CORPUS LINGUISTICS TOOLS FOR IDENTIFYING POLYSEMY

Abstract

Abstract: Polysemy—the phenomenon in which a single lexical item carries multiple related meanings—remains a central challenge in linguistic description and computational language processing. This study examines how modern corpus linguistics tools can be applied to identify and analyze polysemy in English. Using concordancers, collocation measures, distributional semantics, and sense-disambiguation algorithms, the research demonstrates that corpus-based evidence allows for a systematic and quantitative approach to distinguishing senses. The findings show that frequent collocational patterns, semantic prosody, and distributional similarity metrics reveal clear indicators of polysemous behavior. This paper argues that the integration of corpus methods not only enhances theoretical linguistic analysis but also supports practical applications in lexicography and natural language processing.