Exploring lexical polysemy of the Zauzou intensifier xã35

Abstract

Lexical polysemy and its related phenomena have been topics of interests in the realm of lexical semantics for decades. In the practice of linguistic fieldwork, determining distinct senses of a lexical item is a challenge confronted by all semantic fieldworkers in collecting and analyzing lexical data from underrepresented languages. The present paper discusses the methodologies adopted in the investigation of lexical polysemy of the Zauzou intensifier xã³⁵ in non-gradable predicates. The central claim of this paper is that the meanings provided by native speakers via translation or elicitation only represent interpretations that are situated in contexts. To extract the semantic core, i.e., senses, of a word, the acceptability judgment tasks are indispensable. In the case of Zauzou, a semantic inventory of the non-gradable xã³⁵ is first established by means of text investigation and semantic elicitation of interpretations of xã³⁵ in different contexts. This inventory covers all contextualized interpretations of xã³⁵, which may be a combination of three distinct types of meanings: lexical polysemy, conceptual polysemy, and implicatures. Three acceptability judgment tasks are used as diagnostics of potential lexical polysemy in xã³⁵. The results suggest that xã³⁵ is not polysemous in non-gradable V-xã³⁵ constructions. I also claim that there is no single procedure serving as the gold standard about meaning in semantic fieldwork. Results from the judgment tests should only be taken as clues about the meaning of xã³⁵ due to the limitation of those diagnostics.