[Lexicog] lexical polysemy

[Mali Translation]

Now try to translate John's and the following different senses of "abandon"
into your language by one word. It won't work (the translations are from
German). (That is why the translation of puns which play with the polysemy
of words does not work between languages).
to abandon s.o. = verlassen; im Stich lassen
to abandon oneself to = sich ergeben or hingeben
to abandon s.o. to his fate = überlassen
to abandon a project = aufgeben
to abandon hope = entsagen; preisgeben
to abandon s.th. to s.o. = ausliefern

What is the "family resemblance" - to use a term from prototype
semantics - that links all these uses of "to abandon"?

Fritz Goerling



It is interesting to see how some dictionaries that are corpus based differ
with regard to senses for "abandon" under the hypernym "leave". The New
Oxford Dictionary of English has just two primary senses (1) give up
completely a course of action, practice or way of thinking (2) cease to
support or look after someone. Subsenses under (2) are leave a place and
leave a thing. So for NODE "abandon a course of action" and "abandon a
person" are the primary senses of "abandon". COBUILD has four senses (1)
abandon a place or object, (2) abandon someone, (3) abandon a piece of work,
activity, (4) abandon an idea. The Longman Activator has one sense of
"abandon" under key concept "STOP DOING SOMETHING 3" abandon a project,
search, struggle, efforts, etc. and another sense under key concept "GIVE
12" - to unwillingly give something back to someone else or stop having it
yourself. The Longman Activator does not seem to have the "abandon a person"
sense at all and NODE and COBUILD differ as to what they consider primary
and secondary senses of "abandon". Yet they have all extracted these senses
from analyzing large corpora of English texts.

John Roberts








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