词汇学Lecture 5.pptVIP

* * Courseware 3 English Lexicology Instructor: Chen Jinrong Semantic Relations Lecture Five I. Introduction Words are arbitrary symbols and are independent identities so far as their outer facet—spelling and pronunciation is concerned. But semantically all words are related in one way or another. A word which is related to other words is related to them in sense, hence semantic relations. Polysemy, homonymy, synonymy, antonymy and hyponymy will be discussed in this lecture. II. Polysemy Polysemy is “a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings”.(David Crystal, A first Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics, p274). That is to say, the same word may have a set of different meanings. Polysemy is a universal feature of all languages, of course including the English language. However, when a word is first coined, it is always monosemantic. Polysemy gives rise to a great number of polysemous words which are the products of sense-shift (i.e. the change of meaning) in the course of the development of vocabulary. Processes of sense-shift 1) Radiation: a process in which the original meaning of a word is to be considered the central meaning and the other meanings are derived from it.(语/词义辐射) The word “hand”, for instance, may signify: I had it in my right hand. The property is no longer in my hands. The hand of an enemy has been at work here. She heard the news at first hand. She has a light hand at pastry. He is a green hand. The company has taken on 200 extra hands. Let me have a hand now. the hour/minute/second hand on every hand or on all hands He writes a good hand. He set his hand to a document. You have a good hand. We have only 3 players, and we need a fourth hand. Give the dancer a big hand. (clap the hands loudly to show appreciation.) 2) Concatenation: another process in which the original meaning of a word may be lost on other meanings,