Interpretation of Polysemy from Diachronic and Synchronic Perspectives Based on Pragmatic Enrichment Theory

Abstract

Polysemy is an essential feature of English vocabulary, which has always been a focus in linguistic circle. Lexical Pragmatics, as a new discipline in linguistics, mainly studies the pragmatic processing of certain lexical information in utterance interpretation. This pragmatic processing process is called pragmatic enrichment, including pragmatic narrowing, pragmatic broadening, and so on. This paper explored polysemy both from diachronic and synchronic perspectives based on pragmatic enrichment and previous researching results. The researching results show that: from diachronic perspective, the formation and extension of polysemous words senses can be regarded as a pragmatic enrichment process in which the primary or core sense is gradually broadened or narrowed to produce the derived senses; from synchronic perspective, the understanding and selection of polysemous word meaning is restricted by context, and pragmatic enrichment can help determine the exact meaning in context and eliminate ambiguity. These research results shed light on polysemy both from diachronic and synchronic perspectives, bringing significant enlightenment for polysemous words teaching and learning.