Linguistic evidence for polysemy in the mind: a response to William Croft and Dominiek Sandra

Response to Sandra (and Croft) D Tuggy 18-Nov-14

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Linguistic evidence for polysemy in the mind: a response to William Croft and Dominiek Sandra

DAVID TUGGY1

Dominiek Sandra (1998), writing in response to an article by William Croft (1998), discusses the extent to which linguistic evidence can warrant conclusions about the mental representations which underlie linguistic meanings. Centrally at issue is whether particular linguistic structures are stored separately in the mind or not. Croft was concerned that linguists not overestimate the extent to which introspective data alone can be used as evidence in this regard; Sandra goes much further and takes a very dim view of the extent to which linguists (qua linguists) can say anything of import on the matter at all. Some responses are offered to Croft’s and especially Sandra’s contentions. In particular, Sandra’s purported “polysemy fallacy” is not a fallacy but a defensible pre-expectation or plausible working hypothesis, and his highly pessimistic evaluation of the role of linguistic evidence for what’s in the mind is unjustified.

KEYWORDS: Polysemy Monosemy Homonymy Mental Representations Linguistics

William Croft and Dominiek Sandra, in a pair of articles in this journal (Croft 1998,

Sandra 1998), discuss the extent to which linguistic evidence can warrant conclusions about

the mental representations which underlie linguistic meanings. Both articles focus largely on

the issue of whether particular linguistic structures are stored separately in the mind or not,

though Sandra goes well beyond that issue in drawing his conclusions.

Croft’s main concern is that linguists assess realistically the extent to which introspective

evidence alone can bear on the matter. Sandra reacts negatively to linguists’ propensity for

positing polysemous structures, where meanings are distinct but also connected. He so

exaggerates Croft’s cautions as to conclude that that linguists can say nothing to any purpose

regarding how the structures they analyze are represented in the mind. They should leave the

field clear to the psycholinguists, and accept the fact that “no claims on mental

representations are implied by any [linguistic] analysis” (376).2 The major contention of this

article is that this extreme disparagement of linguists’ possible (and actual) contribution to

our knowledge of the mind, particularly on the matter of separate vs. unitary storage, is

unjustified.

1 Croft’s article

Since Sandra’s article was prompted by Croft’s and often refers to it, it will be helpful to

discuss and respond to Croft’s ideas before responding to Sandra’s.

1.1 Overview

The main thesis of Croft’s article is more or less as follows: mental representations of

grammatical and lexical knowledge may be arranged on a continuum of models of increasing

generality or abstractness ranging from (1) homonymy (independent entries)3 through (2)


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polysemy, and (3) (grammatical) derivation to (4) monosemy (with pragmatic rules).

Introspective linguistic data showing grammatical or semantic idiosyncrasy can exclude

model (4), or models (3) and (4), or (2), (3) and (4), but data showing generality cannot

exclude any of these models from the realm of possibility. In other words, evidence of

idiosyncrasy can prove that speakers learn the particulars without necessarily making any

generalization, but evidence that a generalization is possible or even adequate does not prove

that speakers make that generalization, much less that they fail to learn the particulars on

which it is based.

Thus, introspective data alone cannot, in many, probably most cases, inevitably guide the

analyst to one and only one “right” analysis for particular data; it can only limit the range of

possible analyses to a set of alternatives. Evidence that goes beyond what introspection can

provide would be needed to narrow this set to a single plausible model. I find it helpful to

visualize this as in Figure 1.

Figure 1

Sandra (366) insightfully links Croft’s models (3) and (4), saying: “These four models

indeed seem to represent the logically possible alternatives: simple storage of the two usages,

storage of the rule behind those usages (with the distinction between language-specific and

general rules), storage of both usages and the commonality between them.” The gradient

along which the models are ranged involves splitting into two versus joining into one.

Accordingly, I will use a three-model array, also represented in Fig. 1, of monosemy (in

which two usages are joined into one meaning), polysemy (where both joining and splitting


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are going on in the mind), and homonymy (where usages are split into non-joined, separate

meanings). Croft’s central claim can, I think, be restated as “introspective linguistic evidence

can tell you that you must split, but not that you must join.”

For two semantic usages U1 and U2, Croft suggests that the following types of evidence

be adduced to move from a fully “joined” analysis towards a fully “split” analysis. Evidence

against an analysis also constitutes evidence against the analyses above it: for instance

evidence against derivation is also evidence against strict monosemy.

To eliminate: Look for this kind of evidence

Strict monosemy: unitary

storage plus universal principles producing U1 and U2

a. Cross-linguistic evidence that U1 and U2 do not

automatically follow from each other or a general

meaning U (158-159)

b. Evidence that U1 and U2 are both conventional (165)4

Derivation: unitary storage of

one usage plus language-specific rules to derive the other.

c. Irregularities in the putatively derived U2 (162)

Polysemy: storage of both

usages plus stored knowledge of their connection

d. Differences of the (phonological) forms of U1 and U2

(166)

(including: e. Forms of U1 and U2 whose relationship is so

opaque that speakers could/would not perceive it.)

Homonymy: separate storage

of the two usages with no connection between them (homonymous only if the forms are identical)

Introspective evidence can never eliminate this

possibility. (Non-introspective evidence may be able to do

so.)

Figure 2

Two kinds of evidence which Croft adduces, cross-linguistic evidence (2a) and

differences of form (2d), are somewhat problematical. I discuss them briefly in the next two

sections.

1.2 Cross-linguistic evidence

It may sound at first5 as if Croft is arguing that if any language splits two meanings every

language must do so. Such an argument would say, for instance, that since Classical Nahuatl

systematically distinguished the concepts of MAN’S SISTER and WOMAN’S SISTER English

(and every other language) must do so, and thus cannot have a monosemous meaning SISTER.

That would be clearly fallacious, of course. However, Croft is saying something a bit

different. Suppose one were to posit a universal, exceptionless principle guaranteeing that a

form meaning WOMAN’S SISTER (U1) automatically would entail that the meaning MAN’S

SISTER (U2) would be designated by the same form. The Nahuatl evidence would indeed

falsify such a model.

Croft’s argument is valid, then, against a model that requires on universal grounds that

one meaning follow another. It is an argument that the form need not be monosemous, but it


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is not an argument that it cannot be monosemous. Thus its value for disproving a particular

claim of monosemy is dubious.

A particularly important and common case is that in which U1 is a general meaning

(schema, hyperonymous concept), and various U2s are subsumed by it. Thus SISTER would

be U1, and both WOMAN’S SISTER and MAN’S SISTER would be U2’s. Many linguists, from

Aristotle on down, have at times assumed that there is a universal principle (whether

“pragmatic” or not) to the effect that when such a general concept is included in a meaning

all its subcases come for free, and are automatically included in, and have equal status as

parts of, the meaning.6 Croft’s criterion of cross-linguistic differentiation can be used to argue

that such a universal principle cannot be absolute.

