lexical and semantie relations

128 LEXICAL MEANING
finger
(l have ten fingers)
(l broke my finger) thumb
BLO( KING
index pinkie
finger middle ril/g
finger finger little
pointer finger
Figure 6.6 Lexical blocking
question was their thumb. In that case, you would have expected them to say l
broke my thumb. The existence of thumb as a po sible contrast term for finger
bJocks the interpretation of ingular finger to mean 'thurnb. ' Thus we see that the
semantic relation betweenfinger and thumb affect how they are interpreted.
While the aurus-style theorists have sometimes taken the extreme view that
relations are all that is needed for meaning, no successful model of the lexicon
has been able to rely on relations only and completely leave out any kind of
definitional rneaning. Figure 6.5 show us that walking and jumping are different
kinds of moving, but it does not tell us how to walk or jurnp. Similarly, if you
looked at a box diagram of locomotion term for a language you didn't know, you
would be able to say which were the more general terms and which contrasted,
but you probably would not be able to translate the word into Engli h. Thi lack
of definitional information has pro ved difficult for computational model that use
thesaurus-style links among words, Mo t uch model (like WordNet and MIT)
include definitions as well as relations.
This raise the question: if thesaurus-style models require definition , then
why not just use a dictionary-style model, which has to have definitions anyway
and which can account for relations by rules (as in (22) above)? The main
argument in fa vor of representing semantie relations in the lexicon is that not all
sense relations are completely predictable. In this ca e, their relation need to be
represented in the lexicon, the repository of unpredictable facts about language.
Recall the examples of antonymy like big/little, but not large/little, which seem
to indicate that words' seman tie properties are not sufficient to determine which
of a range of synonyms will be its antonym. If thaťs the case and the e relations
are arbitrary to orne degree, then they are fact about the language that must
be recorded in the lexicon. Proponents of the dictionary view argue in reply that
if you look closely enough, you can find emantic difference that predict, for
example, that big/little is a better antonym pair than large/little because big and
little are more minimally different than large and little (recalI your solution to
Puzzle 6-1c). But theori t with a thesaurus point-of-view might till reply that
these words have developed slight variations in meaning preci ely in order to
accommodate the existing relations between them within their semantie field.
6.4 Summary
This chapter i
hyponymy, and antonym:
defining them. It al o de:
of tbe e relations. Dictior
of the words' emantic (
accounts explicitly repres
of how the men tal lexicc
these extremes, since die
non-seman tie propertie
relation , and thesaurus-:
on their own. We return t
relations for verbs in § 1O
antonym type in chapter '
6.5 Further rea
Textbooks by
lots of detail and example
des discussion of the type
sion of history of the dicti:
tie relations in other tiel
cien ce. Sources on the d:
but you can also explore 1
6.6 Answers to
6-1
Your answers will vary,bu
a. The car is safe~
tend to mean di
will come to yo
won't be hit by
locked up and p
b. She was wearin
substitute for re
costurne.
c. A big/large 1110\
large star i phy