Talk:Hyponymy

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Contents 1 hyponym talk 1.1 Typo & Link Suggestion 1.2 Latest revision 2 hypernym talk 2.1 opening line 2.2 Greek word 3 red::colour

[edit] hyponym talk

[edit] Typo & Link Suggestion

concerning:

In his classic formulation, the linguist C.E. Bazell stated, "There is a relation of hyponymy when one word may invariable be replaced by a second word, but not vice-versa, without change of meaning."

i assume 'invariable' is meant to be 'invariably', especially considering the source of the quote is a linguist.
as an aside, i think hyponymy describes a non-commutative synonymy between two words. (e.g., i could use "temperature" in place of "fever" everytime, but not "fever" in place of "temperature" everytime. e.g., "he shouldn't exhaust himself because of his 'fever'." can be expressed (albeit less specifically) as "he shouldn't exhaust himself because of his 'temperature'.") so, a link to "commutivity" or the like may be good for this reason. Factotum 04:59, 31 Jan 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Latest revision

Why has a whole chunk of text been taken out? In my opinion it serves to explain the concept in a manner that is easier to understand. Little muddy funkster 18/05/05

[edit] hypernym talk

[edit] opening line

The opening line "A hypernym is a word whose extension includes the extension of the word of which it is a hypernym."... what the hell does that mean? That's like "Red is the colour which red objects can be said to have" or "The north is the place to the north of an understood location"... Imĵalo

I'm quite certain that the automobile and vehical example is backwards.... Hopefully someone agrees with me and can confirm that and change it. I'm not confident enough to change it.

[edit] Greek word

According to the article for -onym linked from this article, "hypernym" is an "incorrectly formed neologism". Based on that and what I do know about Greek etymology, the listed Greek word υπερνύμιον should not exist. Tsunomaru 02:08, 15 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] red::colour

"According to Fromkin and Rodman, hyponyms are a set of related words whose meaning are specific instances of a more general word (so, for example, red, white, blue, etc., are hyponyms of colour). Hyponymy is thus the relationship between a general term such as polygon and specific instances of it, such as triangle".

Is this specific example used by Fromkin and Rodman? I ask because this paragraph seems to conflate two relations: is-subclass-of (which is what hyponymy has always meaned to me) and is-instance-of. Red is not a subclass of colour; "X is red" does not entail "X is a colour". No definition I've been able to find supports the is-instance-of interpretation. Can anyone give justification for keeping it in the article? Ilkali (talk) 08:44, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I think that the definition given by Fromkin and Rodman is correct. I think that the hyponymy relations includes (partially!) two relations: is-subclass-of and is-instance-of.

"Red is not a subclass of colour." I am not sure. It depends on your defition of the class.

("X is red" does not entail "X is a colour".) I suppose that the hyponymy relation "red::color" (in this (particular!) case) is more similar to the relation is-instance-of than to is-subclass-of. --AKA MBG (talk) 19:25, 7 May 2008 (UTC)