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130<br />
d. I want lo be a somebody/(#someone). While the e two word are u ually<br />
6-2<br />
substitutable, somebody (<strong>and</strong> not someone) ha a noun u 'e that means<br />
'a ignificant per on.'<br />
Perfect sen e synonymy is ymmetricaJ <strong>and</strong> transitive. It is ymmetrical since if<br />
sofa = couch, then coucli = sofa, <strong>and</strong> tran itive in that if s/eep = slumber <strong>and</strong><br />
slumber = snooze, then it hould follow that sleep = snooze. However, becau e there<br />
are few perfect synonym , there i of ten ome" emantic lippage" among the<br />
near- ynonym that one can find in a thesauru , which re ult in non-tran itivity<strong>and</strong><br />
sometime even non- ymmetry. It ha been hown that if you look up a word in a<br />
thesauru , then look up the ynonyms of its ynonym (<strong>and</strong> so on), the ynonym<br />
path between any word <strong>and</strong> its antonym i typically ix teps or fewer, a is the ca e<br />
for authentic/unauthentic in The New Collins Thesaurus (reported in Church et al.<br />
1994):<br />
authentic -7 believable -7 probable -7 ostensible -7 pretended -7 spurious=«<br />
unauthentic<br />
6-3<br />
a. contrary:<br />
slow.<br />
thing can have a 'medium' peed a well as beingfasl or<br />
b. converse: if Max i Alice's teacher, then Alice i Max's student.<br />
c.<br />
d.<br />
e.<br />
6-4<br />
contrary or complementary: ometimes dean is used to mean ab olutely<br />
clean - in which ca e one peck of dirt render omething dirty, But when<br />
we are talking about, ay, the rate of omeone hou ekeeping, we often<br />
treat it as contrary - o that one could ay that orneone' hou e i neither<br />
clean nor dirty - it could be better or worse.<br />
usually a sumed to be c mplementary: if omeone told you that the<br />
univer ity has 10,000 tudent, half of them fernale, you would a urne<br />
that the other half i male. While tate between malene <strong>and</strong> femalene s<br />
are medicaUy po ible, we tend lo ignore that pos ibility in our everyday<br />
u e of the word .<br />
contrary: while male <strong>and</strong>female indicate a per on' phy iological ex,<br />
feminine <strong>and</strong> masculine de cribe behavior or appearance - <strong>and</strong> ome<br />
people are neither feminine nor masculine in tho e re pect .<br />
A common mi take in thi exerci c is lo put orange under or above red <strong>and</strong> yellow,<br />
ince orange i 'made of red <strong>and</strong> yellow. Thi 'made-of relation may be relevant to<br />
paint that are orange <strong>and</strong> red, but not to the meaning of the word orange <strong>and</strong> red,<br />
which are in an overlapping, but contrasting, relation. The diagram hould look<br />
something like figu re 6.7.<br />
All of the contra ting terms overiap, since color boundaries are very fuzzy -<br />
something turquoi e, for in tance, could be called either green or blue. Ideally, the<br />
diagram hould be three-dimen ionalothat purple <strong>and</strong> red join up <strong>and</strong> overlap as<br />
well.<br />
crimson<br />
red<br />
scarlet<br />
Figure 6.7 wil<br />
6.7 Exercises<br />
Ad O pt-a-word<br />
A. Explore the iss<br />
synonyms fou<br />
synonymous?<br />
synonymy is d<br />
why the thesa<br />
B. Design a box (<br />
of its senses)<br />
word class (e.<br />
within the fiek<br />
more appropr<br />
l. Show whethe<br />
whether or no<br />
a. quick, fa t<br />
b. ick. iII<br />
c. near, clo. e<br />
2. Devi. e box dl<br />
ju tify your d<br />
Take into aee<br />
sen e that re<br />
a. tool, bar<br />
b. bun, roll,<br />
3. The followins<br />
whether thi: .<br />
sense of tart
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