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SEMANTICS (R-E anul IV)

LEXICAL RELATIONS
Theories of language state that language users must have some sort of lexicon stored in
memory. When they hear or read, they can recognize the patterns of sounds or letters that
correspond to the lexical items in their lexicon. Each word or lexical item contains
meaning. The description of the meaning of a word is complex because there have to be
considered the following perspectives, which constitute the area of study in modern
linguistics called lexical semantics. (Kenworthy, 1991, p.4)
1. The referential relation between the word and an entity in the world – in linguistics this
is termed its denotation.
2. The relation between the word and other words in the language – its sense relations.
3. The other words which co-occur with it in the language -- the technical term used is its
collocations.
4. The use of the word in the language in terms of restrictions – its communicative value.
Therefore, it is not an easy task to learn the connections between words and their
meanings.
Some words are relatively easy to define by pointing to an object or a picture, but some
are not because we have to consider the context.
In simple semantic situation, there is only one relation between symbol (signifier) and
reference or sense (signified). Proper names like Peter, the Eiffel Tower, the Himalayas
have direct reference. They denote a specific object, person, place, etc. in the world.
Proper names have no resemblance or other link to the objects they denote. A rose
denotes a sweet smelling flower everyone calls a ‘rose’. If we change its name, it is still
the same flower. Peter can change his name to Romeo but he is not changed physically.
Occasionally, a name reflects some sound resemblance. The word is a phonaesthetic
word-- the name imitates the thing (Kenworthy, 1991, p.3). For example, some English
words imitate the sounds the animals or human beings. In English the baby talk for cat is
meow, and that for dog is woof-woof.
. When a word has direct reference, it points to a specific, unique object, person, place,
etc., it can be said that the word has ostensive definition or definition by pointing.
Sometimes a word can refer not only to a unique object, but a set or class of that thing.
For example, student can refer to Anne, Tony, or Paul who are studying in a school.
So, the word student is a common noun as opposed to a proper noun or a proper name.
If we look further, pupil is related in some elements of meaning to the word student.
Therefore, there is a relationship of meaning between words.
What is a word in lexical semantics? It is:
1. A word form – phonologically (and/or graphically) distinct “shape”: bank, mole;
2. A lexeme – phonologically and semantically distinct, autonomous symbolic unit
(i.e., it can stand alone because it contains a root morpheme): bank1, bank2, mole1,
swimming, etc.
3. Inflected forms based on the same root count as the same lexeme: swims, swimming,
swam, swum.
Therefore, in lexical semantics, a word is the same as a lexeme (=lexical unit).
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The major problems of word analysis consist in our capacity to describe:

 what words mean (semantic analysis/decomposition);
 how word- meaning varies with context (discourse analysis);
 how word- meanings are related and how they contrast (paradigmatic
relations);
 the syntactic (and idiomatic) properties of words (syntagmatic relations).
In this respect, linguists have adopted several approaches:
1. Two- level vs. One-level:
According to the two-level approach, ‘there’s a difference between linguistic meaning
and other, non-linguistic (encyclopaedic) meaning; linguistic meaning is simpler and can
be formalised more easily, e.g. in terms of semantic features’;
Within the one-level approach ‘there is no evidence that linguistic meaning is different in
nature from encyclopaedic meaning; all meaning is conceptual, and grammar carries
meaning too’.
2. Monosemic vs. Polysemic:
The monosemic approach recognises as few senses of words as possible , allowing other
senses to be explained via conventional patterns of extension.
Within the polysemic theory, all senses/facets of meaning are recognised, since
extensions are often irregular and cannot be dealt with via general rules.
3. Componential vs. Holist:
The componential model holds that word meanings are constructed out of features -
smaller units of meaning, much like molecules consist of atoms; these features are often
quite abstract, can be combined in different ways to capture the meaning of words
(pioneered by the Danish linguist Hjelmslev);
The holist model states that the meaning of a word incorporates a whole semantic field or
is essentially infinite, but is constrained by the contrasting meanings of other words.
4. Formal approaches (from analytic philosophy; typically componential): try to
explain human language in terms of objectivist, formal logic.
5. Conceptual approaches (usually holist): associate word meaning with the (mental)
concepts which they give access to in the cognitive system; at the centre is the prototype
theory of lexical organisation, including such notions as family resemblance and basic
level. It recognises the embodied nature of human language and cognition (the properties
of body and mind are seen as an integrated unit, not a dichotomy).

According to Cruse, there are two principal sources of primary data for the study of
lexical semantics:
1. the productive output (spoken or written) of native users of language. The limitation
of this source consists in the fact that this approach has more of the character of an
‘observational science’ than that of an ‘experimental science’, such as physics or
chemistry.
2. the intuitive semantic judgements (furnished by native speakers) of various linguistic
materials.

In order to make sense, a linguistic item must have at least the complexity of a simple
sentence; we do not communicate with isolated words. Words, taken singly, cannot be
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true or false, cannot be beautiful, appropriate, paradoxical or original. In isolation, words

are not able to provide for our most relevant experiences of language. We communicate
with utterances and therefore our intuitions concerning utterances will be more reliable
and clearer than those concerning individual words.
The set of normality relations which a lexical item contracts with all conceivable contexts
is its contextual relations. The meaning of a word is reflected in its contextual relations
and can be seen as a pattern of affinities and disaffinities with all the other words in the
language with which it is capable of contrasting semantic relations in grammatical
contexts.
Affinities are of two kinds: syntagmatic and paradigmatic.
A syntagmatic affinity is established by a capacity for the normal association in an
utterance, e.g. ‘dog’ and ‘barked’, since ‘The dog barked’ is normal. A syntagmatic
affinity always presupposes a particular grammatical relationship.
A syntagmatic disaffinity is revealed by a syntagmatic abnormality that does not infringe
grammatical constraints, e.g. ‘the lions are chirruping’.
Paradigmatically, a semantic affinity between two grammatically identical words is the
greater the more congruent their patterns of syntagmatic normality. For instance, ‘cat’
and ‘dog; share far more normal and abnormal contexts than ‘dog’ and ‘lamp-post’.
The meaning aspect of a lexical unit is called sense. Lexemes are items in the lexicon. A
lexeme is a family of lexical units.
Sense relations, the same as affinities (or disaffinities) are of two fundamental types:
paradigmatic and syntagmatic.
Paradigmatic relations of sense reflect the way permanently varied experienced reality is
apprehended and controlled through being categorised, subcategorised and graded along
specific dimensions of variation. Paradigmatic relations represent the speaker’s choice
when encoding his message.
On the other hand, syntagmatic relations serve discourse cohesion, adding necessary
informational redundancy to the message, controlling the semantic contribution of
utterance elements through disambiguation, or signalling alternative (e.g. figurative)
strategies of interpretation.

LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
When one word has several meanings or several words are identical in form, the semantic
situation is complex. This is lexical ambiguity.
Ambiguity is a meaning property. It is a characteristic of a word or sentence which can
refer to two or more rather different types of referents. For example, the term ethics is
ambiguous because it may refer to (1) a person’s moral behaviour, (2) a set of moral
principles to which one may be personally committed, or (3) a theoretical study of the
varieties and bases of moral principles. When the context is not adequate, we might need
to ask for an explanatory interpretation.

I found a bat. ( baseball bat, flying rodent)

She couldn’t bear children. ( give birth to, put up with)

In each sentence the italicized word is ambiguous in that it has more than one meaning.
Sometimes, one word can also occur in various environments:
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He gave me a tap on the shoulder. (hit gently)

The children are playing at the water tap. (faucet)
He complained that his phone had been tapped ( fix a small device to a phone to listen
secretly to what people are saying)
I did tap classes as well as ballet. ( a dance)

There are four meanings of the word tap in four contexts. Each tap in each sentence is
called a lexical item or a lexeme. Dictionaries usually list every lexical item.
So, for tap there should be at least four lexical items or entries. In each of the following
sentences, the word run can represent a separate lexical item:

He runs fast.
He runs a restaurant.
He runs for president.

Lexical ambiguity can be seen in homonymy and polysemy:

1. Homonymy. The first sort of ambiguity occurs where an expression is associated with
two or more unrelated meanings as in:

Ethel’s punch was excellent.

Or I love that old port.

The word punch may be a drink or an action, and port can be a harbour or a kind of wine.
Lexemes whose word forms have this property are called homonyms and can be
subdivided into homophones, where the forms of the lexeme sound the same but may be
written differently, e.g. draft and draught, and homographs, e.g. lead, tear which are
written the same but are pronounced differently. Some lexemes are both homophones and
homographs; they are identical both in their spoken and their written forms. They are
called homonyms, for example: peer 'look narrowly' and peer 'member of the group'. In
practice, it is customary to refer to both homophones and homonyms as 'homonyms'.
Homonymy can also be divided into full homonymy (like bank, punch), where all of the
lexeme’s associated word forms are phonetically or orthographically identical, and
partial homonymy (like find, found) where just some of its word forms are identical.
2. Polysemy. Polysemy is contrasted with homonymy. A polysemous lexeme is one that
is interpreted as having multiple senses that are not entirely distinct. There are
innumerable examples of this condition. The lexeme mouth has different interpretations
depending on what sort of entity is described as having a mouth, e.g. human mouth,
mouth of a cave, mouth of a bottle, mouth of a river. In these cases the MOUTHs are
different, but not absolutely different, as each one refers to an opening of some sort. The
difference between homonymy and polysemy is one of degree, and precise definition of
these terms is difficult and controversial.
Cruse identifies varieties of polysemy such as:
1.Linear polysemy where one sense is a specialisation of the other:
a) Autohyponymy: basic/specialised sense: drink (anything)>drink (alcohol);
b). Automeronymy: basic/subpart sense: door (whole structure)>door (panel);
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c). Autohyperonymy :basic/wider sense: cow (fem.)>cow (any bovine);

d).Autoholonymy: basic/larger part sense: leg (thigh + calf)>leg (incl. knee and foot).

