Hyponymy
Hyponymy is a linguistic relationship where the meaning of a more specific word (hyponym) is included in the meaning of a more general word (hypernym). For example, "rose" is a hyponym of "flower." This concept is important in understanding the hierarchical structure of language and how words relate to each other in terms of specificity and generality.
7 Key excerpts on "Hyponymy"
eBook - ePub- Howard Jackson(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...213: Hyponymy. Again this term derives from Greek, and its two parts (hyp - + - nymy) mean ‘under + name’. Hyponymy refers to the hierarchical relationship between the meanings of lexemes, in which the meaning of one lexeme is included in (under) the meaning of another lexeme. This is seen most obviously in scientific classifications such as we find in biology, where for example the meaning of panther is included within that of cat (as the name of the cat family). In its sense of ‘domestic cat’ the word cat is itself a hyponym of the general word cat. Synonymy Two words are said to be synonyms if they ‘have the same meaning’. It is difficult to understand how a word ‘has’ a meaning. As we saw in Chapter 4, the description of meaning in a dictionary definition is an indication of the meaning potential of a word: only in a linguistic and situational context is the meaning actualised. Synonymy therefore needs to be defined in terms of contexts of use: two words are synonyms if they can be used interchangeably in all sentence contexts. Consider the following pairs of ‘synonyms’. Can you think of any sentence context in which one member of a pair may be used and the other member not? Make sentence frames to illustrate this point, e.g...
eBook - ePubEnglish Vocabulary Today
Into the 21st Century
- Barry J. Blake(Author)
- 2019(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...6 Meaningful relations Meanings are not entirely independent of one another. One word can have a meaning that is part of the area of meaning covered by a broader term. The more particular word is a hyponym of the broader term, the hypernym. Words that share much the same meaning are synonyms (buy, purchase) and pairs of words that have opposite meanings are antonyms. Separate words can come to be pronounced alike (homophones), written alike (homographs) or both (homonyms). One form can have opposite meanings (contronyms) and some artefacts are renamed when superseded by a new invention. They acquire a retronym. All of these ‘nyms’, which are based on the Greek onoma ‘name’, are the subject of this chapter. 6.1 Hyponyms and hypernyms All languages have words of different degrees of generality. I can refer to a tree simply as tree, or as a type of tree, say oak, or as a type of oak, say pin oak. The word tree covers numerous types of tree including ash, oak, beech, elm and maple. These names for particular types of tree are hyponyms of tree. The word oak covers several species of oak such as pin oak and scarlet oak. These are hyponyms of oak. Similarly, poodle, Pekingese, Dalmatian and fox terrier are hyponyms of dog. The more general term that embraces a number of more particular terms, the superordinate term, is a hypernym. Tree is the hypernym of oak, sycamore, elm, pine and so on; dog is the hypernym of different breeds such as collie, red setter, golden-haired retriever and Great Dane-Chihuahua cross. The hypo - of hyponym is the Greek preposition for ‘under’ and the hyper - of hypernym is the Greek preposition for ‘over’ or ‘above’. The corresponding Latin prepositions are sub and super. Almost every word is a hyponym of some other wider term even if it is only of general words such as object, thing, entity, idea, notion, action or process. The word for the hypernym can coincide with the name of one of the hyponyms. With the sexes, this is common...
