Lexical relations

One part of knowing the meanings of lexemes in

any language is the recognition that two or more
lexemes may have some semantic relationship:
father and mother, father and son; father and
paternal; employer and employee; big and large;
big and little; red, yellow and blue. Each of these
sets shows a different relationship. Two of these
lexemes, employer and employee, are related
formally as well as semantically; such
morphological relations are the topic of Chapter
13. The present chapter deals with semantic
relations that have no formal similarity.
• We consider two approaches to the description
of lexical relations, semantic field theory and
truth conditional semantics. Field theory is an
attempt to classify lexemes according to shared
and differentiating features. For example,
wasp, hornet, bee and other items denote
‘flying, stinging insects’; moth and housefly,
among others, denote insects that fly but do
not sting; ant and termite are names of insects
that neither fly nor sting. (And what
differentiates wasp, hornet and bee from one
another? What differentiates insects from
other living things?)
 •Truth conditional semantics studies
lexical relations by comparing
predications that can be made about the
same referring expression. Its task is to
account for the meaning relations
between different expressions in a
language. Three such relations are
entailment, paraphrase and
contradiction.
• Entailment is the relation between two
propositions— let’s label them ‘p’ and ‘q’—
such that if p is true, q must also be true,
but if q is true, it does not necessarily follow
that p is true. If it is true that my necktie is
(entirely) maroon, is it true that my necktie is
red? If it is true that my necktie is red, is it
true that my necktie is maroon?
• Paraphrase is the relation between two
propositions, p and q, such that if either is
true, the other is necessarily true also, and if
either is false, the other is false.
If it is true that my necktie was cheap,
is it true or false that my necktie was
inexpensive? If it is true that my necktie
was inexpensive, is it true or false that
my necktie was cheap?
Contradiction is the relation between
two propositions such that if either is
true, the other is necessarily false. If my
necktie was cheap, is it true or false that
my necktie was expensive? If it was
expensive, was it cheap?
 Lexical fields
•  
’ A lexeme can be defined by telling what ‘set’
it belongs to and how it differs from other
members of the same set. Some obvious sets of
this sort are sports (tennis, badminton, golf,
soccer, basketball…), creative writings (poem,
novel, short story, biography, essay…), manual
occupations (electrician, plumber, welder,
carpenter, painter…), colors (red, blue, black,
green, yellow …). It is not difficult to say what
the members of each set have in common.
 • Some lexical sets involve part-whole relationships
(arm includes hand, which includes finger and thumb).
The set second-minute- hour-day is a part-whole
relationship that is also hierarchical. Some sets are
sequential (numbers one, two, three etc.) or cyclical
(January, February, etc.; Sunday, Monday, etc.;
spring, summer, autumn, winter).
• Some sets, mostly small ones, form
paradigms. The words man, woman, boy
and girl, all denoting humans, are
interrelated this way:
• Male Female
• Adult man woman
• Child boy girl
The paradigm shows that lexemes are systematically
related. Definitions can be made somewhat more
sophisticated through binary features; instead of [male]
and [female] the labels can be [+male] and [-male] (or
[-female] and [+female]), and instead of [adult] and
[child] we may have [+adult] and [-adult] (or [-child]
and [+child]). But the notion of binarity raises
problems: can all contrasts be expressed as pairs, Yes
versus No? In this case we may accept that humans are
either male or female; sex is a biological distinction and
clearly binary. Age, however, is a continuum, and the
distinctions we recognize are partly biological and partly
social. Being social, they are arbitrary. Note that English
has a lexeme adolescent, which is [-adult] and [-child],
but there are no English terms for male adolescent and
female adolescent except boy and girl.
 componential analysis
• All lexical items can be analyzed into a set of semantic features
or semantic components which may be universal. This semantic
theory is called Componential Analysis (CA).
CA is defined as a way proposed by the structural semanticists to
analyze word meaning. It believes that the meaning of a word can
be dissected into meaning components called semantic features.
let’s consider these nouns:
• stool chair bench sofa
• These have in common a component [piece of furniture] that is
also shared by, for example, table, but not by door. They also
share a component [furniture for sitting], which table does not
share. A better candidate for a differentiating feature is
[having upholstery]; a sofa must be [+upholstery] and a bench
is [- upholstery].
• the definition of a lexeme within a set or field requires us to
note what feature or features distinguish it from other
members of the set or field and what features are just ‘there,’
not distinctive.
 Kinship

