Unit 11

LA PALABRA COMO SIGNO LINGÜÍSTICO.

HOMONIMIA, SINONIMIA Y ANTONIMIA.
FALSOS AMIGOS Y LA CREATIVIDAD LÉXICA.

1. THE WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN

2. HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY & ANTONYMY.
Homonymy, polysemy, homographs, homophones.
Synonyms
Antonyms
-Complementary pairs
-Gradable antonyms
-Relational antonyms
3. FALSE FRIENDS
4. LEXICAL CREATIVITY
5. CLASSROOM IMPLICATIONS
6. CONCLUSION
7. BIBLIOGRAPHY
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THE WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN. HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY,

AND ANTONYMY. FALSE FRIENDS AND LEXICAL CREATIVITY.

Good morning, my name is …… and today I will explain you topic 11: The
word as a linguistic sign. Homonymy, synonymy, and antonymy. False friends
and lexical creativity.
In order to introduce this topic, I would like to mention a dialogue of Lewis
Carroll in “Alice and the Wonderland”. The dialogue is between Alice and
Humpty Dumpty in “Through the Looking-Glass”:
“When I use a word”, Humpty Dumpty said, “it means just what I
choose to mean- neither more nor less”.
“The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean
so many different things”.
As you can see, I will base my topic on this words, that’s why the structure
of this study is divided into five main sections. First of all I will start with the
study of the Saussure’s view on the nature of the linguistic sign. Secondly, I
will provide a theoretical discussion of the process of homonymy, synonymy
and antonymy. These useful concepts will help us to understand relationships
between lexemes in terms of their meanings. Thirdly, I will study the notions of
false friends and after this; I will study the notions of lexical creativity. Fifthly, I
will provide future directions for some lexical implications on language
teaching, and finally I will finish with a conclusion from all the points involved
in this topic and with the bibliography I have used.

1. THE WORD AS A LINGUISTIC SIGN.

Ferdinard de Saussure’s theoretical ideas in relation to linguistics were
published in the Course in General Linguistics (Course de Linguistique Generale) in
1916.
Saussure, as a structuralist, was interested in language as a system and
structure, and his ideas were applied to any language and to anything we may
call a “signifying system”. Within this theoretical approach, Saussure describes
the structures within any language which make meaning possible, although he
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was not interested in what particular meanings were created. He was only
interested in the design of the structure itself.
In opposition to the totally historical view of language of the previous
hundred years, Saussure emphasized the idea of language as a living
phenomenon, of studying speech instead of written texts, of analysing the
underlying system of a language in order to demonstrate an integrated
structure. We will extract two many theoretical dichotomies from his work,
thus signifié vs significant, and langue vs. parole; but before that, we will analyse
Saussure’s view of the linguistic sign.
Saussure names the two notions “concept” vs. “acoustic image” (the latter,
not as physical sound but rather the psychological imprint of the sound), and also
“content” vs. “expression”. The linguistic sign, then, is made of the union of a
concept and a sound image. His labels for the two sides were signifié (also
signified, concept, content) which means “the thing signified” or the concept of a
word, and significant (also signifier, acoustic image, expression) which means “the
thing which signifies” or the form of a sign. This was called “double
articulation, which means that the units on the “lower level” of phonology have
no function other than of combining with one another to form the “higher”
units of grammar (words).
Let me give an example to illustrate what Saussure called “double
articulation” in a linguistic sign like “tree”: the meaning would be the signified,
the conceptual side of the process. Tree is a plant which grows above an
established size, which reproduces by means of seeds. On the contrary, the
sound would be the signifier, the phonological side of the process. Tree is the
combination of three phonemes which together form a word: /t/ + /r/+ /i:/.
The linguistic sign, as the combination of a signifier and a signified, has two
main characteristics. First of all, the bond between them is arbitrary, that is,
there is no natural, intrinsic, or logical relation between a particular acoustic
sound and a concept. For instance, we refer to the concept of “house” with
different acoustic sounds in different languages (i.e. English “house”, German
“Haus”, Spanish “casa”, French “maison”). The second characteristic is that the
signifier or the auditory signifier is linear, that is, it exists in time. Thus, you
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cannot say two words at the same time since language operates as a linear
sequence. We must note that each language has a word order structure, for
instance, English (subject-verb-object), German (subject-object-verb), Spanish (may
vary depending on the type of sentence), and so on.
The arbitrary nature of the sign explains why “language” is a system
(langue) which arises in social relations, and in order to set up those relations
between any particular sound image and any particular concept (paroles).
So, the concept of parole is defined as the concrete act of speaking on the part
of an individual. It is a personal dynamic, social activity, which exists at a
particular time and place and in a particular situation, as opposed to langue,
which exists apart from any particular manifestation in speech.
On examining the role of words as a linguistic sign, we deal with lexical semantics,
which examines the relationship among word meanings between words, and therefore
with the fairly traditional concepts of homonymy, synonymy and antonymy. This is our
second point.