2.Non-linear polysemy where one sense is figurative (non- literal) or involves a different
construal (way of “looking” at something), based on some “facet”, for instance:
a).Metaphor: resemblance between domains: swallow (a pill)/swallow (an argument)
b).Metonymy: stand-for association within a domain: hands (body part)/hands (manual
labour: whole persons accessed via their hands, the most salient parts in the context).
c). Other: different construals, e.g. month (Jan 1- Jan 31)/month (period of 30 days).
Most polysemy is non-systematic, i.e. idiosyncratic, exceptions including the most basic
conceptual metaphor patterns, e.g. UP IS MORE/DOWN IS LESS (high price, falling
temperature) and some metonymic patterns, such as PLANT – FLOWER OF PLANT,
ANIMAL – MEAT OF ANIMAL, INSTRUMENT – SOUND OF INSTRUMENT.

Lyons considers two alternatives to circumventing the homonymy-polysemy issue:

1. Maximise homonymy -- associate every meaning of a word with a distinct lexeme.

Lyons shows that this will lead to considerable redundancy in the lexicon, as much
morphological, syntactic, and even semantic information will be repeated in the lexical
entries for the distinct lexemes. However, this redundancy can be greatly reduced given
current inheritance-based approaches to lexicon construction. More problematic is the
observation that this approach depends on the ability to spell out in advance all of the
possible senses in which a word will be used. Lyons suggests that sense distinctions can
be ``multiplied indefinitely'' (1977:554) and that therefore this tack is hopeless. It will
never be possible to decide in advance the full range of possible senses a particular word
might be associated with, and furthermore it makes the computational task of selecting
the appropriate lexeme daunting given the number of lexemes which might be associated
with a particular word form.

2. Maximise polysemy -- adopt the notion that no two lexemes can be entirely distinct
when they are syntactically equivalent and when the set of word forms they are
associated with are identical. On this view, there are only various kinds of partial
homonymy (i.e. when there are syntactic differences among uses of a word). This
removes the vague concept of ``semantic relatedness'' from the lexicon. However, it
would result in an extremely underspecified lexicon from which very little information
about the meaning of words could be gleaned. It suffers from the problem of an inability
to explain the intuitions that underlie the notion of homonymy, and, more relevant to
computation, from a complete inability to identify the normal context of use of a
particular word and no basis for establishing synonym classes or other semantically-
based groupings. How any useful interpretation could be accomplished without some
sense differentiation is difficult to see.

In discussing the semantic contribution of a word to a sentence, Cruse differentiates

between contextual selection of a sense and contextual modulation of a sense. Selection
refers to activation of a particular sense of an ambiguous word form due to the context,
while modulation refers to variation induced by the context in terms of emphasising or
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de-emphasising various aspects of the sense. The sentences below (1a and b) exemplify
modulation in that the two sentences highlight different parts of the car (the engine and
the body, respectively) rather than requiring that car refer to different entities in each
case. The sentences in 2a and 2b, on the other hand, are instances of contextual selection:
a different sense of light is selected in each case.

1. a. The car needs servicing.

1. b. The car needs washing.

  2. a. The room was painted in light colours. (cf. dark/*heavy)

2. b. Arthur has rather a light teaching load. (cf. heavy/*dark)

Contextual selection corresponds to the kind of word sense disambiguation undertaken in

most NLP (Natural Language Processing) systems -- there is a pre-existing set of senses
for a lexeme (word) and the relevant sense must be identified based on the context.
Contextual modulation refers to one creative aspect of language use, and points to the
need for complex representation of knowledge about a word. This is because multiple
aspects of a word can be activated simultaneously: The car needs servicing and washing
is completely felicitous despite the fact that different facets of the car are referred to by
each of the verbs (??Arthur has light teaching loads and rooms in his house which
indicates that multiple senses of light cannot be active at once). This kind of knowledge is
directly relevant for discourse processing (e.g. anaphor resolution, for example in a
discourse such as “The car needs servicing. It also needs washing.'' where the anaphor
refers back to the car as a whole, not just the engine) and generation of coherent
sentences/discourses.

Cruse (1986:68) introduces the concept of a gradient of establishment of senses. By this

he means that a lexical form can be associated with some senses which are potential
rather than explicitly represented in the lexicon. Context can stimulate rules which
generate an appropriate sense. This idea serves as the foundation of work on the
Generative Lexicon (Pustejovsky 1991). Cruse furthermore argues for the existence of
sense-spectra, in which the senses of a lexical form manifest themselves along a
continuum, with no clear boundaries between them, and in some cases without an
encompassing sense, e.g.

That book is full of metaphorical language. That book is full of long sentences. That book
is full of spelling mistakes. That book is full of typographic errors. That book has an
unreadable font. That book has lots of smudged type. That book is covered with coffee.

Cruse (1986:73) suggests that the description of sense-spectra is problematic since a full
sense-spectrum does not function as a single lexical unit. Yet, he proposes to treat them
as a lexical unit, with recognition of the senses along the continuum as local senses.
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A lexeme, corresponding to a lexical entry, is proposed by Cruse (1986:76) to be a family

of lexical units. This family can either correspond to a sense-spectrum, or to a set of
senses which can be related to one another via regular lexical semantic relationships
(captured by lexical rules). Thus the structure of the lexicon on Cruse's view essentially
reflects only productive relationships and groups of senses capturing different aspects of
a single entity which cannot be consistently delineated. In proposing this, Cruse focuses
on the lexical unit as the primary semantic unit and on the distinction between lexical
units, de-emphasising the importance of the word. As such, he skirts the homonymy-
polysemy distinction issue, which involves the relationship between lexemes and lexical
units. Although the difference between contextual selection and contextual modulation
points to phenomena affected by the distinction, he does not propose clear criteria for
establishing the distinction. So the computational lexicographer is left with yet another
reason for making the distinction, but still no basis for making it.

Adam Kilgarriff (1992) devotes his thesis to a discussion of polysemy. The essential
conclusion which he draws, on the basis of considerations of the traditional distinction
drawn between homonymy and polysemy and of investigation of lexicographic
techniques for delimiting dictionary senses, is that ``Polysemy does not form any kind of
`natural kind''' (Kilgarriff 1992:4). Instead, polysemy describes a ``crossroads'' between
homonymy, alternations, collocations and analogy based on general knowledge and
reasoning. Polysemous words can be characterised by at least one of these four
methodologies, and Kilgarriff argues that all four must be allowed for in order to capture
the full variety of polysemy. Kilgarriff observes, however, that collocations and analogy
depend on frequency information and are subject to contextual variation while
description of homonymy and alternations relies on rules, and that joining the two
approaches involves augmenting formal lexical structure with frequency data. This view
is supported by the results of investigation of logical metonymy, which suggests that
conventionality plays an important role in predicting language use. The computational
lexicon must therefore both reflect linguistic generalisations and provide information on
conventional language usage.

The main implication is that polysemy is not a term which can be applied to characterise
word senses in an entirely precise way. There cannot be clear-cut tests for identifying
polysemy due to its multi-faceted nature. Homonymy is not orthogonal to polysemy, but
rather an endpoint of one of the dimensions along which polysemy can be described
(fully predictable sense variation -- unpredictable sense variation). Furthermore, most
words display some variation in the meaning they express and the criteria for pinning
down senses are often dependent on questions of frequency and predictability rather than
on clearly delineated distinctions.

MODELS OF LEXICAL STRUCTURES

There are two models of lexical structures: the network model (N-model) and the
componential model (C-model). The C-model is based on the premise that words are
collections of many smaller units of meaning, while the N-model states that such
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concepts don’t exist, words have certain relations with each other (Delahunty & Garvey,
1994, pp. 36-38)

Network Model: Sense Relations

One of the most promising approaches to structural semantics is concerned with the
relations between words. Not only do words have meaning, they also have systematic
meaning relations to one another. Consider the words ram and ewe, which on the one
hand refer to particular kinds of animals and derive their meaning in this way, but also
belong to a pattern in English that includes cow/bull, sow/boar, mare/stallion, etc. These
words are considered to be related to each other in terms of sex or gender (Palmer, 1981
pp.29-30).
There are other kinds of related words, e.g. duck/duckling, pig/piglet (referring to levels
of maturity), or father/son, uncle/nephew (referring to family relationships). There are
many kinds of sense relations, but the most commonly explored are:
1. Synonymy : extensive overlap in meaning.
2. Antonymy : opposite meaning across related dimensions.
3. Hyponymy : inclusion of meaning.
4. Meronymy : part-whole relationship.
5. Metaphoricity : connection in different senses.

1. Synonymy. Synonymy is the sense relation of ‘sameness of meaning’. We

say that automobile is synonymous with car, or plane with aircraft because there is
‘sameness’ in their meaning.
English is particularly rich in synonyms because its vocabulary has come from four main
sources: Anglo-Saxon, French, Latin and Greek. As a Germanic language, Anglo-
Saxon words are considered ‘native’, while those from French, Latin, or Greek are
‘foreign’. Jackson (1988) states that:

… there is an expression in modern English ‘speaking Anglo-Saxon’, which means ‘plain, blunt speaking’.
Alternatively, the expression ‘Anglo- Saxon words’ is used as a euphemism for taboo words or ‘four-letter
words’. We associate words of Anglo-Saxon origin with straightforward, direct speaking in face-to-face
interaction. (p. 23)

The following words are paired to illustrate this point. The items in the left-hand column
all originate from Old English and tend to be everyday, informal words. Those in the
right-hand column are all borrowed words and tend to be associated with the written
language or more formal context:

pluck - courage (French)

sweat - perspire (French)
guts - determination (Latin)
clothes - attire (French)
climb - ascend (Latin)
begin - commence (French)
book - volume (French)
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pride - hubris (Greek)

lung - pulmonary (Latin)
before - previous (Latin)

However, Jackson's statement may be misleading, for whatever their origins, most of the
words are an essential and natural part of the English language.
Another way in which synonyms are differentiated is technicality. Many professions,
trades, sports, and hobbies have developed vocabularies which contain lexemes
appropriate to the activities engaged in but which are not part of everyday language.
These lexemes are called technical vocabulary or jargon. In many cases technical words
are used to refer precisely to the activity concerned, and distinctions are made that non-
specialists have no need to make. However, jargon sometimes serves as a status symbol
or a mark of membership of a certain profession. The following pairs of synonyms come
from everyday language and jargon:

word - lexeme
hearing - auditory
meaning -semantic
heart - cardiac
injury – lesion
cut – incision

How can two words be synonymous? We can examine synonymy in terms of the
following categories:
1. Some synonyms are dialectal words or expressions that are used in certain dialects of
that language to refer to the same entity. Their status is that of translation equivalents:

American English - British English

trunk (of a car) boot (of a car)
cookie cracker biscuit
biscuit scone
parking lot car park
drugstore chemist’s
sidewalk pavement
apartment flat
traffic circle roundabout

2. Some synonyms are used in different styles or situations. The meaning

is synonymous but the choice of word creates different responses:

He’s smart - He’s cool.

