Sense relations

Synonymy

= two or more lexemes have similar meaning (boy – lad) as there may be no such thing as a perfect synonym, full synonymy is rare (greenhouse – hothouse, kind – sort, noun – substantive).

There’s a close relation between collocations and synonyms since words can be used wrongly in a sentence, even though they have similar meaning. (Before the world started (began), only God existed. Leave/depart. Kingly, regal, royal -> Royal mail. Offspring (formal), children (neutral), kids (informal).

There are also differences in usage within registers (salt -> sodium chloride) and dialect differences (British - Autumn, American - Fall).

Slang synonyms are often numerous: Money (bread, loot), Police (pigs, fuzz, cops), Lavatory (loo,  john), Drink (booze), Drugs (fix, grass, high, snow), sexual orientation (straight, fags, queers).

Antonymy

= lexemes which are opposite in meaning.

Complementary antonyms (below – above, absent – present, buy - sell, wife – husband, day - night)

Contrary antonyms (hot – cold, clean – dirty, single – married, first – last, alive – dead)

Another classification is based on the form:

1. Root antonyms – lexemes with different roots (old – new, rich – poor)

2. Derivational antonyms – with affixes (useful – useless, predictable – unpredictable, appear – disappear)

3. Mixed (correct – incorrect – wrong, married – unmarried – single)

4. Co-occurrence of antonyms in one sentence (bad and good, big and little, black and white, clean and dirty, cold and hot, dark and light, dry and wet, easy and hard, empty and full, far and near, fast and slow, few and many, first and last, happy and sad, hard and soft, heavy and light, high and low)

  

Polysemy

= one lexical item has a range of meanings. Words have usually more than one meaning as monosemantic words are rare, usually in scientific usage (noun, phoneme, morpheme). Words are polysemantic only in the system of the language, in a particular utterance the meaning is limited. (Nut = food, element in engineering, enthusiastic, foolish, silly, head). The representative meaning is presented in the first place in the dictionary (face – obličej) but secondary figurative meaning can be clear only in certain contexts (face – cifernik when talking about clocks).

Homonymy

= lexical items have the same form (spelling, pronunciation) but different meaning, origin and behaves according to different grammatical rules. Etymology of homonyms includes study of different development of several meanings (skirt x shirt), convergence of sounds (I – eye) and borrowing (port, portus – Latin).

FAIR – N veletrh, ADJ spravedlivý, ADJ older krásná mladá žena

TOAST – N topinka, V přípitek, V topinkovat, péct

MATCH - N zápalka, N sportovní zápas, V: přiřadit

Homophony

= lexical items with the same pronunciation but different meaning and spelling. Homonymic clash is the basis for jokes, riddles and puns.

son xsun, die x dye, tale – tail, write x right x rite, sew x sow x so, night x knight

Homography

= lexical items with the same spelling but different pronunciation and meaning

lead – vést /liːd/ + olovo /led/      tear – roztrhat /teər/ + slza /tiə/        row – hádka /raʊ/ + řada /roʊ/

  

Hyponymy and hyperonymy

= relation between specific and general words when the former is included in the latter (rabbit is a hyponym of animal and animal is a hyperonym of cat).

Hyperonym                  Hyponyms

Animal                           rabbit, cat, dog, tortoise

Vehicle                          van, car, lorry, motorcycle

Season                           Spring, summer, autumn, winter

Flower                           daffodil, rose, tulip, pansy

Other sense relations

Semantic field is a named area of meaning in which lexemes interrelate and define each other. It is possible to classify words like banana (food) and mouth (body) yet it is much more difficult with abstract words.

Parts and wholes

Clothing: zip, button, collar, sleeve

Vehicle: wheel, brakes, engine, door, steering wheel

Animal: hoof, mane, leg, feather, claw, tail

House: bathroom, bedroom, window, cellar, ceiling

Series

Numbers, days of the week, months of the year, colours

Hierarchies

Army: lieutenant, captain, major, colonel, general, field marshal

Church: priest, bishop, archbishop, cardinal, pope

Measurements: millimetre, centimetre, decimetre, metre, kilometre