For instance, to argue from the Nahuatl data that SISTER need not necessarily entail

WOMAN’S SISTER and MAN’S SISTER it would be necessary to show that one of the Nahuatl

forms for WOMAN’S SISTER or MAN’S SISTER also bears the general meaning SISTER. I do not

know that either of them does so. Other cases can be found, however. It is arguable that the

word man in many variants of English (including the standard variants of a few years back)

has a meaning HUMAN BEING. It is not the case that the word can be used indiscriminately for

any human being regardless of gender or age, however; man could not mean GIRL, WOMAN,

or BOY. So, these data can be seen as indicating that the meaning HUMAN BEING (U1) does

not universally and automatically entail such U2s as FEMALE HUMAN BEING or YOUNG MALE

HUMAN BEING, and, more generally, that a schematic U1 does not universally automatically

entail all its subcases (U2s).7

Demonstrating this still falls short, however, of allowing us to state definitely that a form

meaning HUMAN BEING in some other language is not monosemous; it only proves it need not

be so. It argues against a mechanically automatic monosemy, but not against a less inevitable

but still possible monosemy. Thus its inclusion in Fig. 2 remains less than fully helpful.

1.3 Polysemic analysis are not excluded

Inasmuch as the major difference between polysemy and homonymy is the presence of a

semantic connection between U1 and U2, one would expect that the evidence that would

keep the analysis from polysemy and restrict it to homonymy would be evidence that there

was no such connection. It is surprising, then, that Croft (166) turns instead to a difference in

the form a between [a/U1] and [a/U2]. Thus the difference in phonological forms between

intentional going to, which often reduces to gonna, and motional going to, which does not

(166), means they cannot be linked polysemically (166). This argument assumes that

polysemy can only obtain where there is complete identity of the form, and in fact Croft has

so defined it (153). This does not seem particularly revelatory, however. Such differences do

indeed demonstrate that speakers systematically distinguish between the usages,8 but they do

not at all deny that speakers may still connect the meanings. Even if the differences are so

great that people make no connections between the forms (Fig. 2.e) this does not mean they

can therefore make no mental connections between the meanings of the forms.

Croft is dealing with what Langacker (1987:396-401), calls a complex phonological

category, the counterpart at the phonological pole of polysemy at the semantic pole.


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A convenient illustration is route … At the phonological pole, major subregions are established by the alternate pronunciations [rawt] and [rut].…In my own speech, either pronunciation can be used with the nominal senses, but only [rawt] is possible when route is employed as a verb.…The acceptability of all possible symbolic pairings between subregions is not automatically given. (1987:398-399).

The difference between the phonological forms’ meanings establishes (or confirms) that the

different meanings are distinct subregions of the semantic structure, but it does not deny that

they are still subregions, or to put it differently, the verbal and nominal senses of route are

still probably (if not inevitably) connected. Thus Croft’s mechanism for eliminating a

polysemic account, restricting the analysis to separate and unrelated storage of the meanings

as the only possibility, does not do the trick.

In any case, it is difficult if not impossible to find any such evidence for the vast majority

of the cases that would come up for discussion. In effect, as long as the morpho-phonological

form is constant, Croft sees no way to argue for homonymy as against polysemy, and even if

it varies by meanings, he has not shown that polysemy is wrong. To argue for that one must

attempt the much more difficult argument for a negative, the absence of any semantic

connection.

1.4 Kinds of evidence

Croft emphasizes the variety of kinds of evidence that can be brought to bear on this

issue of separate versus unitary storage. His category of introspective evidence includes all

the kinds of evidence listed in Fig. 2 besides (at least) introspective semantic tests of the do

so variety (170-171).9 And this is not an exhaustive list. (See the discussion in Section 2.5.)

Croft recommends that we add to the arsenal such things as psycholinguistic experiments

(161, 168ff.); studies of conventions of (prior) use (161-162) or of speech patterns across the

speech community, “an important source of evidence beyond both introspection and

pyscholinguistic experimentation” (165-166), and corpus studies (169). These can give

evidence regarding distinctness (168), conventionality (169), and relatedness of uses (169).

He explicitly states that this also is a representative listing, not an exhaustive one (168).

Evidence from these non-introspective sources may well, on Croft’s view, enable us to

move from the “splitting” pole (homonymy) towards the “joining” pole (monosemy). He

carefully refrains from including them in his contention that introspective evidence only

moves us in the opposite direction.

1.5 Can you really not use introspective evidence to move towards the more general?

It is worth questioning even that basic contention, however. Croft does so himself (170-

171): “I may be underestimating how much introspective linguistic evidence can tell us …

[it] may indicate identity as well as distinctness of senses.” He mentions Cruse’s discussion

(1986:58-74, 1995) of semantic tests of the do so variety, and concludes that “acceptability in

these constructions demonstrates at least the relatedness of the uses.” If so, the claim that


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introspective evidence can only force you towards greater differentiation is clearly denied—

in this case at least it establishes that there is a connection between the uses, i.e. there is not

strict homonymy.

2 Sandra’s article

Sandra’s article is a response to Croft’s, but Sandra wants to “broaden [Croft’s] question”

(361) and “present [his] own view on what linguists can tell us about the human mind on the

basis of linguistic observations.” (362) He comes to very pessimistic conclusions on the

matter.

2.1 Basic ideas

Sandra’s argument may be summarized as follows:10

(i) Croft is right that “Linguists can only restrict the range of possible

representational accounts … but cannot possibly answer the representational

question in a definite way” (367).

(ii) This means that linguists “can only determine the maximally abstract mental

representation. That, of course, is not very much indeed. … Linguists find

themselves in a scientifically uninteresting position” (367).

(iii) Generative and other linguists fell afoul of the rule/list fallacy and the generality

fallacy. Cognitive linguists’ besetting sin is the polysemy fallacy, a “dogmatic

approach to word meaning, representing the belief in fine-grained distinctions

between related usages” (370).

(iv) Polysemic analyses are beset with problems that are (probably) insuperable (370-

375). These may perhaps be summarized by the contention that there are no

constraints: “linguists making such an analysis have too many degrees of

freedom, there being no decision principles to help them perform their analysis”

(376).

(v) Conclusion: linguists can say little or nothing about the human mind. In

particular, they can say nothing to any purpose about the mental representation of

particular linguistic facts.

2.2 Sandra on Croft

Sandra refers to Croft (1998) approvingly throughout, and considers that Croft’s position

strengthens his own (e.g. 362, 365-367, 375-6). But this stance crucially depends on

misunderstanding or mistaking Croft’s words.

