HOMONIMY, POLYSEMY, AND HYPONYMY

HOMONIMY, POLYSEMY, AND HYPONYMY

The branch of semantics that deals with the word meaning is called lexical semantics. It is the study of systematic, meaning related structures of words. Lexical semantics examines relationships among word meanings. It is the study of how the lexicon is organized and how the lexical meanings of lexical items are interrelated, and it’s principal goal is to build a model for the structure of the lexicon by categorizing the types of relationships between words.
Hyponymy , homonymy, polysemy, synonymy, antonymy and metonymy are different types of lexical relations.

A. Definition of Homonymy

The word Homonym has been derived from Greek term 'Homoios' which means identical and 'onoma' means name. So, Homonymy is a relation that holds between two lexemes that have the same form but unrelated meanings. Homonyms are the words that have same phonetic form (homophones) or orthographic form (homographs) but different unrelated meanings. The ambiguous word whose different senses are far apart from each other and are not obviously related to each other in any way is called as Homonymy. Words like tale and tail are homonyms. There is no conceptual connection between its two meanings.
For example the word ‘bear’, as a verb means ‘to carry’ and as a noun it means ‘large animal’.
An example of homonym which is both homophone and homograph is the word ‘fluke’. Fluke is a fish as well as a flatworm. Other examples are bank, an anchor, and so on.
Homophony - Homophony is the case where two words are pronounced identically but they have different written forms. They sound alike but are written differently and often have different meanings. For example: no-know, led-lead, would-wood.
Homograph - Homograph is a word which is spelled the same as another word and might be pronounced the same or differently but which has a different. For example, Bear-bear ; Read-read.
When homonyms are spelled the same they are homographs but not all homonyms are homographs.

B. Definition of Hyponymy

Hyponymy is a sense relation in semantics that serves to relate word concepts in a hierarchical fashion. Hyponymy is a relation between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word. The lexical relation corresponding to the inclusion of one class in another is hyponymy. Examples are : apple- fruit ; car- vehicles ; tool- furntiture ; cow - animal.
The more specific concept is known as the hyponym, and the more general concept is known as the hypernym or superordinate. Apple is the hyponym and fruit is the superordinate / hypernymy. Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon.

E.g :

the verb cook has many hyponyms.

Word: Cook
Hyponyms: Roast, boil, fry, grill, bake.

the verb colour has many hyponyms

Word: colour
Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, black and purple
Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment.

Example : ‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal”.

Hyponymy often functions In discourse as a means of lexical cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid repetition.


C. Definition of Polysemy

A polyseme the phenomenon of having or being open to several or many meanings.When a word has several very closely related senses or meanings.Polysemous word is a word having two or more meanings. For example, foot in : - He hurt his foot ; - She stood at the foot of the stairs.

A well-known problem in semantics is how to decide whether we are dealing with a single polysemous word or with two or more homonyms.
F.R.Palmer concluded saying that finally multiplicity of meaning is a very general characteristic of language.Polysemy is used in semantics and lexical analysis to describe the word with multiple meanings.Crystal and Dick Hebdige (1979) also defined polysemy.Lexical ambiguity depends upon homonymy and polysemy.
The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle. Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma, numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate lemmata. Semantic shift can separate a polysemous word into separate homonyms. For example, check as in "bank check" (or Cheque) , check in chess, and check meaning "verification" are considered homonyms, while they originated as a single word derived from chess in the 14th century.




Source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homonymy

http://everything2.com/title/hyponymy

http://www.yourdictionary.com/polysemy

http://www.buzzle.com/articles/lexical-relations-hyponymy-and-homonymy.html

http://winsomeanuja.blogspot.com/2009/10/lexical-relations-hyponymy- homonymy.html