المستخلص: |
This review article examines the difficulty in determining the homonymous and polysemous lexical items, because of the ambiguous nature inherent in these lexemes. It starts by showing what lexicographers need to do in order to put words together into a dictionary, and how conventional dictionaries list lexical entries. Next the paper presents the views of some research scholars, which explain the ambiguous nature of homonymy and polysemy. Presenting some arguments about how homonymy and polysemy are related to each other, the paper states the difference between them. In the second part, the paper discusses, polysemy and homonymy, with clear examples, in standard Arabic language, and the difficulties the Arabic lexicographers face in making entries of such lexical items. The paper concludes that in spite of several research studies on homonymy and polysemy, the difficulty in determining these lexemes still exists, because of the ambiguous nature inherent in them.
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