ABSTRACT
This chapter explores a number of aspects relating to meaning, from individual words through larger constructs to connectivity in discourse: Lexical meaning, polysemy and homonymy, sense relations, sentence level meaning, and discourse. Words can have literal meanings or non-literal meanings, also called metaphorical or figurative meanings. Just like metaphor, metonymy also refers to something - in this case a name - without mentioning it directly, using non-literal language. Relationship in meaning between two words is antonymy, which refers to opposite meanings such as good and bad. The term hypernym refers to a generic word that can have various hyponyms, words that refer to more specific entities within that overall meaning. Meaning can, however, also be broader and extend beyond the sentence, arising from the overall discourse context. This is what the study of pragmatics is about. Coherence refers to the logic of a sentence linked to the underlying meaning and context conveyed.
