Lexical sense and polysemy

One lemma, multiple uses

Polysemy is the grouping of related senses under a lexical item; homonymy concerns forms with separate lexical histories or analyses. The distinction is not always obvious from one passage. A dictionary often groups attestations by editorial sense headings, but those headings are an aid to comparison, not labels written by ancient users. Start with part of speech, construction, date and genre. Then ask which cited sense best explains the token and whether two analyses remain plausible.

The LSJ entry for Greek λόγος is a useful test: its documented uses range across speech and account or reckoning, among others. Translating every λόγος as “word” would flatten those contexts. The dictionary’s cited passages, grammatical constructions and chronology matter more than the short definition shown in a search result. Do not copy a modern philosophical sense backwards into every early occurrence merely because the same lemma appears.

Meaning is not a bilingual equality sign

Ancient Mesopotamian lexical lists pair Sumerian and Akkadian expressions and sometimes organize professional titles, objects or learned synonyms. Oracc documents the lists as scribal teaching and scholarly material. A paired entry can be evidence of learned association and translation practice without establishing that both words had identical distributions in every genre or period. A modern interlinear gloss is likewise a reading aid, not a promise of one-to-one equivalence.

A corpus glossary may assign contextual meanings to tokens already lemmatized by editors. Oracc explicitly distinguishes a citation form from the meanings of its uses in a given corpus. Search the token in context, inspect the tagged lemma, then follow cited occurrences. A candidate sense should be revised if the construction, object or parallel passage contradicts it.

Practice

Choose one LSJ or Oracc entry with at least three cited uses. Build a small evidence sheet with form, source, date or period, construction and contextual rendering. Group uses only after reading the examples. Explain one case where the first English head gloss would mislead.