He lied - He doesn’t tell the truth.
the old people - the elderly
handicapped – underprivileged
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3. Some synonymous words are partly different because of their emotive or evaluative
meaning, but their cognitive meaning remains the same, e.g. big-gigantic, stingy-frugal-
thrifty, inexpensive-cheap or kill-murder-assassinate-execute.
Certain meanings are also subjective. Some synonymous words are different in their
connotation. When someone calls a woman of 40 a girl, he means that for him that
woman is still young.
4. Some words are collocationally restricted, occurring only in conjunction with other
words. Thus rancid occurs with bacon or butter, addled with eggs or brains.
This does not seem to be a matter of their meaning, but of the company they keep. It
could be argued that these are true synonyms - differing only in that they occur in
different environments.
5. Many words are close in meaning, or their meanings overlap. It is a loose sense of
synonymy. For instance, the possible synonyms for mature are: adult, ripe, perfect, due.
For loose we may suggest an even larger set -- inexact, free, relaxed, vague, lax,
unbound, inattentive, slack. If we look for the synonyms for each of these words
themselves, we shall have a further set for each and shall get further and further away
from the meaning of the original word.

In conclusion, the absolute identity in meaning of synonymy, which requires the

possibility of substituting one word for another in any conceivable context without the
least change of meaning (including style, register, attitude, etc) probably doesn’t exist.
Propositional synonymy i.e. substitution of terms entails the same truth conditions:

She plays the violin > She plays the fiddle (never mind style or associative meaning;
violin and fiddle can refer to the same object).

Near-synonymy, i.e. terms which can be paraphrased (explained in words) the same way,
but may not be felicitously used interchangeably in some contexts: a pretty woman/a
handsome woman – both are GOOD-LOOKING, but probably not in the same sense!; a ?
pretty man/a handsome man – pretty and man don’t seem to go too well together...
Thus, differences in meaning among synonyms must be back-grounded. They include:
 adjacent position on scale of degree: weep - sob – cry
 aspects: calm (state) / placid (character, disposition)
 slight differences in prototypical meaning: brave (physical) / courageous (moral)

2. Antonymy

The word “antonymy” was coined in 1867 by CJ Smith to describe word-pairs –

commonly known as “opposites” - such as hot/cold, girl/boy and buy/sell. Some linguists
(e.g. Lyons (1977) and Cruse (1986)) apply the term “antonymy” restrictively and would
only identify the first of these three pairs as being truly antonymous.
Antonymy is often defined simply as “oppositeness of meaning” (Palmer 1976: 94).
However, the problem with an exclusively semantic definition is that it fails to explain, or
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even acknowledge, the tendency for certain words to become enshrined as “opposites” in
language while others do not.
For instance, rich and poor would be regarded as antonyms because they occupy opposite
ends of the same scale, namely the scale of wealth. Affluent and broke also occupy
opposite ends of this scale, but, intuitively, one would be reluctant to describe them as
antonyms. Therefore, antonymy should be defined according to lexical as well as
semantic criteria. It is a phenomenon “specific to words rather than concepts” (Justeson
& Katz, 1991: 138).

Traditional classes of antonymy

The meanings of antonymous pairs have been logically examined by a number of

linguists (e.g. Lyons 1977, Kempson 1977, Cruse 1986, etc.) and antonyms have been
classified according to their theoretical differences, perhaps at the expense of their
intuitive similarity. Using terminology favoured by Leech (1974), each of the traditional
categories of antonymy will now be outlined.

Binary Taxonomy
The name given by Leech to antonymous pairs such as man/woman, alive/dead and
married/unmarried is “binary taxonomy” (1974: 109). Other writers (see Palmer 1972,
Jackson 1988, Carter 1987) prefer to speak of “complementarity”. Kempson - whose
favoured term is “simple binary opposition” - describes examples of Binary Taxonomy as
“the true antonyms” (1977: 84). However, this description is particularly confusing in
light of the unwillingness of other linguists – namely Cruse (1986) and Lyons (1977) - to
acknowledge Binary Taxonomy as a form of antonymy at all. The criterion necessary for
an opposition to be considered binary is that the application of one antonym must
logically preclude the application of the other. For instance, if X is a smoker, X cannot be
also a non-smoker; if X is baptised, X cannot be also unbaptised, and so on.

Multiple Taxonomy
Multiple Taxonomy is also known as Multiple Incompatibility (Carter 1987:19) and
represents a borderline classification of antonymy that refers to pairs such as
summer/winter and north/south. In some respects, this category is akin to Binary
Taxonomy. The pair male and female, for example, belong to a two-member system, such
that X can never be simultaneously more than one member; solid, liquid and gas, by
comparison, belong to a three-member system, such that X can never be simultaneously
more than one member; similarly, clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades belong to a four-
member system, such that X can never be simultaneously more than one member. And so
on. Thus, Multiple Taxonomy may be seen as Binary Taxonomy extended to three or
more terms. Whether such examples remain within the boundaries of antonymy is
debatable.

Polar Opposition
Polar Opposition differs from Binary Taxonomy because one antonym is not
automatically debarred by the other’s application. In other words, it is possible to be
neither tall nor short in a way that it is not possible to be neither male nor female. Thus,
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tall/short are said to be a Polar Opposition, as are the majority of everyday opposites
(old/new, cold/hot, wet/dry, etc.). Because Polar Oppositions are not mutually exclusive,
they are readily modified (quite happy, extremely happy, fairly happy, etc.) and thus can
take both comparative (happier) and superlative (happiest) form. Indeed, many
commentators (e.g. Lyons 1977, Cruse 1986, Jackson 1988) prefer to label such pairs
Gradable Antonymy.

Relative Opposition
An example of Relative Opposition is tenant/landlord. The statement X is the landlord of
Y entails and is entailed by Y is the tenant of X. Therefore, landlord and tenant belong to
a reciprocal relationship, also reflected by pairs such as teach/learn, buy/sell and
above/below. The majority of semanticists label this phenomenon “converseness” and
Kempson notes that if the variables X and Y are converse verbs, the statement A X B
implies B Y A and the statement A Y B implies B X A. In other words, B precedes A
implies that A follows B, and A follows B implies that B precedes A (1977: 85).
A fertile area for Relative Antonymy is the field of kinship relations. If X is the
grandparent of Y, then Y must be the grandchild of X; if X is the husband of Y, then Y
must be the wife of X.

Other Categories
Leech identifies two further categories of antonymy: “hierarchy” (1974: 106) is similar to
Lyons’s notion of “rank” and describes the relationship between sets of terms such as
January/February/March and one/two/three; “inverse opposition” describes pairs such as
all/some and remain/become2 which may not otherwise be regarded as “opposites”.
Other types of antonymy include “orthogonal” and “antipodal” opposition (Lyons, 1977:
286). Orthogonal – meaning perpendicular, at right angles - describes the antonymy
holding between the words man, woman, girl and boy. Each of these four words contrasts
with two of the other three. So man can be the antonym of boy and woman, but not girl;
and boy can be the antonym of girl and man but not woman. An example of an antipodal
opposition would involve the terms north, east, south and west. Here, words only contrast
in one direction. So north is an antonym of south, but not east or west; and west is an
antonym of east but not north or south

New classes of antonymy

The categories outlined above are very useful if we wish to look at antonymy from a
logical perspective. However, there is another possibility for antonymy to be approached
from a corpus-based angle, with new classes being created to describe not what antonyms
are, but what antonyms actually do in text. According to this approach, it is impossible to
rely on anything other than intuition when it comes to a psycholinguistic phenomenon
such as antonymy. No exhaustive list of antonyms will ever be produced because the
process which gives a pair of words antonymous status is complex and dynamic. This
status could only really be gauged by consensus, as definitions of antonymy vary not only
from one linguist to the next, but also from one mental lexicon to the next. That is why,
this approach consists in creating a list of antonyms, customised to meet the demands of
 13

the research and relevant to a 21st century investigation of antonymy. Such a list may
include:

active/passive advantage/disadvantage agree/disagree alive/dead

attack/defend bad/good badly/well begin/end
boom/recession cold/hot confirm/deny correct/incorrect
difficult/easy directly/indirectly discourage/encourage dishonest/honest
disprove/prove drunk/sober dry/wet explicitly/implicitly
fact/fiction fail/succeed failure/success false/true
fast/slow female/male feminine/masculine gay/straight
guilt/innocence happy/sad hard/soft hate/love
heavy/light high/low illegal/legal large/small
long/short lose/win major/minor married/unmarried
new/old officially/unofficially old/young optimism/pessimism
optimistic/pessimistic peace/war permanent/temporary poor/rich
private/public privately/publicly punishment/reward quickly/slowly
right/wrong rightly/wrongly rural/urban strength/weakness

All database sentences are classified according to their textual function. Eight categories
are presented below, in alphabetic order only, together with three illustrative examples.

