lexical and semantie relations

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ans C RELATION, M, l, PROACH , ILOCKJNG n among words. i between en es. n in which it i i of the lexemes, g at the detai I of :etwo approache icon. In the fir t :h records sense he lexicon like a l. into two type : ilations between captain or dogs me Greek roots, gmatic relations ses, syntagmate.g. dog (noun) re these day as Lexical and semantie relations 109 corpu re earch highlight the way in which word tend to occur with certain words rather than other. For in tance, we can notice that the adjective asleep goe with certain modifier to indicate 'ab olute tate of sleep,' as in fast asleep or sound asleep, and that it occasionally goe with orne other general-purpose modifier that indicate the arne meaning, like completelyasleep, but le with others, like very asleep. Our focus in thi chapter i the more traditional area of tudy for lexical emantic : paradigmatic relation. We'll see orne yntagmatic is ue in the later chapter - including the issue of which modi fiers go with which adjectives, in chapter Il. Words in paradigmatíc relations belong to the ame word cla s and hare orne characteri tie in common. The word in uch relations can be aid to form a paradigm - that i , a et of example that how a pattern. One kind of paradigmatic relation i amorphological paradigrn, uch as the tense forms of a verb: drink, drank; drunk. Notice that the ve rb in this paradigm have eve ry thing in common except their ten e. We are interested in emantic paradigms, which involve word sen e that hare many emantic propertie , but differ in orne. So, for example, the et of ba ic color adjective form a paradigm who e members each refer to a different part of the color spectrurn. Unlike syntagmatically related words, paradigmatically related word are u ually ub titutable for each other. For exarnple, red, white, and any other member of the color paradigm can en ibly and grammatically occur in the ame phrases, as in (l) and (2). (l) a red/white/green/blue house (2) a hade of red/white/green/blue Lexical emantici t tudy paradigmatic relation becau e of their roles in logical relation arno ng entence meanings, uch a entailment (see §2.2), and because of what they might tell us about how the mental lexicon is organized, as we'lI ee in §6.3. They are alointeresting for their u e in creating coherent discourse. U ing related word allow u to describe the ame things in different way, thu providing varied information and avoiding repetition in di cour e. A few paradigmatic relations receive the mo t attention in lexical emantics. Synonymy i the relation of having (nearly) the ame meaning. Couch and sofa are ynonym in many people' dialect. Hyponymy i the 'type-of' relation; for example, house i a hyponym of building becau e a house i a type of building. Co-hyponymy (ometime called lexical contrast) involves a group of ense that make up a et, but which contra t with one another, for example heart/club/spade/diamond. That i , they are different varietie within a single type - in thi ca e, playing card uit. Antonymy i a peci al ca e of contra t in which two word are oppo ite, for example black/white. We examine each of these relation in more depth in the following sub ection . While people of ten talk about word being ynonyms or antonyrn , it i more accurate to talk about senses or lexical units (form + en e-in-u e - see § 1.2.4) as being ynonym or antonym, ince a ingle word may have different ynonym
110 LEXICAL MEA ING or antonym for different en es. For instance, when using the 'ternperature' en se of hot, it oppo ite i cold. but when u ing the' picy' en e of hot, its opposite is mild. For thi rea on, ernantic relation are ometimes called sense relations. 6.2.2 Synonymy The term synonym come from Greek roots syn 'alike' and onym 'name.' It refer to word that mean the ame as each other, o the equal sign = is used to signal synonymy. Becau e it i rare for two word to have exactly the same rneaning/u e, discussions of ynonymy frequently concern word that are not perfect synonym , but that differ only slightly. The substitutability test is u ed to determine whether two words are synonym . Word are ub titutable if there is no change in the mean ing of a sentence when one word is ubstituted for the other. So, for example, if the truth of (3) entails the truth of (4), and vice ver a, then we have evidence that person and human are synonyrn (3) A per on is standing beside me. (4) A human is tanding be ide me. If we want to te t whether man is a ynonyrn for per on, then we can compare (5) and (3). (5) A man is tanding be ide me. In thi case, ince we can conclude that ometime it would be true that a person is standing beside me at the ame time when it is fal e that a man is tanding be ide me - since there things that can be referred to as person that can not be called man - namely, women, girls, and boy . Hence man and person are not ynonyms. Absolute vs. sense synonyms Words are said to be absolute syn ony ms if they are substitutable in any po sible context with no changes in denotation or other a pect of meaning (including connotation - see §2.2.2). U ing that criterion, it i ea y to see that very few word are ab olute ynonym . Take for example funny = peculiar and funny = comical. Where peculiar is substitutable for funny, as in (6), comical probably i not ub titutable and vice ver a, a in (7). (6) My turnrny feels a bit funny (= peculiar, 1comical) whenever l eat fish. (7) Anna told a hilariously funny (l peculiar, = comical) joke. Funny has different ynonym in different context beca u e it is polysemou ,and its various en e match up semantically with different set of words. Since they do not share all their en se .funny and pecu/iar are not ab olute ynonym , and neither are funny and comical. In tead, they are sense synonyms, in that they each have one sen e that mean the ame as one of the other word' en e . For each of the followingpa ynonyms by giving a enter Describe why they are not 1 a. safe, ecure b. fake. false C. big, large d. (a tough one!) Ol The exi tence of large the: are very close in meaning. : to find pair that are perfectl may feel that funny and co, funny joke is a slightly diff (1973:12-13) has gone of. where two expres ion canr be deceiving our elve ." Tt technical names for thing furze = gorse = whin, whic American example i groutu leave it to you to decide wh, myself in claiming that the ( Near-synonyms Far more common is for wo [ake ~ false in Puzzle 6-1. ynonyms (in a particular contexts, but not every conte) ub titution te t in (8), but fa have a sense that roughly me: are not shared by both word (8) Ian obtainedlacquir (9) a. Jan obtained permi b. Ian acquired a Briti! So far, we have seen that being poly emou in differer ynonym ) or by not having onyms that are denotationally way - for exarnple, by belo different connotations. So, w
Page 1: 6 lexical and semantie relations Ke
Page 5 and 6: 112 LEXICAL MEA ING are not strictl
Page 7 and 8: 114 LEXICAL MEA l G food I =--= mea
Page 9 and 10: 116 LEXICAL MEANING Table 6.1 Prope
Page 11 and 12: 118 person adult ~ child mÔoman bo
Page 13 and 14: 120 LEXICAL MEA I G not tall ------
Page 15 and 16: 122 LEXICAL MEA ING for instance mo
Page 17 and 18: 124 LEXICAL MEANI G The mo t extrem
Page 19 and 20: 126 l' z o vi :J ..J U ~ 11 (l) X -
Page 21 and 22: 128 LEXICAL MEANING finger (l have
Page 23 and 24: 130 d. I want lo be a somebody/(#so

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