Chapter: lexicology and its object subject matter of Lexicology

3. Polysemy and frequency of the word
The comparative study of the frequency value of different meanings of polysemantic words shows that the frequency value of individual meanings is different. For example. The meaning of the word «table» -ctoji (a piece of furniture) possesses the highest frequency value and comprises 52% of all uses of this word.
The meanings of polysemantic words have different stylistic references. For example. «jerk» in the meaning of «sudden movement)) belongs to a neutral style but in the meaning of «an odd persons it is a slang (mostly expressive and ironical words). Stylistically neutral meanings are very frequent. In any historical period as a result of semantic development the secondary meaning of the word may become the central (major meaning of the word).
Polysemantic words are in most cases frequent, etymologically — native or morphologically -simple (which has simple stem). From the phonetical point of view they have mostly one syllable, stylistically they are neutral words. For example, heart, work, do, talk, etc.
There is however, another aspect of polysemy which can be more precisely quantified: its relation to word-frequency. By systematically comparing the relative frequency of various words with the number of senses in which they are used, the late Q. K. Zipf arrived at an interesting conclusion which he termed the «principle of diversity of meanings ». According to Zipf there is a direct relationship between the number of different meanings of a word and its relative frequency of occurrences. He even tried to find a mathematical formula for this relationship: his calculations suggested that «different meanings of a word will tend to be equal to the square root of its relative frequency (with the possible exception of the few dozen most frequent words. (S. Ulman)


Answer the following questions:
1. What is understood by the term «polysemy»? 2. What is the difference between polysemantic and monosemantic words? 3. How do we analyse polysemy diachronically?. 4. How do we classify the meanings of polysemantic words diachronically? 5. How do we classify the meanings of polysemantic words synchronically? 6. What is a context? 7. What types of contexts do you know? 8. \Vhat is the frequency value of meanings of polysemantic words? 9. What are the stylistic references of different meanings of words? 10. What is the semantic structure of correlated words in different languages? 11. What are the most characteristic features of polysemantic words.