Zeugma-based arguments conflate context-sensitive modulation of a univocal term with genuine polysemy, a distinction Recanati and others have shown is empirically and theoretically significant.

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Key Terms

Context-sensitive modulation(what the argument confuses with something else): When the meaning of a word changes slightly depending on the situation or context it's used in, without the word actually having multiple separate definitions.
Empirically and theoretically significant(describing why the distinction matters): Important both in terms of what we can actually observe and measure in real life, and important to how we understand the underlying concepts.
Polysemy(what the argument falsely claims is happening): When a single word has multiple genuinely different meanings—like 'bank' meaning both a financial institution and the side of a river.
Recanati(as a key figure in contextualism): François Recanati, a French philosopher who studies how words and context interact to create meaning, and how speakers convey thoughts beyond just the literal words they use.

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zeugma(Central test throughout the passage; zeugmatic anomaly is taken as evidence of genuine ambiguity, but the reliability of this test is subject to several confounds discussed in the text)

A construction in which a single word or expression governs two or more other expressions under different senses, producing anomaly; used as a diagnostic test for lexical or structural ambiguity

Zeugma-based arguments conflate context-sensitive modulation of a univocal term with genuine polysemy, a distinction Recanati and others have shown is empirically and theoretically significant.

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