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Working With Words (From Gairns & Redman, 1986)

The document discusses several key concepts relating to how meaning is conveyed through language: 1) Polysemy refers to words with multiple related meanings depending on context, like the different meanings of "head". Homonymy involves words that sound the same but differ in meaning and spelling, like "weak" and "week". 2) Synonymy relates to words with similar meanings, while hyponymy describes a categorization relationship like specific animals under the general term "animal". 3) Appropriateness of language depends on factors like formality, registers defined by topic, and idioms where the meaning cannot be deduced from individual words.

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70 views2 pages

Working With Words (From Gairns & Redman, 1986)

The document discusses several key concepts relating to how meaning is conveyed through language: 1) Polysemy refers to words with multiple related meanings depending on context, like the different meanings of "head". Homonymy involves words that sound the same but differ in meaning and spelling, like "weak" and "week". 2) Synonymy relates to words with similar meanings, while hyponymy describes a categorization relationship like specific animals under the general term "animal". 3) Appropriateness of language depends on factors like formality, registers defined by topic, and idioms where the meaning cannot be deduced from individual words.

Uploaded by

Yaneli Gil
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Working with Words (from Gairns & Redman, 1986)

Meaning

a) Polysemy a single word form with several different but closely related meanings
the ‘head’ of a person
the ‘head’ of a pin
the ‘head’ of an organisation

b) Homonymy A word that sounds the same as another word but differs in meaning. Can
refer to both homophones and homographs.

A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning
and is spelled differently.
weak — week
sun — son
see — sea
plane — plain
meet — meat

Homographs are words with the same spelling but having more than one meaning.
We went for a walk in the park.
The tennis course is sometimes used as a car park.

c) Synonymy

d) (denotation v ) connotation the attitudinal and emotional factors which can be express
in an item of vocabulary
Joanna is a single woman.
Joanna is a spinster.

d) Hyponymy
animal cow, horse, pig, dog, etc.

e) Antonymy a variety of different forms of ‘oppositeness’

Appropriacy

a) Style In a very broad sense, it includes level of formality (i.e. slang, colloquial or
informal, neutral, formal, frozen), as well as styles such as humorous, ironic, poetic, literary, etc.
children (neutral)
offspring (formal, sometimes humorous)
nippers (colloquial, often humorous)
kids (colloquial)
brats (colloquial, derogatory)

b) Registers varieties of language defined by their topic and context of use; the language of
medicine, education, law, computers, etc.
‘minor’ is the legal term for ‘child’
‘insolvent’ is the banking term for ‘penniless’
‘cardiac arrest’ is the medical term for ‘heart attach’

Other types of relations

a) Part-whole relations
parts of the face ear, cheek, jaw, forehead, eye, nose, mouth, etc.

b) Items commonly associated with …


kitchen fridge, cooker, sink, cupboard, toaster, waste bin, etc.

c) Multi-word verbs

i) A ‘base’ verb + preposition e.g. look into (investigate), get over (recover from)
ii) A ‘base’ verb + adverbial particle (phrasal verb) e.g. break down (collapse), call off
(cancel)
iii) A ‘base’ verb + adverbial particle + preposition e.g. put up with (tolerate)

d) Idioms a sequence of words which operates as a single semantic unit and the meaning of
the whole cannot be deduced from an understanding of the parts.

e) Collocation when two items co-occur, or are used together frequently.


The earth revolves around the sun.
The lion roared.
She bites her nails.
a loud noise, heavy traffic
badly dressed

f) Word building affixation, compounding and conversion

g) Pronunciation
i) sound and spelling
II)stress

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