A semiotic perspective on polysemy

Abstract

This paper extends Semiotic-Conceptual Analysis (SCA) to provide a means for comparing and evaluating semiotic relations (i.e. sets of signs) with respect to their ability of and efficiency of expressing conceptual structures. One contributing factor for efficiency is polysemy which refers to reusing representamens of signs in different contexts. Two different types of polysemy are identified: ambiguous polysemy which encodes a view from part signs to compound signs and simultaneous polysemy for analysing how compound signs simultaneously denote more than one meaning. Two detailed examples are included.