2. HOMONYMY, SYNONYMY, ANTONYMY

So let’s begin with the first one, homonymy.
Following Yule (2006), homonyms are traditionally defined as words or
forms (written or spoken), which have the same pronunciation, same spelling
but different meaning not related. (for example: “bank” as “financial institution”
vs. “sloping side of a river”; “bear” as “animal” vs. “carry”, and cleave meaning
“to cut” vs. cleave meaning “to adhere”). We cannot deduct where they come
from because they have different roots or etimology, but accidentally they have
the same form.
Yet, when two or more words have the same form and related meaning,
that’s what is called polysemy. For instance, ‘neck’: part of the body, of a bottle,
of land.
Regarding the distinction between homonymy and polysemy, it is necessaru
to look up in the dictionary to check the different uses of a word, which can
have homonyms and polysemic forms.
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Another different aspect is the homophones and homographs. Homophones

are defined as “one of two or more words which have the same pronunciation
but different meaning or spelling (for example: as the words to, too and two
/tu:/, see /si:/ vs. sea /si:/ “ocean”, meat /mi:t/food vs. meet /mi:t/ “gather”, and
threw /thru:/ “past of throw” vs. through “go across” and so on.
Secondly, homographs are defined as “one of two or more words spelt alike
but different in meaning of pronunciation (for example: as in bow / bau/ “front of
forward end of a boat” vs. bow /bou/ “piece of wood curved with a tight string”
and similarly, dove (bird) vs. dove (past of dive), and tear (pull sharply apart) vs.
tear (drop of water from the eyes).
In addition to the difference in meaning, homonyms may also be kept apart
by syntactic differences. For example, when homonyms belong to different
word classes, each homonym has not only a distinct meaning, but also a
different grammatical function. For example, the word “use” (the noun vs. the
verb), “record” (the noun vs. the verb) and “wind” (a noun meaning moving air
vs. a verb meaning what is done to a watch or clock).

According to synonymy, we can say that synonyms are different

phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings. Some
examples are the following: couch-sofa, boy-lad, lawyer- attorney, toilet-lavatory,
large-big.
The synonyms often have different distributions along a number of
parameters. They may have belonged to different dialects and then become
synonyms for speakers familiar with both dialects, like Irish English press and
British English cupboard. Or the words may belong to different registers. Thus
wife or spouse are more formal than old lady or missus. The synonyms may
portray positive or negative attitudes of the speaker: for example naïve or
gullible seem more critical than ingeniuous. Finally, we can also say that one or
other of the synonyms may be collocationally restricted. For example, the
sentences below might mean roughly the same thing in some contexts:
She called out to the young lad / She called out to the young boy
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In other contexts, however, the word lad and boy have different
connotations; compare:
He always was a bit of a lad / He always was a bit of a boy

In order to finish with this second point, I am going to talk about antonymy.
This term refers to the notion of oppositeness of meaning, as in good-bad, cold-
hot, happy-sad, or love-hate, or antibiotic and antivirus. Three types are commonly
identified: complementary pairs, gradable pairs and relational antonyms.
Complementary pairs as in married/ single, complete/incomplete, are pairs of
words correspond to binary features where any member of a particular set is
either one or the other but not both. There are no intermediate states (for
example: single/married; pregnant/not pregnant), and therefore, it is not gradable,
for instance, you cannot be “a little single or married” or “a little pregnant”. Other
examples for people would include “alive/dead”, “Jew/gentile”, “Rhesus positive/
Rhesus negative”.
Gradable pairs. They represent opposite ends of a continuum or scale. For
example: hot-cold, wide-narrow, big-small, which allows for natural, gradual
transition between two poles (for example: hot-cold: hot-war-tepid-cool-cold).
These intermediate terms may take, firstly, a large number of values, from
“positive” to “negative” (for example: different: slightly different, quite different,
very different and so on). Secondly, their meaning is relative to cultural norms,
thus “very very old” for American people might be over 100 years old, whereas
for Chinese people it might be only 60 because of differences in life expectancy;
but if you are talking about buildings then “very very old” for Americans might
be over 50 years old whereas for the Chinese it would be at least a millennium.
And finally, relational antonyms, which represent two opposite roles in an
interdependent relationship which are not on a natural scale. Oppositeness
depends on real world attitudes which share the same semantic features, but
the focus or direction is reversed (for example: tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive,
teacher/pupil, doctor/patient). They entail a logical relationship through symbolic
systems of thinking. Entailment is a logical relationship that occurs when one
meaning implies another. For instance, in Cold War thinking, the relational
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opposite of American is Russian; in current US politics, the relational opposite of

Democrat is Republican. These are cultural relational opposites.

