Homonymy -an ambiguous word / phrase whose different senses are far apart from each other and
not obviously related to each other in any way. Cases of homonymy seem to be matters of accident
or coincidence.
Example:
ball1 n. round - object that is thrown, kicked or hit in a game or sport
ball2 n. a large or formal occasion at which people dance
Homonyms -are different words that are pronounced the same, but may or may not be spelled the
same
(homophones) or which are spelled the same but are not pronounced the same
homographs – lead (v.) vs lead (n.)
homophones – flour vs flower
Synonymy, i.e. “sameness of meaning” – words that sound different but have the same or nearly the
same meaning.
Polysemy – a case of lexical units with multiple meanings, where the meaning is partly identical, so
the meanings are partly related. Signifiés (almost) identical, signifiants different.
example school (1) a building (2) an institution (3) a group of people (4) a group of fish or dolphins.
Polysemy and homonymy are not always clearly distinct cases.
Oppositional relations - the most important non-hierarchical relations are the
oppositional relations, e.g., systematic vs unsystematic.
Oppositional relations – the exclusion of one meaning from another; it is the primary semantic
relationship on the paradigmatic axis.
A. incompatibility (which implies a close semantic link), e.g. silly vs. clever, intelligent
B. non-identity (no link), e.g., wise, well-clad, red.
Oppositeness of meaning
- complementarity
- antonymy proper (oppositeness of gradable adjectives)
- reversibility
- multiple incompatibility
- converseness (?)
The basic property of two words that are antonyms is that they share all but one semantic property.
Complementary pairs (also called binary pairs or simple antonyms):
alive/dead present/absent awake/asleep
Gradable pairs of opposites (gradable antonyms):
big/small hot/cold happy/sad
HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS
generic, i.e., concept A encompasses and is broader than concept B = Inclusion (Hyponymy)
partitive, i.e., concept A is the whole and concept B (one of ) the parts = Meronymy
Inclusion (Hyperonymy/Hyponymy)
The part-whole relation between nouns is also considered a semantic relation. The networks
identified as MERONIMY are lexical: it is conceptually possible to segment items in countless
ways, but only some divisions are coded in the vocabulary of a language.
Types of part-whole-like relations:
- component-object: branch-tree ( creanga-copac)
- member-collection: tree-forest( copac-padure)
- portion-mass: slice-cake(felie-tort)
- material-object: alluminium-plane( aluminiu-farfurie)
- feature-activity: paying-shopping(plateste-cumpara)
- place-area: Iasi-Romania
PORTION MASS – the relation between mass nouns and the usual unit of measurement: a grain of
salt, a sheet of paper. ( Masa porțiunii – relația dintre substantivele de masă și unitatea obișnuită de
măsură: un grăunte de sare, o foaie de hârtie.)
SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS
Syntagmatic sense relations:
· Philonyms - normal combination e.g. John drinks tea.
· Tautonyms, pleonastic combination e.g. My male uncle. John kicked the ball with his foot.
· Xenonyms – semantic clash, e.g. John drinks morphemes.
Words have meaning, which may result from the meaning of various morphemes the word consists
of. The meaning of nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs and even some of the function words (e.g.
prepositions - with or over) can at least partially be specified by some properties.
ex. cat cats cat’s paw, cat’s cradle, catty, rain “cats and dogs”
ex. The assassin was stopped before he got to Mr. Ford.
This can be achieved resorting to information about the words – semantic properties. The same
semantic property may be part of the meaning of many different words.
ex. tigress, hen, actress, maiden, doe, mare, debutante, widow, ewe, girl, woman, nurse*
ex. doctor dean professor bachelor parent baby child
seme: element of a sememe, defined as the extreme of a binary relational function between
sememes. The seme is the smallest unit of signification defined by analysis.
sememe: signified of a morpheme.
signified: content of a linguistic unit
The same semantic property may occur in words of different categories. ex.
mother, breastfeed, pregnant
No two words have the exact same meaning – additional semantic properties
make for finer and finer distinctions of meaning. ex. plod, stalk, saunter etc.
