Anthropology 1027A/B Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Hyponymy And Hypernymy, Homophony, Conceptual System
17 Nov 2016
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Four major topics: nature of meaning, conceptual system, syntax and sentence interpretation, other factors in sentence interpretation. Thinking about meaning is to think about how two words" relation in order to identify the difference. Hyponymy: x is always contained in y: x is the hyponym (e. g. poodle, y is the hypernym (e. g. dog) Synonymy: similar meanings: no complete synonym from all aspects. The absence of one is the other: gradable (e. g. old/young) Not old doesn"t mean young: reverse (e. g. zip/unzip) One is the opposite action of the other (undoing: converses (e. g. above/below) Polysemy: a word has 2 or more related meanings (metaphorically: bright: shining, intelligent, deposit: minerals in the earth, money in the bank. Homophony: single phonetic form has 2 or more entirely distinct meanings: bank: financial institution, land at edge of the river, right/write. Polysemy and homophony create lexical ambiguity: the study of semantics is to figure out the ambiguity. Paraphrase: same meaning but different structure.
