Polysemy, syntax, and variation. A usage-based method for Cognitive Semantics

The study of polysemy has a venerable tradition in Cognitive Linguistics. Since the pioneering of work of Dirven ( 98 ), Radden ( 98 ), Brugman ( 983), Lindner ( 983), and Vandeloise ( 984), the Lexical Network approach to spatial prepositions has proved to be one of the most important contributions of the cognitive paradigm. However, at both a theoretical and methodological level, this network approach to sense variation has recently come under fire. This study examines a methodological proposal that answers some of the criticisms that a cognitive approach to polysemy faces. The basic premise is to conserve the network model, but to complement this with another method: a corpus-driven quantified and multifactorial method. Such an approach employs a kind of componentional analysis that identifies clusters of features across large numbers of speech events. In other words, rather than analyse the possible meanings of a lexeme, a polysemic network should “fall out” from an analysis that identifies clusters of the cognitive-functional features of a lexeme’s usage. These features do not in any way resemble those of the Structuralist componentional analyses, since they are not based on a hypothetical semantic system, but describe instances of real language usage and are based upon encyclopaedic semantics of that language use in context. This usage-based approach is gaining wide currency in Cognitive Linguistics, attested by the wide range of edited volumes dedicated to the subject (Gries and Stefanowitsch 006; Stefanowitsch and Gries 006; Zeschel 008; Glynn and Fischer in press; Newman and Rice in press; Glynn and Robinson forthcoming). We will refer to this approach as the Quantitative Multifactorial method. The discussion begins by briefly covering the current state of the art of polysemy study in cognitive linguistics, where we underline the need for the implementation of this method and how it may cooperate with existing analytical models. In Section , the discussion moves to the description of the Quantitative Multifactorial method, and finally the third section examines a case study of the English lexeme hassle.