The Branches of Semantics "Antonym, Synonym and Hyponym"

ANTONYMY, SYNONYMY, AND HYPONYMY

A.  Antonymy

Antonymy is the state or phenomenon in which the words have the sense relation which involve the opposite of meaning. The concrete form of antonymy is called “antonym” (opposite). Antonyms are words which have opposite meanings. The words hot and cold are antonyms. So are up and down, and short and tall. A word can have more than one antonym, depending on which meaning you use for the word.

For example :

- short could have the antonym tall if you are referring to a person's height.
- short could have the antonym long if you are referring to the length of something.

In many languages, including English, you can sometimes make antonyms by adding a prefix :
- real and unreal are antonyms
- flexible and inflexible are antonyms

The word pairs of antonym can be divided into several types, there are :

a)    Implicitly Gradable Pairs (Graded Antonym)

Refers to the words related to the object they modify, opposites at either end of the
spectrum.

Examples :

     small    ><  big

     good    ><  bad

     slow     ><  fast

     old       ><  young

b)  Complementary Pairs (Complemetarity)
Refers to the existence of pairs that the denial of one, implies the assertion of the other
(absolute opposites).
Examples :

     male    ><  female

     alive    ><  dead

     awake  ><  asleep

     mortal  ><  immortal

c)  Relational Pairs (Converseness)
Opposites where one word describes a relationship between two objects, and the other word describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed.
Examples :

     buy      ><  sale

     give     ><  take

     teach   ><  learn

     doctor ><  patient

In English, there are a number of ways to form antonyms. You can add the prefix (un-) :

Examples :   likely      ><     unlikely

                   able        ><     unable

or you can add (non-) :

Examples :   entity     ><     nonentity

                   descipe  ><     unable

or you can add (in-) :

Examples :   tolerant  ><     intolerant

                   visible    ><     invisible

B.   Synonymy

Synonymy is the state or phenomenon in which the words that sound different (different in pronounciation) but have the same or identical meaning as another word or phrase. Synonyms can be nouns, verbs, adverbs or adjectives, as long as both are the same part of speech.

For example :
- chair and seat            (nouns)
- go and leave              (verbs)
- quickly and rapidly    (adverbs)
- long and extended     (adjectives)

Here are more synonyms :

-       small                         =   little

-       big                            =   large

-       mother and father      =   parents

-       sick                           =   ill

A word can have more than one synonym depending on which meaning you use for the word.
For example :
- expired could have the synonym no longer fresh, if you mean milk that's past its sale date.
- expired could have the synonym dead, if you mean no longer alive.

C.  Hyponymy

Hyponymy is the state or phenomenon that shows the relationship between more general term (lexical representation) and the more specific instances of it. In linguistics, a hyponym is a specific term used to designate a member of a broader class. For instance, daisy and rose are hyponyms of flower. Also called a subtype or a subordinate term. Words that are hyponyms of the same broader term (that is, a hypernym) are called co-hyponyms.

Example :

The lexical representation of :

red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, is (color)

Thus, we can say that : “red” is a hyponym of “color”

The relationship between the general term and the specific instances is often be described using a hierarchical diagram, called “taxonomy”.

References :

http://www.slideshare.net/Andriyanieka12/13-semantics-synonym-antonym-homonym-hyponym-polyseme-idioms-18509523

http://englishsemantics4eslstudents.blogspot.co.id/2011/02/synonym-antonym-and-hyponym.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPddLCf73QA&list=PLp44Ee2YHzxzxXO1wx-M4v06oLZLFWt0d

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cCqu5hArDQ&spfreload=10