(a) Sandra takes Croft to be saying that “linguists can only restrict the range of possible

representational accounts … but cannot possibly answer the representational question in a

definite way” (367). Croft clearly does envision linguists being able in at least some cases to

restrict the range to one possibility, namely homonymy, thus “answering the representational


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question in a definite way.” More importantly, throughout his presentation Croft carefully

emphasizes the condition of using “introspective linguistic evidence alone”, and a major part

of his purpose is to encourage linguists to utilize other evidence, including psycholinguistic

evidence, as well (1.4), and thus indeed come nearer to the goal of a definitive answer.

Croft’s own summary of the basic argument (152), could hardly say it any plainer.

(b) Relatedly, Sandra represents Croft’s central claim as that “language users cannot

possibly arrive at more abstract representations than those of which the linguist can conceive”

(366). That is not what Croft said, and the differences are important. Croft said that

introspective linguistic evidence could show that certain abstract models would not account

for particular data, and thus restrict the analysis to less abstract ones. Those less abstract

models might include as abstract mental representations of particular forms as any the

linguist could conceive (e.g. as connecting concepts between more specific representations in

a polysemous meaning), but they would have to include more specific representations as

well. In any case, the linguist is clearly able to conceive of the abstract representations crucial

to the solution he or she rejects, and the claim is not that language users cannot conceive of

those abstract representations as well, but that such representations alone are not adequate to

account for the (introspective linguistic) data. Where the evidence shows a given abstract

representation to be inadequate, Croft is claiming, that means language users must have more

specific (split) representations in their minds, whether or not they have the more abstract

(joining) one as well. Croft’s position would be better stated as “language users must arrive at

representations at least as specific (split) as the introspective data require. There is no

comparable requirement for abstract (joined) representations.”

Sandra’s formulation of the criterion makes it sound like linguists should set about

thinking up the most abstract representations they can imagine, and then rest in the assurance

that they have thereby set an upper limit on how abstract the language users’ representations

could be, and that that is all they can do in the matter. “In other words, the linguist can at best

look for the most abstract description possible for a given language phenomenon and then

remain agnostic as to whether language users also achieve such a level of abstractness. He

can only be confident that language users will never arrive at a mental representation that is

more abstract than the maximally abstract representation in a linguistic analysis” (366).

(c) Relatedly again, Sandra claims that “Croft demonstrates [that] linguists have no

evidence to prefer one mental model over another” (367). Croft does indeed claim that, using

introspective linguistic evidence alone, linguists cannot invariably single out one mental

model as against all the rest. But his whole section 4, easily the longest of the article, deals

precisely with using introspective evidence to exclude certain models, i.e. adducing evidence

to justify preferring the other mental model(s) over the one(s) to be excluded. And Croft,

unlike Sandra, does not assume that linguists have access only to introspective evidence—

that is the whole point of his concluding discussion (168-170).

For what it’s worth, Sandra is also contradicting his own approbation (362, 367) of

Croft’s position, including the “types of linguistic evidence [that] can be used to argue

against each of these representational alternatives.”

(d) Where Croft uses the term “introspective linguistic evidence” Sandra prefers to talk

about “intuition”. This presumably means something like “a vague (though perhaps strong),

unreasoned feeling that something is so”; dictionary definitions of “intuition” coincide in


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emphasizing a bypassing, if not a suspension, of rational processes. The expression

“introspective evidence” more accurately covers the range of knowledge that can be gained

from carefully and rationally considering what one already is aware of, certainly including

intuitions, but other things as well.

2.3 Intuitions

Sandra quite palpably distrusts (others’) intuitions, preferences, and beliefs. A number of

statements to that effect culminate in the assertions that “network analyses are more like

proclamations of a shared belief than true linguistic exercises” (371); and that linguists

making “highly polysemous analyses of … synchronic meaning … are only constrained by

their intuitions”, so that “the scientific status of their analyses can be seriously questioned”

(375-376).

To some degree, of course, this is just scientific hard-headedness, a virtue rather than a

vice. Scientists have been right to mistrust (not necessarily to distrust) what is merely

subjective, because, as Sandra says, people do “tend to see in the data what they are looking

for” (367) unless something objective straightens them out.

Yet when the object of study is meaning, language users’ intuitions as to what they and

their interlocutors mean are extremely important evidence. When such intuitions line up

impressively, they acquire a degree of objectivity and should be listened to carefully and not

contradicted without overwhelming evidence. To refuse all evidence from intuitions would

be to blind ourselves to what we know as language users, cutting ourselves off from all but

the most meager sources of information about what language structures mean. When

“intersubjectively valid intuitions”11

line up with other kinds of evidence (not a few of them

in turn dependent to some degree on intuitions), something approaching certainty can be

achieved.

Even though by definition they lack explicitly argued justification, language users’

intuitions regarding particular meaning structures are not irrational or anti-rational. (This is

true even for non-native users, and vastly a fortiori for native users.) It would be more

accurate (though a bit of an overstatement) to call them “scientific results” of years of

informal but extremely thorough experimentation. Every time you use a structure in

communication you are conducting an experiment, betting that your interlocutor is going to

understand. If he or she does so, your hypothesis as to its meaning is confirmed, strongly to

the degree that that particular structure was crucial to the communication. If

miscommunication results, your hypothesis is disconfirmed to the extent that the particular

structure seems to be at fault, and you will, often even consciously, adjust your hypothesis

about its meaning. Every time your interlocutor uses the structure and what he or she is

saying makes sense, the hypothesis is again confirmed. When repeated experimentation of

this sort starts to consistently produce confirmatory results, you stop worrying about the

structure at all and just use it: you “just know” what it means; but your continued successful

use continues to confirm the hypothesis ever more strongly.12

You of course do not, and

cannot, even remember, much less document, all the details of the experiments that led you to

this conclusion, and we therefore label it an “intuition”; but that does not make the

conclusion intrinsically doubtworthy. And when other experimenters in the field (i.e. other

language users) report comparable results from their multitudinous experiments, all differing


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in detail from yours, you have extremely strong evidence as to what the structure means in

the language you share. The fact that the experiments did not occur in a psycholinguist’s

laboratory, with experiment design confining you to yes/no responses and a computer ticking

off the milliseconds, does not invalidate the conclusions.

Sandra himself relies on intuitions. His objection to the “polysemy model” is that it

involves positing connections between usages that “seem to be distinct and unrelated” and

distinguishes between usages that “seem to be nondistinct and, of course, related … find[ing]

relations where distinctness seems the only option and differences where identity seems the

only possibility” (369—It is instructive to pursue Sandra’s use of the word “seem” through

the next few pages.) When looking at network analyses “one [or, at least, Sandra] has the

impression that many of the distinctions are unnecessary” (370). In other words, the problem

is not that the other analysts are relying on intuitions and impressions, it is that their intuitions

contradict Sandra’s.

