< The only problem I have with this is the implicit assumption that
< the senses given in published dictionaries are disjoint. Since
< the senses are often not disjoint, any ambiguity resolution which
< always chooses exactly one active sense is inherently wrong in any
< case where more than one sense applies.
<
< To take an example with the word STOCK we've been discussing so much
< here: In the sentence 'They had acquired 48.5 per cent of Continental's
< stock', does STOCK take the sense 'shares which are large parts of the
< ownership of a company ... and which can be bought as an investment'?
< Or the sense 'the amount of money which the company has through selling
< shares to people'? (Both definitions are from CoBuild.)
<
< It seems to me that both senses apply.
<
< The situation is even clearer in the case of a word like German
< 'Pflanze', which is used by farmers to refer to their crops, but by
< biologists to refer to all objects which are neither animals nor
< minerals, whether planted intentionally as a crop or not. (The tree in
< front of the farmhouse is a plant only in the second sense; the wheat in
< the field is a plant in both senses.)
If language is viewed as a media for commnication rather than a
knowledge representation, the sense of a usage should be taken as the
sense intended by the speaker/writer rather than all the senses which
make the statement true. While it is true that the wheat in the field
is a plant in both senses, a usage of the word is most likely intended
as one sense or the other depending on the context. If it is a farmer
talking to his son, it would more likely be the first sense. If it is a
biologist writing an academic paper, it will very likely be the second sense.