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Lexical Semantics

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NaturalLanguageProcessing

Lexical Semantics is the branch of linguistics and NLP that studies how words encode meaning and relate to each other.

Hypernyms and Hyponyms

These describe the hierarchical "is-a" relationship in lexical semantics.

Hypernym refers to the more general - or superordinate - term: an "animal" is a hypernym of dog. Think "hyper" -> over/above like hyperactive, for higher, broader category.

Hyponym is the more specific (subordinate) term: "dog" is a hyponym of animal.

Think "hypo" -> under/below like hypothermia for the lower, specific term.

In RDFS the rdfs:subClassOf predicate captures the hyponym -> hypernym relationship between terms.

Hyponymy

The relationship between hypernyms and hyponyms is called "hyponymy": e.g., "dog is-a animal".