BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Polysemy: Pragmatics and Linguistic Conventions - Professor Robyn 
 Carston\, UCL
DTSTART:20201008T153000Z
DTEND:20201008T170000Z
UID:TALK152503@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tim Laméris
DESCRIPTION:Polysemy\, understood as the phenomenon of a single linguistic
  expression having multiple related senses\, is not a homogenous phenomeno
 n. There are regular (apparently\, rule-based) cases and irregular (resemb
 lance-based) cases\, which have different processing profiles\, and there 
 are several kinds of relations that may hold between the senses making up 
 a polysemy family: narrowing/broadening\, metaphor\, metonymy. Focusing on
  the irregular cases\, I consider whether polysemy is best treated as a se
 mantic or a pragmatic phenomenon\, that is\, a set of stable conventionali
 sed senses or a matter of occasion-specific context-sensitive inference. D
 rawing on relevance theory\, I maintain that many instances of well-establ
 ished (hence\, arguably\, semantic) polysemy have their origins in online 
 pragmatic processes of ad hoc concept construction\, including cases where
  a new word (not just a new sense) is created\, based on an existing word\
 , and giving rise to cross-categorial polysemy. \n\nFinally\, the question
  of what linguistic constraints there are on these apparently very flexibl
 e pragmatic processes of sense creation is considered. Here I attempt to s
 ituate polysemy in a broad picture of the human language faculty\, one tha
 t respects the distinction between the narrow linguistic faculty (syntax a
 nd its interfaces) and the wider\, more unruly ‘systems’ of sense and 
 usage conventions that grow up in a language community. 
LOCATION:Online
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR