In metasemantics, people ask the question: in virtue of what does a word have its meaning? For example, in virtue of what does 'stick' mean a stick (a thin piece) rather than a cat? In the project of metasemantics, people often make two idealizations: (1) one word is mapped to only one meaning, and (2) the mapping is static and atemporal. However, most words in natural languages have multiple meanings (i.e., polysemy), and their different meanings emerge in particular orders in historical language evolution and child language acquisition. For example, 'stick' can refer to a thin piece, the motion of thrusting, and the state of adhering. These three meanings also emerge in this particular temporal order: a thin piece → to thrust → to adhere, in both language evolution and child language acquisition. I argue that these two idealizations are counterproductive. By assimilating recent computational and psycholinguistic work on why a single word can have multiple meanings and how a new meaning of a word can be extended from an existing meaning, the project of metasemantics will become more tractable.
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