Ancillary Antonymy
Sentences attributed to this category contain two contrasts: that between the established
pair of antonyms (in bold) and that between a pair of words or phrases which would not
usually be interpreted contrastively (in italics). Here, it would appear that the antonyms
function as lexical signals. They serve an “ancillary” role, helping us to process another,
perhaps more important, opposition nearby.

 At Worcester on Wednesday, Botham - apart from bowling well - was

wandering around in a T-shirt with the message:‘ Form is temporary,
class is permanent‘.
  Broadly speaking, the community charge was popular with
Conservative voters and unpopular with Labour voters.
 Robin Cook, Labour’s health spokesman, demanded: ‘How can it be right
to limit the hours worked by lorry drivers and airline pilots, but wrong to
limit the hours of junior hospital doctors undertaking complex medical
treatment?’

Comparative Antonymy
This category is home to sentences in which a pair of antonyms are set up in comparison
with one another. This function of antonymy is often expressed by a lexico-syntactic
framework such as more X than Y or X is more [adjective] than Y.

 And it is possible to accept both that Dr Higgs was a lot more right
than wrong in her diagnoses, but that it is now impossible for her to
return.
 14

 ‘Well,’ said Cage, completely unabashed, ‘some living composers are

more dead than alive ‘.
 Training would be based upon rewarding good behaviour, because
behaviourists, Skinner argued, had found that reward is more effective
than punishment.

Co-ordinated Antonymy
The antonymous pair in each of the examples below is presented in a unified, co-
ordinated context. The function of such antonyms is to identify a scale, then exhaust that
scale. The contrastive power of each pair remains untapped because their purpose is to
express inclusivity. Mostly, antonyms which serve this role are conjoined by and or or.

 He showed no disloyalty, publicly or privately, to Virginia Bottomley

though it must have irked him that she was in the Cabinet and he was not.
 Whitehall was yesterday unable to confirm or deny other simulated
devolutions.
 Again in debates over genetic research it is significant that Christians,
Muslims and Jews have united, implicitly and explicitly, in condemning a
low view of the value of embryonic life.

Distinguished Antonymy
The sentences below refer, in a metalinguistic fashion, to the semantic dissimilarity
between antonyms. The framework which houses the antonyms most frequently is n
between X and Y, where n is difference or a synonym thereof.

 But far from that, Mortimer’s father had not given him even a basic moral
education, such that today he still doesn’t know the difference between
right and wrong, or so he said.
 But it made the point that the division between gay and straight is one of
many rifts in our society.
 Mr Craxi’s fresh-faced deputy, Claudio Martelli, also dissented, saying
that ‘one must distinguish between hard and soft drugs’.

Extreme Antonymy
Sentences classified in terms of Extreme Antonymy are similar to Co-ordinated
Antonymy examples. The difference is that here a contrast is set up, not between
antonyms, but between both ends of a semantic scale, on one hand, and the semantic
space in between, on the other. Typical frameworks show antonyms linked by or or and,
and premodified by an extremity-signalling adverb such as very or too.
 No-one can afford to go to law except the very rich and the very poor and
it can’t possibly get any worse.
 The advantages are that the track does not need watering, and can be used
when conditions are either too dry or too wet for racing on turf.
 Freud maintained in Civilization and Its Discontents that human beings
feel a deep hate and a deep love for civilization.
 15

Idiomatic Antonymy
Many antonymous pairs co-occur as part of a familiar expression, proverb or cliché. Such
examples have been assigned to category of Idiomatic Antonymy.

 The long and the short of it is that height counts.

 They evidently knew they could teach this old dog a few new tricks.
 Whoever said the female of the species was more deadly than the male
hadn’t met Lord William Whitelaw.

Negated Antonymy
Arguably the purest function of antonymy, the sentences below each negate one antonym
in order to place additional emphasis on the other or to identify a rejected alternative. The
most common framework for this class is X not Y.

 Well, without the combination of an arms race and a network of treaties

designed for war, not peace, it would not have started.
 Democracy means more than the right to pursue one’s own self-interest –
government must play an active, not passive, role in addressing the
problems of the day.
 However, the citizen pays for services to work well, not badly.

Transitional Antonymy
The function of antonyms belonging to this category is to help describe a movement from
one state to another. This transition is usually expressed by a framework such as from X
to Y or hinges around the verb to turn.

 Her film career similarly has lurched from success to failure, with
enormous periods out of work.
 The atmosphere of the negotiations was tense, discussion uneven, the
mood in both camps swung from optimism to pessimism.
 Inflation is a tax which redistributes wealth to the sophisticated from the
unsophisticated.

Such statistical data demonstrate that the most remarkable aspect is that the majority of
pairs, regardless of their word class, follow a similar pattern of distribution. For example,
Ancillary Antonymy and Co-ordinated Antonymy are the most commonly occurring
categories, but this is not just because they are each strongly favoured by a small number
of pairs, but also that this pattern is consistent among almost all pairs.
The conclusion of this approach is that corpus-based analyses are relevant to an
investigation of antonymy. Based on evidence from newspaper corpora, it was argued
that:
In addition to logical distinctions, antonymous pairs are also receptive to classification
according to their textual function. Data show that the two most common text-based
classes of antonymy are Co-ordinated Antonymy (in which antonyms are joined by and
or or and express exhaustiveness or inclusiveness) and Ancillary Antonymy (in which
antonyms act as a lexical signal of a further, nearby contrast).
 16

All antonymous pairs examined co-occur intra-sententially, at least three times more
often than chance would allow.
Using lexico-syntactic frameworks associated with the co-occurrence of established
antonymous pairs, it is possible to identify new textual oppositions. Such research may
shed light on the process by which a pair of words achieve antonymous status in language
and allow us to identify new antonyms in their infancy.

3. Hyponymy. There is a relation which holds between a more specific lexeme and a
more general lexeme, e.g. cow-animal, rose-flower, buy-get, crimson-red. This relation is
called hyponymy, which is inclusion or subordination. If rose is a hyponym of flower,
and so are jasmine and tulip, then rose, jasmine, tulip are co-hyponyms of the same
lexeme, the superordinate or hypernym flower.
Hyponymy is a transitive relation indicating meaning inclusion. If cow is a hyponym of
mammal, and mammal is a hyponym of animal, then cow is a hyponym of animal.
The same term may appear in several places in the hierarchy of hyponyms. This is
possible when it is polysemous (has several meanings). For example, animal is used in
contrast with plant to include bird, fish, insect, and mammal, while mammal includes
human being and animal.

There is a similar situation with the word dog. Though dog is a co-hyponym of bitch, it is
also the superordinate term of both bitch and dog. We can avoid the ambiguity of dog by
using the term male dog to contrast with bitch. The terms cattle and poultry are a little
odd in that though they are superordinate, they are used only for plural reference.
Hyponymy involves entailment. To say This is a rose entails This is a flower, and
This is a tiger entails This is an animal. This form of analysis forms the basis of Carnap's
(1956) concept of meaning postulates, which suggest that the meaning of lexical items
can be stated in terms of such entailments. Meaning postulates treat hyponymy as the
basic sense relation.

4. Meronymy. Meronymy or a part-whole lexical relation (Lyons, 1977, pp. 311-

17) which designates the situation where one word represents something that is a part of
some whole represented by another word, e.g. head/body, wheel/bicycle. Partitive
relationships not only apply to physical objects but may extend to temporal relationships
(day/week), events (inning/baseball game) or abstract entities (self-control/maturity).

5. Metaphoricity. One network relationship that deserves special attention is

metaphoricity. A metaphor is an extension in the use of a word beyond its primary
meaning to describe referents that bear similarities to the word’s primary referent. For
instance, the word mouth has a central sense and metaphorical senses applying to a part
of the river and to the mouth of a bottle. Metaphors occur constantly in day-to-day
speaking and writing. From the front page of the newspaper, we can see sentences
containing metaphors: The baht is falling quickly, The proposal smells fishy, The project
simmers for five years. Metaphorical senses arise later than their central, more literal
sense. There may be general principles in language for metaphorical growth, and they
differ from language to language. For example, English seems to have a principle by
 17

which color words may be extended to psychological states : e.g. blue (sad), red (with
anger), green (with envy), yellow (cowardly), black (mood).

Multiple and Extended Meaning

Homonymy, Polysemy and Metaphor
Multiple senses of a lexical item
When investigating the meaning of words we must take into consideration that a single
word form may have more than one sense. Many languages, and English is a good
example, do not always have one-to-one correspondence between form and meaning.
This is clear to us, even at an intuitive level. We all know for example that the word form
table has one sense when denoting a piece of furniture and another when denoting the
organization of figures or other information in a book or other written material.
(1) Look at that lovely pine table and matching chairs
(2) Look at the table on page 234
Furthermore, in English, a single form may have more than one sense across word
classes.
(3) The committee were sitting at the table
(4) Are you going to table another motion?
By and large there is a correlation between how common a word is and the number of
senses it may have. The example we shall use below, head, has a good number of senses,
whilst the term incinerator has only one.
The different senses of a word are distinguished in dictionaries. This is done in the
following way, according to how the senses of a word form are related.
1. Related senses are listed by numbers under the head word (considered the same entry)
2. Unrelated senses are given separate headwords (considered separate entries)
bank1
1. land along the side of a river
2. earth which is heaped up in a field or garden
3. a mass of snow, clouds mud
bank2
1. a place where money is kept
2. a place where something is held ready for use
3. a supply of money or pieces for payment or use in a game
There are at least 6 different recognized senses of bank, as above, but they are grouped
under different entries. What are the grounds for making decisions of this kind?
Essentially, as we suggested, it is a question of semantic relatedness. The three senses in
bank1 have more in common with each other than any in bank2, and similarly with those
in bank2. Another criterion which is used is etymology. As word forms change through
changes in the spelling system of a language, two differently spelled words may end up
accidentally with the same spelling. Examples of this are:
bank, as above
ear (on a head - of wheat)
 18

race (of people - competition)

The boundaries between these two types of difference are not always clear. The two
groups of senses of bank, for example, are in fact related, if one goes a good way back in
their etymology. Most users of the language are, however, not aware of the historical
development of the words they use.
The two types of relationship between the senses of a word form (not semantically related
- semantically related) are expressed by the terms homonymy and polysemy
respectively.
Distinguishing two homonyms is a much easier task than distinguishing two polysemous
senses of a word. Dictionaries, themselves, show differences in the number of
polysemous senses that they give for some words.
One basis for distinguishing related senses is their context and in particular their
collocations. Another is the sense relations which each recognised sense enters into with
other words.