eBook - ePub- Ronald Carter, Michael Mccarthy(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Other examples are: back and forth, to and fro, up and down, ladies and gentlemen, all of which have become culturally ‘frozen’. Learners have to learn them as pairs. They are not the same in all languages: in German and Italian you go ‘forth and back’ (hin und her, avanti e indietro); in Malay you address ‘gentlemen and ladies’ (tuan-tuan dan puan-puan). Neither way is more logical than the other, and while some may see cultural pointers determining the order of the items, they are probably best seen simply as fixed, arbitrary strings that combine two opposing items from the same lexical field. In considering sense relations, just as important as the general relationship of oppositeness between words is the relationship of inclusion, which Lyons calls Hyponymy (1977, p. 291–5). Specific terms in the vocabulary are covered by more general terms. The words rose/tulip/pansy are all hyponyms of flower. Flower is the superordinate term. In semantics this relationship is described according to unilateral implication: if it is a rose then it is a flower, but not necessarily vice versa. If the implication is bilateral, then this is synonymy (if it is an egg-plant then it is an aubergine, and vice versa; therefore they are synonyms). Hyponymous sets include things like hammer/saw/screwdriver, etc., under the general word tool ; plaice/cod/herring, etc., under fish. Hyponymy therefore is a relationship which creates taxonomies or tree-like configurations, with higher-order superordinates above the lower superordinates: a cow is a mammal, a mammal is an animal, therefore a cow is an animal. Again, Hyponymy offers the possibility of clear, diagrammatical representations of meaning. It would seem conceivable that the whole of the vocabulary could be hierarchically organized in this way. However, there are problems. Cruse (1975) raises some significant objections to the notion of unilateral implication on which Hyponymy is based...
eBook - ePubWords
The Foundation of Literacy
- Dale D. Johnson(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Size can comprise one such continuum as in gigantic, huge, large, medium, small, tiny, minuscule. The pairs gigantic — minuscule, huge — tiny, and large—small are gradable antonyms. (b) Complementary antonyms are mutually exclusive word pairs. In each pair, one word negates the possibility of the other word. The entity being described cannot be both (e.g., living — dead, open — closed, awake — asleep, in — out). (c) Converse antonyms are word pairs in which one antonym in the pair implies that the other antonym needs to exist (e.g., teacher — student, parent — child, buy — sell). Linguists use the term hypernym to mean superordinate word or, more simply, category label. In the category Tools: saw, hammer, pliers, wrench, for example, Tools is the hypernym, or category label, and the other words are members of the Tools category. The following four types of meaning relations show ways that different words in a category are related to the hypernym, the superordinate word. hyponomy: Hyponyms are members or examples of the category named by the hypernym. Hyponyms of the hypernym Dog include schnauzers, poodles, bulldogs, and collies. meronomy: Meronyms are words that signify parts of the hypernym. Meronyms of the hypernym Dog include paws, tails, teeth, and coat. attribution: Attributes are semantic features that describe the hypernym. Attributes of Dog include loyal, hungry, and protective. function: Functions are words that tell what the hypernym does or what is done to it. Functions of Dog include barking, growling, fetching, guiding, rescuing, and grooming. The remaining categories of meaning relations are as follows: polysemy: Polysemous words are multiple-meaning words, as exemplified earlier by the words stick and rock. These words are spelled the same but have different meanings and sometimes different pronunciations (e.g., conduct). collocations: Collocations are pairs of words that frequently occur together in English...
eBook - ePubMetonymy and Language
A New Theory of Linguistic Processing
- Charles Denroche(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...It is a specific set of mutually coherent images, which still leaves scope for further narrowing as the prose progresses. The words on the page give access to the general sense associated with those words and ‘metonymic processing’ narrows them down to the specific image that the reader constructs for that particular reading. Defining Categories Because the relationship between superordinates (general categories) and hyponyms (sub-categories) involves part-whole relations, metonymy is very well suited to identifying general categories which do not have convenient labels. Departments within retail stores and sections of supermarkets, for example, can be identified in this way. In data from my notebooks, I noted that in a branch of the UK supermarket Tesco, the section for pharmacy products was identified metonymically by ‘Aches and Pains’ (metonymic because products for treating ailments other than pain and products of general hygiene are found there), alongside sections identified using literal superordinates, such as ‘Canned Goods’, ‘Household Goods’ and ‘Soups’. In another UK supermarket, Morrisons, the term ‘Medicines’ was used for this section. In both cases, the term ‘Pharmacy’ was perhaps not used because it was considered to sound too medical or it suggested that a trained pharmacist was on hand, though it is the term used by another UK supermarket chain, Waitrose. Many languages have a single word standing for both superordinate and hyponym, eg in the Native American Indian language Hopi, the word for ‘cottonwood’ means both ‘deciduous tree’ and ‘cottonwood tree’ (the most common deciduous tree in this region); and in the Native American Indian language Shoshoni, the word for eagle means both ‘eagle’ and ‘large bird’ (Glucksberg 2001:39). The relationship between these words is metonymic. In sign languages, salient features are used to identify celebrities, such as ‘big ears’ for Prince Charles and ‘opening a trouser zip’ for Bill Clinton...
