Words with more than one meaning?

sheikh radlinrol · Post by **sheikh radlinrol** » Thu May 28, 2009 9:39 pm

I'm not a linguist, so please be patient. The word ''smart'' has various meanings in English. ''Smirt'' doesn't exist. Nor does '''smert'' nor ''smurt''.
''Smort'' would be a good word, wouldn't it?
Years ago, I read an explanation of this but have forgotten it. Please remind me. It certainly occurs in Spanish! What about other languages?

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Thu May 28, 2009 11:34 pm

I've no idea what your actual question is Sheikh but apparently some people are using this word.

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smurt

This one too

http://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SMORT

sheikh radlinrol · Post by **sheikh radlinrol** » Fri May 29, 2009 2:24 pm

Thanks for the reply, Woodcutter. Maybe I didn't put my question well. What I wanted to ask was this. Why do we use the same word for two different things?
e.g. I prefer lean meat. Do not lean out of the window.
I read an explanation of this years ago. Maybe you could jog my memory.

lolwhites · Post by **lolwhites** » Fri May 29, 2009 4:11 pm

Smirt exists as well:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=smirt

My memory is a bit hazy on this, but isn't there more than one reason why one "word" can acquire more than one meaning? In some cases, a word can have similar meanings which diverge over time, or a word's pronunciation can evolve until it becomes identical to another's.

woodcutter · Post by **woodcutter** » Mon Jun 01, 2009 12:45 am

It is all a bit complicated, but I suppose the Sheikh is after homonyms and not polysemy, so the pronunciation point lol makes is more relevant than the acquisition of meaning point (although the end result of diverging meaning may be two utterly different things, I suppose).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polysemy

If there is a language without homonyms then I am not aware - it seems impossible. Words develop in a number of ways, and there seems no reason why the development should be blocked by the existence of another word with the same sound. Why would we NOT have these words, especially if like with "lean" you have different parts of speech so it isn't confusing?

(Though of course Carrington-Pimkins and Snaig (2005) did valuable work with the Sapiworfan tribe in the Kahk-Dup valley, noting that uniquely this tribe's language seemed to have no homonyms, numbers, names or consonants)

I am quite interested in comparing the number of homonyms a language possesses, because it seems to me that Korean is incredible in this regard, and that this adds to the difficulty of learning it. If you borrow most of your vocab from a tone language and you have no tones in your own, then you seem to get a lot of things that sound the same.