Semantika - Seminarski
Semantika - Seminarski
INTRODUCTION.............................................................................................................3
1. HOMOMYMY……......................................................................................................4
2. POLYSEMY……………………..................................................................................5
3. SYNONYMY……………………………………………………………………....…7
4. ANTONYMY.........................................................................................................…...8
CONCLUSION.................................................................................................................9
BIBLIOGRAPHY...........................................................................................................10
INTRODUCTION
This seminar paper will discuss lexical semantics, i.e. semantic relations between
lexemes.
Lexemes are vocabulary words which may take on different forms depending on the
context they find themselves in.1
Lexical semantic is the study of how and what the words of a language denote.2 It is a
subfield of linguistic semantics. It is also called lexicosemantics. Lexical semantics is
concerned with the identification and representation of the semantics of lexical items. It deals
with a language lexicon, i.e. the collection of words in a language. It is, unlike compositional
semantics, concerned with the individual words.
Homonymy
Polysemy
Hyponymy
Synonymy
1
Lyon, 1977
2
Pustejovsky, 1995
2
1. HOMONYMY
The word homonymy is of the Greek origin – homonumon, ‘having the same name’. It
is derived from homos – same and omnia – name.
Homonymy refers to the relationship between words that are spelled or pronounced the
same way but that have different meanings.
Homonymy can be total or partial. If the both, writing and pronunciation of words are the
same we can speak about total homonymy. If there is coincidence in some, but not all of their
grammatical forms we can speak about partial homonymy.
Homography
Homograph is a word that has the same written form as another word, but has a
different meaning.
E.g.
bear (verb) – to support or carry
bear (noun) – the animal
Homophony
Homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word, but has a different
meaning.
E.g.
night - knight
3
3
3
http://conceptsinsemantics.weebly.com/
4
2. POLYSEMY
The word polysemy is of the Greek origin: poly – many and sema –sign.
Polysemy is the coexistence of many possible meanings for a word or phrase. Multiple
meanings of a word may be unrelated or unconnected.
E.g.
4
http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~flohaas/Handout%207_SemI.pdf
5
3. SYNONYMY
The word synonymy is of the Greek origin: sun – with and onoma – name.
Absolute synonymy does not exist because there are always some contexts in which one
member of the pair cannot be used.
Synonymous forms may also differ in terms of formal and informal uses.
For example:
My father purchased a large automobile.
My dad bought a big car.
5
http://emedia.leeward.hawaii.edu/hurley/Ling102web/mod4-3_semantics/4mod4.3.2_lexical.htm
6
4. ANTONYMY
Two words are antonymous if their meanings are opposite. There are three types of
antonyms:
Gradable antonyms deal with the levels of the meaning of the words. For example, if
something is not good it may still not be bad.
E.g.
- fat/skinny
- young/old
- last/first
- dark/light
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CONCLUSION
In conclusion it can only be said that lexical semantics is a broad term that has many
semantic relations, out of which in this seminar paper are explained homonymy, polysemy,
antonymy, and synonymy. There are also hyponymy, heteronymy, etc. Most of them are easy
to understand nevertheless there are many similarities between them.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY