LEXICAL SEMANTICS - meaning relations between words

synonyms - share most semantic components

thesaurus - dictionary arranged by meaning groups

    denotative meaning - real world difference

run, walk, lumber, amble, trot, dash, jog 

    connotative meaning - difference in speaker attitude

die, croak, kick the bucket, pass away, pass on, give up the ghost

paronyms  - words with confusingly similar forms but different meanings: 

proscribe/ prescribe,  industrial/ industrious,  except/accept,  affect/effect.

antonyms - words with opposite meanings

   gradable antonyms - on a scale with middle being neutral: 

tall-short, slow-fast, hot-cold

   complementary antonyms - absolute difference, no middle ground:  pregnant-not pregnant, married/unmarried

   relational antonyms - not on a natural scale; oppositeness depends on real-world attitudes:  tie/untie, buy/sell, give/receive, teacher/pupil, father/son, Democrat/Republican, Communist/Capitalist.

homonyms - words with same form, different meaning

polysemous homonyms - one meaning derives from the other

   leg (of table), leg (of person), table (furniture)/table (chart)

true (coincidental homonyms) - etymologically unrelated

  can (tin)/can (able), weak/week, meet/meat, see/sea, no/know

homophones- homonyms that are spelled differently

homographs - spelled the same, different pronunciations and meanings wind

DEER - DEAR  

Universal tendencies in polysemy (one meaning from another)  

Polysemy seems logically motivated: 

   concrete to abstract:  sharp knife-> sharp mind

   mundane to technical:  chip of wood-> computer chip

1) part of body to part of object (hands, face, lip, elbow, veins of gold or leaf);             but:  appendix.

2) animal to human for personality traits (shrew, bear, wolf, fox, quiet as a                              mouse); but:  my cat is a real Einstein.

3) space to time (long, short, plural),

4) spatial to sound (melt, rush,)

5) sound to color (loud, clashing, mellow)  

6) physical, visible attribute to emotional or mental, invisible quality (crushed,            big head, green with envy, yellow coward, sharp/dull, spark)  

SIMILARITY AND CONTIGUITY - TWO TYPES OF SEMANTIC ASSOCIATIONS

hyponyms (category terms) and taxonyms (varieties) color -> red, green, etc.

holonyms (whole) and meronyms (part)  hand -> finger,  foot -> toe  

tropes (literary figures of speech) also based on similarity or contiguity

   SIMILARITY RELATIONS

metaphor - using a word to describe something similar (life's a bowl of cherries)

simile - using like or as to make the comparison (life's like a bowl of cherries)

    CONTIGUITY RELATIONS

metonymy - using a word to denote something nearby  White House (=president)

synecdoche - using a part to describe a whole - all hands on deck, mouths to feed

most polysemous homonyms are just "dead metaphors" or other hackneyed tropes