Well, and so what? Doesn’t Sandra have just as much right to his intuitions as anyone

else?13

If some other linguist has the intuition that a valid linguistic distinction may be made

between the meanings of “on” in “the fly on the table” and in “the fly on the ceiling” (373),

and Sandra has an equally strong intuition that the usages “seem to be nondistinct”, are we

not at an impasse? Are not both intuitions on an equal footing? Doesn’t the very

disagreement constitute evidence that neither intuition is “intersubjectively valid” and thus

reliable?

Not necessarily. Notice that in the cases under contention, the intuitions of both agree on

the obvious fact. The polysemy-minded who find relatedness where Sandra sees only

distinctness would certainly agree with him about the distinctness, and those seeing

distinctions where he finds only identity would agree strongly on the intuition that the usages

are “of course, related.” It is subtleties that the others claim to be seeing and that Sandra does

not want to admit. When either the mental joining or the splitting is much more salient than

the other, it is easy, and useful for many purposes, to ignore the weaker of the two. But the

weaker one is not thereby shown not to exist. Sandra’s intuitions are about the absence of a

connection or a distinction, rather than its presence. Like other evidence for a negative, such

intuitions are intrinsically weaker than evidence for the corresponding positive.

All that having been said, I welcome Sandra’s hardheadedness and his demand for

evidence beyond solitary intuition. We who posit the kinds of analyses he disparages would

do well to document, wherever we can, that many speakers of the language have the same or

compatible intuitions, that language usage patterns corroborate our claims, that

psycholinguistic experiments fit in as well, and so forth. Until we do, we are giving Sandra

the right to say “Show it to me”, and running the risks he warns us of, of our analyses

becoming little more than exercises of our imagination.

Nonetheless, I would like to enter a plea for a little practicality. Holding a pistol to the

head of every claim, and saying “you have no right to exist unless you can prove to me

already that you are true,” can be a kind of filibustering technique that hampers rather than

helps scientific discourse. If I had to exhaustively tabulate all these kinds of evidence for

every single claim I have made through network analyses, I would probably still be working

on the first one. Also you cannot expect that a polysemic analysis presented as a stepping-

stone to the main point of a 20-minute conference presentation or a space-limited journal


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article will come with a full exposition of the evidence supporting it, and the lack of it in the

presentation need not be taken as indicating that there was none available. We who posit

polysemous structures should want and try to get more evidence to convince people like

Sandra (and ourselves) that what we are positing is both inherently reasonable and not based

on solitary intuition alone, but we should not a priori deny the right of linguists to say

anything unless they can immediately prove everything they think is true.

2.4 The “polysemy fallacy”

Sandra devotes very nearly half of his article to countering the “polysemy fallacy”. This

is “the extreme polysemy position” (368), “the tendency to look for polysemy even when

there is no evidence for it” (361). Linguists under its influence shrink from definitively

splitting or joining meanings, preferring to claim some degree of both is happening.

Sandra acknowledges the important relations that justify historical derivations, and

doesn’t mind them being “stored in the lexicon of the language” (whatever that is) but “not

the mental lexicon” (italics his), “as relics of the history of the language” (368). In other

words, such connections have no place in synchronic semantics, or at least in mental

representations, apparently because the meanings they are trying to connect are “obviously

distinct” (369).

Sandra is much more exercised, however, over the “opposite concern, to distinguish

obviously related usages”, which he calls “almost obsessive”. It is because of the primacy of

this concern that he can define the polysemy fallacy as the “opposite trap” to the “generality

trap” (368). “In both cases the polysemy approach invites one to find distinctness and

relatedness simultaneously. One can find relations where distinctness seems the only option

and differences where identity seems the only possibility.” (He clearly does not mean “such

relations and differences are out there, legitimately to be found,” but rather “linguists can and

in fact do —perversely enough— find them.”) “These practices in cognitive linguists’

semantic analyses underscore the fact that they eschew both homonymy and monosemy as

descriptive concepts and have a strong preference for polysemy, which occupies the middle

ground between the two alternatives.”

Sandra’s use of the term “fallacy” is unfortunate. Although dictionaries allow meanings

like “1. A false notion”, the standard and most useful sense of the word in academic discourse

is more like “2. A statement or an argument based on a false or an invalid inference” (American

Heritage 1992). Sense #1 is a not particularly useful synonym for “error” that easily becomes

pernicious by referring to something that the speaker thinks is in error, while falsely

suggesting to hearers that the speaker has identified a logical cause for the error (sense #2).

Sandra is using the word in something like sense #1, but I am afraid his readers will have

thought he was claiming to have found a logical flaw in the position he opposes.

The polysemy fallacy is presented as parallel to the rule-list (or redundancy) and

generality fallacies (Croft 156-157). Those are fallacies by the definition urged above,

arguments that purport to be compelling but are in fact logically flawed. They are both

subcases of “the exclusionary fallacy[,] the gist of [which] is that one analysis, motivation,

categorization, cause, function or explanation for a linguistic phenomenon necessarily


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precludes another” (Langacker 1987:28). It is indeed fallacious to assume that A precludes B

when nothing prevents both from being simultaneously true.

Croft (157) defines the generality fallacy as “assuming that the most general or ‘simplest’

representation compatible with the data is the psychologically correct representation.”

“Sandra, however, redefines it as “the belief in very general and highly abstract monosemic

senses” (370). To believe that highly abstract monosemous senses exist and are sometimes,

often, or even usually correct, is not a fallacy, but a theory. To believe that a monosemic

analysis is correct for a given case, or to generally prefer monosemic analyses over other

analyses: these positions are not in and of themselves fallacious. They are to be refuted not by

exposing their flawed logical underpinnings, but by exhibiting empirical evidence against

their claims. Ruhl (1989:3-5), for instance, confesses to such a belief, but he rightly (and

courageously) calls it a “monosemic bias”. I think Ruhl is wrong (Tuggy in press), but if so

he has committed an error, not a fallacy.

Similarly Sandra’s own term, “the polysemy fallacy”, is a misnomer. No one (that I know

of) is fallaciously insisting that polysemy is the only option, i.e. that monosemic or

homonymic accounts of meanings are excluded a priori. As Sandra himself makes clear, what

he is really objecting to is a “tendency” (361) a “strong preference” (369), an “(often tacit)

assumption” about “how the object of inquiry should be studied and what constitutes a

plausible … working hypothesis” (367), an “almost obsessive tendency”(369), or, more

invidiously, “merely a belief, an article of faith, which is applied uncritically to the data”

(370). This may be a wrong belief, and of course it is unfortunate if any belief is applied

uncritically to the data, but it is not a fallacious belief, in the sense of containing an inherent

logical flaw.

Are there any grounds for justifying an open-minded preference for or pre-expectation of

polysemic analyses? I think there are.

(1) Both monosemy and homonymy amount to postulating a negative, and negatives are

notoriously hard to prove. Homonymy says “there is no connection (in the mind)”.

