Synonyms: Are Their Meanings the Same or Different?

Synonymy is one of modern linguistics' most controversial problems. The very existence of words traditionally called synonyms is disputed by some linguists; the nature and essence of the relationships of these words is hotly debated and treated in quite different ways by the representatives of different linguistic schools. Even though one may accept that synonyms in the traditional meaning of the term are somewhat elusive and, to some extent, ficti-tious it is certain that there are words in any vocabulary which clearly develop regular and distinct relationships when used in speech. In the following extract, in which a young woman rejects a pro-posal of marriage, the verbs like, admire and love, all describe feel-ings of attraction, approbation, fondness:

The synonyms stroll and trot vividly describe two different styles of walking, the long slow paces of the young man and the gait between a walk and a run of the short-legged child

Criteria of Synonymy

Synonymy is associated with some theoretical problems which at present are still an object of controversy. Probably, the most contro-versial among these is the problem of criteria of synonymy. To put it in simpler words, we are still not certain which words should cor-rectly be considered as synonyms, nor are we agreed as to the charac-teristic features which qualify two or more words as synonyms. Traditional linguistics solved this problem with the conceptual cri-terion and defined synonyms as words of the same category of parts of speech conveying the same concept but differing either in shades of meaning or in stylistic characteristics.

It is difficult to accept interchange-ability as a crite-rion of synonymy because the specific characteristic of synonyms, and the one justifying their very existence, is that they are not, cannot and should not be interchangeable, in which case they would simply become useless ballast in the vocabulary. Synonyms are frequently said to be the vocabulary's colours, tints and hues (so the term shade is not so inadequate, after all, for those who can understand a metaphor). Attempts at ascribing to synonyms the quality of interchangeability are equal to stating that subtle tints in a painting can be exchanged without destroying the picture's effect. All this does not mean that no synonyms are interchangeable. One can find whole groups of words with half-erased connotations which can readily be substituted one for another. The same girl can be de-scribed as pretty, good-looking, handsome or beautiful. Yet, even these words are far from being totally interchangeable. Each of them creates its own picture of human beauty. Here is an extract in which a young girl addresses an old woman:

Types of Synonyms

The only existing classification system for synonyms was established by Academician V. V. Vinogradov, the famous Russian scholar. In his classification system there are three types of syno-nyms: ideographic (which he defined as words conveying the same concept but differing in shades of meaning), stylistic (differing in

stylistic characteristics) and absolute (coinciding in all their shades of meaning and in all their stylistic characteristics). However, the following aspects of his classification system are open to question. Firstly, absolute synonyms are rare in the vocabulary and, on the diachronic level, the phenomenon of absolute synonymy is anoma-lous and consequently temporary: the vocabulary system invariably tends to abolish it either by rejecting one of the absolute synonyms or by developing differentiation characteristics in one or both (or all) of them. Therefore, it does not seem necessary to include absolute syno-nyms, which are a temporary exception, in the system of classifica-tion. A more modern and a more effective approach to the classifica-tion of synonyms may be based on the definition describing syno-nyms as words differing in connotations. It seems convenient to clas-sify connotations by which synonyms differ rather than synonyms themselves. It opens up possibilities for tracing much subtler distinc-tive features within their semantic structures.