semantics Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction betwee ...

and

lexical Lexical may refer to: Linguistics * Lexical corpus or lexis, a complete set of all words in a language * Lexical item, a basic unit of lexicographical classification * Lexicon, the vocabulary of a person, language, or branch of knowledge * Lexical ...

typology A typology is a system of classification used to organize things according to similar or dissimilar characteristics. Groups of things within a typology are known as "types". Typologies are distinct from taxonomies in that they primarily address t ...

, colexification is the ability for a language to express different meanings with the same word. When a language colexifies several concepts, this is generally understood as a sign that these concepts are semantically related. Research in lexical typology has thus been using colexification as a tool to measure

semantic similarity Semantic similarity is a metric defined over a set of documents or terms, where the idea of distance between items is based on the likeness of their meaning or semantic content as opposed to lexicographical similarity. These are mathematical tool ...

between concepts.

Definition

Colexification describes the case of different meanings being expressed by the same word (i.e., “co-lexified”) in a language. For example, the two senses which are distinguished in English as ''people'' and ''village'' are colexified in Spanish, which uses ''pueblo'' in both cases. Colexification is meant as a neutral descriptive term that avoids distinguishing between

vagueness In linguistics and philosophy, a vague predicate is one which gives rise to borderline cases. For example, the English adjective "tall" is vague since it is not clearly true or false for someone of middling height. By contrast, the word " prime" ...

polysemy Polysemy ( or ; ) is the capacity for a Sign (semiotics), sign (e.g. a symbol, morpheme, word, or phrase) to have multiple related meanings. For example, a word can have several word senses. Polysemy is distinct from ''monosemy'', where a word h ...

, and

homonymy In linguistics, homonyms are words which are either; ''homographs''—words that mean different things, but have the same spelling (regardless of pronunciation), or ''homophones''—words that mean different things, but have the same pronunciatio ...

. Some cases of colexification are common across the world (e.g. ‘blue’ = ‘green’); others are typical of certain linguistic and cultural areas (e.g. ‘tree’ = ‘fire’ among Papuan and

Australian languages The Indigenous languages of Australia number in the hundreds, the precise number being quite uncertain, although there is a range of estimates from a minimum of around 250 (using the technical definition of 'language' as non-mutually intellig ...

; or ‘

thunder Thunder is the sound caused by lightning. Depending upon the distance from and nature of the lightning, it can range from a long, low rumble to a sudden, loud crack. The sudden increase in temperature and hence pressure caused by the lightning pr ...

’ = ‘

dragon A dragon is a Magic (supernatural), magical legendary creature that appears in the folklore of multiple cultures worldwide. Beliefs about dragons vary considerably through regions, but European dragon, dragons in Western cultures since the Hi ...

’ in the

Sino-Tibetan languages Sino-Tibetan (also referred to as Trans-Himalayan) is a family of more than 400 languages, second only to Indo-European in number of native speakers. Around 1.4 billion people speak a Sino-Tibetan language. The vast majority of these are the 1.3 ...

). The opposite of “ co-lexify” is “

dis Dis, DIS or variants may refer to: Arts and entertainment Music * Dis (album), ''Dis'' (album), by Jan Garbarek, 1976 * ''Dís'', a soundtrack album by Jóhann Jóhannsson, 2004 * "Dis", a song by The Gazette from the 2003 album ''Hankou Seimeib ...

-lexify”, i.e. 'express two meanings using different lexical forms'. François (2022:95). Thus, Russian colexifies 'arm' and 'hand' using the single word ''рука'', but Spanish dislexifies these two meanings using two distinct words, respectively ''brazo'' v. ''mano''.

Examples

Use in linguistic studies

The term was coined by the linguist

Alexandre François Alexandre François is a French linguist specialising in the description and study of the indigenous languages of Melanesia. He belongs t''Lattice'' a research centre of the CNRS and dedicated to linguistics. Research Language description and ...

in his 2008 article “Semantic maps and the typology of colexification”. This article illustrated the notion with various examples, including the semantic domains of , , . The latter notion is at the source of a colexification network that is attested in several languages, linking together such senses as ‘breath’, ‘life’, ‘soul’, ‘spirit’, ‘ghost’...: Skr. आत्मन् ''ātmán''; Anc. Gk ψυχή,

πνεῦμα ''Pneuma'' () is an ancient Greek word for "breathing, breath", and in a religious context for "spirit (animating force), spirit". It has various technical meanings for medical writers and philosophers of classical antiquity, particularly in rega ...

; Lat. ''animus'', ''spīritus''; Arab. روح ''rūḥ'', etc. François built on that example to propose a method for constructing lexical semantic maps. Several studies have taken up the concept of colexification and applied it to different semantic domains and various language families. Colexification is also the object of a dedicated database, known a
CLiCS
“Database of Cross-Linguistic Colexifications”. Based on data from more than 2400 language varieties of the world, the database makes it possible to check the typological frequency of individual instances of colexification, and to visualize

semantic network A semantic network, or frame network is a knowledge base that represents semantic relations between concepts in a network. This is often used as a form of knowledge representation. It is a directed or undirected graph consisting of vertices, ...

sFor example, th
subgraph around the notion
/ref> based on empirical data from the world's languages.

Notes

References

* * * *. * * Gast, Volker & Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. 2018
The areal factor in lexical typology
In D. Olmen, T. Mortelmans & F. Brisard (eds), ''Aspects of linguistic variation'', 43–82. Berlin: DeGruyter. * * Georgakopoulos, Thanasis, Daniel A. Werning, Jörg Hartlieb, Tomoki Kitazumi, Lidewij van de Peut, Annette Sundermeyer & Gaëlle Chantrain. 2016
The meaning of ancient words for ‘earth’: An exercise in visualizing colexification on a semantic map
. In Gerd Graßhoff & Michael Meyer (eds), ''Space and Knowledge''. Special issue of ''eTopoi. Journal for Ancient Studies'' 6. 418–452. * * * * * Pericliev, Vladimir. 2015. On colexification among basic vocabulary. ''Journal of Universal Language'' 16(2). 63–93. . * *{{Cite book, publisher = De Gruyter , doi=10.1515/9783110377675-012, pages = 355–422, editor1 = Päivi Juvonen, editor2 =Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, last1 = Schapper, first1 = Antoinette, last2 = San Roque, first2 = Lila, last3 = Hendery, first3 = Rachel, title = The Lexical Typology of Semantic Shifts, chapter = Tree, firewood and fire in the languages of Sahul, location = Berlin, Boston, date = 2016, chapter-url = https://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783110377675/9783110377675-012/9783110377675-012.xml , ref=schapper * Urban, Matthias. 2012. ''Analyzability and semantic associations in referring expressions''. Leiden University PhD dissertation.

External links