meaninghas

Meaninghas is a theoretical concept in semantics used to describe the multiplicity of meanings associated with a linguistic expression. It denotes the set or collection of senses that a form can have across different contexts, rather than a single fixed meaning. The notion is often discussed in relation to polysemy, sense disambiguation, and contextualism.

Origin and scope: The term meaninghas is a portmanteau-like construction used in theoretical discussions to focus on the property that expressions meaninghas multiple senses. It is not tied to a specific language and is used for analytical purposes rather than documentation of usage.

Formalization and usage: In formal semantics, meaninghas can be represented as a relation meaninghas(expr, sense) where expr is a linguistic expression and sense is a possible meaning in a given context. For example, meaninghas('bank', 'financial institution') and meaninghas('bank', 'shore of a river'). In disambiguation tasks, context narrows the set meaninghas(S) to a single intended sense.

Examples: The sentence 'I deposited money at the bank' relies on the financial-institution sense of bank, while 'The fisherman sat by the bank' relies on the riverbank sense. A data annotation might attach meaninghas('bank', {'financial institution', 'shore of a river'}) to indicate its polysemy.

Relation to other concepts: Meaninghas is related to polysemy, sense inventories, contextualism, and disambiguation. Some critics argue that the term introduces unnecessary formalism, while others view it as a useful shorthand for discussing multiplicity of meaning.