eBook - ePub- Charles Kreidler(Author)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Chapter 5 Lexical relations 5.1 Lexical fields 5.2 Kinship 5.3 Hyponyms 5.4 Synonyms 5.5 Antonymy 5.6 Binary and non-binary antonyms 5.7 A comparison of four relations 5.8 Converse antonyms 5.9 Symmetry and reciprocity 5.10 Expressions of quantity One part of knowing the meanings of lexemes in any language is the recognition that two or more lexemes may have some semantic relationship: father and mother father and son father and paternal employer and employee big and large big and little red, yellow and blue Each of these sets shows a different relationship. Two of these lexemes, employer and employee, are related formally as well as semantically; such morphological relations are the topic of Chapter 11. The present chapter deals with semantic relations that have no formal similarity. We consider two approaches to the description of lexical relations, semantic field theory and truth conditions. Field theory is an attempt to classify lexemes according to shared and differentiating features. For example, wasp, hornet, bee, and other items denote flying, stinging insects; moth and housefly, among others, denote insects that fly but do not sting; ant and termite are names of insects that seldom fly or sting. And what differentiates wasp, hornet, and bee from one another? What differentiates insects from other living things? Entomologists develop a careful classification on a scientific basis but semanticists often need to pay more attention to folk taxonomy, the traditional ways in which non-scientists classify the phenomena of their world. Truth-conditional semantics studies lexical relations by comparing predications that can be made about the same referring expression. Its task is to account for meaning relations between different expressions in a language...
eBook - ePubAntonymy
A Corpus-Based Perspective
- Steven Jones(Author)
- 2003(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...2 A brief history of antonymy Given that antonymy is ‘the only sense relation to receive direct lexical recognition in everyday language’ (Cruse 2000: 167), one might expect to find that a robust system of classification has emerged. However, though antonymy has been the subject of continual linguistic scrutiny, not all analysts have reached the same conclusions. Granted, most commentators categorise antonymous pairs according to broadly similar criteria, but the terminology used to describe these categories is anything but standard. Furthermore, an adequate definition of antonymy has yet to be agreed upon. Though all speakers can easily recall a lengthy list of ‘opposites’, describing this relation in a clear, concise fashion has proved problematic. Antonymy is a phenomenon better suited to exemplification than definition. Defining antonymy The word ‘antonymy’ was coined in 1867 by C. J. Smith 1 as an opposite of (and by analogy with) ‘synonymy’. Whether antonyms are really the ‘opposite’ of synonyms is a moot point, especially as it is widely accepted that true synonymy does not exist (e.g. Palmer 1976: 94), but this does not challenge the validity of the concept. Since 1867, numerous attempts have been made to pin down the meaning of antonymy and formulate a workable definition of the term, but the problem is that antonymy lends itself more to illustration than description. Good ‘opposites’ are intuitively available to us all (old/young, down/up, lose/win, bad/good, etc.) but finding a definition which adequately accounts for every example of antonymy is more problematic. In general, two ways of defining antonymy have emerged: the first involves semantic criteria; the second involves lexical criteria. The relative merits of each approach will now be evaluated. Semantic definitions The Longman Dictionary of Applied Linguistics (Richards, Platt and Weber 1985) defines an antonym as ‘a word which is opposite in meaning to another word’ (1985: 14)...
