Abstract
According to Falkum (2011: 9), it is apparent that a single word form can be associated
with several different meanings. We may take the selected word for our
elaboration, which is run. Its meaning in the verb phrase run a half marathon is apparently
different from the one it has in run some water, or, for that matter, in run on
gasoline, run on empty, run a shop, run late, run away from responsibilities, run in
the family, run for President, etc. This phenomenon, described as polysemy, proliferates
in natural languages, including English as well. This is confi rmed by a range
of different senses (and/or uses) that any available source, e.g. any dictionary will
have listed under a polysemous term a considerable number of its entries.
The objective of this article will be the theoretical analysis related to the notion of
polysemy. The subsequent sections of the article will comprise the practical demonstration
of the results of the corpus study. Its subjects were Polish students of English
Philology. The students’ use of a selected polysemous word run was investigated
based on the available corpus PELCRA1. The corpus was selected as it is a very
reliable source to investigate the use of L2 from the perspective of non-native Polish
users of English. To demonstrate how the students comprehend the selected polysemous
word run, the extracts from students’ compositions, essays and short stories
were analysed in accordance with the occurrence of the word run and supplemented
with their performance during the spoken mode. The extracts were subsequently
analysed in light of their use and assumed awareness of the investigated word.
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