Extended meaning
One reason for the multiplicity of senses of a word is the need to extend its meaning to
cover different fields. When we need to find a word for a particular concept, we can
either create a new word form or use an existing form and extend its meaning to the new
concept. And when we take an existing word we clearly are doing so because of some
aspect of similarity between the original, base sense and the new sense. A good example
of this is the extension of bank to mean a place where something is held ready for use, as
in blood bank, sperm bank etc.
Let us examine the relationship between a `base sense’ of a word and its extended senses,
and identify which aspects of the original meaning are being `transferred’.

Head
1. the part of the body which contains the eyes, ears, nose, mouth and the brain-in
animals at
the front of the body, in man on top
2. the end where this part rests, the head of the bed, of the grave
3. the mind or brain
4. a ruler or leader
5. a headache
6. the front side of a coin
7. a measure of height or distance
8. a person (e.g. £3.00 per head)
9. a part at the top of an object which is separate from the body
10.the white centre of a swollen spot which is about to burst
11. the top of a page
12. the upper end of a stretch of water
13.the top part of some plants
14. the white froth on the top of some drinks
15. the most important place: the head of the table
 19

From these 15 senses it would appear that the predominant semantic feature which most
extended senses draw on is TOP of something. Another is metonymic extension, that is
using the sense of head to stand in for something connected with it or of which it is a part.
We also find several senses based on the clear difference the head has from the body - the
head as separate extremity.
It is interesting to note that this is a fairly universal feature of vocabulary. There are a
number of other words in English, e.g. chef, chapter, chief, corporal, captain, capital,
which are all etymologically related to the Latin caput - which means head!

Different sense relations

As we suggested above, the different senses of a word form may be distinguished by the
different sense relations they enter into with other words. Here are some examples
head - body, eye, ear, nose, hair, arms, legs (core)
head - heart (brain or mind)
heads - tails (coin)
head - shaft (tool)
head - mouth (river)

Metaphor
Metaphor has traditionally been discussed in the study of literature. Work on metaphor,
notably by Lakoff and Johnson (1980), in an influential book, Metaphors We Live By, has
helped us understand that metaphor pervades all language use.
In essence metaphor is a linguistic (rhetorical) device through which the semantic
features associated with one linguistic expression are used in the description of some
object, event, quality. Examples in literature are legion;
All the world’s a stage
Every man is an island
I am a rock
Metaphor in this sense is a more direct form of simile. In simile, the comparison is made
explicit.
All the word is like a stage
Every man is like an island
I am like a rock
Metaphor requires co-operation on the part of expresser and interpreter. The interpreter
must be able to understand the attribution of features from the source expression to the
target.
Your body is a mountain chain, your bones
Ridges of rock, your nipples ice-cream cones
(Laurence Lerner; Meanings) (in Aitchison 1987)
Your body is a can opener, your bones
A crucian carp, your nipples a seismograph

The interpreter assumes that the expresser is being co-operative, in Gricean terms, that
the expression has relevance (in Sperber and Wilson’ s terms). It is a tall order for
anyone to see how the features of a seismograph can be relevant to nipples. Ice-cream
cones, on the other hand, transfer a number of features, shape and lickability.
 20

The following expressions have different degrees of interpretability:

Howard’s a bastard
Howard’s a stag
Howard’s a mother-fucker
Howard’s a bitch
Howard’s a pen
Howard’s a typewriter
Howard’s a spoon
Howard’s a duck-billed platypus

Metaphors We Live By
If we use metaphor to attribute certain qualities to something, which are typically
associated with some other thing, there are many other instances when metaphor is the
norm. Certain aspects of the human condition require, and are given, metaphorical
expression. Typically they concern the human senses, especially emotions and cognition.
How do we express mental processes when they take place within our bodies, within our
brains? The physical events of the external word seem much more tangible than what is
taking place within our bodies and minds and it is to this world that we turn when
attempting to communicate our inner emotions and thoughts. Let us first consider
cognition, our awareness, understanding, remembering, forgetting of the stimuli that
affect us.
I can’t work it out
It dawned on me that they were not English
It brought it home to me that I was wrong
I couldn’t get my head around it at first
I couldn’t make head nor tail of it
Will you get it into your head that she won’t be coming back
Only weeks later did I see the light
Do you get it?
I haven’t got the faintest/foggiest idea
I’ve got some idea of what she meant
It goes in one ear and out of the other
It’s very clear that he doesn’t love her
I can’t see that he cares
Were still in the dark about his activities
Make up your mind
Bear in mind that he is human
It’s gone out of my mind
It’s just come to me that....
I’ve lost it
It’s gone
I never realised
I imagined that she would come back
I remembered that I was to blame
I forgot to tell her
I understood that she had left
 21

What these expressions, and numerous others, indicate are the kind of general metaphors
given below:
The mind is a container
Knowledge is possession
Understanding is clear perception
Understanding is (physical) effort
Decision is physical composition of the mind
Knowledge and understanding is gain, maintenance and loss
Let us now look at one of Lakoff’ s examples: the expression of anger
Anger ( Lakoff 1987)
He lost his cool
She was looking daggers at me
I almost burst a blood vessel
He was foaming at the mouth
You make my blood boil
He’ s wrestling with his anger
He’ s on a short fuse
He’ s just letting off steam
Don’ t get a hernia
They were having a heated argument
He’ ll bust a gut when he finds out
Try to get a grip on yourself
I was shaking with rage
He was hopping mad
I was so angry I couldn’ t see straight
Let him stew
He bottled up his anger
Don’ t fly off the handle
When I told him, he exploded
He channelled his anger into something constructive
Cool down
He hit the ceiling
Smoke was pouring out of his ears
He was red with anger
He appeased his anger
She kept bugging me
When I told my mother she had kittens

The physiological effects of anger:

increased body heat
increased internal pressure
agitation
interference with accurate perception
As anger increases, the physiological effects increase:
 22

body heat
internal pressure
redness in face and neck area
agitation
interference with accurate perception
This gives us a general metaphor with the following characteristics
the body is a container for the emotions
anger is the heat of a fluid in a container
when anger increases the fluid rises
intense anger produces pressure on the container
keeping the pressure back
when the pressure is too high the container explodes
parts of the container go up in the air
when a container explodes, what was inside comes out

Grammatical metaphor
Halliday (1994) discusses the notion of grammatical metaphor. This involves
congruent ways of expressing events and metaphorical ways of expressing them. In the
examples below, the congruent way of representing the events (C) is compared to the
metaphorical alternative (M), where typically, the participants, circumstances and process
are `reconfigured’. Thus, in the first example, the processes of eating and swimming are
expressed as nominal groups, supper of ice-cream and a gently swim, and the time
adjunct then is expressed by the new process followed.
(C) In the evening the guests ate ice-cream and then swam gently
(M) The guests’ supper of ice-cream was followed by a gentle swim
Observe the re-expression in the paired examples below.
(C) They arrived at the summit on the fifth day
(M) The fifth day saw them at the summit
(C) I don’ t know at all why he didn’ t like the meal
(M) I haven’ t the faintest idea why he didn’ t like the meal
(C) her eyes are blue
(M) she has blue eyes

Componential Model
The componential model (C-model) is an approach that employs the Componential
analysis. The analysis rests on the thesis that the total meaning of every lexeme can be
analyzed in terms of a set of distinct elements or semantic features.
Woman may be analyzed as being comprised of the semantic features of [female] [adult]
[human], spinster as having the features of [female] [adult] [human] [never married].
Components such as these are presented through binary composition (±) to indicate the
inclusion or exclusion of a feature. The plus and minus signs are used (Katz & Fodor,
1963) to refer to the values of the variable. As far as the distinction of gender is
concerned, there are males and females. Therefore, the features can be specified as
 23

[+male] [-male] or [+female] [- female]. When there is a lack of distinction, it is labelled

as 'plus or minus' with the symbol [±].
a stallion [+male] [-female]
a mare [-male] [+female]
a horse [± male]
The technique of componential analysis involves two steps (Kenworthy, 1991,p.8).
1. Select a group of words which seem to be connected in meaning, that is, words which
will share components. This group is a lexical field or semantic domain.
Room : room, chamber, living-room, bedroom, library, study, lounge, office, kitchen,
lobby, hall
Cup : chalice, beaker, glass, goblet, tea cup, coffee cup, wineglass
Vehicle : train, car, bicycle, motorcycle, truck, van, bus, wagon
Container : bag, sack, pocket, basket, bucket, pot, bottle, basin, cup
Beginning : start, origin, birth, conception, debut, kick-off, inaugurate, introduce,
beginning, initiate, inception
Following : follow, trail, pursue, tail, tag along, thread on the heel of
One concern of semantics is to study the relationship between the items in each field.
Notice that the members of each field are not restricted to single words. We have to
consider multi-word combinations as single terms. Linguists use the term lexical item to
avoid confusion.
2. The next step is to form analogies among the lexical items, then try to identify the
semantic components. For example, in the lexical field of vehicle we can form an analogy
between car and motorcycle and wagon and bicycle. A car is a vehicle with a motor and
four wheels. A motorcycle has a motor and two wheels. A wagon has four wheels and no
motor. A bicycle has two wheels and no motor. From these analogies we can identify
four semantic components : vehicle, motor, two wheels, four wheels. The symbols + and -
are used to show if that lexical item has that particular component or not.
The analysis can be presented in the form of a grid.
[VEHICLE] [MOTOR] [FOUR WHEELS] [TWO WHEELS]
Car + + + -
motorcycle + + - +
bicycle + - - +
wagon + - + -

