[Lexicog] lexical polysemy

[Peter Kirk]

On 17/04/2004 16:01, John Roberts wrote:

> Peter Kirk wrote:
>
> > On the last point, only because "abandon" seems to imply some kind of
> > intent, which isn't usually the case with books, at least for us
> > bibliophiles. (Even the runaway pet cockroach has some kind of intent!)
> > It can be used of some small objects e.g. I have certainly heard of
> > abandoning a plate, having eaten off it. And I did have to abandon some
> > of my books in Azerbaijan when I returned to England, although I would
> > probably say "left" because I gave them away to good homes (or
> > second-hand stores) rather than dumping them.
>
> How does the car I abandoned on the motorway have intent?


The intent is that of the subject of "abandon", i.e. you (not
personally, I hope, unless you were waiting for it to be repaired,
although I don't think I would use "abandon" in this case).

>
> 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.


Unwillingly? I would say precisely the opposite - well, at least
intentionally, though maybe reluctantly, as with the books I abandoned
in Azerbaijan.


--
Peter Kirk
peter at qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk at qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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