Future Researchers Semantics Hyponymy
12 Since words become the source to describe meanings, the term for a word
as source of meaning is called lexeme or lexical item. In line with this, Poole 1999 notes that the lexeme refers to “an item of vocabulary with a single
referent whether it consists of one word or more than one word” p. 10.
Moreover, the lexical item is deeply studied in semantics. Semantics is one of the branches in linguistics which explores meaning.
Being more specific, semantics is divided into two main areas, which are lexical semantics and phrasal semantics as explained by Fromkin 2000. Isti‟anah
2016 argues that lexical semantics covers the meaning of word itself and its relationship with the other words. Meanwhile, phrasal semantics describes the
meaning of syntactic element in a larger context than words such as phrases. In this case, as this research deals with the word meanings of sports, thus this
research highlights lexical semantics theory. One of the ways to express the lexical meaning is through finding the
definition in the dictionary. The dictionary provides the meaning for particular thing in a form of written sentence. In other words, a dictionary denotes the
meaning of a thing. As stated by Palmer 1981 that the dictionary characterizes meaning. The dictionary provides the definition by suggesting the words or the
phrases to be understood through the „same‟ meaning‟.
As a conclusion, meaning could be enhanced trough the existence of words. The words become the source of meaning to understand a language. The
meaning itself is studied in semantics. Further, semantics is divided into two main parts, namely lexical and phrasal semantics. Lexical semantics focuses on the
13 word meaning and its relation, meanwhile phrasal semantics concerns about a
larger meaning than the word such as phrasal meaning.