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Unit 32: Synonymy, Antonymy, Polysemy, Homophony and Ambiguity

32.4 ‘Cognitive’ and ‘Emotive’ Meaning Notes

1. complete and total synonymy;
2. complete, but not total;
3. incomplete, but total;
4. incomplete, and not total.
The distinction between ‘cognitive’ and ‘emotive’ meaning is based on mental faculties such as
intellect, on the one hand, and the imagination and the emotions, on the other. It is often said that
by contrast with the vocabulary of scientific and technical discourse, the words of ‘everyday
language’ are charged with emotional ‘associations’ or ‘connotations’, over and above their primary,
purely ‘intellectual’ meaning. As cited by Ullmann. liberty-freedom, hide-conceal are cognitively
synonymous. One word may be preferred to another because of its different emotive or evocative
associations. But the extent to which this is of importance varies considerably from one style or
situation to another. Since we are concerned with the moral general principles of semantic structure,
we would not discuss various factors responsible for the acceptability of particular forms rather
than with their sense or reference. Rather we would prefer to restrict the term ‘synonymy’ to
‘cognitive synonymy’.
32.5 Hyponymy and Incompatibility

32.5.1 Hyponymy
Hyponymy is frequently referred to as ‘inclusion’ or ‘classification’. For example, the ‘meaning’ of
scarlet is said to be ‘included’ in the ‘meaning’ of red; the ‘meaning’ of red is ‘included, in the
‘meaning’ of blood; the ‘meaning’ of rose is said to be ‘included’ in the ‘meaning’ of flower; and
so on. This formulation of the relationship of ‘inclusion’ rests upon the notion of reference.
The way of examining vocabulary is to note the ways in which a language classifies units. In
English, for, example, dogs and cats are classified as domestic animals. Lions and tigers are
classified together under the general heading of animals. And animals and human beings both
come under the heading of animate beings.
The vocabulary of English is classified in this way in Roger’s Thesaurus. Each entry has under it
a list of hyponyms (i.e. things classified under it).
32.5.2 Incompatibility
Incompatibility is generally defined on the basis of the relationship of contradictoriness between
sentences. For example, the following simple, and familiar example from the colour-terms in
English. If someone says John was wearing a red hat, this will be understood as implicitly denying
John was wearing a green (blue, white, yellow, etc.) hat. And the substitution of any one of the
terms in the set green, blue, white, yellow, etc. for red would also be taken as implying the denial
of John was wearing a red hat. The colour-terms therefore form a set of incompatible lexical items.

32.6 Antonymy, Complementarity and Converseness

Oppositeness of meaning has been one of the most important semantic relations. In many languages
there are dictionaries of synonyms and antonyms, the study of opposites is quite complex. Some
writers use the term antonym for all types of opposite, others divide ‘oppositeness of meaning’
into three sub-categories :
1. complementarity.
2. antonymy, and
3. converseness.

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