Another related issue to the world as a linguistic sign in lexical semantics is the
term false friends or false cognates for a learner of a foreign language, which is our
point number 3.

3. FALSE FRIENDS.
A false friend is a word in the foreign language which resembles a word in
one’s mother tongue, but has a different meaning. Thus, for a Spanish learner of
English, the following words may be false friends: disgraced (resembles
“desgraciado”, but means “damaged”), miserable (resembles “miserable”, but means
“sad”), or “realize” (resembles “realizar”, but means “notice”).
For instance, the following words constipated, recipe, preservative and
embarrassed are usual in everyday language and misleading at the same time. In
English if you are “constipated” you may ask for a “prescription” at the doctor’s.
However, in Spanish, you would not be “constipado” but “estreñido”, and you
would ask for a “receta” (medicine) and not a “recipe” (food). Similarly, you might
find yourself “embarrassed” (but not pregnant!) if you to do the same chemist’s
and ask for a “preservative” (“preservativo” in Spanish), and instead of getting a
“condom”, you get “conservantes”.
Once we have studied false friends, it is also essential to study the lexical creativity,
which is the relationship between from and meaning. The productivity of word-
formation (see topic 10) has been a major factor in providing the huge vocabulary of
English, and the fact that the process of creating new lexemes with new forms has not
faded out.

4. LEXICAL CREATIVITY
What makes human language creative? How do we produce and
understand idioms such as “to let the cat out of the bag”, novel words and
expressions such as “a dot-com company”, and novel uses of familiar words, such
as “The music screamed the audience into submission?”
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Productivity is one of the defining features of human language, and is that

property of language which allows a native speaker to produce an infinitely
large number of sentences, many of which have never been produced before.
However, creativity is the native speaker’s ability to extend the language
system in a motivated, but unpredictable way. Here, we can distinguish
different types of creativity:
a) Words which are similar in form and meaning, that is, borrowings:
map/mapa, pilot/piloto; or cognates: son/syn, brew/brow.
b) Words with are similar in form but different in meaning, that is, both
borrowings and cognates although they reflect some kind of narrowing:
rekord, present.
c) Cases where no semantic lexicalisation is required, but merely some
formal reorganisation which leaves the semantics of the base unchanged,
for example,some nominalizations: For example, instead of saying “we
ought to punish whoever scribbed that foul message”, we can say: The scribber
of this foul message should be punished or The scribbing of this foul message
should be punished.
d) And finally, cases where semantic lexicalisation is required. This is called
“nonce-formation”. For example, instead of saying “They borrowed my
dictionary”, I can say “They left me dictionaryless”. The commonest process
here is compounding, for example “workaholic”. In this case, the nonce-
formation has been accepted into the language, but most often these
creations are only used once, due to a particular communicative need.
Lexical creation is quite commonly used in literature, especially in narrative
works where the author is creating a particular literary world. Apart from the
famous “superchalifragilisticiespialidoxus”, we can mention:

a) James Joyce: oneigorot, barekneed, deepchested…

b) George Orwell: dayorder, doubleplusungood, unperson.

c) Tolkien: Hobbit.

5. EDUCATIONAL IMPLICATIONS
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However, how relevant is this topic for the teaching of English in ESO and
Bachillerato?
In Spanish curriculum (B.O.E. 2002), the study of vocabulary, has been
considered an important element of language teaching, and also word-meaning
devices. After all, the importance of vocabulary cannot be understood since you
cannot communicative without it. The popularity of the communicative method
has left the “teaching” of specific information on the sidelines, but in order for
ESL teachers to help students recognize new words, the teachers need to know
the linguistic information themselves.
However, learners cannot do it all on their own. Language learners, even 2 nd
year Bachillerato students, do not automatically recognize similarities which
seem obvious to teachers; learners need to have these associations brought to
their attention. As we have seen, understanding the notions of semantic
features and sense relations is important to teachers because they are typical
means of defining new words. Teachers commonly define new words by giving
synonyms and antonyms, for instance, “come across” and “meet by change” or
“shallow” and “not deep”.

6. As a CONCLUSION, we can say that learning vocabulary is very

important. Students have to be able to understand and use a wide set of words
if we want them to communicate effectively in the foreign language. So, we
must to emphasize this aspect, and a good way to do it is by teaching them not
isolated words, but words related one to another, as antonyms or synonyms. To
avoid problems, false friends have to be explained, detected and avoided. With
our students we can use a wide variety of activities to practice the correct use of
words: games, words related to signs, antonyms, false friends, etc.

7. The Bibliography I have used to develop my topic is:

George Yule: The Study of Language (2006), CUP, 3rd Edition
Hurford and Heasley. “Semantics: a course book”. Cambridge University Press.
1983.
Lyons. “Semantics”: Cambridge University Press.1977
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Quirk . “A University Grammar of English”. Longman.

And that’s all. Thank you very much for your attention.