Linguistics Encyclopedia.pdf

we must, first, have a reasonably good grasp of the meaning of the words; otherwise we
could hardly come to feel that their meaning was inappropriate in some cases.
SENSE RELATIONS
Let us begin by seeing how far it is possible to get in semantics by concentrating on
relationships between words. Several such relationships can be set up, and we can, in
addition, discover relationships between sentences. Such relationships are commonly
known as sense relations.
On the assumption that we understand how negation works, it will seem obvious to
anybody that if a proposition, P, is true, then its negation, it is not the case that P, which
we shall symbolize as , must be false. When two propositions stand in this
relationship to each other, we say that the sentences expressing them contradict each
other. We can also apply this knowledge of how negation works to a study of predicates.
It is possible to produce two sentences that are contradictions of each other by simply
negating the predicate of a sentence. For instance, if Thomas is a tank engine is true, then
Thomas is not a tank engine is false. Of course, the opposite holds as well—if an
unnegated sentence is false, then its negation will be true. Any predicate will behave in
this way when negated in one of two otherwise identical simple sentences, a fact which
is, in itself, not terribly exciting.
However, it seems that there are pairs of terms in natural language which behave in
just the same way as predicates and their negations with respect to the ways in which they
affect the truth and falsity of sentences in which they are used. Consider:
male—female
dead—alive
true—untrue
true—false
married—unmarried
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It seems that if Thomas is male is true, then Thomas is female is as definitely and
obviously false as Thomas is not male would be; but, of course, the predicates is male and
is female can only operate in this way if the individual of whom they are predicated is
one of which it makes sense to say that it is male or female. If Thomas is a tank engine,
then it is only within a fictional context that maleness can be predicated of him.
Real tank engines, as well as stones, houses, tables, and so on do not fall within the
semantic field of gendered things. Within specific semantic fields, we can call predicate
pairs like those above binary or complementary antonyms. These produce sentences
which are contradictions of each other when one of the pair is substituted for the other in
a sentence. Linguistically, we can distinguish two ways in which the contrast between
two antonyms may be realized, as the list above shows: either the graphological (and
phonological) form of each member of the pair is distinct from that of the other, or they
share a form, but one member has a prefix such as un-. When there are distinct forms we
call the contrast equipollent contrast; when the basic form is shared and a prefix added
to one member of the pair, we talk of privative contrast.