Topic 11. THE WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN.

HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY AND

ANTONYMY. FALSE FRIENDS. LEXICAL CREATIVITY.
1. The word as a linguistic sign.
Semantics (19th c.):the study of meaning.
1.1. Definitions of ‘word’.
 The Oxford English Dictionary
 Saussure (Structuralism) sign or symbolic entity which consists of signifier and
signified.
 Bloomfield, a word or “minimum free form” of a language (the smallest form
that may occur in isolation, as opposed to the morpheme).
 Odgen and Richards: symbol, referent and thought or mental concept.
 Gardiner: a word is “the smallest thought-unit vocally expressible”.
1.2. Criteria supporting the notion of word as a linguistic unit.
 Phonological: prosodic features (stress) mark word-unity, phonemes function
as diacritical marks and differentiate between meanings.
 Grammatical: clause, phrase and word plus the morpheme.
 Lexical and semantic criteria: words = lexemes (units of lexicology),
composed of smaller units called morphemes. Eg.: “run”: “runs”, “ran” and
“running”.
Other processes take place: affixation and composition of words.
Two subfields in lexicology (following the duality of form vs. content):
- Lexical morphology: studies word-formation (affixation,
composition, conversion, back-formation, abbreviation …)
- Lexical semantics: studies the meanings of words.
o open classes (noun, adjective, full verb and adverb) are
found in isolation
o closed classes (preposition, pronoun, determiner,
conjunction, auxiliary verb) never occur alone.
2. Lexical or sense relations.
2.1. Homonymy: two words identical in form but two different meanings: “nail”, “file”,
“pole” (native E. word) meaning shaft or stake and “pole” (from Greek) meaning
the terminal point of an axis.
 Homophones: identically pronounced but different spellings, “no” and “know”
 Homographs: same spelling (pronounced differently): “row” /rəʊ/ (to row a

boat) and /raʊ/ (an argument); “saw” (N) and “saw” (V, past tense of “to see”)
2.2. Polysemy.
 A word with several different but closely related meanings: “branch” of a tree, a
family, a bank, a railway line…
 not always clear whether it is polysemy or homonymy.
2.3. Synonymy: more than one word with the same meaning, “fiddle”-“violin”, but
used interchangeably in all sentence contexts without altering their content.
 2.3.1. Absolute or strict synomymy (two words with exactly the same meaning
and same contextual relations) may not exist due to:
 the economy of languages: strict synonymy is allowed for a short time.
 if strict synonymy occurs 2 phenomena take place:
- semantic specialisation (“mouton” MF borrowing = “sheep” ME
(Anglo-Saxon word), “mutton”: specialised meaning for the meat of the animal
consumed as food) and stylistical restrictions: “commence” vs “begin”
- disuse: in modern E. “kith” is only found in the expression “kith and kin”
2.3.2. Loose synonymy (wide range of contexts): “big”/“large”, “refuse”/”decline”,
“beneath”/ ”below”
2.3.3. Dialectal synonymy: BE “lift”, “pavement” or “flat” for AE “elevator,
“sidewalk” and “apartment”
2.3.4. Synonymy and formality: French or Latin-derived words in formal speaking
and writing: “go in” vs. “enter”
2.3.5. Synonymy and technical vocabulary: many professions, trades, sports and
hobbies have created lexicons which are not part of everyday language:
“cranium”/”skull”, “incision”/”cut”, “lexeme”/”word”
2.3.6. Synonymy and connotation: “adore” (connotations of passion or worship)
vs. “love” (+neutral); “crowd” / “mob” (negative connotations)
2.3.7. Euphemisms: “die” vs. “pass away”; “drunk” vs. “intoxicated” or “inebriated”
2.3.8. Partial synonymy: part of the meanings of two (or more) words are not
identical: “mature”, “ripe”, “adult” overlap
3. Antonymy: words with opposite meanings;various kinds:
3.1. Gradable: “tall”-“short”; “small”-“large”; “weak”-“strong” adjectives that do not
refer to absolute qualities but subject to comparison.
3.2. Complementary (or binary), 2 mutually excusive items, no possibility of a 3 rd
term lying between them:“dead”-“alive”; “relinquish”-“retain”; “open”-“shut”
3.3. Relational opposites, reciprocal relations: “over”-“under”, “sell”-“buy”,
”wife”-“husband”, “guest”-“host”, “mother”-“daughter”
4. Lexical creativity: new terms are assimilated into the language.
4.1. Neologisms (word coinage): “prolly” (elided pronunciation of "probably."), “snail
mail”, “spam”, “spork”
4.2. Conversion: also called zero derivation, creation of a word from an existing word
without any change in form. eg: the noun “green” in golf from the adj. “green”
4.3. Semantic transfer: the semantic specifications change.
 Metaphor: “a lump of mud” -> “a doughnut of mud”
 Metonymy: “the whole town” welcomed them (= all the people in the town)
5. False friends: lexical items with a similar or identical spelling) in English and the TL.
 not related semantically: “large” (≠long)
 some related meanings, but not all: “station” (train station but ≠season)
  even if related semantically, they are likely to differ:“camping” (go camping
≠campsite)
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BAUER, L.: English Word-Formation. Cambridge University Press (1989)
HILL, R.: A Dictionary of False Friends, Macmillan, London (1988)
PALMER, F.:Semantics, CUP, Cambridge (1981)
QUIRK, R. & GREENBAUM, S., LEECH, G.& SVARTVIK, J.: A University Grammar of
English. Longman. London (1979)
ULLMANN, S.: Principles of Semantics, Blackwell, Oxford (1957)

Other sources
www.onelook.com
www.answers.com
www.britannica.com
www.worldwidewords.org/index.htm
Webopedia Online: http://webopedia.internet.com/
www.owlnet.rice.edu/~ling215/NewWords/
www.wikipedia.org
www.rhymezone.com/g/shakespeare/coinages