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 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-of Jerry

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.

5.3.5 Semantic relationships between 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 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 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 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.