Aspects of Polysemy in Biblical Greek: A Preliminary Study for a New Lexicographical Resource

The paper departs from a corpus-based analysis of a portion of the Biblical Greek lexicon. Attention is focused on the nouns associated with the semantic sphere of ‘Law’ and their Hebrew equivalents, within a well-defined and homogeneous textual corpus. The analysis is underpinned by a theoretical study of word-meaning representation, carried out within a lexicological framework which takes into account the flexibility produced by the context, in a range from inherent to selectional polysemy (Croft and Cruse: 2004; Pustejovsky 2008). It assumes the syntagmatic processes of sense modulation, which contribute to the determination of the meaning of complex syntagmatic structures (Pustejovsky 2006). This theoretical framework suggests new paths for scholars of Biblical Greek. The paper suggests the database WordClustering as a new lexicographical tool for the study of the Biblical Greek lexicon. This resource will enhance the possibilities available to scholars, supplying for example the following new features: • Search all the nominal heads of a given adjectival modifier; • Search all the direct objects of a given predicate; • Search all the occurrences of a given nominal/verbal phrase; • Cluster the readings of an inherently polisemous word (inherent polysemy occurs when multiple interpretations of an expression are due to the semantics inherent in the expression itself); • Cluster the readings of a word on the basis of selectional restrictions (selectional polysemy arises when a novel interpretation of an expression is due to context, namely, the type of the nominal selectee); • Cluster nouns on the basis of their type in terms of logical formalism. Offering a refined representation of semantic flexibility with regard to the processes of sense modulation, the database is also capable to show whether a regular pattern of polysemy in a given Greek noun matches its Hebrew equivalents.