lexical and semantie relations

le basic-level
guishable from
.epared and eaten
of food (e.g. the
) refer to cheese
.in English
ord in English
le say it 's cheese,
idar cheese
les)
rmsfood or dairy
y different taxoereeptually
more
imple t and most
Id thi i typical
eiu ion relations
: noun in X is a
Lexical and semantie relations 117
Cruse (1986) proposes that we test for hyponymy in verbs using the test sentence
Xing is a way of Ying instead. We could extend thi to adjectives by using the
copular ("linking") verb being, as in (14b).
(14) a. Marching is a way of walking.
b. Being nauseated is a way of being ill.
But while we can identify hyponyrn relations for verbs and adjective , their
taxonornie do not tend to have as many level as noun taxonomies have. For
example, it is hard to think of more verbs that could go on either end of the
inelusion chain marching < walking < moving and even harder to think of what
a hyperonyrn for iII could be. You might sugge t that it would be something like
state of health, but notice that state of health is a noun phrase, so not really in
paradigrnatic relation to iII. Lyon (1977) refers to relations like these, which
cross word-class boundaries, as quasi-hyponymy. In chapter 10 we look at other
types of inclusion relations for verbs.
Is hyponymy a lexical relation?
While inelu ion relations are definitely relevant to the discussion of lexical semantics,
it i not clear that such relations are specifieally lexical in nature. This is to
say that the relation between the word s cheese and cheddar i a direct reflection
of the relation between concepts (and the objeets) CHE ESE and CH EDDA R. The
words are in a hyponym relation imply because the things that they denote are
related by inclu ion relations. Cornpare thi to ynonyrny, for which denotative
meaning i only part of the story - we noted that word are not "good' (i.e. fully
ubstitutable) synonyrn unless they rnatch on is ue like con notation, register,
and dialect as well as denotative meaning. Hyponyrn relation are le s sensitive
to these non-denotational is ue . It i true to ay that a kitty is a type of animal,
even though kitty and animal differ in register. We might prefer to ay that a
cat is a type of animal, ju t because it is odd to u e a non-standard word in a
pronouncernent of X being a type of Y, but that doe not change the fact that
something cali ed ki/ty is just as much an animal as sornething cali ed cat. For
this rea on, it can be said that synonymy (and, as we shall see, antonyrny) is
both a semantic (i.e, denotational en se) relation and a lexical (word) relation,
sinee it involve imilarity on both denotational and non-denotational levels, but
hyponymy is just a ernantic relation.
6.2.4 Incompatibility, antonymy, and contrast
The relations di eu sed so far hold between words that denote overlapping
categorie . Incompatibility is the logical relation between words that
cannot denote the same thing. So, for example, fiower and equation are incompatible,
as there are no flowers that are al o equation - in fact, there is little that
links flowers and equations. More interesting to us are cases of incornpatibility
that con titute sernantic paradigrns. Of these, the most di cussed iantonymy, the