Semantic minimalism and the continuous nature of polysemy

Abstract

Polysemy has recently emerged as a popular topic in philosophy of language. While much existing research focuses on the relatedness among senses, this article introduces a novel perspective that emphasizes the continuity of sense individuation, sense regularity, and sense productivity. This new perspective has only recently gained traction, largely due to advancements in computational linguistics. It also poses a serious challenge to semantic minimalism, so I present three arguments against minimalism from the continuous perspective that touch on the minimal concept, the distinction from homonymy, and the quasi‐rule‐like nature of polysemy. Last, I provide an account of polysemy that incorporates this continuous perspective.