 Homonymy

     Homonyms are words which have the same form, but different meanings.

     Homographs – words which are identical in spelling, but different in meaning and pronunciation: tear [] (v.)/tear [] (n.)

     Homophones – words which are identical in pronunciation, but different in spelling and meaning: see/sea

     Full homonyms – words which are identical in spelling and pronunciation, but different in meaning: bear (v. to give birth to a baby/to stand)/bear (n. a kind of animal)

     Rhetorically, homonyms are often used as puns.

     Polysemy

     A polyseme is a word which has several related senses.

     Polysemy is based on the intuition of native speakers as well as the etymology or history of words.

     Hyponymy

     Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion.

     Tiger, lion, elephant and dog are hyponyms of the word animal. Words like animal are called superordinates.

     This kind of vertical semantic relation links words in a hierarchical work.

     Componential analysis

     Componential analysis is the approach that analyze word meaning by decomposing it into its atomic features. It shows the semantic features of a word.

     Examples:

     Man: +HUMAN +MALE +ADULT

     Boy: +HUMAN +MALE –ADULT

     Father: +HUMAN +MALE +ADULT →PARENT

     Daughter: +HUMAN –MALE 0ADULT ←PARENT

     Words and concepts

     Categorization

     Categorization refers to the process by which people use language to classify the world around and inside them.

     It is fundamental to human cognition.

     In the past two decades cognitive psychologists and cognitive linguistics have gained new insights into the nature of categories.

     Prototypes

     A prototype is a set that has typical, central features. Others are peripheral features, which are not typical but related.

     Hierarchies

     Conceptual network

     Sentencial sense relations – semantic relations of sentences

     Sentences may be related in sense. I will illustrate sense relations within and between sentences.

     Tautology: The bachelor is unmarried.

     Contradiction: The bachelor is married.

     Inconsistency: John is single./John is married.

     Synonymousness: John broke the glass./The glass was broken by John.

     Entailment: The meeting was chaired by a spinster./The meeting was chaired by a woman.

     Presupposition: Sam has returned the book./Sam borrowed the book.

     These semantic relations are found within or between meaningful sentences. There are sentences which sound grammatical but meaningless. These sentences are said to be semantically anomalous. For example:

     Colourless green ideas sleep furiously.

     The pregnant bachelor killed some phonemes.

     Metaphors

     From rhetorical device to cognitive device

     The classical view sees metaphor as a kind of decorative in addition to ordinary language, a rhetorical device that makes language use colourful.

     Another view of metaphor, which has become more influential in the past two decades, holds that metaphors are a cognitive device. Metaphor is an essential element in our categorization of the world and our thinking process.

     Cognitive linguistics has shown that metaphor is not an unusual or deviant way of using language. The use of metaphor is not confined to literature, rhetoric and art. It is actually ubiquitous in everyday communication.

     The components of metaphors