Introduction to semantics Budu, 2017

G R O U P 3 P R E S E N T S , F I V E S E M A N T I C
R E L A T I O N S .
C O M P I L E D B Y B U D U B R I G H T
LNG 231. INTRODUCTION TO
SEMANTICS
9/20/2017BUDU, BRIGHT (2016). STUDY OF MEANINS
1

GROUP THERE
UNIVERSITY OF EDUCATION, WINNEBA
FACULTY OF GHANAIAN LANGUAGES EDUCATION
AJUMAKO-CAMPUS
LECTURER: MR. BODUA-MANGO KENNETH
COURSE TITTLE: INTRODUCTION TO SEMANTICS
COURSE CODE: LNG 231
LEVEL: 200
GROUP: THREE
2

GROUP THERE
QUESTION: DISCUSS THE FOLLOWING WITH
EXAMPLES
1. HOMONYMY
2. POLYSEMY
3. SYNONYMY
4. MERONYMY
5. METONYMY
6. ANTONYMY
3

GROUP MEMBERS
NAMES INDEX NUMBER SIGN
BUDU BRIGHT 5150410014
ANSAH DACOSTA 5150410013
BOAKYEWAA ABIGAIL 5150410015
BEKOE LILY 5150410012
SIAKA KWABENA 5150410011
4

INTRODUCTION
Semantics as a branch of linguistics is the study of
meanings of words, phrases and sentences in human
language. In our discussion, we shall limit ourselves to
some lexical relations which are (synonymy,
homonymy, meronymy, metonymy and
polysemy). Thus, semantics cannot be studied
without mentioning the above words. The elaborations
are as follow;
5

SYNONYMY
A synonym is a word or phrase that means (sense) exactly or nearly
the same as another word or phrase in the same language.
Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous and the state
of being a synonym is called synonymy. The word comes from
Ancient Greek ‘syn’ (with) and ‘onoma’ (name). For instance, the
words Portent and foretoken, happy and pleased, sad and
miserable, inflexible and rigid are synonymous. Again, words can be
synonymous when meant in certain sense, even if they are not
synonymous in all of their senses. For example, if we talk about ‘a
long time’ or ‘an extended time’, in this context, long and extended
are synonymous. This means that synonyms fit well into the
‘semantic world’ when certain words are being used in a statement.
6

SYNONYMY CONT.
Synonyms with exact interchangeability share denotation
sememe whereas those with inexactly similar meanings
share a connotatinal sememe and thus overlap within a
semantic filed. Synonyms can be any part of speech such as
nouns, verbs, prepositions or adverbs as long as both
words belong to the same part of speech. Other examples
together with the already mentioned are as follow;
respect and regard, weird and strange, excellent and fine,
evidence and proof, suggestion and hint, precise and exact,
guardian and protector, having said that and nevertheless,
stubborn and obdurate, diminish and reduce, position and
place, stop and halt.
7

HOMONYMY
Another lexical relation in the field of semantics is
homonymy. Homonyms are words which have the
same written or spoken forms and unrelated
meanings. In other words, homonyms are words which
have the same spellings or orthography and share the
same phonetic features but different meaning.
Examples are bat (a winged rodent and a piece of
equipment used in table tennis), bank (a financial
institution and a large mass of cloud or fog), sense (a
natural physical ability that most people have (the five
senses), especially the ability to see, hear, smell, feel
and taste and the meaning of a word or phrase).
8

HOMONYMY CONT.
Homonyms can be divide into two; homograph and
homophony. Homographs are words with the same
spellings but different pronunciations which marks
differences in meaning. For example, minute / mınıt/ (a
period of 60 seconds) and minute /maı’nju:t/ (very small).
On the other hand, homophones are words that have the
same pronunciation but different orthography. For
example, sic /sık/ and sick /sık/, site /saıt/ and sight
/saıt/, knight /naıt/ and night /naıt/ etc. This means in
effect that homophonous words should share the same
supra-segmental features or prosodic features such as
stress, duration of length, pitch and tone.
9

MERONYMY
Furthermore, meronymy is also another lexical item in
the field of semantics. Cruse (1986), describes
meronymy as a word which denotes part of a whole.
For example, hand is to the body, branch is to trees,
clouds is to the sky just to mention a few. In other
words, when part of something is used to represent a
whole, then it is called meronymy. In this regard, we
are talking about the smaller units which come
together as one thing. Other examples are; week is to
month, days is to week.
10

ANTONYMY
Additionally, we have another type of semantic relation
which is antonymy. Antonyms are words which are
opposite in meaning. For example win and lose, kind and
cruel. Antonymy may be classified as gradable and non-
gradable.
Gradable shows role playing like teacher – students,
speaker - audience, sender – receiver. Gradable antonyms
involve adjectives and adverbs. They can also be graded
into comparative and superlative or be quantified by
intensifies. They describe movement or continuum. For
example, tall and shorter, strong and weak etc.
Non-gradable antonyms on the other hand is the
acceptable of one is an automatic denial of the other. For
example, male and female, true and false etc.
11

MERONYMY
Furthermore, meronymy is also another lexical item in
the field of semantics. Cruse (1986), describes
meronymy as a word which denotes part of a whole.
For example, hand is to the body, branch is to trees,
clouds is to the sky just to mention a few. In other
words, when part of something is used to represent a
whole, then it is called meronym. In this regard, we are
talking about the smaller units which come together as
one thing. Other examples are; week is to month, a day
is to week, second is to minute, minute is also a
meronym of hour.
12

