Enter the nutty world of Hagemaru

I was so frustrated that day, so went and sat in front of television.
I started surfing channels just to let off the burden. I always watch cartoons to let go the so called tension. My friends find watching cartoons very childish but I find it very entertaining, even more than TV serials.
So I was surfing channels and stopped to see a cute character with big eyes, broad eyebrows, smallest nose, and especially with countable three hairs.
Bewildering! Isn’t it? But if you take a look at the following picture, you will get to know how it is.

This character is called Hagemaru. It is a Japanese name and the character also resides in Japan.
When I started watching the stories of Hagemaru, I found them extremely crazy, funny and humorous.
Hagemaru is such a character who is although scrooge and nutty loved by all his friends and neighbors due his innocence and helpfulness. He has friends like Kondo and Mezzurita.
Hagemaru always cracks extremely funny jokes which are senseless yet based on plausible situations.

With his unstoppable creative and witty nature he can do the things out of this world.
He is and his family is famous among people and has a tag Scrooge.
He is witty, funny, scrooge, crazy, mad, cute and the list goes on.......

There’s one instance for this, once he sees his friends surfing near the sea shore, he also tempts to do that. Since he is very poor, could not afford a surfing pad. In the next scene, we see him surfing with a pad on the surface of sea.
His rich friend asks him from where he brought the surfing pad; he points out to the door and shows how he took out the door of that office and transformed it to use as a surfing pad.

Hagemaru’s eccentric family makes you laugh till your stomach aches. His mother, father and pet dog Pesu are unique characters with one common characteristic- stinginess.

In spite of all his so called weird qualities you tend to like Hagemau, due to his cute innocence.
What makes you always curious is his style of using extraordinary tricks to get the things done.
You never know what he and his extremely stingy family will do the next moment.

I must mention the voiceover artists who have made this character lively and close to Indian viewers. The voice-over used for Hagemaru is extremely peculiar, on other hand that of his friend Kondo is amusing. The influence of Gujrati dialect related to story and used to present the whole animation series adds to the fun.

Ok, I spoke a lot about this cute cartoon character. To enjoy this amusement you have to watch it.
For me, it was a refreshing experience; it taught me that we should take things very lightly. We should not be always serious and stressed.
It also gave me another aspect to look at things…………….hmm…….bizarre? isn’t it? yes …but not more than Hagemaru.

My first Voting

I was tremendously excited that day. Do you know why? It was a voting day.

Since my childhood, I had been wishing to vote. Later by hearing the pessimistic views I was depressed since I was considering voting as the only ray of hope that can bring a revolution in our country and will someday lead to prosperity and progress, which a common Indian man always wishes.

I am also not very happy with the progress of our country, but always wanted to contribute significantly for my motherland. But as any teenager could not find a right way to do something creative and progressive. So I regarded voting as the only way to get the expected development done in society.

I thought profoundly and finally decided to vote.

I started asking my friends, colleagues, and neighbours, that Are they willing to vote? 99% response was NO.

I was again depressed to see their gloomy faces. When holiday was declared on the voting day, somebody was planning to enjoy the holiday, somebody was planning to go out of town, somebody took a long leave adjacent to voting holiday, somebody…………………
There were lots of interesting plans, except voting.

In middle class and higher middle class, this kind of depressing behavior is observed most. Since the basic needs are fulfilled and there is a cut throat competition in education and jobs, we are busy running in the rat race to achieve our goals. We are busy running behind the desire to become more prosperous.

But do we think of bringing our nation ahead? Bringing prosperity to our nation? But do we say that Let’s get rich and show the world our power and bring significance to our glorious History, culture and heritage?

I know all this may seem a dream and there are chances that some [people find it overdramatic also, since patriotism has become a big melodrama in our country due to lack of honesty and devotion.

I admit that there are miserable things and situation regarding political India since years, still I have some positive hopes for my country, I still want to contribute significantly in the development of my nation.

That day I woke up early in the morning. I got ready and went to confirm my number and place for election, as we have already found out the place. I went with my license as an identification proof.

I was so excited and was making my mind to stand in a long long row, but …. There was a very tiny row of 3 /4 old men and women. I became dejected again, but voted. The time recommended for voting was from 7.00 a.m. to 5 p.m. So I thought people will come in the afternoon may be….

In the afternoon, I heard some people are shouting near the residential areas….I saw from the window and realized that they were some volunteers trying to appeal voters to go and vote. I felt very bad to see them plead. I was also shocked with people’s reluctance.

The next day, everybody was teasing me when I said them that I went for voting. In their view, I was childish….hoping something good for my country…..

Let it be..I am childish then…. ..at least I have that urge to contribute for my nation….and I will cherish it, I know you also want our country to be a well developed nation, with content people, only the thing is you are waiting for an initiative….like me…like any common citizen…

A study of Lexical Relations

The branch of semantics that deals with the word meaning is called lexical semantics. It is the study of systematic, meaning related structures of words. Lexical field or semantic field is the organization of related words and expressions in to a system, which shows their relationship with one another. e.g. .set 1 angry, sad, happy, depressed, afraid.
This set of word is a lexical field all its words refer to emotional states.

Lexical semantics examines relationships among word meanings. It is the study of how the lexicon is organized and how the lexical meanings of lexical items are interrelated, and it’s principle goal is to build a model for the structure of the lexicon by categorizing the types of relationships between words.

There are different types of lexical relations-
Hyponymy
Homonymy
Polysemy,
Synonymy,
Antonymy and
Metonymy.

