thesis and semantic

[sio]

any suggested topics for writing a thesis on teaching english?
what is the difference between homonym and polysm in semantic? thank you

[Soup]

I can answer your second question.

Polyseme (they share etymologies)
Bank (theme: security)
1. a financial institution
2. a synonym for 'rely upon' (e.g. "I'm your friend, you can bank on me").


Homonym with 1. and 2. above (they do not share etymologies)
Bank
1. river bank

It is a completely different meaning. River bed, though, is polysemous with the beds on which people sleep.

Polysemy - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[sio]

so, homonym could have the same pronunciation + spelling (might be), but they have different meaning. on the other hand, polysym is a word that has several meaning.

the head of a bed
the head of lettuce

head here is polysym. am i right?

flour and flower .... those are homonym.

what about hyphonym. what i know is words that belong to larger classification, such as roses, orchid, tulip, etc. are hyphonym of flower, and flower is hyphonym of plant.

thanks for your help.

[Clark]

When we have one and the same sound unit used in, say, two different meanings, we ask ourselves whether it is one word or two different words.
If the meanings have common features (a certain invariant), it means we deal with one word, and this phenomenon is called polysemy. If they have no common semantic ground, then they are two different words, and it is homonymy. It is possible that at some point in the history of a language two realizations of the same word were regarded as its variants, but in the process of evolution the connection between them was lost and at the present stage they are understood as homonyms.