The Semantics of Polysemy: Reading Meaning in English and Warlpiri

This comparative investigation of the polysemous senses of English and Warlpiri percussion/impact (‛hitting') verbs lays out a novel approach to the study of polysemy in cognitive linguistics. The book's theoretical chapters develop an interpretative rather than a scientific vision of the activity of semantics, problematizing the conceptualist and reductive orientations characteristic of many semantic models. The empirical chapters present a typology of the polysemous senses of English and Warlpiri percussion/impact (or P/I) verbs based on just four types of semantic operation, under which the phenomenon of polysemy emerges as amenable to strikingly concise description. The book is addressed primarily to students and researchers in semantics, cognitive linguistics, English, and Australian languages.