Bondéelle, Olivier (2015). Polysémie et structuration du lexique: Le cas du wolof [Polysemy and the structure of the lexicon: The case of wolof]. Utrecht: LOT. PDF (open access)
This work deals with the role of polysemy in structuring the lexicon. The thesis proposes a qualitative evaluation of polysemy, comparing it with the other relationships that structure the lexicon. This undertaking makes it possible to verify that polysemy links should not be modeled independently of derivation or conversion links. The results of the evaluation show that the boundary between polysemy and conversion is porous.
The language of study is Wolof, a coastal language of West Africa. This language provides adequate material for the research. A wide range of morphological processes structure the lexicon (derivation by suffixation, derivation by consonantal alternation, conversion by change of the nominal class morpheme).
The descriptive contribution of this work lies in the exploration of the areas of artefacts and emotions of the Wolof, areas never described previously for an African language from the point of view of structuring the lexicon. The methodology consists in describing the meanings of the lexical units and the semantic links connecting them by a single metalanguage, that of the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM), introduced here for the Wolof language.
