Usage context: subsenses
A subsense is a distinct word meaning that appears to be motivated by usage context: the specific situational context in which the word (and the utterance in which the word is embedded) occurs. However, the distinct sense disappears in other contexts. This suggests that subsenses (also known as micro-senses; Croft and Cruse 2004) lack what Cruse calls full autonomy: the degree of conventionalisation that secures relative context-independence and thus identifies distinct senses. Example (27), taken from Cruse (2000: 36), illustrates context-specific subsense of the lexical item knife:
Although Billy does have a knife (a penknife), the context (sitting at the meal table) stipulates that it is not a knife of the appropriate kind. In other words, the usage context narrows down the meaning of knife to CUTLERY KNIFE. At this point, we might pause to consider whether the notion of subsenses can be subsumed under vagueness: could it be that the expression knife is vague rather than polysemous like the expression aunt? Cruse argues that this is not the case based on evidence such as the identity constraint. Consider the following examples adapted from Croft and Cruse (2004: 129):
In the first sentence, we are likely to interpret the second conjunct as referring to the same sense of knife (e.g. they both need a table knife): this illustrates the identity constraint. However, in (29), there is no such constraint. The second conjunct could refer to either a maternal or paternal aunt. These examples illustrate Cruse’s claim that, while subsenses adhere to the identity constraint, lexical items that are vague do not. Now let’s consider why subsenses are not fully conventional senses. Cruse observes that in certain situations the distinct subsenses CUTLERY KNIFE and PENKNIFE disappear:
This sentence could appropriately be used to describe a drawer that contained a cutlery knife, a penknife, a surgeon’s knife, a flick knife, a soldier’s knife and so on. In other words, the example in (30) appeals to a unified meaning of knife in which the contextually induced subsenses disappear. This demonstrates that subsenses do not qualify as fully distinct senses because they require specific kinds of context in order to induce them. Hence, the polysemy associated with the lexical item appears to be heavily dependent upon usage context.
