bath which has a sink, toilet, and shower stall, but no bathtub) bathroom