MEANING RELATIONS

ENGLISH SEMANTICS
Semantics is the study of meaning that is used to understand human
expression through language.

Semantics is perhaps the most difficult part of the grammar of a

language to learn. The reason is because, basically, meanings in a
language are indefinite/undetermined.

Remember that language is arbitrary (one of the characteristics of

languages). It is arbitrary because the relationship between forms and
their meanings are sometimes cannot logically proved.
In discussing Semantics, linguists sometimes use the term lexeme (as
opposed to word), so that word can be retained for the inflected
variants; the different forms of the same lexeme.

There are several kinds of sense relations among lexemes. First is the
opposition between syntagmatic relations (the way lexemes are related
in sentences) and paradigmatic relations (the way words can substitute
for each other in the same sentence context).
For example:

• A cat is sleeping on the table. (syntagmatic)

• A …… is sleeping on the table. (paradigmatic)

Note:
In paradigmatic, a lexeme can be changed but it does not change the
structure of the sentence.

Also in this case, under the subject of Semantics, we will deal with the
concepts of:
• Synonymy - "sameness of meaning" (pavement is a synonym of sidewalk)
• Hyponymy - "inclusion of meaning" (cat is a hyponym of animal)
• Antonymy - "oppositeness of meaning" (big is an antonym of small)
• Meronymy – “part-whole relationships” (head is a meronym of body).
ANALYSING AND DISTINGUISHING
MEANINGS
LEXICAL RELATIONS

Knowing an expression’s meaning doesn’t simply involve knowing its

definition or inherent semantic content. As well as knowing a word’s
definition meaning, a competent speaker knows how it relates to other
words of the language: which words are synonyms? Which are
antonyms? Which are meronyms, linked by the relation of a part to a
whole? And which are hyponyms, linked by the relation kind of?
Describing these relationships has often been takes as one of the
principle tasks of lexical semantics.
For example:

1. Kitchen is a meronym of restaurant.

2. Often is antonym of rarely.
3. Many is a synonym of numerous.
4. Sushi is hyponym of Japanese food.
ANTONYMY
Speakers of English can readily agree that words like good-bad, love-hate,
and in-out are opposite or antonymy.
Antonymy (oppositeness) may be characterized as a relationship of
incompatibility between two terms with respect to some given dimension of
contrast. Some words seem to have more than one anthonymy, depending
on the dimension of contrast involved.
For example:
1. Girl has both boy and woman as its opposite. (Depending on whether
the dimension of contrast is sex or age).
2. Sweet has both bitter and sour.
Another mark of the significance of antonymy is the fact that many
languages can create antonyms morphologically. In English, antonyms were
created through the addition prefix (un-), (non-), or (in-).
For example:
• Breakable – Unbreakable
• Believer – Nonbeliever
• Visible – Invisible

Other prefixes may also be used to form negative words morphologically,

such as (mis-) or (dis-). When discussing antonymy, the principal distinction
we have to make is between gradable and non-gradable antonyms.
GRADABLE ANTHONYMS
Anthonyms which contain midpoint (somewhere in between), such as
hot-tepid-cold, bad-average-good, etc.

Thus, hot and cold are two points towards different ends of scale which
has midpoint, tepid (hangat), which is used to refer to the temperature
of liquids which are neither hot nor cold, but somewhere in between.