Hyponymy

Hyponymy is a relationship between two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the meaning of the other word.
The lexical relation corresponding to the inclusion of one class in another is hyponymy.

A hyponym is a subordinate, specific term whose referent is included in the referent of super ordinate term.
e.g. Blue, green are kinds of color they are specific colors and color is the general term for them. Therefore color is called the super ordinate term and blue, red, green, yellow, etc. are called hyponyms.
A super ordinate can have many hyponyms.

Hyponymy is the relationship between each lower term and the higher term(super ordinate).It is sense relation. Hyponymy is defined in terms of the inclusion of the sense of one item in the sense of another. e.g. The sense of animal is included in the sense of lion.
Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon. e.g. the verb cook has many hyponyms.

In a lexical field, hyponymy may exist at more than one level. A word may have both a hyponym and a super ordinate term.

We thus have Sparrow, hawk, crow , fowl as hyponyms of bird and bird in turn is a hyponym of living beings .So there is a hierarchy of terms related to each other through hyponymic relations. Two or more terms which share the same super ordinate terms are co-hyponyms.
Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment. e.g. ‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal’ Hyponymy often functions in discourse as a means of lexical cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid repetition.

Homonymy

Homonymy is ambiguous words whose different senses are far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way. Words like tale and tail are homonyms. There is no conceptual connection between its two meanings.
The word ‘homonym’ has been derived from Greek term Homoios which means identical and onoma means means name.Homonyms are the words that have same phonetoc form (homophones) or orthographic form(homographs) but different unrelated meanings.
e.g. Thev word bear as a verb means to carry and as a noun it means a large animal.
An example of homonym, which is both homophone and homograph, is fluke. Fluke is a fish as well as a flatworm. Other examples-bank, an anchor,etc.

Homophony

Homophony is the case where two words are pronounced identically but they have different written forms. They sound alike but are written differently and often have different meanings. e.g. no, know and led, lead and would, wood.etc.

Homograph

Homograph is a word which is spelled the same as another word and might be pronounced the same or differently but which has a different meanings. E.g.bear,to bear. when homonyms are spelled the same they are homographs but not all homonyms are homographs.

Polysemy

When a word has several very closely related senses or meanings .Polysemous word is a word having two or more meanings.
e.g.foot in :He hurt his foot
She stood at the foot of the stairs.
A well-known problem in semantics is how to decide whether we are dealing with a single polysemous word or with two or more homonyms.
F.R.Palmer concluded saying that finally multiplicity of meaning is a very general characteristic of language.
Polysemy is used in semantics and lexical analysis to describe the word with multiple meanings.Crystal and Dick Hebdige (1979) also defined polysemy.

Lexical ambiguity depends upon homonymy and polysemy.

Synonymy

Synonymy is used to mean sameness of meaning. Synonym is a word, which has the same or nearly the same meaning as another word. There are several ways in which they differ
1.Some set of synonyms belong to different dialects of language, e.g. Fall - used in united states, Autumn-used in some western countries.
2.There is a similar situation but are more problematic one with words that are used in different styles or registers.
3.Some words may be said to differ only in their emotive or evaluative meanings.
4.Words are collocationally restricted they occur only in conjunction with other words.
5.Synonyms are often said to differ only in their connotation.
Examples-hid, conceal,
It is very hard to list absolute synonyms: words, which are identical both in denotation and connotation.

Antonymy

The word antonymy derives from the greek root anti(opposite) and denotes opposition in meaning.
Antonymy or oppositeness of meaning has long been recognized as one of the most important semantic relations .e.g. quick-slow, big-small, long-short, rich-poor, etc.
Antonyms are divided in to several types-1.gradable antonyms/pairs, 2.nongradable antonyms/complementaries, and 3.reversives 4.converse pairs
1.gradable antonyms/pairs-They can be used in comparative constructions like bigger than or smaller than, etc. Also the negative of one member of the gradable pair does not necessarily imply the opposite. e.g.not hot does not mean cold.
2.nongradable antonyms/complementaries- The relation of oppositeness is that which holds between the pairs as single:married, man:woman,etc.
The denial of one implies the assertion of the other and the assertion of one implies the denial of the other. It is the characteristic of complimentaries.
3. reversives-It is important to avoid most antonym pairs as one word meaning the negative of another.e.g.tie-untie.
4.converse pairs –Another kind of antonymy is forming converse pairs. e.g. Converseness is used to refer to the relationship between buy and sell.

Metonymy

A metonym substitutes for the object that is meant the name of an attribute or concept associated with the object. The use of ‘crown’ for ‘king’ is an e.g. of metonymy. This term has been derived from Greek word meta means after and onoma means substitution for name.
e.g. gray hair can be used for old age.
The distinction between metonymy and metaphor is made in linguistics. For instance, the phrase ‘to fish pearls’ metonymy is used and in the phrase ‘fishing for information’ metaphor is used. In cognitive linguistics, the word metonymy stands for the use of one basic characteristic to identify a more complex entity. Metonymy according to American Linguist Bloomfield is nearness in pace and time.
More precisely it focuses on specific aspects of objects having direct physical association to what is being referred to.

References (Bibliography):

1.Lexical Semantics-D.A.Cruse (Cambridge university press)
2.Semantics – a course book-James R..Hurford, Brendan Heasley (Cambridge university press)
3.Semantics –a new outline-F.R. Palmer-(Cambridge university press)
4.Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics-John Lyons- (Cambridge university press)
5.LANGUAGE Its structure and use- Edward Finegan -(Harcourt Brace Publishers)
6.Longman dictionary of applied linguistics-Jack Richards,John Platt,Heidi Weber-(Longman)