Modelling polysemy and categorial ambiguity in a constructional family

The case of agentive compounds in Persian

Bibliographic Data

ID21200111
AuthorsZoleikha Azimdokht (University of Isfahan), Adel Rafiei (0000-0002-8798-4043, University of Isfahan), Jenny Audring (0000-0002-1254-1192, Leiden University)
Year2022
Volume14
Issue2
Pages262-300
Publication date2022-12-22
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueConstructions and Frames (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1876-1933 • E-ISSN: 1876-1941
PublisherJohn Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1075/cf.21007.azi
OpenAlexW4312155403
LanguageEN
References cited20

In this paper we analyse a family of compound constructions in Persian that show two interesting properties: (1) they split into two semantic patterns, human agent noun and instrument noun, and (2) they display categorial ambiguity between noun and adjective. The compounds in question, which are formed with the verbal stem - yāb ‘find’, are collected from diachronic and synchronic corpora and analysed in the framework of Construction Morphology ( Booij 2010 ). We argue that the instrumental pattern is an innovation under the influence of loan-translated English instrument nouns. This pattern dovetailed with a much older morphological construction for human agent nouns. This raises questions about the relation between the two constructions in the contemporary speaker’s lexicon. For the dual functionality of the words as nouns and adjectives, we argue that it can be understood as a second order schema ( Booij & Masini 2015 ) or sister construction ( Jackendoff & Audring 2019 , 2020 ), whereby no precedence is ascribed to either of the two patterns

Adjective · Ambiguity · Lexicon · Linguistics · Noun · Polysemy · Computer Science · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation

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