Functional Shift in Relation to Lexical Semantics

Abstract

There  are  three  concepts  in  the  English  language  that  tend  to  confuse  some  English  language users: Functional shift, homonymy and polysemy. Functional Shiftcan fall under morphological and/or  syntactic  domain  depending  on  the  theoretical  approach  one  adopts.  It  can  also  fit  into semantics  when  meaning  of  words  is  considered  in  addition  to  forms  and  functions;  hence,  its relation  to  semantics.  Homonymy  and  polysemy  fall  under  the  lexical  semantics  which  tend  to characterize  the  meaning  of  a  word  not  in  terms  of  its  component  features,  but  in  terms of  its relationship   to   other   words.   However,   homonymy   and   polysemy   sometimes,   pose   some difficulties  to  English  language  users  when  compared  to  functional  shift.  This  paper  sets  out  to critically   evaluate  these  processes  with  the  intention  to  clear   all  manner  of   ambiguities surrounding  the  distinction  of  functional  shift  from  homonymy  and  polysemy  by  providing  a clear cut distinguishing features among these three concepts and present each on an atmosphere devoid of complexities