Through componential analysis, we can make finer distinctions in meaning. The meaning
of a word is specified in part by a set of semantic features. For example, knowing that the
word kitten refers to an animal, a young animal, and a young feline animal is enough to
define the word, despite the fact that kitten also has the properties of age, size, name,
place where it lives, name of the owner, and so on. The meaning of kitten signifies what
all kittens have in common.
The componential analysis has been used by anthropologists to study kinship
terminology. For example, the difference in meaning of grandfather, father, mother,
uncle, aunt, brother, sister, son, niece, and granddaughter is derived from contrasts of
sex [±male], maturity [±adult], generation [±ascending, ±descending] and
lineality[±lineal, ±colineal, ±ablineal]. Direct lineality or [+lineal] is the relationship in a
direct line of descent to the speaker: grandfather, father or mother and son. Nonlineals [-
 24

lineal] share ancestors with the speaker but are not themselves ancestors or descendants
of the speaker.
Nonlineal can be divided into [+colineal] when all of the ancestors of the speaker are also
ancestors of the relatives (brother and uncle), and [+ablineal] when only some of the
speaker's ancestors are also ancestors of the relatives (cousin).
Thomas W. Gething (1972) called these semantic features significata. He said there are
other significata that come from cultural facts and that the speaker uses both situational
and referential knowledge. In English, nickel [+mass] is used when it is a metal, but
nickel [+count][- mass] is used when it is a five-cent American coin. The componential
analysis can be used to analyze any vocabulary; for example, murder, and kill may be
contrasted through the features [±intention][±causation][ ±death], give and take through
[±causation] and [±change of ownership]. Semantic features include [±animate],
[±human], [±physical object], [±activity], [±liquid] and many others.
Ball [social activity] [physical object] [large] [having globular shape] [solid missile for
projection by engine of war] [assembly] [for the purpose of social dancing]
.The meaning of all content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs), and function
words can be at least partially defined by semantic features.

1. Semantic Representations of a Noun. A small set of components is assumed to

represent the distinct concepts that are attached to various words. In a noun, the
components that should be considered are mass, count, concrete, abstract, animate
(includes action or movement), inanimate, human, male, female, adult, singular, plural.
For example:
count : coin, fork, jewel, cloud, data
Non-count or mass : rain, fog, information, sugar, jewelry, money,
change ( pile of coins), silverware
concrete : cushion, picture, wool, cloud, soup
animate : man, giraffe, crowd, flower
Semantic cases are also used (Greene and Coulson, 1995, p. 26):
Agent : animate being who initiates action
Instrument : inanimate entity which is involved in the action.
Recipient : animate being who is affected by the action.
Object : inanimate entity which is affected by the action.
Locative : the location or direction of the action

2. Semantic Representations of a Verb. The representation of a verb can be transitive,

intransitive, action, stative, motion, or other characteristics of a verb. Other semantic
properties like [±cause] can be found in darken, kill, beautify, take. For example:
darken [+cause] [+become] dark
kill [±intend] [+cause] [+become] not alive
beautify [+cause] [+become] beautiful
take [+cause] [+change] possess
Other semantic properties that help account for the meaning of verbs are:
Semantic feature Verb having it
+motion bring, fall, plod, walk, run, stalk…
+contact hit, kiss, touch …
 25

+creation build, imagine, make…

+sense see, hear, feel…
It should be remarked that this theory has one major drawback -- there is no limit to the
number of markers or semantic features that can be established. Any piece of information
can be used to disambiguate and can thus function as a marker.

COLLOCATION AND SEMANTIC RESTRICTION

The importance of syntagmatic relations has been demonstrated in the study of
collocation. The probabilistic view of lexical meaning is based on the work of a British
linguist J.R. Firth and has become known as the collocational theory. (Van Buren, 1975).
Collocation has been defined as ‘the habitual association of a word in a language with
other particular words in sentences’ (p. 126). Firth maintained that it is part of the
meaning of the word night that it is more likely to co-occur (collocate) with the word
dark in a discourse than with the word hippopotamus. The word father collocates
significantly with son and shave rather than with nail varnish.
Collocation is not simply a matter of association of ideas, it is fairly idiosyncratic and not
easily predicted. The word blond usually occurs with hair, but not with door or dress. We
can say pretty child, buxom neighbour only when referring to females. This characteristic
of language is found pervasively in collective words (a flock of sheep, a shoal of fish, a
pride of lions) and certain action verbs (dog/bark, horse/neigh, cow/moo, and cat/meow).
Semantic limitation can also be determined at the level of sentences. Consider the
following sentences:
* The table moves the chair.
* John killed the table.
* Truth broke the window.
They are syntactically well-formed but semantically anomalous. It was explained by
Chomsky (1965) that the deviance occurs at the level of deep structure. There are
appropriate conditions or selectional restrictions when inserting the lexical items into the
deep structure, and the syntax-based explanation cannot account for this deviance.
Therefore, well-formedness is not syntax-based alone, but also semantic-based.
Semantic anomalies will result when selectional restrictions are violated.
* John killed the window.
Kill : has a subject, the individual who is the cause of killing. has an object, an individual
who has undergone the death .but the window is not an individual.
But John killed it is well-formed because the one undergone the death can be either
human (baby) or animal, which we can state as [animate] XNP,VP
The specifications of how words can combine with each other, as well as definitions of
individual words, or selectional restrictions, can identify the semantic limitations on the
components of words put together in close grammatical relationships, such as subject and
predicate, verb and object.
* John accidentally resembles his sister.
* He brushed the crumbs off the table with his car.
When John resembles his sister, his appearance is similar to that of his sister. The
appearance is what people look like, so it is not accidental. In the second sentence, the
shape of the car is not like anything used to brush.
 26

However, semantic violation is considered legitimate in poetry, for example:

The golden crocus reaches up
To catch a sunbeam in her cup.
(Walter Crane's The Crocus)
Sometimes, the violation of semantic limitation can convey a particular idea. Cervantes's
metaphor Walls have ears is anomalous but can be interpreted as ‘you can be overheard
even when you think nobody is listening’.

LEXICAL RELATIONS: SENTENCES

The meaning of a sentence is dependent on the meaning associated with its individual
words and morphemes and the meaning implied by their combination. We understand the
meaning of a sentence because we know the meaning of individual words and we know
rules for combining their meanings.

SEMANTIC ROLE
The meaning of a sentence cannot be determined by adding up the meaning of each
content word alone since the position of the content words as well as function words
contribute distinctively to the sentence meaning. Consider the following pair of
sentences:
1. Tom killed a tiger.
2. A tiger was killed by Tom.
These sentences can be categorized as active and passive sentences. The process of
passivization is involved in changing the former to the latter. If the sentences are
synonymous, we need to clarify how they possess the same meaning.
The crucial point to be taken into consideration is the role of each noun phrase in relation
to the verb – the semantic role of a noun phrase. Semantic role refers to the way in which
the referent of the noun phrase contributes to the state, action, or situation described by
the sentence (Finegan, 1994, p. 183). Semantic role is different from syntactic role where
the noun phrase has the role of subject, object, etc. In both sentence 1 and 2 Tom is the
agent (the initiator of the action) and a tiger is the patient (the entity that undergoes a
certain change of state).
Another pair of synonymous sentences is:
3. Louise opens the door with a key.
4. Louise used a key to open the door.
Both 3 and 4 have the same referential meaning. A key is an instrument used in
performing the act and the door is the patient. When the door occurs in another sentence:
5. The door opened easily.
The semantic role of the door is still as a patient. However, the role of the subject noun
phrase in the following sentence is different.
6. Stacey likes Heavy Metal.
When Stacey is experiencing a physical or mental sensation, she is an experiencer (the
semantic role of an entity that receives a sensory input). Other semantic roles that the
subject noun phrase can take are shown in the following sentences:
7. My niece won the Young Artist Award. (Benefactive)
8 Phuket attracts many tourists from Europe. (Locative)
9. The next day found us on the road to the seashore. (Temporal)
 27

10. The earthquake destroyed the whole city. (Cause)

11. The field is green. ( Objective)
12. Tammy got a puppy. (Recipient)
A noun phrase in a sentence can assume different semantic roles. We can say that every
noun phrase is assigned a single semantic role in a sentence. While the syntactic rules are
different, these semantic roles are universal features of the semantic structure of all
languages.
ENTAILMENT AND PARAPHRASE
Linguists have explored several aspects of the meaning of structure larger than words. In
the following situations the sentences, while syntactically different, are related
semantically :
1. John potted a cactus.
2. A cactus was potted.
3. There was a cactus.
4. No one potted a cactus.
5. There is no such thing as a cactus.
6. A cactus was potted by John.
7. It was John who potted a cactus.
8. John planted a cactus.
9. John potted a plant.
The relation between sentences 1, 2 and 3 is one of entailment. If it is true that
John potted a cactus then there exists a cactus to be potted. We can say that
S1 entails S2
S1 entails S3 because sentences 2 and 3 truly describe the situation whenever sentence 1
does.
Sentences 4 and 5 express a situation which is the negation of what is expressed in
sentence 1. We can say that the negation of the entailment causes contradiction. The
relation between sentence 1 and sentences 6 and 7 is also primarily semantic. It is a
paraphrase. We may say that these sentences are paraphrases of each other since they all
have the same core meaning.
In sentences 9, the lexical items potted and plant relate to the lexical items planted and
cactus respectively in sentence 8. It is part of the meaning of planted that the action
potted involves, so there is a relation between these two verbs. The same type of relation
occurs between cactus and plant.

