7.3 Sense Categories: Hyponymy

The third kind of semantic relation is hyponymy, a relation of inclusion. “A hyponym is a word whose meaning is included, or entailed, in the meaning of a more general word” (Denham & Lobeck, 2010, p.298). Hyponymy may be explained as the relation between specific and general lexemes and phrases; for example, house is a hyponym of building. Georgios Tserdanelis and Wai Yi Peggy Wong view this relation as “the loss of specificity” (2004, p.225). It indicates moving from specific (a rose, tulip, and petunia) to general (flower). The relationship between the lexemes can be seen in the diagram:

Flower and plant are super-ordinate terms, or hypernyms. Flower is the hypernym for crocus, rose, begonia, and daffodil, and it is also a hyponym of plant. Flower is superior to crocus, rose, begonia, and daffodil, but flower is inferior to plant at the same time.

It should be noted that not all lexemes have hypernyms; for example, nightclub or balloon may not have hypernyms other than vague names such as a place and a thing. Sometimes, it is difficult to assign hypernyms to abstract nouns.

Like other semantic relations, hyponymy can be subdivided into two subtypes: taxonomic and functional (Miller, 1998b, as cited in Murphy, p. 219). Taxonomies are classification systems. Taxonomic relation can be illustrated in the following example: cow is in a taxonomic relation to animal, but cow is in a functional relation to livestock (a cow functions as livestock). However, functional relation is not necessarily a logical relation because not every cow is livestock, and not every knife is a weapon.

7.4 Sense Categories: Meronymy

The fourth kind of semantic relation is meronymy (from Greek meros = part and onoma = name), which is the semantic relationship between parts of something to the whole. The ‘part of’ relation can be illustrated in the following diagram:

Thorn, leaf, root, and bud are meronyms of the holonym (Greek holon = whole and onoma = name) rose.

7.5 Related Senses

A traditional distinction is made in lexicology between homonymy and polysemy. Both deal with multiple senses of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related. Lexicographers should keep this in their mind when they design their dictionaries “because polysemous senses are listed under the same lexical entry, while homonymous senses are given separate entries” (Saeed, 2009).

Polysemy is a semantic process whereby a lexeme assumes two or more related meanings (Greek poly = ‘ many’, semy = ‘ meanings’). For example, the lexeme “finger” does not only denote ‘a digit of the hand’ but also ‘the part of a glove, covering one of the fingers’; ‘a hand of a clock’; ‘an index’; and ‘a part in various machines.’ Body parts are often polysemous. we use leg to refer to the leg of a chair and the leg of a table; arm to refer to the arm of a chair; and eye to refer to the eye of a storm. A lexeme that has more than one meaning in the language is polysemous. It is very important to distinguish between the lexical meaning of a lexeme in speech and its semantic structure in the language. The meaning of a lexeme in speech is contextual; therefore, polysemy can exist only in the language, not in speech. The semantic structure of a polysemous word may be defined as a structured set of interrelated meanings. These meanings belong to the same set because they are expressed by a single form. The set is called structured because its elements are interrelated and can be explained by means of one another.