call some putative explanation a“gooseberry etymology”? I don't know in general; I only know that doing so is an
honorable last resort.
Next consider some cases whereit is easy tomake a judgment.On oneextreme, I thinkeveryoneagreesthat thebanks
inriver bankandsavings bankrepresent separate homonymous concepts listed in the lexicon, not a single polysemous
concept. On the otherextreme, I doubt anyone thinks that the mental lexicon listsham sandwichas potentiallyreferring
to a person, orRussellas referring to a book, orJohnas referring to a car, eventhough theyare understood that way in
(5).
(5) a. [One waitress to another:]
The ham sandwichin the corner wants some more coffee.
b. Platois on the top shelf next toRussell.
c. Johngot a dent in his left fender.Rather, these“extended”meanings are builtup online from lexically listed meaningsby general principles; we take this
process up in section 12.2.
The cases between these two extremes are of greater interest. One that Ifind uncontroversial is the sort of multistep
chaining ofassociationfound incardinal. AccordingtotheOxford English Dictionary, theearliest meaningis‘principal,’as
incardinal points of the compassandcardinal virtues. Fro mthere it extended to the high-ranking church official, then to the
traditional color of his robes, then to the bird of that color. All of these senses are still present in English, but they
surely do not constitute a single polysemous word—especially thefirst and last member. The reason is that the basis
for connection changes en route, so that one cannot trace the connection without knowing the intermediate steps.
What should we say about these cases? They are more closely related than plain homonyms, but not closely related
enough to be said to for ma unified concept. One might call them“opaquely chained concepts.”^174
Wefind a quite different situation in the related senses ofopenin (6), which are related by semiproductive lexical
relations; the relation between (6b) and (6c) is the causative relation illustrated in (1) and (2).
(6) a. The door is open 1.
b. The door opened 2.
[≈the door became open 1 ]
c. John opened 3 the door.
[≈John caused the door to open 2 = John caused the door to become open 1 ]340 SEMANTIC AND CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS
(^174) I havethesame sense aboutLakoff's (1987 : 104–9) analysisoftheJapaneseclassifierhon:among theentitiesto whichitapplies, there is a motivatedroutefrom candles to
Zen contests and to TV programs, but Ifind it hard to think of the mas constituting any sort of unified category, as Lakoff claims.