For some linguistic schools of thought this fact poses a problem since it is at variance with a presumed one-form-one-meaning principle, according to which
monosemy is more natural than polysemy or, more generally, multifunctionality.
Paul's Language of [Zelos]:
Monosemy and the Rhetoric of Identity and Practice
(126)
Monosemy is the condition where a word or phrase has a single meaning, or where there is an absence of ambiguity.
"Lexical 'Facets': Between
Monosemy and Polysemy." In Sprachspiel und Bedeutung: Festschriftfur Franz Hundsnurscher zum 65.
From a semantic perspective, the marketing discourse, like most specialized discourses, is traditionally characterized by
monosemy, mono-referentiality, semantic precision, conciseness and impersonality.
Semantic analysis of body parts in emotion terminology: Avoiding the exoticisms of 'obstinate
monosemy' and 'online extension'.
Consequently, meanings can be understood as either detailed, static, rigid and finite inventories of senses, oscillating between rampant polysemy (Lakoff 1987) and
monosemy (Goldberg 1995), or as meaning potentials (Vandeloise 1994; Kemmer 2005; Szwedek 2007).
2) Very basically, a stance was taken which positively acknowledges polyfunctionality (polysemy), as opposed to a
monosemy stance.
(19) His views agree with mine in suggesting that signification "changes markedly in every new perception"; (20) in that the internal form tends to expire, reducing the structure of literary works "to two constituents--external form and signification and its potential polysemy to a referential
monosemy"; and in that one of the main differences between poetic and non-poetic (scientific, in the extreme) texts is that the latter lack internal form.
Nor do I imply that classificatory kin terms have a unique semantic value throughout the grid of relationships (
monosemy; see Hocart 1968 [1937]).
We argue that both the gradual diachronic expansion of the range of uses of both items, and the small, but nevertheless clear, differences of use among the two that we observe in synchrony, support an analysis in terms of polysemy, as opposed to
monosemy. What we propose is in the first instance a synchronic description of the two particles.
Thus, the
monosemy of a collocation such as take a picture is at least in part a function of processes that are typical of the formation of lexical units, namely coselection, repetition/recurrence in discourse, and intertextual bonding.
