Associated with work in lexical semantics from the perspective of formal linguistics. While formal lexical semanticists have long recognised the existence of polysemy, it has generally been viewed as a surface phenomenon, in the sense that lexical entries are underspecified (abstract and lacking in detail), and are 'filled in' either by context as argued by Charles Ruhl, or by the application of certain kinds of lexical generative devices as proposed by James Pustejovsky.

According to this view, polysemy is epiphenomenal, emerging from a monosemous lexical entry. According to this monosemy perspective, at the conceptual level a linguistic unit such as a word has a single relatively abstract meaning from which other senses (such as the range of meanings associated with over ) are derived.

Work in cognitive lexical semantics has typically argued against a monosemy perspective, preferring to view surface polysemy as reflecting conceptual reality.