Intended Utterance Actual Utterance (Error)
bridge of the nose bridge of the neck
when my gums bled when my tongues bled
Such words often belong to belong to same semantic field, sometimes also
called a conceptual area (Cruse, 2006)
“The sense of a lexeme is therefore a conceptual area within a conceptual
field, and any conceptual area that is associated with a lexeme, as its sense,
is a concept.” (Lyons, 1996)
ex. the colour system in various languages – the lexical field of colour
Componential analysis: the segmentation of the data into discrete, codable
elements. It aimed to isolate universal semantic features (applicable to any
language).
the meaning of a word: is the sum of a number of elements of meaning which it possesses
Violation of rules.
Violation of semantic rules may result in:
- anomaly – a violation of semantic rules to create "nonsense";
- metaphor – nonliteral meaning;
- idioms – in which the meaning of an expression is not related to the meaning of its parts
In English the same phrase can have in different syntactic roles and
the same thematic role.
Ex. Bill went into the house.
syntactic analysis: [S [NP Bill] [VP [V went] [PP [P into] NP the
house]]]]
semantic analysis: [event GO ([agent BILL], [path TO ([place IN ([thing
HOUSE])])])]
CONTRADICTION is most centrally a logical term. The basic form of a
logical contradiction is p & - p. Anything that is clearly an instance of
this basic logical contradiction, e.g. John is here and John isn't here
can be called a contradiction.
ANOMALY is semantic oddness (as opposed to grammatical oddness)
that can be traced in the meanings of the predicates in the sentences
concerned. Thus, Christopher is killing phonemes is anomalous
because the meanings of the predicates kill and phoneme cannot be
combined in this way. Anomaly involves violation of selectional
restriction rules.
Deixis – the type of immediate environmental reference where signs
in the text refer the addressee to situational factors and
circumstances inside the area of sense perception which the speaker
and hearer share.
-For convenience one can define discourse deixis as some kind of
commentary on the text or conversation by the speaker.
-gestural uses: the deictic expression can be interpreted only with
reference to a physical monitoring of the speech event:
Ex. This one is genuine, but this one is a fake. (pointing with finger)
-symbolic uses: the knowledge of the basic spatio-temporal
parameters of the speech event is sufficient to interpret them:
Ex. This city is really beautiful. (the city where the speech event
occurs)
IMPLICATURE is the relationship between two statements in which
the truth of one suggests the truth of the other, but does not require
it.
IMPLICATURES are deductions that are made in accordance with the
conversational maxims, taking into account both a. the meaning of
the linguistic utterance and b. the particular circumstances in which
the utterance is made.
H. Paul Grice (1913 – 1988), British philosopher, attempted to
formalize what exactly is it that we know when we successfully
perceive implicature in a conversation. He considered that language
users can calculate implicatures because they are all following some
implicit principles. Grice called these principles “maxims” of
discourse, circumscribed by a cooperation principle, and used them
to serve as the foundation of pragmatics, the study of extra-truth-
conditional meaning.
-Maxim of Quantity: Information:Do not make your contribution
more informative than is required-Ex. Pat: "How was the party?"
Sam: "Not everyone showed up.”
-Maxim of Quality: Truth
• Do not say what you believe to be false.
• Do not say that for which you lack adequate evidence.
Ex. Sam (at a bar): Honey, I’m stuck at the office for another hour to
double check the balance sheets.
-Maxim of Relation: Relevance
• Be relevant.
Ex. Pat: How's your work coming along? Chris: It sure is sunny today.
Maxim of Manner: Clarity
• Avoid obscurity of expression.
• Be brief, avoid unnecessary prolixity.
• Be orderly.
Ex. a. Joe and Sue got married and had a baby. b. Bill and Sally had a
baby and got married.
We can distinguish performative utterances (and sentences) from
constative utterances (and sentences).
- A PERFORMATIVE utterance is one that actually describes the act
that it performs, i.e. it performs some act and simultaneously
describes it.
- A CONSTATIVE utterance is one which makes an assertion (i.e., it is
often the utterance of a declarative sentence) but is NOT
performative.
