Kwara State University, Malete

Name: Muhyideen Kolawole Ayuba

Matric Number: 23/27MEL/009

Topic: Examine the Lexical Representation of Meaning in English

Course Code: ENG834

Course Tittle: Lexicology and Semantics of English

Lecturer: Dr Abiodun Jombadi

March, 2024

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Introduction
The sole aim of using language is to make meaning. The notion of meaning in linguistics
concerns that which is expressed by sentences, utterances and their components. Meaning is the
content conveyed in communication by language, the message or thought in the mind of the
speaker that is encoded in language and sent to a hearer who decodes it. Hence, lexicons of a
language are the means to an end – meaning and examining it means the process through which
lexical items make meaning in a language and how the meanings are realised. In lieu of this, this
study explores the lexical representation of meaning in English.

Before delving into lexical semantic and sense relation, it is salient to emphasise that a lexical
item may have meaning in isolation but become meaningless in context. As such, before a lexical
item is put into use, one needs to examine if such an item has meaning at all before investigating
the meaning it has. Donaldson and Lepore (2012) point out that the meaning of a word is given
by its contribution to the truth-conditions of the sentence in which it occurs. This buttresses
Lyons’s (1966) argument that meaning of utterances varies in inverse proportion base on context.
Let us consider the following examples.

(i) I’ve not chopped anything since morning.

In the above example, a Nigerian listener understands that the speaker means they have not eaten
was meant but just substituted “eaten” for “chopped”.

However, in the following example, the lexcial item “chop” is well understood in context unlike
in the first example given.
(ii) The man chopped off the head of the wood with an axe.

This is also applicable to lexical items that are not recognised within a structural environment
due to their odd relation to other lexical items paradigmatically. Even though "The apple ate the
man" is grammatically correct, it is semantically odd. As such, it could be deduced that a
syntactic element would only be considered relevant when it is a member of the syntactically
determined classes in the deep structure of the sentence. In linguistics therefore, lexical items

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that will have meaning must relate to other items with which they work together. To make this
clearer, there is a need to examine how it works, hence, lexical semantics and sense relations.

Lexical Semantics and Sense Relations

Dictionary meaning is not sufficient enough to determine the overall interpretation of meaning of
lexical items in a language, especially English. It is of greater advantage if the words are studied
in association with other words with which they are used in discourse. This relationship could be
closeness of meaning, reference or opposite in meaning among others. This is what is known as
sense relations. This is mostly discussed through synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, homonymy,
polysemy, homophony, homography, metonymy and collocation.

Synonymy
Synonymy is the relation of sameness or close similarity of meaning; lexemes related in this way
are synonyms. Some examples of synonyms are: hide and conceal, smali and little, rich and
wealthy, mother and mum, car and automobile, truck and lorry and dear and expensive. You will
notice that the members of these pairs are not exact synonyms; indeed, exact identity of meaning
is quite rare. Synonyms often belong to different registers or styles of language such as formal,
literary or colloquial. I concealed the automobile under a tarpaulin is more formal than I hid the
car under the tarp. Synonyms sometimes belong to different dialects: togs, swimmers, cosines
and trunks are words in different dialects of Australian English for the item of clothing worn
when swimming.

Synonymy may also differ in the lexical company they keep, in the collocations they enter into.
Strong and powerful are partial synonyms, and share some contexts:" he has strong arms" and
"he has powerful arms". But we speak of "the strong arm of the law" not "*the powerful arm of
the law", and "a strong head for alcohol" not "a powerful head for alcohol". Strong enters into
many more compounds than powerful.

Some linguists also believe that there are no perfect synonyms in the English language.
Moreover, this group of linguists holds that pure synonyms do not exist in language.

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Synonyms in the real sense of it can be said to exist if both cannot comfortably take each other's
position in discourse and still retain grammatical correctness of discourse appropriateness. The
major reason put forward is that no two synonyms have the same reference as seen in the
examples above on powerful. That is, no two words seem to have identical links in the
worldview of the language users. The argument, therefore, is that no two words could be said to
be absolutely synonymous if they cannot maintain a paradigmatic relationship in every
discoursal context.

Antonymy
Another important sense of relations needed to be discussed is antonymy. Antonymy is the
relation of opposite in meaning, and examples of antonyms include big and small, long and short,
up and down, dead and alive and so on. Several different types of antonyms are usually
identified.

Gradable antonyms allow intermediate degrees between the two opposite extremes, like big and
small, fast and slow and rich and poor. Gradable antonyms can thus be used in comparative
constructions, like richer than and poorer than. And for gradable antonyms, the negative of one
does not necessarily imply the positive of the other: not fast does not necessarily mean slow.

Non-gradable antonyms, also known as complementary pairs, are polar opposites, and allow no
intermediate degrees. Examples are dead and alive, pass and fail, male and female, and true and
false. For these, the negative of one implies the positive of the other: not true implies false, not
dead implies alive. Non-gradable antonyms do not normally enter into the comparative
construction. Pairs like push and pull, come and go, and rise and fall, which contrast in direction
of movement, can also be interpreted as being opposite in meaning. These are called reverses, as
also are pairs like tie and untie, pack and unpack, and inflate and deflate where there is a reversal
of the action sequence.

