Polysemy of derivational constructions and categorization of derivatives in Polish language: An analysis of derivatives with the nominal suffix -acz

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present the relationship between defining derivational polysemy and homonymy and the issue of categories of derivatives. Traditional approaches and lexicographical practice concentrate on the formal relations between the base word and its derivatives, although, in some cases, words with the same form and structure have very disparate lexical meanings. Even though they are described as polysemous in dictionaries and lexicons, they frequently belong to different categories, viz. nomina agentis or nomina instrumenti. Some of these lexemes are so-called ‘associative derivatives’. This paper shows different approaches to describing these relationships and suggests ways of unifying the overall methods of analysis.