“Where is the bank?” or how to “find” different senses of a word

Smirnova, Alexandra Yu.

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2016.e00065

Cited by 4 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…Наши наблюдения над тем, как в английском языке используется существительное bucket, позволяют сделать несколько важных выводов о роли оценочного потенциала в структуре значения слов, которые обозначают простые бытовые предметы в своих частотных вариантах значений. Представленный анализ подтверждает выводы, полученные и описанные в ряде статей, которые демонстрируют возможности уточнения структуры значения слова с помощью учета его оценочного потенциала [Smirnova 2016;2021;Smirnova, Tolochin 2018;Tkalich, Tolochin 2018]. Структурирование значения слова как функция контекста широко обсуждается в рамках корпусных исследований [Brezina 2018;Harris, Hutton 2007;Rundell 2018].…”

Section: Computingunclassified

The Noun Bucket: The Figurative Sense Overlooked by Dictionaries

Tolochin¹

2023

St. Petersburg University Studies in Social Sciences &Amp; Humanities

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The paper makes a strong case for treating figurative contexts of an English word as an important factor in the disambiguation of its polysemy and in the search for successful sense definitions. The noun bucket has been selected for a case study. A comparative study of the definition of bucket in Lexico online dictionary and in a number of selected contexts drawn from electronic databases clearly demonstrates the inconclusive information the dictionary provides about the meaning of this noun. The root cause of this is attributed to the insufficient attention the lexicographers have paid to the markers of the figurative use of bucket in context. The analysis of figurative contexts has made it possible to define a separate figurative sense of this word and also to account for the meaning and the expressive potential of the compound bucket list and the phrase kick the bucket traditionally considered a non-compositional idiom meaning die. The analysis of the figurative sense of bucket also reveals a strong positive evaluative charge at the very core of the meaning of this word. A hypothesis is proposed that further study of the evaluative potential of the nouns bucket, pail and can may clarify the differences in their meaning and help avoid cross-references in dictionary definitions. Defining the figurative sense of bucket adds a missing link to the systemic representation of its meaning in dictionaries and highlights its role in informing the expressive potential and meaning of bucket list and kick the bucket. Refs 15.

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Section: Computingunclassified

The Noun Bucket: The Figurative Sense Overlooked by Dictionaries

Tolochin¹

2023

St. Petersburg University Studies in Social Sciences &Amp; Humanities

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“…The lack of meaning does not warrant its total absence ( Smirnova, 2016 ): in order to function as a buzzword, a word will still need to have at least a hint of appropriate semantic content ( Cairns and Krzywoszynska, 2016 ), for otherwise it will only leave the audience confused, as opposed to intrigued. Although one of the functions of buzzwords is to simplify a complex field ( Mjøs et al., 2014 ), they must also operate as language units that help discuss existing concepts in new ways, which would be inconceivable should one infest this discussion with the vocabulary bearing zero semantic load.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Making sense of “buzzword” as a term through co-occurrences analysis

Malyuga

Rimmer

2021

Heliyon

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The study argues that while the existing research on buzzwords mainly involves the functional and pragmatic analysis of their individual specimen, such as “engagement”, “synergy” or “development”, an alternative approach can be implemented to look into the nature and immediate implications behind the term in question. The suggested approach involves investigating the occurrences of the term proper as opposed to analysing individual buzzwords. The authors hypothise and demonstrate that linguistic context of the term “buzzword”, i.e. the peculiarities of its occurrence alongside different language units and patterns, may provide credible inferences concerning the key properties attached to the term and afford some illuminating perspective on the prevailing attitudes towards it. The study uses titles of research and newspaper articles retrieved from Google Scholar as material for the research due to better representation of the term in titles as opposed to full texts, as well as titles' higher informativity and better descriptive saturation. Apart from the prevailing focus on the immediate linguistic context surrounding the term, the inferences made in this study also stem from the frequency data showing how often a certain feature of buzzwords is being mentioned in the titles. The study showed that while the greatest emphasis is being placed on the field of use and temporal lifecycle of buzzwords, the attitudes towards them can be best of all described by examining the place of the term in oppositions. As illustrated in the paper, these oppositions reflect the idea of the term's inferior status by opposing it to more favourable concepts.

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The Contribution of Cognitive Linguistics to the Acquisition of Polysemy: A Dictionary Entry-Based Study with Chinese Learners of English

Zhang

Xia

2020

International Journal of Lexicography

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This paper reported on a quasi-experimental study into the effectiveness of two types of entries – entries enhanced with cognitive linguistic insights (CL entries) and linearly ordered entries (LO entries) – in promoting L2 learners’ acquisition of English polysemes. Sixty-five college students majoring in English were divided into an experimental group (EG) and a reference group (RG). EG received the CL entries for lift and break in and RG were presented with the corresponding LO entries. Both groups were given twenty minutes to read the entries and to learn the twenty-seven senses. To examine the effectiveness of the two types of entries, an English-Chinese translation test was administered before the learning session (as Test 1), immediately after it (as Test 2) and two weeks later (as Test 3). The results showed that: (1) EG outperformed RG in the comprehension of the target senses on both Test 2 and Test 3. (2) The CL entries were more effective in promoting short-term retention than the LO entries, but had no advantage over the latter in long-term retention. (3) The CL entry for lift facilitated the learning of the target senses more than the LO entry did, but the CL entry for break in was no more effective than the LO entry in helping L2 learners acquire the target senses. The study suggests that the cognitive linguistic view can and should be further applied to treating polysemy in learner’s dictionaries, but the model for CL entries is not always recommendable and the knowledge gained from reading the CL entries needs consolidating.

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“Where is the bank?” or how to “find” different senses of a word

Cited by 4 publications

References 15 publications

The Noun Bucket: The Figurative Sense Overlooked by Dictionaries

The Noun Bucket: The Figurative Sense Overlooked by Dictionaries

Making sense of “buzzword” as a term through co-occurrences analysis

The Contribution of Cognitive Linguistics to the Acquisition of Polysemy: A Dictionary Entry-Based Study with Chinese Learners of English

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