A pragmatic solution to the polysemy paradox*

This paper investigates the phenomenon of polysemy: a single word with two or multiple related senses (e.g. run in run a half marathon, run on gasoline, run a shop, etc.). While it is largely unproblematic from the point of view of communication, polysemy poses a range of theoretical and descriptive problems. This has been described as the polysemy paradox (Ravin & Leacock 2000). In this paper, I claim that the source of the paradox lies with the traditional assumption that polysemy is primarily a fact about language, i.e. a phenomenon requiring an explanation in terms of the workings of the language system. Against this lexical semantic view, I argue that polysemy should be seen as a natural consequence of how communication works; it results from our capacity to infer the meanings/thoughts that speakers intend to communicate to us, taking the linguistic evidence as crucial but not fully determining of content. In this way, polysemy is rooted in the more general phenomenon of underdetermination of a speaker’s meaning by the language, whose study belongs to the realm of pragmatics. This pragmatic approach, I argue, provides a more promising way of tackling the theoretical challenges posed by polysemy: one that contributes to resolving the paradox.