Monosemy says “there is no difference (in the mind)”. Polysemy says “there is some

connection (though it may range from something tenuous/sporadic/etc. to almost

overwhelming) and also some difference (though it might be very slight or, in its turn,

practically overwhelming)”. It is easier to prove that there is some connection, or some

difference, than to prove that there is none.

(2) Relatedly, if monosemy and homonymy are endpoints on the continuum, and

polysemy “occupies the middle ground between the two alternatives” (369), it is not

unreasonable to suppose that most of the cases to be plotted on the continuum will fall

somewhere in the middle. Sandra agrees that, with respect to “the question whether two

usages are distinct or not[,] apart from having answers like ‘they are distinct’ and ‘they are

similar’, there will be an[sw]ers like ‘they are somewhat similar and somewhat dissimilar’.”

He concludes: “It is quite probable that the majority of answers will be of the latter type”

(371). But that latter type of answer is precisely the essence of the polysemic analyses he is

objecting to.

(3) Evidence for polysemy is not all that hard to find in many cases (see section 2.5).

Analysts may have found it so often that they have come empirically to the conclusion that it

is the default case. I have such a bias myself. I am convinced that the preponderance in all but


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the most rudimentary dictionaries of entries with multiple meanings—meanings obviously

related to the point that it is difficult to delineate between them, but not fully predictable from

each other—is no fluke but a reflection of the natural state of language. I do think the burden

of proof ought to be on one who wants to deny polysemy in any given case. In short, I do not

so much “look for polysemy even when there is no evidence for it” (361) as expect polysemy

until I look long and hard and find no evidence for it.14

But this is far from a hard-and-fast position that polysemy is always right. Sandra (and

Croft) are right to call for us to not simply assume it (or any other analysis) just because it

intuitively feels right to us, but to look for evidence that will confirm or disconfirm our

intuitions, and to exhibit that evidence in presenting our analyses.

In sum, it is unfortunate that Sandra calls this preference for polysemic analyses a

“fallacy”, as if it embodied some inherent logical flaw. It is an expectation, defensible in

some degree, a “plausible working hypothesis” that empirically fits a vast number of

situations and thus proves useful. But I agree with Sandra that it is unfortunate to leave things

at that. It behooves us as analysts, insofar as possible, to look for evidence beyond sheer

solitary intuition to indicate whether or not a polysemic analysis or some other is appropriate.

2.5 Evidence beyond solitary intuition

Let us revisit the topic of what kinds of evidence can be adduced for the questions of

mental representations. We can, for the sake of this discussion, agree with Sandra that the

linguist’s own isolated intuitions are so strongly suspect as to be invalid by themselves.

Coincident intuitions are another matter. In keeping with what was said earlier regarding

the centrality of intuitive evidence for semantics and its strong rational basis, this kind of

“intersubjectively valid” evidence is very strong.15

If many speakers of a language coincide in

an intuition regarding meaning (e.g. that a particular U1 and U2 can be distinguished, or that

they are the same meaning, or both), that intuition should be accorded a high degree of

credence.16

If it happens to confirm the analyst’s intuitions, that should not be surprising, nor

be taken as tainting the conclusion. If it contradicts his or her intuitions, it has a very strong

claim to be objective.

Note that coincident, intersubjectively validated intuitions can as easily point to

connection and generalization (joining) as to distinction and differentiation (splitting.)

Croft, it will be remembered (1.4), included under “introspective linguistic evidence” a

good many things besides intuitions. Sandra approves (366-367). So, with Sandra’s blessing,

we are free to use all the kinds of evidence listed in Fig. 2 to force our analysis towards more

and more definite splits (i.e. away from monosemy towards homonymy).

Croft’s list of kinds of introspective evidence was not exhaustive. He did not include, for

instance, direct intuitions about connectedness or distinctness of meanings, perception of

puns and other kinds of meaning-based jokes, the clear awareness, related to assessment of

productivity but significantly different from it, that “that’s a new way to use that word—I

never heard that before”, evidence from blends and other speech errors, meaning-related

miscommunications, holes in predicted patterns (see below), and so forth.


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Cross-language comparisons are of some, albeit somewhat limited, value (1.2). Cross-

lectal comparisons have much the same force. If a usage is putatively derived by universal

rules but shows up in one dialect and not in another, this can be good evidence that the usage

is in fact learned in one case but not in the other. Diachronic change is another area where

cross-lectal variation is obvious. If a lexical item has a sense and loses it, or gains a new

sense, it becomes difficult to maintain that having that sense was ever inevitable, as it must

have been if automatic monosemy is the correct analysis.17

Croft mentions the do so type of tests (170-171), admitting that they can give evidence

for relatedness (joining) as well as for distinction (splitting). Under the rule/list fallacy they

were often assumed to indicate monosemy vs. homonymy (though the terms vagueness and

ambiguity were often used, e.g. in Lakoff 1970b— Geeraerts 1993 critiques the general

position). E.g., if you want to decide whether reading books and reading electric meters are

one or two senses, you construct a sentence like I do my reading in the morning and so does

John, cross the senses so that I read electric meters and John books (or vice versa), and see if

the sentence “sounds funny” or not. If it sounds funny (zeugma results), this was supposed to

indicate ambiguity (homonymy); if not, vagueness (monosemy) was indicated. I believe these

tests are indeed valid for disproving both monosemy (where there is zeugma) and homonymy

(where no zeugma results), but they do not disprove polysemy. Equivocal results (weak or

unclear zeugma, or subjects differing on whether there is zeugma or not, or zeugma in some

contexts but not others) may even confirm polysemy by militating simultaneously against

both homonymy and monosemy. In other words, zeugma indicates a split in the meanings,

and lack of zeugma a joining of the meanings, but zeugma does not disprove any joining

(thus proving homonymy), nor lack of zeugma disprove the possibility of splitting (proving

monosemy). These tests, then, remain a useful source of evidence on the matter of joining

and splitting.

Figure 3 represents the picture as I understand it (contrast with Figure 1).


