Monosemantic words are words which have only 1 meaning. They are comparatively few in number, mostly — scientific terms. The bulk of English words are polysemantic — they possess more than 1 meaning. The actual number ranges from 5 to 11. The commoner the word is the more meaning it has. The problem of polysemy is mainly the problem interrelation and interdependence of the various meanings of the same word. If polysemy is viewed diachronically it is understood as the growth and development or change in the semantic structure of the word.
Polysemy is diachronic terms implies that a word may retain its previous meanings and at the same time acquire 1 or several new ones. The main source of polysemy is a change in the semantic structure of the word, result as a rule in new meanings being added to the existing meanings in the semantic structure of the word. Some of the old meanings may become obsolete or disappear. But the bulk of English words tend to increase in number of meanings.
Synchronically polysemy is understood as the co-existence of various meanings of the same word at a certain historical perioud of time.
The concepts of central or basic meaning and marginal or minor meanings may be interpreted in terms of their relative frequency and speech. It means that the meaning with the highest frequency value is synchronically its basic meaning. There is an approach of formallogical relations among the meanings. According to this approach there are 2 types of possible relations: radial and chain relation.
Radial relation implies that any 2 meanings have a common part. The common part is called an invariantcommon meaning. Chain relation is where the 1st and the 3rd components have nothing in common but they are connected only through the 2nd. Both types of relations are possible simultaneously — it is called the semantic network of meanings.
