Why do we need polysemantic words

The ambiguity of words is an important linguistic phenomenon. It is common to all developed languages. Ambiguous words reduce the number of dictionaries. At the same time, they serve as a special expression of speech.

Any language seeks to express all the diversity of the world, name phenomena and objects, describe their signs, designate actions.

When pronouncing the word, an idea about the named object or phenomenon arises in the mind. But the same word can mean different objects, actions and signs.

For example, when pronouncing the word “handle”, several concepts appear in consciousness at once: a door handle, a ballpoint pen, a child’s handle. This is a multi-valued word that does not correspond with one, but with several phenomena of reality.

In polysemous words, one meaning is direct, and the rest is figurative.

The direct meaning is not motivated by other lexical meanings of the word and is directly related to the phenomena of the world.

The figurative meaning is always motivated by the basic meaning and is connected with it in meaning.

Usually native speakers can easily grasp the common between direct and figurative meanings and easily recognize figurative meanings of a word. For example: steel nerves (strong as steel), a stream of people (continuously) - people move like a river flows.

The transfer of names takes place on the basis of the similarity of objects and is called a metaphor, which is a vivid expressive and imaginative means: seething feelings, dispel dreams, mill wings.

Another type of polysemy is metonymy or the transfer of names by adjacency. For example: buying up gold (gold items), the class went on a campaign (class students).

There is another kind of ambiguity, built on the principle of transfer from part to whole or vice versa - this is the synecdoch: Little Red Riding Hood, Blue Beard.

Sinekdoha is a special kind of metonymy. It also implies the contiguity of phenomena called in one word.

The ambiguity of words is widely used by writers and publicists as a special stylistic device that makes speech more expressive, enhances the figurativeness of speech and makes the described phenomena and events more colorful and visual.

Often the technique of hidden or explicit juxtaposition of the direct and figurative meanings of words is used in the names of literary works, which makes them more capacious and vivid: “Thunderstorm” A.N. Ostrovsky, "Cliff" I.A. Goncharova.

Ambiguous words often serve as a source of a language game, creating new jokes and funny rhymes and puns. For example: in the evening I have evening.

Lexical errors associated with the use of polysemantic words.