Lexical Structure

Presented by:
Nayab Fatima
ENGL51F22R016
 Contents
• Synonymy
• Polysymy and homonymy
• Incompatibility
• Hyponymy
• Antonymy
• Relational opposites
• Components

•
 Synonymy
• Definition with example:
Synonymy is used to mean “sameness of
meaning”.The words which have same meanings are
synonymous or are synonyms of each other.
For example, gala and festivity, Mavis and thrush
are synonyms of each other.
 Native and foreign meaning:
It has often been suggested that English is particularly rich in synonyms
for the historical reason that its vocabulary has come from two different
sources, from Anglo-Saxon on one hand and from French, Latin and
Greek on the other hand. Since English is considered to be a Germanic
language from historical point of view, with Anglo-Saxon as an earlier
stage of its development, the Anglo-Saxon words are often considered to
be “native” while those from French, Latin and Greek are “foreign”,
“borrowed” from these languages. Thus there are pairs of native and
foreign words. For example, we have brotherly and fraternal, buy and
purchase, world and universe and many others.
 Difference among synonyms:
• First, some sets of synonyms belong to different dialects of the language. For
instance, the term fall is used in United States and in some western countries
of Britain where others would use autumn. It is only a matter of people
speaking different forms of language having different vocabulary items.
• Secondly, there are words that are used in different styles and registers. A
nasty smell might be, in the appropriate setting, an obnoxious effluvium or an
horrible stink. The former is,of course, jocurly very posh and the latter
colloquial. Similar trios are gentleman, man and chap, pass away, die and pop
off. These are more difficult to deal with because there is a far less clear
distinction between the styles than between the geographically defined
dialects.
• Thirdly, some words nay be said to differ only in their emotive and
evaluative meanings. The remainder of their meaning, their “cognitive”
meaning remains the same. Examples are statesman/politician,
hide/conceal; a further trio is thrifty, economical,stingy and there is a
relayed problem in the meaning of words such as fascist and liberal.
• Fourthly, some words are collocationally restricted, i.e. they occur 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, perhaps be argued that
these are true synonyms differing only that they occur in different
environments.
• Fifthly, it is obviously the case that many words are close
in meaning or that their meanings overlap. There is a
loose sense of synonymy. This is the kind of synonymy that
is exploited by the dictionary maker. For “mature” fir
instance, possible synonyms are adult, ripe, perfect, due.
If we look for the synonyms for each of these words
themselves, we shall have a further set fir each and
shall,of course get further and further away from the
meaning of the original word.
 Testing Synonymy:
• One way of testing synonymy is perhaps substitution, substituting one word for another. It had
been suggested that true or total synonyms are interchangeable in all their environments. But,
some words are interchangeable in certain environments only, e.g. that deep or profound maybe
used with sympathy but only deep with water, that a road maybe wide or broad but an accent
only broad.
• Another possibility is to investigate the opposites. Thus superficial is to be contrasted with both
deep and profound, but shallow is for most part is contrast only with deep. Thus we shall arrive
at the words that are interchangeable in certain environments, for it is precisely in the context
in which deep and profound are interchangeable that they have same antonym superficial.
• Finally, there is “connotation”, for synonyms are often said to differ only in their connotations. It
is sometimes suggested that words become associated with certain characteristics of the items
to which they refer. Thus woman has the connotation “weak” and pig had the connotation
“dirty”.
 J. Lyons’ phenomenon:
• [Link] gave examples for the context-dependent synonymy where
two items appear to be synonyms in the particular context. The
examples are dog and bitch in “My ___ has just had pups” and buy
and get in “I’ll go to the shop and __ some bread”. The context
supplies a specific information that is lacking in one of the
examples.. Having pups indicate that the dog is female, going to
the shop indicates that the bread is to be bought. But this is not
part of the meaning. The dog may not be female and I might steak
the bread. The fact that information can be gleaned from the
context does not affect the meaning of items.
 Polysymy and Homonymy
• Polysymy definition and example:
Same word having different meanings is called
polysymy and that particular word is polysemic.
For example, the word flight can be defined in
atleast the following ways: passing through the air, power of
flying, air journey, unit of the air force, volley, digression,
series of steps.
 Problems with polysemy:
• First, we cannot clearly distinguish whether two meanings are the same or
different and therefore determine exactly how many meanings a word has.
Consider the word eat, the dictionary will distinguish the “literal” sense of
taking food and derived meanings of “use up” and “corrode” and we should
perhaps treat these as three different meanings.
• Secondly, we may ask to make general remarks about differences of meaning.
One of the most familiar type of relationship between meanings is “metaphor”
where the word has both literal meaning and transferred meaning.
