Lecture 8 sense relations 词汇学 教学课件.ppt

C) words differing in emotive or evaluative meaning little and small are synonyms. But if any emotion is associated with the designation, we must choose “little”. A small boy is as good English as a little boy. Yet if you should exclaim *Poor small boy!, the phrase is unidiomatic, because the word small has no affective meaning. D) collocational synonyms These words can be considered as synonyms only when they occur in conjunction with certain words. a flock of, a heard of, a school of, a pride of: A …..of a flock of sheep a heard of cows, a school of whales, a pride of lions Polysemy and Homonymy 1. the definition of polysemy Polysemy is a universal feature of all languages, including the English language. Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. That is to say, the same word may have a set of different meanings. For example, chip can mean a piece of wood, food, or electronic circuit. People see no problem in saying that the word chip has several different meanings in English. There is a main process when a word has got plenteous meanings. That is radiation. Radiation is a term used to refer to a process of sense-shift in which the original meaning of a word is to be considered as the central meaning and the other meanings are derived from it. The word “hand” may signify: 1) part of the human body beyond the wrist: I had it in my right hand. 2) keeping, possession: The property is no longer in my hand 3) influence or agency The hand of an enemy has been at work here. 4) person or source from which something comes She heard the news at first hand 5) skill a painting that shows a masters hand. 6) person who does She is a new hand 7) employee The factory has taken on 200 extra hands 8) turn, share in an activity Let me have a hand now 9) a thing like a hand, pointer on a watch, clock the hour hand 10)