The context of the situation as a reason for polysemy in Turkish

Year 2022, Issue: 74, 129 - 148, 02.12.2022

Erdoğan Boz , Asiye Hande Nur Türkoluk

https://doi.org/10.32925/tday.2022.88

Abstract

The context of the situation is a concept about how verbal and written dialogues, within a situation, work in the human mind. This concept has three factors, which are the field, the tenor, and the mode. These three factors form the main elements of the context of the situation. This elements are developed by M.A.K. Halliday. This article attempts to show how the words in dialogues gain new meanings and become polysemic through these factors. This paper follows a case-study design, with an in-depth analysis of Michael Halliday’s the context of the situation theory. Data for this study is collected using a screenplay named Korkuyorum Anne İnsan Nedir ki (I am Afraid, Mother What is a Human) written by Reha Erdem and Nilüfer Güngörmüş in 2009. Nouns, adjectives, and verbs are selected from the text by their frequency of occurrence. For this purpose, polysemic words in the text, are scanned and separated into word classes. Then, Halliday’s theory, which argues that a word gains its meaning depending on the context, is examined. By this way, we would like to prove why nouns, adjectives, and verbs gain their new meanings, also why they follow different methods because of their various semantic structure.

Keywords

The Context of the Situation, contextuality, polysemy, Halliday, semantic structure, methods of gaining new meanings

References

• Aksan, D. (2006). Anlambilim konuları ve Türkçenin anlambilimi. Engin.
• Başar, A. H. N. (2019). Bir çok anlamlılık fenomeni olarak durumsallık. Master Thesis, Eskişehir: Eskişehir Osmangazi University Department of Turkish Language and Literature.
• Benveniste, E. (1973). Problems in general linguistics. University of Miami Press.
• Boz, E. (2020). Dilbilgisel ve dilbilgisi dışı kavramları üzerine. Uluslararası Disiplinler Arası Dil Araştırmaları, 1(1), 1- 11.
• Bozkurt, F. (2017). Sözlükselleşme: genel sözlükler için sözlük birim seçimi. Kesit.
• Bussmann, H. (1996). Routledge dictionary of language and linguistics. Routledge.
• Cruse, A. (1986). Lexical semantics. Cambridge University Press.
• Crystal, D. (2008). Dictionary of linguistics and phonetics. Blackwell.
• Erdem, R. & Güngörmüş, N. (2009). Korkuyorum anne insan nedir ki... Metis.
• Firth, J. R. (1968). Selected papers of JR Firth, 1952-59. Indiana University Press.
• Gentner, D. (1978). On relational meaning: The acquisition of verb meaning. Child Development, 49(4), 988–998.
• Goffman, E. (1971). Relations in public. Basic Books.
• Halliday, M. A. K., & R. Hasan. (1989). Language, context and text: Aspects of language in a social-semiotic perspective. Oxford University Press.
• İmer, K., Kocaman, A., & Özsoy, A. S. (2001). Dilbilim sözlüğü. Boğaziçi Üniversitesi.
• Kamacı Gencer, D. (2019). Yardımcı eylemler. E. Boz (Ed.), Türkiye Türkçesi III sözcük türleri içinde (305-331). Gazi Kitabevi.
• Langendoen, D.T. (1967). On selection, projection, meaning and semantic content. Working Papers in Linguistics 1. Ohio State University Press.
• Lehmann, C. (2008). Roots, stems and word classes. Studies in Language, 32(3), 546-567.
• Melnikov, A., & Johnson, J. M. (2012). Existential and sociological interpretations of the concepts “situation” and “context”. A. Salvini, D. Altheide, & C. Nuti (Ed.), The Present and future of symbolic interaction 2 içinde (15-28). FrancoAngeli.
• Murphy, L. (2010). Lexical meaning. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press.
• Nerlich, B. (2003). Polysemy: past and present. Polysemy: Flexible Patterns of Meaning in Mind and Language içinde (49-76). Mouton de Gruyter.
• Nunberg, G. (1979). The non-uniqueness of semantic solutions: Polysemy. Linguistics and Philosophy, 3(2), 143-184
• Recanati, F. (2017). Contextualism and polysemy. Dialectica, 71(3), 379-397.
• Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1998). The mapping between the mental and the public lexicon. P. Carruthers, & J. Boucher (Ed.), Language and thought: Interdisciplinary themes içinde (184-200). Cambridge University Press.
• Uçar, A. (2009). Türkçe eylemlerde çokanlamlılık: Uygunluk kuramı çerçevesinde bir çözümleme. PhD Thesis. Ankara: Ankara University Linguistics Department.
• Uğur, N. (2007). Anlambilim: Sözcüğün anlam açılımı. İstanbul: Doruk Yayımcılık.
• Wierzbicka, A. (1986). What’s in a noun? (or: how do nouns differ in meaning from adjectives?). Studies in Language, 10(2), 353-389.