Мағыналық қатынастар: Жалпы және жеке ұғымдар

Semantic relations involving the type of property

Hypernymy and hyponymy are the semantic relations between a generic term (hypernym) and a specific instance of it (hyponym). The hypernym is also called a supertype, umbrella term, or blanket term. The hyponym is a subtype of the hypernym. The semantic field of the hyponym is included within that of the hypernym. For example, pigeon, crow, and hen are all hyponyms of bird and animal; bird and animal are both hypernyms of pigeon, crow, and hen.

In linguistics, semantics, general semantics, and ontologies, hyponymy shows the relationship between a generic term (hypernym) and a specific instance of it (hyponym). A hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is more specific than its hypernym. The semantic field of a hypernym, also known as a superordinate, is broader than that of a hyponym. An approach to the relationship between hyponyms and hypernyms is to view a hypernym as consisting of hyponyms. This, however, becomes more difficult with abstract words such as imagine, understand and knowledge. While hyponyms are typically used to refer to nouns, it can also be used on other parts of speech. Like nouns, hypernyms in verbs are words that refer to a broad category of actions. For example, verbs such as stare, gaze, view and peer can also be considered hyponyms of the verb look, which is their hypernym. The meaning relation between hyponyms and hypernyms applies to lexical items of the same word class (that is, part of speech), and holds between senses rather than words. For instance, the word screwdriver used in the previous example refers to the screwdriver tool, and not to the screwdriver drink. Hypernymy and hyponymy are converse relations. If X is a kind of Y, then X is a hyponym of Y and Y is a hypernym of X. Hyponymy is a transitive relation: if X is a hyponym of Y, and Y is a hyponym of Z, then X is a hyponym of Z. For example, violet is a hyponym of purple and purple is a hyponym of color; therefore violet is a hyponym of color. A word can be both a hypernym and a hyponym: for example purple is a hyponym of color but itself is a hypernym of the broad spectrum of shades of purple between the range of crimson and violet. The hierarchical structure of semantic fields can be seen in hyponymy. They could be observed from top to bottom, where the higher level is more general and the lower level is more specific.

If the hypernym Z consists of hyponyms X and Y, then X and Y are identified as co hyponyms (cohyponyms), also known as coordinate terms. Co hyponyms are labelled as such when separate hyponyms share the same hypernym but are not hyponyms of one another, unless they happen to be synonymous. This shows that compatibility may be relevant.

A word is an autohyponym if it is used for both a hypernym and its hyponym: it has a stricter sense that is entirely a subset of a broader sense. For example, the word dog describes both the species Canis familiaris and male individuals of Canis familiaris, so it is possible to say "That dog isn't a dog, it's a bitch" ("That hypernym Z isn't a hyponym Z, it's a hyponym Y"). The term "autohyponym" was coined by linguist Laurence R. Horn in a 1984 paper, Ambiguity, negation, and the London School of Parsimony. Linguist Ruth Kempson had already observed that if there are hyponyms for one part of a set but not another, the hypernym can complement the existing hyponym by being used for the remaining part. For example, fingers describe all digits on a hand, but the existence of the word thumb for the first finger means that fingers can also be used for "non thumb digits on a hand". Autohyponymy is also called "vertical polysemy". Horn called this "licensed polysemy", but found that autohyponyms also formed even when there is no other hyponym. Yankee is autohyponymous because it is a hyponym (native of New England) and its hypernym (native of the United States), even though there is no other hyponym of Yankee (as native of the United States) that means "not a native of New England". Hyperonymy is used, for instance, by John Lyons, who does not mention hypernymy and prefers superordination. The nominalization hyperonymy is rarely used, because the neutral term to refer to the relationship is hyponymy.

Computer science often terms this relationship an "is a" relationship. For example, the phrase "Red is a color" can be used to describe the hyponymic relationship between red and color. Hyponymy is the most frequently encoded relation among synsets used in lexical databases such as WordNet. These semantic relations can also be used to compare semantic similarity by judging the distance between two synsets and to analyse anaphora. As a hypernym can be understood as a more general word than its hyponym, the relation is used in semantic compression by generalization to reduce a level of specialization. The notion of hyponymy is particularly relevant to language translation, as hyponyms are very common across languages. For example, in Japanese the word for older brother is (兄), and the word for younger brother is (弟). An English to Japanese translator presented with a phrase containing the English word brother would have to choose which Japanese word equivalent to use. This would be difficult, because abstract information (such as the speakers' relative ages) is often not available during machine translation.