Kinship systems make an interesting area for

componential analysis. Kinship is universal since all
humans are related to other humans through blood
ties and through marriage, but kinship systems
differ from society to society. A relationship is a kind
of predicate. Sentences such as Harold is Alice’s
father and Rose is Jerry’s sister have a propositional
content that we represent this way:

• Theme Predicate Associate

• Harold father-of Alice
• Rose sister-ofJerry
• Some of the predicate relations in all kinship systems can
be described with four primitive features: [parent],
[offspring], [sibling] and [spouse]. We also need the
components [male] and [female], of course, which we will
indicate as M and F, respectively. Combining M and F with
the four basic features gives definitions of eight
predicates: father=M parent, mother=F parent,
brother=M sibling, sister=F sibling, son=M offspring,
daughter=F offspring, husband
• =M spouse, wife=F spouse.
• Other relations are defined by combinations of features:
grandmother=parent’s F parent, grandfather=parent’s M
parent, granddaughter=offspring’s F offspring,
grandson=offspring’s M offspring
 :Advantage of CA

• CA allows a highly explicit and

economical account of meaning
relations such as hyponymy and
incompatibility.
• Woman: + HUAMN +ADULT + FEMALE
• Spinster: +HUMAN +ADULT +FEMALE
-MARRIED
• Bachelor: +HUAMN +ADULT +MALE
-MARRIED
• Spinster: +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE
-MARRIED
• Wife: +HUMAN +ADULT -MALE +
MARRIED
• Thus, spinster is incompatible with
bachelor by contrast of gender
specification; and with wife by the marital
specification.
 Semantic relationships between 5.3.5
words
• Homonymy
• Polysemy
• Synonymy
• Antonymy
• Hyponymy
• Meronymy
 Hyponymy

• B. Definition of Hyponymy
Hyponymy is a sense relation in semantics that serves to relate word
concepts in a hierarchical fashion. Hyponymy is a relation between
two words in which the meaning of one of the words includes the
meaning of the other word. The lexical relation corresponding to the
inclusion of one class in another is hyponymy. Examples are : apple-
fruit ; car- vehicles ; tool- furntiture ; cow - animal.
The more specific concept is known as the hyponym, and the more
general concept is known as the hypernym or superordinate. Apple
is the hyponym and fruit is the superordinate / hypernymy.
Hyponymy is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns.
It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon.

E.g : a. the verb cook has many hyponyms.

•
Word: Cook

Hyponyms: Roast, boil, fry, grill, bake.

b. the verb colour has many hyponyms

Word: colour

Hyponyms: blue, red, yellow, green, black and purple

Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment.

Example : ‘There is a horse’ entails that ‘There is an animal”.
Hyponymy often functions In discourse as a means of lexical
cohesion by establishing referential equivalence to avoid
repetition.
 SOME WORDS HAVE A MORE GENERAL MEANING,
WHILE OTHERS HAVE A MORE SPECIFIC MEANING,
WHILE REFERRING TO THE SAME ENTITY.
e.g. tree and oak
oak is a more specific object than
tree.
tree may be used to refer to objects that are not oaks,
but which share with them the essential features of
“treeness” (e.g. large plants, with trunk, branches,
leaves, etc)

 the term oak is the hyponym of tree, and the term

tree is the superordinate of oak.
 Hyponym is a word whose referent is included in the
referent of a more general word
 ENTAILMENT
Consider these pairs of sentences:
1a Rover is a collie
1b Rover is a dog
2a There are tulips in the vase
2b There are flowers in the vase