 Semantic roles

Semantic roles are a means to represent sentence meaning in logical terms. Semantic
roles are assigned to nouns and NPs according to the relation they hold with the verb.
Semantic roles are said to exist for every language and have been used both in formal and
functional approaches to linguistics (the latter have paid special attention to them). At
least ten semantic roles are distinguished:

Agent Doer, actor

Patient Entity affected by deed of agent or cause
 28

Location Location of deed/event

Instrument Entity employed by an agent in a deed
Time Time of deed/event
Recipient Receiver of result of deed of agent
Experiencer Perceiver of a stimulus
Stimulus Entity perceived/experienced by an experiencer
Cause Cause not an agent (non-volitional / non-intentioanal)
Goal Targeted location (also 'purpose' or 'finality')

Examples:

Farmers raise crops for cityfolk

     Ag             Pa            Re

Rain pleases the farmers but too much  rain harms the crops
  St                       Ex                          Ca                  Pa

In the summer, they use trucks to bring crops from the fields
              Ti        Ag          Ins                 Pa                 Lo

They may send their crops to market through cooperatives

  Ag                       Pa             Go                        Ins

The crops are sent by train to distribution centres in large cities

      Pa                        Ins                 Go                     Lo

Market value determines which crops farmers will plant the next spring
        Ca                                     Pa       Ag                         Ti

The semantic nature of verbs determines to a large extent the semantic roles of its
complements. Compare:

The farmer listened to the tree fall

      Ag
The farmer heard the tree fall 
      Exp

The farmer watched the tree fall

      Ag
The farmer saw the the tree fall 
      Exp
 29

The verbs SEE and HEAR are said to be non-volitional, therefore their subjects are
experiencers, rather than agents.

This may be taken as the basis for a syntactic/semantic classification of verbs.

 Verb classes according to semantic roles

The following is a -very simplistic- classification of English verbs according to the

emantic roles they require:

1. S(Ag) V O(Pa) Ex:    Mom opened a box of cornflakes

                                     Ag                         Pa

2. S(Ag) V  Ex:   Nixon resigned

                            Ag  

3. S(Ag) V O(Pa) <-> O(Rec)   Ex:  She gave money to the United Fund ( <-> 'the UF
money')
                                                      Ag            Pa                     Rec                 Rec       Pa

4. S(Ag) V A(Go)  Ex:    They went into the bar

                                       Ag                   Go

5. S(Rec) V O(Rec)   Ex:     Five people won a magazine subscription

                                                Rec                           Pa

An in-depth study of syntax and semantics, having semantic roles as the basis has been
the objective of many researchers.

Grammatical relations vs. semantic roles

There is a strong correspondence between GRs and SRs. Both are what they are because
of the relationship they hold with the verb. This is the reason why sometimes GRs are
studied in notional, rather than in formal terms (e.g.: "the subject is the doer of the
action"). It is an error to do this because notional (or semantic) elements do not hold a
one-to-one relationship with formal elements.

GRs and SRs are different in at least three ways: (1) their formal or structural nature, (2)
their constancy in paraphrase, and (3) their means of expression in languages.

Formal nature of grammatical relations

 30

GRs reflect the formal relations between the consituents of the sentence.
SRs reflect the meaning relations between constituents.

Constancy of semantic roles in paraphrases

Because of this, meaning remain constant across different forms (i.e. 'paraphrases') even
though the GRs of the elements are changed. The typical example is that of passive
constructions:

   Beavers eat fish    <->   Fish are eaten by beavers

     S(Ag)      O(Pa)          S(Pa)                   O(Ag)

Formal expression of grammatical relations

For the same reason, GRs have certain regular, concrete, formal properties, which cannot
be said of SRs ('fish' is not formally different from 'beavers'). For example the GR
'subject' has these properties in English:

1. It typically precedes the verb

2. Third person singular
3. They can be replaced by subject pronouns
4. The auxiliary precedes the subject in yes/no questions
5. Tag questions include a pronoun with the person and number of the subject

Paraphrases and semantic roles

Paraphrases may be regularly possible for sentences with verbs of certain types according
to the semantic roles on their associated nouns/NPs.

Verbs with cause/agent and patient

Active sentences with verbs of this type can be paraphrased as passive sentences :

  Noise frightens the beavers     <->   Beavers are frightened by noise

Change of state verbs

Verbs whose patient undergoes a change of state may have the patient as active verb
subject, with no agent expressed (requires the presence of a manner adverb):

   These logs light easily   <-> Someone these logs easily

   The gas tank in my car empties quickly on long trips   <-> Long trips empty the gas
tank...

Verbs with agent, patient and recipient

 31

These may have the patient as direct object and the recipient as object of to
(indirect/benefactive), or both patient and recipient as co-objects, without to. A pssive
construction is another regular paraphrase:

   They haven't sent the check to me  <-> They haven't sent me the check
                                                             / I haven't been sent the check (passive)

Verbs with source and goal

Source is a SR additional to the ten above. If the source is subject, the the goal is object
of into. If the goal subject, the source is object of from:

   Little acorns grow into mighty oaks   <-> Mighty oaks grow from little acorns

Verbs with agent = patient

These have the agent as a subject, and the same noun phrase agent may be optionally
expressed as an object reflexive pronoun.

   Fred shaved   <->  Fred shaved himself

   Tha cat is washing  <->  The cat is washing himself

Such a classification may be expanded and further refined as more SRs are added and
sibtleties are distinguished.

Sentence Meaning
1.  Sentence Meaning and Truth
a sentence may be:

(i) contingently true: whether it is true depends on how the world happens to be

   Prince William is unmarried

    Patten was the last governor of Hong Kong

(ii) analytically true: must be true by virtue of its own structure, regardless of how the
world is

   Tautology: statement necessarily true because of meanings of words

    (analytically true: true in all possible worlds)

   This bachelor is unmarried.

  ‘Either Arsenal will score or they won’t...’  (sports commentary)
 32

   Contradiction: statement necessarily false because of meanings of words

    (analytically false: false in all possible worlds)

   This bachelor is married.

    He was killed but he didn’t die.

2. Propositional Logic
2.1 Proposition (p): the basic semantic content of a sentence, describing a state of affairs

e.g. p: [that] Macau is a Portuguese colony

      p: [that] The sky is blue

2.2 Logical connectives

Negation: ~ p

    p: Macau is a Portuguese colony

 ~ p: Macau is not a Portuguese colony

Disjunction: p v q  -- i.e.  either the proposition p is true or the proposition q is true

  inclusive or: either p or q, or both

  exclusive or: either p or q, but not both

  In logic:  v  is defined as inclusive

  In natural language semantics: or seems to be typically exclusive;

  Doctor: You can have a glass of wine or beer with dinner.

A:  He must be either incompetent or a crook.

B:  Or both!

  Use of  and/or for inclusive disjunction:

  Advertisement: Applicants should have knowledge of experimental and/or

computational methods

2.3 Truth tables in logic and natural language

Negation: ~ reverses the truth value of a proposition

 p     ~p
_______
 T      F
 F      T
 33

 p     ~p
_______
  T      F     John is happy
  F      T     John is not happy
? F     F     I wouldn’t say John is not happy but I wouldn’t say he was happy either

Double negatives: in logic,  ~ [~ p] = p

                           In natural language: It’s not that he’s not happy =/= he’s happy

Material implication

 p   q    p -> q

___________________________
 T    T    T
 T    F    F
 F    T    T
 F    F    T

Promise:  If you come with me I’ll be grateful

Prediction (p->q): If Arsenal win this game they will win the championship
                               p: Arsenal win this game
                               q: Arsenal win the championship

3. Sentence relations
-- meaning relationships between sentences
-- analogous to lexical relations betwen word meanings (synonymy, antonymy etc)

synonymy:    Few people believe that <-> Not many people believe that

contradiction: Someone came  vs. No one came

(cf. antonymy)

ambiguity:  He works on hydrofoils (i) goes to work on board hydrofoils (as in engineer)
(cf. polysemy)                              (ii) studies hydrofoils (as an academic)

entailment:  Many people came  =>  Some people came

(cf. hyponymy)                     (entails)

entailment: p  => q,  i.e.  if p is true then q is true

synonymy as mutual entailment

e.g. passives:  Chan wrote the book.   <=>   The book was written by Chan.
but:  Everyone here speaks two languages <= Two languages are spoken by everyone
here
 34

Many arrows did not hit the target vs. the arrow was not hit by many arrows

Contradiction as mutual entailment

p <=> ~q    i.e. if p is true then q is false, etc.

4. Presupposition

He has stopped working for Philips (He used to work for Philips)
The cause of the pollution problem is fossil fuel.  (There is a pollution problem)
The reason why they came is to discuss productivity.   (They came)
The police are looking for my gun.   (I have a gun)

  presuppositions are preserved when the proposition is negated:

The cause of the pollution problem is not fossil fuel. (There is still a pollution
problem)
The reason why they came is not to discuss productivity.  (They still came)
The police are not looking for my gun.   (I still have a gun)
 
  Sentence Meaning: Situations

1. Situations as subject matter of sentences:

 sentences describe 'situations': states of affairs, events, actions...

1.1 States: knowing someone, being in love...

Grammatical properties of stative verbs:

 disallow/resist imperative form:    * Know him better

                                                  ? Love her more

 disallow/resist progressive form:   * I’m knowing him better (already)

                                                   ? I’m loving her more than ever

Semantic properties of states:

 no movement
 no (necessary) change over time

1.2  Events: meeting someone, falling in love, getting married...

  events as dynamic situations (involving change and/or movement): The window
broke
  actions as  events initiated by agents:   The thief broke the window

2. Situation types
2.1 Semantic distinctions between verbs (or predicates):
 35

  static vs dynamic
  punctual (taking pace at a point of time) vs durative
  telic (directed toward goal/endpoint) vs atelic

2.2 Features defining situation types (also known as “verb classes”, but really a
classification of predicates)

           stative verbs  (know, love, resemble)

         /
  verbs                                      durative: accomplishments (learn a language, build a
house)
         \                           telic:   /
           dynamic verbs:  /          \  punctual: achievements (arrive, graduate)
                                   \
                                     atelic: activities (run, sing, study)

2.3 Properties of situation types

  states: have duration, do not change during course; lack inherent endpoint;
  activities: have duration without endpoint (like states: they talked for half an hour);
            imply change over time (unlike states)
  accomplishments: include endpoint but have duration (she learnt Chinese in two years)
  achievements: instantaneous events without duration (she arrived at 9 p.m. / *all
evening)

3. Interaction of situation type and grammatical aspect

   state + Progressive -> temporary or wilful state

        She is resembling her sister more than usual today (temporarily)
        She's being sick on purpose  (intentionally)
        I’m having a headache right now (temporarily or intentionally)

   accomplishment +  Progressive  -> activity

       They have repaired the machine   ==> The machine has been repaired
       They have been repairing the machine  =/=> The machine has been repaired

   state + perfective -> inchoative (entering new state)

      “Where did you meet/get to know him?”

