6) Of the correlative relations with the system of free word-groups:

1. non-idiomatic, if the meaning of the whole is the sum total of the meanings of the components, e.g. flower-bed, homeland;

2. idiomatic compounds are different in meaning from the corresponding free phrases, e.g. a night-cap - «a drink taken before going to bed at night», butterfingers - «a person who is likely to let things fall or slip through his fingers».

Рахматуллоева М., ПД-3-18

Срс 6. Polysemy

Polysemy is the ability of a word to possess several meanings (or lexico-semantic variants - LSV). It is the name given since M. Breal to the use of the same word in two or more distinct meanings.

Many words in English are polysemantic or have a complicated semantic structure. There are few monosemantic (having only one meaning) words in English. They are mainly special terms like morpheme, antibiotics, numerals, etc. In a polysemantic word various meanings (lexico-semantic variants) coexist at a certain period of the development of the English language. All lexico-semantic variants of a word taken together form its semantic structure.

Thus, semantic structure of a word is the interrelation and the interdependence of all its lexico-semantic variants. It is determined not only by the number of its lexico-semantic variants but also by their types. The semantic structure of a word is a flexible category, it changes with the development of the language.

Polysemy (as well as semantic structure) exists only in language, it is a phenomenon of language not of speech. Polysemy belongs to paradigmatic description, syntagmatically we do not deal with polysemy.

Paradigmatic relations define the word meaning through its interrelations with other members (in dictionaries) within one of the subgroups of vocabulary units. Syntagmatic relations define the word meaning in the flow of speech in different combinations through various contexts.

There are two processes of the semantic development of a word: radiation and concatenation. In cases of radiation the primary meaning stands in the center and the secondary meanings proceed out of it like rays. Each secondary meaning can be traced to the primary meaning. In cases of concatenation secondary meanings of a word develop like a chain. In such cases it is difficult to trace some meanings to the primary one. Often the last meanings have nothing to do with the primary ones, and in such cases homonyms appear. This phenomenon is called the split of polysemy.

Examples

Man

1. The human species (i.e., man vs. animal)

2. Males of the human species (i.e., man vs. woman)

3. Adult males of the human species (i.e., man vs. boy)

Bank

1. a financial institution

2. the building where a financial institution offers services

3. a synonym for 'rely upon' (e.g. "I'm your friend, you can bank on me"). It is different, but related, as it derives from the theme of security initiated by 1.

Book

1. a bound collection of pages

2. a text reproduced and distributed

3. to make an action or event a matter of record (e.g. "Unable to book a hotel room, a man sneaked into a nearby private residence where police arrested him and later booked him for unlawful entry.")

Newspaper

1. a company that publishes written news.

2. a single physical item published by the company.

3. the newspaper as an edited work in a specific format (e.g. "They changed the layout of the newspaper's front page").