Word Meaning and Sense Relations
WORD MEANING AND SENSE RELATIONS
What constitutes a sentence in any given Language is the combination of words in a systematic manner. Of course, this must be meaningful at least within a “social mass which at any given moment establishes its value (De Saussure in Akwanya 2002:49) Note that this position tends towards syntax which gives/assigns meaning to a group of words in acceptable pattern of combination in a Language. Sense relation as noted by Agbedo (2000:152) show. “The sense of a word reveals itself through the relations of meaning which the word contracts with other words in the language”. Semantic relations of these types are well-defined and systematic. Since the word is the most significant unit of morphological analysis, there must be a way it relate with others within the system called Language in terms of its meaning. The ways are as follows; it based on the works of Agbedo and Akwanya.
(i) Homophony
(ii) Synonymy
(iii) Hyponymy
(iv) Opposites
(v) Polysemy
(vi) Semantic Field Theory
(vii) Componential Analysis
1. Homophony: A sense relation in which a word is pronounced like another but different in meaning, spelling or origin is homophony. Examples are, Sun/son, some/sum, bale/bail, tail/tale, gate/gait, break/brake, red/read, bred/bread, flair/flare, buy/by/bye, know/no. Some times two differently words are spelt alike but are pronounced differently, for example, lead/led, lead/li:d/
2. Synonymy: According to palmer (1976:50) Synonymy is used to mean “sameness of meaning Akwanya sees Synonymous words as “different phonological words having similar meanings”. Ordinarily it is very simple but it is extremely difficult to find perfect synonyms in English. The only example in this regard is “adder” and “Vipper”. Akwanya described it as “identity”. This situation has led to emergence of two major interpretations of the word Synonymy: Absolute Synonymy: This happens when the two words are interchangeable in all contexts without any change in
What constitutes a sentence in any given Language is the combination of words in a systematic manner. Of course, this must be meaningful at least within a “social mass which at any given moment establishes its value (De Saussure in Akwanya 2002:49) Note that this position tends towards syntax which gives/assigns meaning to a group of words in acceptable pattern of combination in a Language. Sense relation as noted by Agbedo (2000:152) show. “The sense of a word reveals itself through the relations of meaning which the word contracts with other words in the language”. Semantic relations of these types are well-defined and systematic. Since the word is the most significant unit of morphological analysis, there must be a way it relate with others within the system called Language in terms of its meaning. The ways are as follows; it based on the works of Agbedo and Akwanya.
(i) Homophony
(ii) Synonymy
(iii) Hyponymy
(iv) Opposites
(v) Polysemy
(vi) Semantic Field Theory
(vii) Componential Analysis
1. Homophony: A sense relation in which a word is pronounced like another but different in meaning, spelling or origin is homophony. Examples are, Sun/son, some/sum, bale/bail, tail/tale, gate/gait, break/brake, red/read, bred/bread, flair/flare, buy/by/bye, know/no. Some times two differently words are spelt alike but are pronounced differently, for example, lead/led, lead/li:d/
2. Synonymy: According to palmer (1976:50) Synonymy is used to mean “sameness of meaning Akwanya sees Synonymous words as “different phonological words having similar meanings”. Ordinarily it is very simple but it is extremely difficult to find perfect synonyms in English. The only example in this regard is “adder” and “Vipper”. Akwanya described it as “identity”. This situation has led to emergence of two major interpretations of the word Synonymy: Absolute Synonymy: This happens when the two words are interchangeable in all contexts without any change in
References: (1) Agbedo, C.U. (2000) General Linguistic: An Introductory Reader, Nsukka:ACE Resources Konsult (2) Akwanya, A.N (2004) Semantics and Discourse: Theories of meaning and Textual Analysis, Enugu: Acene Publishers (3) Lyons, J (1968) Introduction to theoretical Llinguistic, Cambridge: C.U.P (4) Ullman, S (1957) The Principles of semantics, Oxford:Blackwell