Types of Meaning Relationships



 Synonymy

Synonymy refers to the phenomenon of "more than one form having the same meaning". Eg: "Prison" and "jail" are synonymous.

Polysemy 

Polysemy refers to the phenomenon of the "same form having more than one meaning". Eg: "Eye" refers to a part of animal body and to the hold of a needle.

Homonymy 

Homonymy is the likeness of different words. Two words are homonyms because they are pronounced and spelt alike. Eg: "Bank" (the side of a river) and "bank" (financial institution).

Homophones

Homophones is when words are pronounced alike but spelt differently. Eg: "Quay" and "key"; "sweet" and "suite".

Homographs

Homographs are words which spelt alike but pronounced differently. Eg: "Lead"(verb) and "lead"(noun) - a metal.

Metaphor

Metaphor illustrates how a particular meaning feature of a word is extended to refer to the quality feature of another referent. Eg: "Gol" is metaphorically used to mean anything valuable or genuine.

Metonymy

Metonymy is the use of an item to refer to some other item by association. Eg: "The chair" is used to refer to "the person who is in the chair".

Antonymy

Antonymy is the "oppositeness of sense". Antonymy of the type found in "tall" vs "short" is absolute antonymy. Antonymy in some cases depends on the dimension one has in mind. For eg:

  1. Man ✖ boy (+ adult)
  2. Man ✖ beast (+ human)
  3. Man ✖ woman (+ female)
Some linguists consider incompatibility a more comprehensive term and prefer it to antonymy.

While incompatibility refers to "meaning exclusion", hyponymy refers to "meaning inclusion". Hem is hyponymous to a general item.

The specific item is subordinate to the general item, also called a hypernym or superordinate item.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity can have its source in homonymy or polysemy, can be syntactic or lexical.

  1. She saw me near the bank. (lexical)
  2. Visiting professors can be expensive. (syntactic)
In sent (1) ambiguity is due to lexical homonymy: "bank" and "bank". On the other hand, in sent (2) ambiguity is due to what is called structural homonymy.

    2.a. Visiting (the professors) {can be} expensive.
    2.b. (The) visiting professors {can be/are} expensive.

Dr. Susan Mathew
CMS College


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