Monday, November 12, 2007

Meronymy or Not

Look at the utterance
I've got wheels.
What do you have to say about this sentence in relation to the concept Meronym?

1) technically speaking, wheels is a meronym of car
2) However, in accordance to this sentence, the word 'wheels' does not seem to imply wheels of the car but the entire car.
3) in this case, the part (wheels) is used to refer to the whole (car)
4) the relationship of the wheels and the car is thus no longer a part whole relationship.
5) also, the word 'wheels' does not include the entire car as part of its meaning.
6) the part 'wheels' is used is if it is the whole. This is known as synecdoche.

Difference between meronymy and synedoche
while synedoche takes over the meaning of the whole, meronym retains the meaning of the part relative to the whole.



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