I've been wondering about this for a while (and may have asked before, but I don't recall being answered): where is the border between the two, and how does lojban address it?
{mi pu ze'a pensi la'e di'e (to ji'a ju'o cu'i mi pu te preti .i ku'i na morji lo du'u dafsku toi) .i fi ma sepli fa lo za'e sorsmu [to'i zo'oi polysemy toi] lo za'e smugri [to'i zo'oi clustering toi] .ije ma la'e di'u danfu ci'e la .lojban.}
(Incidentally to my question, I would appreciate input on my lojban.)
I will illustrate with an example: the word "singleton" can mean "a set with exactly one element", "a single entity which makes all decisions", "an object (in the CS sense) which is only instantiated once", or "a type which has only one value"; I observe that all of these senses are special cases of the first (sometimes implicitly {se}-ed), but when I hear the word, I know that it refers to one of those and not, for example, "the only person who sleeps in a particular bed".
Obviously, part of this is context, but it feels to me like there's a difference between the context of the conversation and the context of the society. It would feel silly and facetious for me to say (pretending for a moment that {selte'i} is an adequate translation of "singleton") {mi selte'i lo ka sipna ti noi ckana}, even if it's technically true.
Uncommon words seem to take on a clustered, though not quite polysemous, definition: "It means this in the most general case, but it probably is being used for one of these more specific cases."
Anyone have any thoughts? Apologies for any incoherence... it sounded better in my head.
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mu'o mi'e .arpis.