ABSTRACT
This chapter explores in what ways French words possess not only a French form, but also distinctively French meanings. At the same time, however, we must not forget that at a fundamental level, despite these differences, the lexicons of human languages also have a great deal in common. Structural linguists refer to them as paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations. While hyponymy is a relationship of inclusion, antonymy is a relationship of exclusion or incompatibility, involving oppositeness of meaning. It is possible for words to belong to the same semantic field and yet to be 'opposite' in meaning. Semanticists have distinguished three types of oppositeness: complementary opposites, converse opposites and true antonyms. The third and perhaps most important relationship which exists between words belonging to a particular semantic field are synonymy: lexical items which have the same meanings are synonyms. We are confronted here with a widespread feature of the lexicon: polysemy or multiple meaning.