Language with many adjectives are the most likely to have gradable
antonyms.
NON-GRADABLE ANTONYMS
Antonyms which do not admit a midpoint, such as male-female, pass-fail, alive –
dead, present – absent, etc.
Thus, if someone is female, they are necessarily not male. And someone who has
failed an exam has necessarily not passed it.
Other kinds of antonyms:
• Converseas : (relational opposites) It describes the same situation from different
perspective (doctor-patient), (seller-buyer), (teacher-student), etc.
• Reversives : (directional opposites) It involves a change of direction, especially a
motion in different direction (open-shut), (push-pull), etc.
• Incompatibility : It refers to a non-binary semantic opposition of two expressions
that are semantically similar yet different in a single semantic feature (red-blue),
(tulip-rose), etc.
Pay Attention!
The speaker’s knowledge of the relation of antonymy (also all of the
lexical relations: synonymy, etc) is METALEXICAL. In other words, it is
part of our encyclopedic knowledge about the word’s meaning.
MERONYMY
It is the relation of part to whole.
For example:
Hand is a meronymy of arm, seed is a meronymy of fruit, blade is a meronymy of
knife. Meanwhile, arm is the holonym of hand, fruit is the holonym of seed, knife is
the holonym of blade.
It is also applies for the triple. If A is a meronymy of B, and B is a meronymy of C,
then A is also a meronymy of C.
For example:
• A seed is part of a fruit. A fruit is a part of a plant. A seed is part of a plant.
• Simpson’s finger is part of Simpson’s hand. Simpson’s hand is part of Simpson’s
body. Simpson’s finger is part of Simpson’s body.
Six possible different meaning according the functionalities :

Types Examples

Component – Integral object Pedal – Bike

There is a clear structural and functional relation between the whole and Handle - Cup
its parts. Phonology - Linguistics

Member – Group Fleet - Ship

Parts do not necessarily have a structural or functional relation with respect Tree – Forest
to the whole, parts are distinct from each other. Student - Class

Portion – Mass Slice – Pie

There is a complete similarity between the parts and the whole. This sub- Centimeter - Meter
relation is often called a mereology.
Six possible different meaning according the functionalities :

Types Example

Object – Material Car – Steel

This type of relation describes the materials from which an object is Wine - Alcohol
constructed or created, or the constitutive elements of an object.

Sub-activity – Activity Paying – Buying

It describes the different sub-activities that form an activity in a structured Teaching – Giving exam
way.

Place – Area Monas – Jakarta

Parts do not really contribute to the whole in a functional way. This sub- Oasis – Desert
relation expresses spatiality. Alps - Europe
HYPONYMY
It is the lexical relation described in English by the phrase kind/ type/ sort
of. A chain of hyponyms defines a hierarchy of elements. Thus, hyponymy
can be viewed as the semantic relation of subordination. The superordinate
term is referred to as hyperonym, while hyponyms that share the same
hyperonym are called co-hyponyms.
For more example:
• Sports car is a hyponym of car. (Since a sports car is a kind of car.)
• Car is a hyponym of vehicle. (Since a car is a kind of vehicle.)
Another example:
The lexical representation of: red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, is
[+color]
A standard identification procedure for hyponymy is based on the notion of
class-inclusion: A is a hyponym of B if every A is necessarily a B, but not every
B is necessarily an A.
For detail example:
• Every car is vehicle, but not every vehicle is car. (Since there are buses,
motorbikes, trucks, etc.)
Sometimes there is no single word in the language that encompasses as set
of hyponyms. Such as: guitar, piano, violin are hyponyms because they are
“musical instruments”. There is not a single word meaning “musical
instrument”.
Hyponym is a major semantic relation in the grammar of many languages.
One of its particular types is Taxonomy. The relationship between the general
term and the specific instances is often be described using a hierarchical
diagram, called “Taxonomy.”
SYNONYMY
It is frequently claimed to exist between different expressions of the same
language. Two expressions A and B in the same syntactic position are
synonymous if A implies B and B implies A.
For example:
• Movie – film
Another example:
• John is a sailor.
• John is a seaman.
These expressions share the same denotation and connotation meaning and
are referred to as complete (absolute) synonyms. However, most synonyms
are partial (near) synonyms and differ with regard to their connotations.
POLYSEMY, MONOSEMY, HOMONYMY
POLYSEMY
It is the state or phenomenon in which the words have more than one
meaning. In other words, it can be described as multiple meanings of
words. The concrete form of polysemy is called “polyseme”.

For example:
• Plain
The word ”plain” means: (1) simple, or (2) with nothing added/not
decorated in any way.
MONOSEMY
It is a word has a single meaning.

HOMONYMY
It is the case where two unrelated words happen to share the same
phonological form.