      “I’ve fallen in love with him”
      "You seem to have put on weight"

Resultative complements / particles and situation type

 36

    `study' (activity)  ->    ‘finish studying’ (achievement)

    `build a house' (accomplishment)

  Activities: -te iru form gives progressive interpretation

              Mary-wa kinoo  Ziroo-to  kooen-o  aruite-ita

              Mary  yesterday Ziroo-with park walk-CONT-PAST
             “Mary was walking in the park with Ziroo yesterday.”

  De dat exemple

4. Verbal aspect

Aspect: Different ways of viewing the internal structure of situations (Comrie 1976;
situations = events, states etc.)

4.1. subjectivity: "ways of viewing" = perceiving/conceiving the same situation

e.g. A:  What have you done since arriving in Hong Kong?
      B:  I've visited all the shopping malls/been visiting all the shopping malls

      A:   Have you seen the professor?

      B:   I spoke to him only this morning/I was speaking to him only this morning

Progressive aspect: situation viewed as in progress, dynamic etc. i.e. a property of a

mental representation of the situation

4.2 Classification of aspectual categories (Comrie 1976)

                      ______________________
                     |                                            |
                 perfective                          imperfective
                                                     ______|______
                                                    |                        |
                                               continuous           habitual
                                              ____|____
                                             |                 |
                                       progressive    stative

Perfective vs. imperfective

 
 “She’s put her clothes on”          “She’s putting her clothes on”

Continuous vs. habitual

 37

 “She’s wearing jeans”                           “She usually wears jeans”

She was teaching English at DBS  vs.   She used to teach English at DBS

Progressive vs. continuous/stative

 
  “She’s watching you”               “She’s staring at you”

5. Tense: grammaticalized location in time (Comrie 1985)

5.1 Tense as a deictic category: temporal reference depends on time of utterance

5.2 Reichenbach's model of tense: relates points along a time line

    R Reference time

    E Event time
    S Speech time

Simple tenses: R=E,  e.g.   Simple Past:  R,E________S    I finished the paper this
morning

Complex Tenses: R=/=E, e.g. Future Perfect:  S____E____R   (by) tonight I will have
finished the paper

Present Perfect:   R=S:     E________R,S                I have (now) finished the paper

6. The Perfect:

6.1 Tense or Aspect?

Deictic (suggests tense): The professor has resigned locates event prior to time of
utterance
Subjective (allows choice: suggests aspect):  I have recently met the professor.
                                                                   I recently met the professor.

6.2 Types of Perfect 

Resultative: My car has broken down ; “she has gone to bed/is asleep” 
   “He has died/is dead” 

THEMATIC STRUCTURE
The thematic structure of utterance is the way in which an utterance is organized as a
signal encoding a particular context-dependent message (Lyons, 1977, p. 500).
 38

Considering the terms generally used in syntax -- subject and predicate -- of a sentence,
the subject, a grammatical subject, is applied to the expression employed by a speaker to
identify what he is talking about and the predicate is the expression that is used to say
what he wishes to say about the subject. An investigation of the meaning carried by
segments of a sequence, regardless of their syntactic role, is the study of theme and
rheme.
The concepts of theme and rheme stem from the idea that we can distinguish between
what we are talking about and what we are saying about it. ‘Theme’ is the expression
used by the speaker for what he announces as the topic of his utterance: it is called the
thematic subject. ‘Rheme’ refers to the expression that contains the information the
speaker wishes to communicate. In the following sentences, the themes are different.
1. John saw the play yesterday.
2. Yesterday John saw the play.
In 1, John is the theme because the speaker gives notice that he is talking about
John, but in 2 yesterday is the theme since the speaker makes yesterday’s events the topic
of his utterance. As Halliday defined it (Lyons, 1977, 507), the theme is “the peg on
which the message is hung.” In many languages, as in English, the theme occurs at the
beginning of a sentence.
In the subsequent studies by semanticists and pragmatists, theme is often referred to as
'topic' by some scholars; and rheme as 'comment'. In some languages, Japanese and
Korean, there are formal ways of distinguishing topic and comment and the category is
thus a formal one (Levinson, 1983, p.88).
On the other hand, English and many other languages have no simple formal categories
for topic and comment. The topic is frequently placed at the beginning of the sentence,
where the grammatical subject is.
However, Palmer (1981, pp. 159-161) mentions four features of English that can be
related to such notions.
1. It is possible to place a word at the beginning of a sentence when it is not its normal
syntactic positions as in:
The man over there I do not like very much.
John Smith I haven’t seen for ages.
This is a device for indicating first what we are going to talk about, but it is a rare
phenomenon in English, though it can be seen as an example of topicalization. Lyons
(1977, p. 506) calls this type of subject (The man over there, or John Smith) a thematic
subject. The thematic subject is different from the grammatical subject (I).
2. We often choose alternative syntactic structures which bring the topic to the subject
position. An example is converting active to passive:
John hit Bill.
Bill was hit by John.
We ought to look for some clear motivation for the choice of the construction. Possible
reasons for the choice may be to preserve the cohesion of the discourse by retaining the
same subject, or because the doer is unknown:
The child ran onto the road and was hit by a car. (Cohesion)
The child was knocked down. (The doer is unknown)
3. English has clear devices for dealing with the GIVEN information (the information
that is already known in the discourse) and the NEW information (the information that is
 39

being freshly stated). We can avoid restating in detail what is given by using pronouns
(he/she/it/they), pro-verbs (do/did/does) or other pro-forms (such -adjective, so-adverb,
therefore- conjunction). We also use sentence stress for a similar purpose. The general
rule is that the stressed point is new and that the not highlighted term is given.
4. We often use accent for contrast. In John hit Bill and then Fred hit him, it means that
Fred hit John not Bill. The accent indicates the contrast 'not Bill' and the only possible
inference is that it was John.
So far we have distinguished two kinds of subjects: grammatical and thematic.
There is yet a third kind of subject: the logical subject. In a sentence where a proposition
describes a situation in which there is an agent or doer who is the source of the activity,
the expression referring to the agent is called the logical subject. For example, John is an
agent who did the activity in John came home late. The logical subject may coincide with
the grammatical subject. In John came home late, John is either a grammatical subject or
a logical subject. But in a passive construction like Bill was hit by John, the logical
subject (the agent who performs the activity) is 'John', while the grammatical subject is
'Bill'.
Thematic structure or the way in which a speaker presents his or her utterance is also a
major concern of pragmatics in the interpretation of meaning. As the inherent property of
topic and comment is part of the speaker's competence and performance, the investigation
of thematic structure is the responsibility of both semantics and pragmatics.
 40

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alston, W.P. 1964. Philosophy of Language. Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice-Hall.
Austin, J.L. 1962. How to Do Things with Words, 2nd Edition. Cambridge: Harvard
University Press..
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 42

SEMANTICS

LEXICAL RELATIONS
Theories of language state that language users must have some sort of lexicon stored in
memory. When they hear or read, they can recognize the patterns of sounds or letters that
correspond to the lexical items in their lexicon. Each word or lexical item contains
meaning. The description of the meaning of a word is complex because there have to be
considered the following perspectives, which constitute the area of study in modern
linguistics called lexical semantics. (Kenworthy, 1991, p.4)
1. The referential relation between the word and an entity in the world – in linguistics this
is termed its denotation.
2. The relation between the word and other words in the language – its sense relations.
3. The other words which co-occur with it in the language -- the technical term used is its
collocations.
4. The use of the word in the language in terms of restrictions – its communicative value.
Therefore, it is not an easy task to learn the connections between words and their
meanings.
Some words are relatively easy to define by pointing to an object or a picture, but some
are not because we have to consider the context.
In simple semantic situation, there is only one relation between symbol (signifier) and
reference or sense (signified). Proper names like Peter, the Eiffel Tower, the Himalayas
have direct reference. They denote a specific object, person, place, etc. in the world.
Proper names have no resemblance or other link to the objects they denote. A rose
denotes a sweet smelling flower everyone calls a ‘rose’. If we change its name, it is still
the same flower. Peter can change his name to Romeo but he is not changed physically.
Occasionally, a name reflects some sound resemblance. The word is a phonaesthetic
word-- the name imitates the thing (Kenworthy, 1991, p.3). For example, some English
words imitate the sounds the animals or human beings. In English the baby talk for cat is
meow, and that for dog is woof-woof.
. When a word has direct reference, it points to a specific, unique object, person, place,
etc., it can be said that the word has ostensive definition or definition by pointing.
Sometimes a word can refer not only to a unique object, but a set or class of that thing.
For example, student can refer to Anne, Tony, or Paul who are studying in a school.
So, the word student is a common noun as opposed to a proper noun or a proper name.
If we look further, pupil is related in some elements of meaning to the word student.
Therefore, there is a relationship of meaning between words.
What is a word in lexical semantics? It is:
1. A word form – phonologically (and/or graphically) distinct “shape”: bank, mole;
2. A lexeme – phonologically and semantically distinct, autonomous symbolic unit (i.e.,

it can stand alone because it contains a root morpheme): bank1, bank2, mole1,
swimming, etc.
3. Inflected forms based on the same root count as the same lexeme: swims, swimming,
swam, swum.
Therefore, in lexical semantics, a word is the same as a lexeme (=lexical unit).

 43

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