About that question on hyponyms

[Celso Alvarez Cáccamo]

Hello,

About that question on hypernyms / hyponyms,

>1) Is there a specific term for terms that serve both as terms for a genre
>and terms for members of that same genre (e.g., "man" when used to refer
>to both male homo sapiens and all homo sapiens)?

(Sorry, I erased the original message and those that followed).

If we regard man1 and man2 as different entries in the lexicon, man1 and
man2 can be just treated as homonyms. This could explain why "All men are
created equal" is acceptable -- though demode and ideologically
hypocritical -- while "Half of all men can bear children and breastfeed" is
very strange, to say the least.

I believe "generalization" as the common process by which a term comes to
cover a broader group of referents can apply in this case as well in which
the broader group is the entire class. The reverse is "specialization". So
in man1 / man2 historically we've got one of those (I don't know which; in
Romance languages I would say the process was specialization, since Latin
generic "homo" covered both "vir" and "femina"). But, if one doesn't want
to use the expression "generic term" or "general" term for this hypernym,
then syncronically we could talk about hypernym/hyponym homonyms, or
something funny like that. An HHH, triple H.

Peace,
-celso
Celso Alvarez-Cáccamo
lxalvarz at udc.es