monoseme

monoseme (plural monosemes)

1. (prosody) A single semeion or mora.

   Coordinate terms: diseme, triseme, heptaseme

   • 2001, John William Johnson, “Computer Technology and the Study of Music and Prosody: The Case of Somali Oral Performance”, in Russell H. Kaschula, editor, African Oral Literature: Functions in Contemporary Contexts, →ISBN, page 7:

     The foot pattern for the baby caprine song is: diseme/monoseme/diseme/diseme.

   • 2008, John William Johnson, “Music and Poetry in Somalia”, in Douglas Puchowski, editor, The Concise Garland Encyclopedia of World Music, volume 1, →ISBN, page 58:

     In a given poem, a monoseme contains a short vowel of one mora, and a diseme contains two moras.

   • 2011, Charles H. Cosgrove, An Ancient Christian Hymn with Musical Notation. Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 1786: Text and Commentary, →ISBN, page 116:

     But its primary meaning must be rhythmic, since it is not used to group notes longer than a monoseme […]

2. (semantics) A monosemous term; a term with one meaning.

   Antonym: polyseme

   • 1982, FID/CR Report Series‎, number 20, International Federation for Documentation, Committee on Classification Research, page 3:

     Moreover, a word that is a monoseme in general language can be used equivocally in a special language.

   • 1993, Fred Riggs, “Social Science Terminology: Basic Problems and proposed Solutions”, in Helmi B. Sonneveld, Kurt L. Loening, editors, Terminology: Applications in Interdisciplinary Communication, →ISBN, page 207:

     As a dictionary search makes clear, preciously few ordinary words are monosemes, but they do exist: hippopotamus may be an example.

   • 2015, Christian Kay, Kathryn Allan, English Historical Semantics, →ISBN, page 41:

     The simplest kind of word is a monoseme […] So many words develop additional meanings over time that it’s quite difficult to think of examples, but three possibilities are telephone, word-processor, giraffe – all fairly recent additions to the English vocabulary.

3. (semantics) An underlying meaning of a word, more general than a sememe.
   • 1972, Linguistics: An International Review‎, number 77, page 71:

     A monoseme in the semantic respect is less than a word but in the syntactical configuration — more.

   • 1977, Proceedings of the Twelfth International Congress of Linguists, page 229:

     Our observations made it clear that the new meanings, which emerged in the inner forms of the lexical units, had taken root under direct “pressure” of the monosemes of the confronted and identified counterpart in the source-language.

   • 1980, Vladimir A. Khomiakov, “Two typological features of nonstandard English and Russian vocabularies”, in New Zealand Slavonic Journal, number 2, →JSTOR, page 62:

     Thus, we suggest that in semantic structures of standard words there emerge nonstandard monosemes which are stylistically marked or socially determined and dependent on contexts and extra-linguistic situations.

   • 2006, John Hewson, Vit Bubenik, From Case to Adposition: The development of configurational syntax in Indo-European languages, →ISBN, page ix:

     In many modern studies the underlying meaning of a preposition such as over is seen as a group of related meanings, a sort of molecule. Others see it as a single meaning, a monoseme, or ideal meaning, Jakobson’s Gesamtbedeutung […]

monoseme (not comparable)

1. (rare) Monosemic.
   • 1984, Sándor Rot, “Inherent Variability and Linguistic Interference of Anglo-Old-Scandinavian and Anglo-Norman French Language Contacts in the Formation of Grammatical Innovations in Late Old English and Middle English”, in N. F. Blake, C. Jones, editors, English Historical Linguistics: Studies in Development, page 76:

     Thus, in the early period of PIE lexical units having conglomerate monoseme internal forms with “existential” (motional), “spatial”, and “temporal” meanings began to polarize.

   • 2003, Walter Breu, “Bilingualism and linguistic interference in the Slavic-Romance contact area of Molise (Southern Italy)”, in Regine Eckardt et al., editors, Words in Time: Diachronic Semantics from Different Points of View, →ISBN, page 359, n. 10:

     The insensibility towards a semantic structure adaptation goes so far that the (also imperfective) monoseme synonym jijam of grem in the meaning ‘to go’ is disappearing nowadays.

   • 2007, Jan Hoogland, “Lexical Gaps in Arabic: Evidence from Dictionaries”, in Everhard Ditters, Harald Motzki, editors, Approaches to Arabic Linguistics, →ISBN, page 467:

     The Dutch word ‘loods’, as a person, is monoseme and can only mean ‘a pilot in shipping’, and certainly not ‘airplane pilot’ or any other type of guide.

   • For more quotations using this term, see Citations:monoseme.

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monoseme

1. inflection of monosem:
   1. strong/mixed nominative/accusative feminine singular
   2. strong nominative/accusative plural
   3. weak nominative all-gender singular
   4. weak accusative feminine/neuter singular