Cont’d
13
Examples and Observations: "In one context finger is an
appropriate meronym of hand, and in other cases flesh is
an appropriate meronym of hand. Finger and flesh,
however, are not co-meronyms of hand, since different
relational criteria (functional part versus material) are
applied in each case." "In many ways, meronymy is
significantly more complicated than hyponymy. The
Wordnet databases specify three types of meronym
relationships:
1. Part meronym: a 'tire' is part of a 'car'
2. Member meronym: a 'car' is a member of a 'traffic jam'
3. Substance (stuff) meronym: a 'wheel' is made from
'rubber'"

Cont’d
14
"Meronymy is a term used to describe a part-whole
relationship between lexical items. Thus cover and
page are meronyms of book. "Meronyms vary in how
necessary the part is to the whole. Some are necessary
for normal examples, for example nose as a meronym
of face; others are usual but not obligatory, like collar
as a meronym of shirt; still others are optional like
cellar for house."

METONYMY
15
Moreover, the study of semantics cannot be done
without mentioning metonymy. Metonymy is a lexical
relation that replaces the name of a thing with the
name of something else with which it is closely
associated. In other words, metonymy is a figure of
speech in which one word or phrase is substituted for
another with which it is closely associated, such as
("crown" for "royalty"). We can come across examples
of metonymy both from literature and in everyday life.
For instance, these lines are taken from “Out, Out” by
Robert Frost.

Cont’d
16
“As he swung toward them holding up the hand
Half in appeal, but half as if to keep
The life from spilling”
In these lines, the expression “The life from spilling” is
a metonymy that refers to spilling of blood. It develops
a link between life and blood. The loss of too much
blood means loss of life.

POLYSEMY
Finally, Polysemy is the association of one word with
two or more distinct meanings. A polysemy is a word
or phrase with multiple meanings. Adjective:
polysemous or polysemic. In contrast, a one-to-one
match between a word and a meaning is called
monosemy. According to William Croft, "Monosemy is
probably most clearly found in specialized vocabulary
dealing with technical topics" (The Handbook of
Linguistics, 2003).
17

POLYSEMY (cont’d)
According to some estimates, more than 40% of
English words have more than one meaning. The fact
that so many words (or lexemes) are polysemous
"shows that semantic changes often add meanings to
the language without subtracting any" (M. Lynne
Murphy, Lexical Meaning, 2010).
For instance, "The word good has many meanings. For
example, if a man were to shoot his grandmother at a
range of five hundred yards, I should call him a good
shot, but not necessarily a good man." (G.K.
Chesterton, Orthodoxy, 1909).
18

POLYSEMY (cont’d)
Again, Kitchens "Now, the kitchen was the room in
which we were sitting, the room where Mama did hair
and washed clothes, and where each of us bathed in a
galvanized tub. But the word has another meaning,
and the 'kitchen' I'm speaking of now is the very kinky
bit of hair at the back of the head, where the neck
meets the shirt collar. If there ever was one part of our
African past that resisted assimilation, it was the
kitchen." (Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Colored People.
Alfred A. Knopf, 1994).
19

Cont’d
20
"While conceptually simple, this approach fails to
explain how some senses are intuitively related to each
other and some are not Words or, perhaps more
accurately, word occurrences that have closely related
senses are logically polysemous, while those that do
not receive the label accidentally polysemous or simply
homonymous. . . . Bank is a classic example of an
accidentally polysemous word. On the other hand,
lunch, bill, and city are classified as logically
polysemous."

Cont’d
21
Note: "Some, though by no means all, semanticists have
proposed that lexical meanings are encyclopedic in
character (Haiman 1980; Langacker 1987). The
encyclopedic view of lexical meaning is that there is no
sharp dividing line between that part of a word's meaning
which is 'strictly linguistic' (the dictionary view of lexical
meaning) and that part which is 'nonlinguistic knowledge
about the concept.' While this dividing line is difficult to
maintain, it is clear that some semantic properties are
more central to a word's meaning than others, particularly
those properties that apply to (almost) all and only the
instances of the kind, which are intrinsic to the kind, and
which are conventional knowledge of (almost) all of the
speech community (Langacker 1987: 158-161)."

REFERENCE
Kpodo, Pascal. (2015). Phonetics and phonology: the
basics. Wyse print. Accra.
Issah, Samuel Alhasan & Adomako, Kwesi. (2013).
Introduction to Linguistics. Pedaddo Ventures.
Koforidua.
M. Lynne Murphy. (2003). Semantic Relations and the
Lexicon: Antonymy, Synonymy and Other Paradigms.
Cambridge University Press.
Nicholas, Asher. (2011). Lexical Meaning in Context:
A Web of Words. Cambridge University Press.
22

Cont’d
23
Saeed I. John. (2003). Semantics, 2nd ed. Wiley-
Blackwell.
William Croft, "Lexical and Grammatical Meaning."
Morphologie / Morphology, ed. by Geert Booij et al.
Walter de Gruyter,( 2000).
E.K.O.N. (2014). Introduction to Semantics
Semantics: retrieved (2016, 18:32).
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/synonym.
MacMillan. School Dictionary.

Introduction to semantics Budu, 2017

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