The Quest for Meaning: The Role of Meaning Dominance in Northern Sotho Ambiguity

Abstract

Some scholars of semantics (e.g. Hogaboam & Perfetti,(1975) criticised much of the previous literature in ambiguity on the grounds that a potentially relevant variable, namely, the dominance of the different meanings of an ambiguous word, had been ignored. That is, not all meanings occur with equal frequency (Simpson, 1979). This implies that given an ambiguous word, one retrieves its most frequent meaning first. This meaning is tested against the context, and if it is determined to be appropriate, it is accepted. If it is not appropriate, the next most frequent meaning is retrieved. It is the main aim of this article to test ambiguity of words in a sentence, starting from the most dominant meaning to the most subordinate meaning. In this respect, context plays a very important role. The company/situation in which one finds oneself determines the dominant meaning.