The Acquisition of Hyponymy by Iraqi EFL University Students

This study sets out to concentrate on hyponymy as one of the lexical relations which holds between words. In this relation, one word or phrase is included in that of the other. For the purpose of investigating the problems which the subjects of English face in using this phenomenon, the study deals with the identification of the students performance to find out the causes of the subjects errors and their sources. To get the core goal of the study, a random sample of one group of (50) Iraqi EFL subjects at the Fourth-year level, Department of English, College of Education, University of Babylon during the academic year 2015/16 is subjected to a diagnostic test. The analysis of the incorrect responses provides demonstration that the subjects are really incompetent in the correct recognition and production of hyponymy. This is evident from their achievement at these levels.