Polysémie standard et facettes de sens vues au travers du prisme de la diversité linguistique : entre la variation et la régularité

Abstract

The aim of this pilot study is to investigate how two types of meaning alternation, viz. standard polysemy and lexical facets, are realized across languages. The languages compared are French, English and Standard Arabic. We hypothesize that in the case of lexical facets the meaning alternation is more systematic across languages than in the case of polysemy because of the ambivalent nature of entities denoted by lexical facets. To test our hypothesis and to compare these two types of meaning variation, we compiled our own corpus of data in French, English and Standard Arabic by applying an original and controlled experimental approach. Descriptive and statistical analyses of the data show that lexical facets do indeed manifest a greater regularity across the three languages than metaphoric and metonymic types of polysemy. These first results open new perspectives for both a better characterization and a better delineation of these two types of meaning alternation.