6.5   Hyponymy（ hypo- 表示“在…下”、“次，亚”）

    Just as important as the general relationship of oppositeness between words is the relationship of inclusion, which is called hyponymy（上下义关系）, i.e. the meaning of a more specific word is included in that of another more general word (Lyons 1977, Jackson 1988). For instance, tulip（郁金香） and rose are hyponyms（下义词） of flower, and lion and elephant are hyponyms of animal. The general terms flower and animal are the superordinate（上位层次的）terms and the more specific terms tulip, rose, lion, elephant are the subordinate（下位层次的） terms. In semantics this relationship is described according to unilateral（单向的，单边的） implication（涉及，密切关系；蕴涵）: if it is a rose then it is a flower, but not necessarily vice versa. If the implication is bilateral（双向的，双边的）, then this is synonymy: if it is an egg-plant then it is an aubergine（茄子，紫红色）, and vice versa. Therefore, egg-plant and aubergine are synonyms. Hyponymous sets include things like hammer, saw（锯）, screwdriver（螺丝刀）, spanner（扳手）, etc. under the general word tool; plaice（鲽）, cod（鳕鱼）, herring（鲱）, sole（鳎）, etc. under fish.

    Hyponymy is a relationship which creates taxonomies（分类法；分类学） or tree-like configurations（结构；构型）, with higher-order superordinates above the lower subordinates. But their status either as superordinate or subordinate is relative to other terms. For example, horse, dog,snake are subordinates in relation to animal, which is a superordinate, but become superordinates with reference to mare, hound, cobra. Animal in its turn becomes a hyponym of creature, which is the hyponym of living things. It would seem conceivable that the whole of the vocabulary could be hierarchically organized in this way:

                             living    things

              creature                                         plant

                 /               \                                    /              \

       animal              insect                      vegetable  flower    tree

  horse    dog   snake   cockroach      cabbage    rose    pine   oak 

  mare   hound  cobra

    Sometimes, there seems to be no item of the same grammatical class to act as superordinates: round, square, oblong（椭圆） form one such set, where we have to use the noun shape as a pseudo- superordinate, just as taste acts for bitter, sweet, sour. This is quasi-hyponymy（相似上下义关系）.