Converses describe the same relation from contrasting viewpoints, as in own and belong to (he
owns it, it belongs to him), like and please (I like it, it pleases me), give and receive (I gave

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money to the beggar, the beggar received money from me), and above and below (the red block
is above the blue block; the blue block is below the red block). Other examples are tie– untie,
exit–enter, pack–unpack, lengthen–shorten, raise – lower, dress – undress etc.

Hyponymy
In hyponymy the meaning of one lexeme includes the meaning of another. A hyponym includes
the meaning of a more general word. Hammer, saw, chisel, screwdriver all include the meaning
of tool - they all denote types of tool - and are hyponyms of took the four terms are co-
hyponyms. The general term is called the superordinate (sometimes the terms hypernym or
hyperonym are used instead). Dog and cat are co-hyponyms of animal, slap and punch are co-
hyponyms of hit; and carrot is a hyponym of vegetable.

Hyponymy is a kind of relation: hyponyms are kinds of the superordinate category, which in turn
indicates the general type of the hyponym. Thus, relations of hyponymy associate meanings on
taxonomic hierarchies. Certain semantic domains lend themselves well to this sort of analysis,
including colour terms, kinship terms and terms for animals and plants.

In summary, relationship that is based on the notion of inclusion is known as hyponymy. That is,
with hyponyms, the meaning of a concept is included in the meaning of another. For instance,
buman includes man, woman, children; vebicle includes car, lorry, bus, truck: fomer includes
hibiscus, rose, tulip, etc. The general (upper) term is Superordinate while the specific (lower)
term is hypomym. Therefore, inclusion is a matter of membership of a particular class.

Meronymy/metonymy
Meronymy is the part-whole relation. Door and window are meronyms of room; wheel,
handlebar and pedal are meronyms of bicycle; and hand and face are meronyms of clock.
Meronymic relations in the lexicon can be represented in hierarchies similar to taxonomies.
Other instances of metonymy in which an attribute of something of someone is used to stand for
the thing or person is “Aso Rock" which stands for the Nigerian Government House"; the
"crown" which equates “the king" are instances of metonymy.

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The relatedness of meaning found in polysemy is essentially based on similarity. The head of a
company is similar to the head of a person on top of (and controlling) the body. There is another
type of relationship between words, based simply on a close connection in everyday experience.
That close connection can be based on a container-contents relation (boule - coke; can - juice), a
whole-part relation (car - wheels; house - roof) or a representative- symbol relationship (king-
crown; the President - the White House).These are examples of metonymy. It is our familiarity
with metonymy that makes He drank the whole bottle easy to understand, although it sounds
absurd literally (i.e. he drank the liquid, not the glass object). Metonymy is basically used when
talking about filling up the car, having a roof over your head, answering the door, giving
someone a hand, or needing some wheels among others.

It must be stressed that networks of both hyponymy and meronymy/metonymy are lexical
networks, not networks of relations among real world entities. There are many conceptually
different ways the animal kingdom can be taxonomized and the human body divided into parts.

Polysemy
This is a linguistic situation whereby a word has several meanings (various lexemes) and it
mostly occurs as a word in the dictionary. Examples are key (a tool for lock); key (most
important thing); and key (of musical instrument) and key (of computer). The relatedness of
meaning accompanying identical forms is technically known as polysemy, which can be defined
as one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings which are all related by extension.
Examples are the word head, used to refer to the object on top of your body, on top of a glass of
beer, on top of a company or department; or foot (of person, of bed, of mountain), or run (for
person, water and colours).

Homonymy
The term homonymy is used when one form (written and spoken) has unrelated meanings. I
Examples of homonyms are the pairs bank ( of a river), bank (financial institution), bank, storage
of blood; bat (flying creature) - bat (used in sports); race (ethnic group), race (contest of speed);
pupil (at school), pupil (in the eye) and. mole (on skin) - mole (small animal).

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To clear the last two discussed terms, the distinction between polysemy and homonymy is not
always clear cut but can be identified this way: polysemy has a single entry with multiple
meanings while homonymous words have different entries in the dictionary. Head and run are
typically polysemy and bank and sole are homonymy. What happens to date?

Homophony
This is an instance where words which have different forms (spellings) and different meanings
but are pronounced the same way. Examples are write, right, rite, wright; meet, meat; feet, feat;
among many other examples.

Homography
Homographs are words that have the same spelling but different sounds and meanings e.g.,
minute /mainuit/; minute /minit/
wound /waund/; wound /wu:nd,/

Conclusion
After a close examination of lexical items and how they derive meaning, we have been able to
establish that lexical items have meanings in isolation but may become meaningless in context.
As a result of that, language users must decide the meaning they intend to give a lexical item
before they use it in discourse or communicative event. Importantly, particular items may reflect
degrees of varied meanings from context to context and that's why users of English must be
conscious whenever they are using the language as the medium of communication.

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References
Fara, D. G., and Russell, G. (eds.), (2012). The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of
Language. New York: Routledge.
Ndimele, O.M. (1998). Semantics and Frontiers of Communication. Port Harcourt: University of
Port Harcourt Press.
Jombadi, A. (2015). Basic Studies in English. Ilorin: Olad Publishers Nigeria Limited.
Ogbulogo, C. (2005). Concepts in Semantics. Lagos: Sam Iroanusi Publication.
Palmer, F.R. (1996). Semantics. London: Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (2007). The Study of Language. Cambridge University Press.