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Figure 3

Another kind of introspective linguistic evidence worth stressing is what may be called

“holes in the pattern”. It is a particularly persuasive way of eliminating a monosemic or rule-

governed model; i.e. it would be added to the array of tools Croft has already handed us for

showing that a structure is (at least) polysemous, with differentiation among the usages

putatively produced from a single source. Essentially, if some monosemous structure [a/U] is

posited, a necessary consequence is that all subcases of U (U1 … Un) can be equally

felicitously called a. So finding a subcase of U that is not felicitously called a is evidence that

U is not monosemous. For instance, the English verb paint designates a wide range of cases

where a colored substance is applied to a surface (including such non-standard cases as

painting a patient’s body with disinfectant prior to making an incision, or applying makeup to

the face). One might well be tempted to posit for the word the relatively abstract,

undifferentiated meaning ‘apply a colored substance to a surface’. However, the cases of

drawing and filling in designs on paper with colored pencils, or coloring a picture with

crayons, or staining wood, fit the definition, but are not felicitously called painting. These

holes in the pattern demonstrate clearly that the undifferentiated general meaning cannot be

the whole story: English speakers know that some subcases of it are and others are not to be

called painting.18

All these kinds of evidence are subject to the stricture mentioned several times above,

that much less is needed to prove a positive than to prove a negative. Intuitions, perceptions,

and evidence about absence are intrinsically weaker than intuitions, perceptions, and

evidence about presence. Clear proof of the presence of a semantic connection or distinction

(or of a monster in Loch Ness or lipids indicative of eukaryotic life in Archean rocks) is

pretty much proof of its presence: correspondingly strong proof of its absence is only proof

that you didn’t find it. It may cast a deal of doubt on the strength or continuity or even the


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possibility of its presence, but it rarely if ever amounts to absolutely compelling proof of

absence.

This applies to psycholinguistic experiments as well. If an experiment shows a semantic

distinction, you can be pretty sure there was a distinction. If an experiment shows no

distinction, you can be pretty sure that if there was a distinction, it didn’t show up in this

experiment. And the same, of course, goes for connections. Rice, Sandra and Vanrespaille (in

press) may well have drawn a blank trying to find, with a variety of experimental techniques,

evidence that present-day speakers of Dutch and English still have access to the space-time

metaphor inherent in the temporal usages of certain prepositions (370). This is evidence that

the speakers were not utilizing any connection through that metaphor in the ways the

experimental techniques counted on. It casts doubt on whether the connection exists at all, or

if it does, on its strength or relevance. But does it really categorically prove there is no such

connection, that “speakers … no longer have access to the metaphor”? Not hardly.

All of these sources of evidence (and the others that Croft intimates may well exist, 1.4),

then, are useful; none, perhaps, can alone give a final answer to “the representational

question”; in many cases all of them together may not be able to do so. But taken together

they can give us a “fix” on the answer, allowing us to triangulate on a better approximation

than any of them could yield alone. Pace Sandra, an inability to provide all the evidence

necessary to “answer the representational question in a definite way” does not leave you in “a

scientifically uninteresting position” (367). Rather we should welcome the scientifically

interesting evidence that psycholinguistic experiments, along with everything else, can bring.

Partial though their conclusions be, they are a step towards finding out the truth of the matter

and should not be despised just because they leave you “short of being able to make bold

statements on mental representation” (367).

2.6 Evidence against monosemy

As mentioned above (in section 2.4), Sandra’s major concern is not the tendency to posit

connections where none are (in his view) warranted, but the opposing propensity to find a

mare’s nest of distinctions in what to him are obvious semantic identities, “the belief in fine-

grained distinctions between related usages” (370). He wants linguists to see these related

usages as single, monosemous entities in mental representations, and claims there is no

evidence but only a pre-established mindset that prevents them from doing so.

It bears repeating that Croft (on whom Sandra is basing his argument) enumerates four

kinds of introspective linguistic evidence which can be used to eliminate the monosemy

model in favor of the polysemy model. They are cross-linguistic comparison (but see 1.2),

evidence of semantic idiosyncrasy or irregularity of the particular usages, evidence of

conventionalization of those usages, and evidence of phonological or morphological

idiosyncrasy linked to them. We could add “holes in the pattern”, the do so type tests and

intersubjectively validated intuitions19

(see the discussion above) as further kinds of powerful

evidence that can be adduced against monosemic analyses.

Any or all of these kinds of evidence can indicate that there is a valid mental distinction

to be made. They are proofs of a positive. The monosemous structure that Sandra prefers

needs to prove the negative, that there is no such distinction. That is harder to do.


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Added to these would be the other kinds of evidence that Croft thinks may indicate

distinctions between the usages, including psycholinguistic experiments, corpus studies and

so forth. If none of these indicate a distinction, then Sandra may be right, that there is none.

But if any of them indicate that there is, there almost certainly is.

2.7 Problems raised by polysemic analyses

Sandra spends several pages discussing issues which he apparently sees as telling blows

against polysemic analyses, indications of their fallacy. I would characterize them rather as

aspects of linguistic structures that make any definitive analysis difficult, and, perhaps, any

pinpoint-precise analysis impossible in principle.

The central, often repeated objection is that there are no rules to the game, no “decision

principles which would make it possible to decide in an objective and replicable way whether

two usages … are distinct or not” (371). Even if the decision criteria are in principle fuzzy

because the structures being described are not fully and clearly delineated from each other (a

possibility Sandra discusses explicitly and, on the whole, admirably) “a lack of clear

principles is not a license for arbitrariness.” One aspect of the problem is the lack of clear

cutoff points for splitting: “One can always think of two usages which differ along yet

another dimension … when has one reached the point where one can ignore the distinction

because polysemy has turned into vagueness? How can one decide which distinctions are

semantically relevant and which are not?” The corresponding problem is that of the cutoff

points for joining. “One has no control over the point where the abstraction stops,” Sandra

laments. “One must accept that the maximally abstract representations will be part of the

representational structure” (373). For both splitting and joining, “any stop along the way will

be an arbitrary decision on the part of the analyst” (374).

It seems clear that the different kinds of evidence we have just been discussing (2.5) are

the decision principles Sandra is asking for. They will not give pinpoint answers to “the

representational question” because, indeed, the structures being described are fuzzy, and do

not consist of “countable, and for that reason clearly distinct and stable, semantic entities”

(371). But they do save these appropriately fuzzy descriptions from arbitrariness: they

constitute the rules of the game. Particularly important is the parameter of

conventionalization (or perhaps more exactly, conventional salience). By Croft’s (165)

principles (and Langacker’s (1987:62-63) and, I believe, most of the linguists’ against whom

Sandra is arguing), any distinction or connection that is conventionalized, whether strongly or

weakly, is in that degree relevant and must be part of mental representations; any that is not

conventionalized, even if the linguist can discern it, is not.20

Conventionality provides the

cutoff principle, though being a matter of degree itself it does not generally provide a clear

cutoff point. Not every possible distinction is salient to any language user, much less to all of

them; nor is it the case that every possible schema (generalization or abstract connecting

concept) is ever conceived of by any language user, much less conventionalized among them

all, and the higher the abstraction the less likely that conventionalization will happen.

(Langacker is quite explicit on this point, e.g. 1987:381).

Similarly with the problem of “know[ing] which clusterings of schemas and tokens

should be chosen … it is difficult to decide which cluster is the right one” (373). The answer

is of course that no one cluster is necessarily right and the others wrong; to assume so is to


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embrace the exclusionary fallacy. Again Langacker says it explicitly, e.g. (1987:388): “Not

only is coherence inherently a matter of degree, but also the definition [of a coherent

category] allows a single network to be divided … in multiple and mutually inconsistent

ways. I regard this as a realistic characterization of the phenomena in question.” And, again,

conventionalization provides the cutoff principle: only those (and all those) clusterings which

are conventionalized are part of the mental structure of the language.