 THE TRUTH RELATIONSHIP:

a b b a
T T T ?
F ? F F

3a There is a tennis in the court

3b There is a game in the court
 Notes:
1) There are co-hyponym without a
superordinate.
e.g. a knife, a fork, a spoon
2) This is an instance of a lexical gap
(see Kreidler 1998, 94-95)
 homonymy
word Homonym has been derived from Greek term 'Homoios' which means identical
and 'onoma' means name. So, Homonymy is a relation that holds between two
lexemes that have the same form but unrelated meanings. Homonyms are the words
that have same phonetic form (homophones) or orthographic form (homographs) but
different unrelated meanings. The ambiguous word whose different senses are far
apart from each other and are not obviously related to each other in any way is called
as Homonymy. Words like tale and tail are homonyms. There is no conceptual
connection between its two meanings.
For example the word ‘bear’, as a verb means ‘to carry’ and as a noun it means ‘large
animal’.
An example of homonym which is both homophone and homograph is the word
‘fluke’. Fluke is a fish as well as a flatworm. Other examples are bank, an anchor, and so
on.
Homophony - Homophony is the case where two words are pronounced identically
but they have different written forms. They sound alike but are written differently and
often have different meanings. For example: no-know, led-lead, would-wood.
Homograph - Homograph is a word which is spelled the same as another word and
might be pronounced the same or differently but which has a different. For example,
Bear-bear ; Read-read.
When homonyms are spelled the same they are homographs but not all homonyms
are homographs.
 Polysemy
• A polyseme the phenomenon of having or being open to several or many
meanings.When a word has several very closely related senses or
meanings.Polysemous word is a word having two or more meanings. For
example, foot in : - He hurt his foot ; - She stood at the foot of the stairs.
A well-known problem in semantics is how to decide whether we are
dealing with a single polysemous word or with two or more homonyms.
F.R.Palmer concluded saying that finally multiplicity of meaning is a very
general characteristic of language.Polysemy is used in semantics and
lexical analysis to describe the word with multiple meanings.Crystal and
Dick Hebdige (1979) also defined polysemy.Lexical ambiguity depends
upon homonymy and polysemy.
The difference between homonyms and polysemes is subtle.
Lexicographers define polysemes within a single dictionary lemma,
numbering different meanings, while homonyms are treated in separate
lemmata. Semantic shift can separate a polysemous word into separate
homonyms. For example, check as in "bank check" (or Cheque) , check in
chess, and check meaning "verification" are considered homonyms, while
they originated as a single word derived from chess in the 14th century.
 Antonymy
1. Antonyms are opposite in meaning.
if one is true, the other must be false
e.g. The television is on now
The television is off now.
big vs. small
2. The meaning—like big, is very much
dependent on the topics they are associated
with: a big rat is not as big as small elephant.
 BINARY AND NON-BINARY ANTONYMS

1. BINARY ANTONYMS
THERE IS NO MIDDLE GROUND
e.g. On Vs. Off
An electric light is on/off.
2. NON-BINARY ANTONYMS
THERE ARE OPPOSITE ENDS OF A
SCALE THAT INCLUDES VARIOUS
INTERMEDIATE TERMS
e.g. Old Vs. Young
Mr. Jones is very old.
3. Non-binary antonyms can easily be
modified:
e.g. very old, rather young
4. But, it is also a fact that binary antonyms can
be modified:
e.g. quite dead, wide open
5. Non-binary adjectives are gradable.
e.g. very long, rather short
6. Binary adjectives are considered ungradable
though the expression “someone is too asleep.”
is meaningful.
 CONVERSE ANTONYMS

1. CONVERSE ANTONYMS  TWO

LEXEMES SO RELATED THAT EITHER
ONE PRESUPPOSE THE OTHER.
e.g. If A gives X to B, B receives X
from A
2.Converseness is a kind of antonymy
between two terms.