Hyponymy and meronymy

Everyday we are confronted with lexical hierarchies in our correspondences, without actually thinking about it. In this paper I will present two kinds of branching lexical hierarchies: taxonymy and meronymy, which both structure the vocabulary of a language. We will further see that semantic relations, which are defined in terms of logical relations, underlie lexical hierarchies. The problem is that it is not possible to give general, satisfying definitions of suitable test frames for the two kinds, but I will present different approaches that come close to final conclusions. Another aspect I am interested in is the transitivity of taxonymy and meronymy – are they transitive, and if yes, in how far do we have to restrict transitivity? In the final part of my paper I will draw a conclusion, containing a summary of the distinctions and similarities between taxonymy and meronymy.