Thus, the answer to Sandra’s concern is that indeed there are decision criteria, tests, rules

of the game. The fact that they do not yield black-and-white answers is appropriate to the

nature of the structures being described, but the decisions are not arbitrary. True, “the mind

does not reveal itself easily” (375), but that does not mean nothing useful can be done to

tease out and describe the meanings that are represented there.

2.8 Counsel of despair

Sandra has repeatedly emphasized, to the point of absolutizing, the difficulties facing

linguists trying to analyze meaning structures, and downplayed, to the point of denying, their

resources for dealing with those difficulties. In his conclusion he parlays this position into a

remorselessly bleak view of the prospects for such activities. He has already counseled pretty

strongly that linguists simply give it up (373-374); in the end he says that is “the only

available option” (376).

On the one hand, according to Sandra, (a) “network analyses strongly suggest that they

are models of the language user’s mental lexicon (the aspect of representational content)—if

they are not, it is unclear what else they could be” (375). Nevertheless (b) “there is no basis

for making such claims.” So, “why would [linguists] make any statements on such issues [as

the representation of language facts] at all? What purpose does it serve? My answer to this

question is: ‘none’” (376). The best that linguists can do is “maintain that these issues can be

solved within a linguistic framework, without attributing psychological reality to these

concepts. As a matter of fact, this is the only available option … One must accept that no

claims on mental representations are implied by any analysis” (376). In other words, (a) the

only real thing your synchronic analyses could possibly refer to are mental representations,

but (b) they cannot refer to mental representations. So, the best you can do is stop trying to

pretend that what you posit has anything to do with what is going on in people’s heads, and

go play hocus-pocus games with theoretical entities that correspond to nothing mentally real.

And leave the field free to the psycholinguists. Linguists can tag along if they want,

perhaps “mak[ing] passing remarks” (364). “At best linguists can offer psycholinguists

additional intralinguistic evidence” (375). “They have to play a minor role (see Croft 1998)

and will have to leave the leading roles to psycholinguists” (376).

This counsel of despair is not justified. Sandra has started with some valid points— (a)

analysis of meaning structures in the mind is not easy and (b) a straightforward relationship

between linguistic analyses and mental representations cannot be taken for granted. (c)

Analysts should show evidence beyond their own intuitions to back up their analyses, and (d)

it behooves them to be somewhat modest in their claims. He has exaggerated these points to

say in essence that (a) such analysis is impossible to linguists, and (b) whatever they are

doing when they make their analyses, it has nothing to do with mental representations. (c) In


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fact they have no evidence beyond their own intuitions to back up their analyses, and (d) they

would do better to remain completely silent regarding mental representations. Although

Croft’s work is appealed to throughout, it does not support these conclusions.

2.9 Points of (dis)agreement

Let me (re)state some of the salient points on which I agree or disagree with Sandra.

I welcome the call for evidence to back up claims. Indeed we should not be positing

things solely on the basis of momentary, solitary intuitions, especially not positing them as

definitive analyses, without further evidence. But the conclusion that therefore we should not

posit anything at all does not follow.

Sandra does well to urge us to modesty and humility in our presentation of linguistic

analyses, a recognition that they are at best hypotheses which we are proffering, not

absolutely sure conclusions. This paper has defended the possibility of finding good evidence

for positing polysemous structures. But correctly positing a polysemic analysis isn’t much.

There are all kinds of issues that leaves you with, issues such as relative salience of parts of

the polysemous structure, or how important, in what contexts and for what purposes, the

joinings and splittings are, for which speakers under which circumstances, issues regarding

exactly what is stored in polysemy (e.g. to what extent are the differentiated senses delineated

from each other? Are redundant parts duplicated?) and so forth. The same tools and

techniques that can establish polysemy can provide evidence relevant to these questions, but

the answers are likely to be less than convincing or definitive. You have just jumped off the

shorelines of monosemy or homonymy into the ocean that lies between them. There is plenty

of room for modesty.

But it is unfortunate for this call for modesty to turn into a call for a loss of confidence or

for diffidence to the point of silence, which is what Sandra makes of it in the end (375-376).

And, it cuts both ways. Psycholinguists have no more right to demand that linguists always

meekly accept what they say, contributing only “passing remarks” (364) and “leav[ing] the

leading roles to psycholinguists” (376) than linguists have the right to demand such

subservience from psycholinguists.

Introspective or intuitive evidence should certainly be taken warily and evaluated

carefully. But the same is true for every kind of evidence, certainly including, and perhaps

not least, timing results from psycholinguistic experiments.

Regarding cognitive linguists’ analyses of language data, Sandra says:

A mental representation interpretation seems, however, unavoidable in the synchronic semantic analyses. It is hard to believe that language users do not recognize the links between usages which are so close to each other. If these analyses do not refer to mental representations (not their format but their content), it is hard to see what they could refer to. (370)

I fully agree. I want each such analysis that I have produced to be considered to be a

hypothesis, the best hypothesis I was able to advance at the time I proffered it, about mental

representations constituting the linguistic structure I was trying to analyze and understand.

When I represent two meanings as distinct, I do indeed mean that I think they are in some


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degree distinct in at least some language users’ minds, and when I connect them, I do indeed

mean that I think some language users at least have a mental connection between them. I may

be wrong to varying degrees on various points, and where that is so I welcome arguments and

evidence that will help correct my understanding. But if this work amounts to just shuffling

chips in some linguistic framework with no relation to mental reality, which Sandra says is

all it should be taken to be (376), I have no interest in it.

Questions of how meaning is represented in the mind are not simple, and it is rarely easy

to come to absolute and definite conclusions about them. However, there are many kinds of

evidence which linguists can use to elucidate certain aspects of those questions, and by

combining all these kinds of evidence they can approach certainty in at least some cases. The

picture is not nearly so bleak as Sandra paints it.


References

Croft, William

1998 Linguistic evidence and mental representations. Cognitive Linguistics 9(2),

151-173.

Cruse, D. Alan

1986 Lexical semantics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

1995 Polysemy and related phenomena from a cognitive linguistic viewpoint. In P.

Saint-Dizier and E. Viegas (eds.), Computational Lexical Semantics.

Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 33-49.

Cuyckens, Hubert, and Dominiek Sandra (Polysemy volume—I do not know the title)

in press

Geeraerts, Dirk

1993 Vagueness’s puzzles, polysemy’s vagaries. Cognitive Linguistics 4(3), 223-

272.

Langacker, Ronald W.

1987 Foundations of cognitive grammar. Vol. 1: Theoretical prerequisites.

Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Lakoff, George

1970a Irregularity in Syntax. New York: Holt Rinehart Winston.

1970b A note on vagueness and ambiguity. Linguistic Inquiry 3:357-359.

Raukko, Jarno

1999. “An ‘intersubjective’ method for cognitive-semantic research on polysemy:

The case of get.” In Hiraga, Masako, Chris Sinha, and Sherman Wilcox

(eds.), Cultural, Typological, and Psycholinguistic Issues. Proceedings of the

Fourth International Cognitive Linguistics Conference, vol. 3. Amsterdam:

Benjamins.

Ruhl, Charles

1989 On monosemy: a study in linguistic semantics. Albany, NY: SUNY Press

Rice, Sally, Dominiek Sandra and Mia Vanrespaille

in press Prepositional semantics and the fragile link between space and time. In:

Hiraga, M., Chris Sinha, and Sherman Wilcox (eds.) Cultural, typological,

and psycholinguistic issues. Proceedings of the Fourth International

Cognitive Linguistics Conference, Vol. 3. Amsterdam: Benjamins.

Sandra, Dominiek

1998 What linguists can and can’t tell you about the human mind: A reply to

Croft. Cognitive Linguistics 9(4), 361-378.

Tuggy, David


in press. The Orizaba Nawatl verb kîsa:a case study in polysemy. In Cuyckens, and

Sandra, eds.


Notes

* Summer Institute of Linguistics

[email protected]

2 Since both Croft’s and Sandra’s articles were published in the serially numbered Volume 9 of

Cognitive Linguistics (albeit in different issues), and since I will be citing page numbers from

them continually, I will cite them only as a number between parentheses, without the customary

year number (which would be 1998 in both cases). Numbers between 151 and 173 refer to Croft’s

article; numbers between 361 and 378 to Sandra’s.

3 Croft prefers the term “independent entries” because of some analysts’ use of “homonymy” to mean

“never connected” rather than “not synchronically connected”. I use “homonymy” because it fits

Sandra’s terminology, and similarly “monosemy” instead of Croft’s “pragmatic rules”.

4 Croft actually adduces this evidence (Fig. 2.b) to eliminate the less commonly-posited “nonce-use”

account, which he places between strict monosemy and derivation, but it also would effectively

eliminate strict monosemy. (It also, if I understand his theoretical framework correctly, would

eliminate the derivational account.) Similarly the criterion of an opaque formal relationship (Fig.

2.e) is adduced to eliminate the “complex formal relationship” model, which he places between

polysemy and fully separate storage.

5 It apparently did to an anonymous reviewer of this article, to whom my thanks are due for prompting

clarification of the discussion of this point.

6 This assumption is the heart of the “rule-list” fallacy, which Croft agrees is indeed fallacious (156).

7 The argument is not as straightforward as this summary might sound, however. The fact that man

rarely means HUMAN BEING apart from despecifying contexts such as every ___ or any ___ must

be factored in to the equation, for instance, and one must sustain somehow that the meaning is not

something less schematic, like HUMAN BEING OF UNSPECIFIED GENDER AND AGE. This is difficult to

do. This is not an isolated kind of case, however; all cases of “holes in the pattern” (2.5) make this

point.

8 This only holds where the phonological differences systematically line up with the semantic or usage

differences, of course.

9 One might quibble over whether some kinds of evidence are appropriately included in the category or

not. There is some sense in which all evidence must become introspective before a thinker can use


it to think with. I for one would not have thought of counting comparison with data from other

languages as an introspective technique.

10 I omit from this discussion Sandra’s ideas on what linguists are allowed to say (essentially nothing;

364, 375) about “how” language is structured in the mind, i.e. questions of language processing

and representational format. I also ignore the carte blanche he offers for investigating high-level

parameters of Language, as opposed to nitty-gritty details about languages (365, 375). This silence

should not be taken to necessarily betoken agreement.

11 I owe this term to Esa Itkonen, who used it in an email about a completely different topic. For

further discussion of the concept see section 2.5

12 The closer an intuition is tied to this sort of everyday usage of a particular structure, the better

evidence it constitutes. This is one reason (not the only one) that Sandra’s dictum that as linguists

we can deal with high-level “parameters that shape language” or “humans’ mental predisposition

for language”, but not with particular language structures (365, 375), strikes me as getting things

backwards.

13 Assuming, of course, that all those whose intuitions are being compared are equally experienced

users of the language in question.

14 Even that is not true for highly specific meanings. Vagueness (=monosemy) is the typical case there.

One does not expect, for instance, that language speakers will make as much of differences among

ladybugs as among kinds of insects, or anticipate that a differentiation will be made among the

different kinds of sneezes, or women’s fingers as opposed to men’s. One is not surprised to find a

word that covers all subcases of such a highly specific kind with no distinctions. (One is not blown

away to find that distinctions are made, either.)

15 Not coincidentally, it is evidence for conventionality as well as brute existence of whatever structure

it relates to.

16 I have been impressed with the unpretentious but solid work of Jarno Raukko (e.g. 1999) along these

lines, tabulating speakers’ reactions on such issues and mapping out degrees of consensus.

Although Sandra does not seem to consider such studies to be part of linguistic methodology, he at

least seems positive about the possibility that they could provide some useful information (374).

17 Croft uses cross-language comparison as an indicator of distinctness of meanings. It can also provide

evidence for the plausibility of a semantic connection. When a set of meanings has a single form

in widely separated languages, that may reflect natural semantic connections between the


meanings of the set. Of course, unless those natural connections are conventionalized in a

particular language (and of course not all are), they will not appear in the mental representations

of that language.

18 Holes in the pattern are the clearest subcase of a wider category of evidence which has to do with

differences in (conventional) salience among subcases. For paint the ideas of painting pictures as

an artist does, or painting houses as a housepainter does, are highly salient; the ideas of painting

disinfectant on a body or makeup on one’s face are much less so. Even when such differences

amount only to what one might call weak or thin spots in the fabric rather than actual holes, they

too provide evidence against sheer monosemy being the whole story.

19 Although these last two provide very strong evidence for splits in meanings, they tend to work better

with more salient splits than the typically non-salient ones, overshadowed by salient joinings, that

Sandra is objecting to.

20 Of course what is conventional does not equate directly with what is present in any individual’s

mind. Assuming that the individual is a fully competent user of the language, the distinctions and

connections that are conventionalized will perforce be in his or her mind. But he or she may well

have further (or stronger) mental connections or distinctions that are not shared by all users. If the

difference is striking, however, the individual will usually know pretty well that other speakers of

the language do not generally share his or her mental structure on that point: thus it will not be

part of even his or her own conception of the language, much less of the language as examined

from outside.

Linguistic evidence for polysemy in the mind: a response to William Croft and Dominiek Sandra

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