• Thirdly, there is a problem that if one form has several meanings, it is not
always clear whether we shall say that this is the example of polysemy or of
homonymy(that there are several words with the same shape).
 Homography and homophony:
• We do not make the same distinctions in writing and
speech. Thus lead(metal) and lead(dog’s lead) are spelt in
the same way but pronounced differently while site and
sight, rite and right are spelt differently but pronounced in
the same way. For the former, the term “homography”
maybe used and for the latter, “homophony”. Curiously
there are some homonyms and homophones that are also
antonyms, e.g. raise and raze.
 Polysemy vs Homonymy:
• Dictionaries differentiate between them upon etymology. If it is known that identical forms
have different origins they are treated as homonymous and given separate entries; if it is
known that they have one origin even if they have different meanings, they are treated as
polysemic and given a single entry in the dictionary.
• A second way of attempting to establish polysemy rather than homonymy is to look for a
central meaning or a core of meaning. This is possible where we have examples of metaphor
or of transferred meaning.
• Finally, there may sometimes be formal reasons for recognizing polysemy. Ullmann quotes
that French word poli which means polished either in the literal or transferred sense. These
would seem to be clear example of homonymy and historically they have a single origin. But
in the literal sense, the word is linked with déploir (take polish off) and polissage (polishing)
while in the other sense, it goes with impoli (polished or impolite) and politesse(politeness).
This seems to suggest that there are two different words that belong to two different sets.
 Incompatibility
• Field theory of semantics:
This theory derives very largely from de Saussure’s notion of
[Link] pointed out that a knight on a chessboard is a knight not because
of any inherent quality but because of what it can do in relation to the other
pieces on the board. He stressed thus relational aspect of language saying
that these were only differences and no positive terms. For instance sheep in
English has different value from mouton in French because English also has
the word mutton. Similarly, plural in Sanskrit has different value from plural
in French and English because in Sanskrit it belongs to the three-term
system singular,dual and plural while in French, it belongs to a two-term
system of singular and plural only.
 [Link] example:
• He compared the field of intellectual aspect of German of
around 1200 with that of around 1300. In the earlier
period, the field was divided into kunst and list, the former
referring to courtly qualities and the second to non-courtly
skills. The term wîsheit was used to cover the whole. In
the layer period,however,the field was divided into
three_wîsheit “religious experience”,kunst “knowledge”
and wizzen “art”. Thus Triar’s example compared the
language at two different periods.
• Another example is the one given by E.A. Nida in which terms of class
gave been discussed. Ther words in Mexican language for noise are six
i.e. Children yelling, people talking loudly, people arguing, people
talking angrily, increasing noise and funeral noise.
• In above mentioned example, we have a list of words referring to items
of a particular class dividing up a semantic field. But in almost all cases
a relevant point is that the words are incompatible. We cannot say this
is a red hat and of the same object this is a green hat. Nor shall we
allow the creature to be described both as a lion and as an elephant.
Sentences with incompatible terms will thus contradict each other.
 Hyponymy
• Definition with or example:
The semanic relationship between each of the more
specific words (such as daisy or rose) and the broader
term(flower) is called hyponymy or inclusion. Inclusion is
the matter of class membership.
The upper term is the superordinate and the lower
term the hyponym. The members of class are co-hyponyms.
For example, flower is the superordinate term and daisy and
rose are co-hyponyms of each other.
• The same term may appear in several places in hierarchy.
This is, of course, possible only if it is polysemic;in one of
its meanings it may actually be superordinate to itself in
another meaning. Thus, animal maybe used in contrast
with vegetables to include birds,fishes,insects as well as
mammals, in the sense of mammals to contrast with birds,
fishes and insects to include both humans and beasts and
in the sense of beast to contrast with humans
• Hyponymy relations may vary from language to language.
For example, in German “potato”Kartoffel is not included
among “vegetables” Gemiise.
 Entailment:
• Hyponymy involves the logical relationship of entailment.
To say that one sentence entails another is to say that if
first sentence is true, the second us also true. To say “this
is a tulip” entails “this is a flower” and “this is scarlet”
entails “this is red”. In this way, a sentence containing the
hyponym entails a sentence containing the superordinate
term. But if we have reference to all the items, the reverse
is the case. Thus all flowers are lovely entails all tulips are
lovely but not vice versa.
 Antonymy
• Definition with example:
The word antonymy is used for oppositeness of meaning. Words that
are opposite are antonyms.
Wide and narrow,old and young, big and small are antonyms of each
other.
• Gradibility:
Sapir argued that we should handle the words in terms of gradability.
The comparative forms of adjective are Explicitly Graded, since to say that
one road is wider than another, one boy is older than another or one book is
bigger than another is to place them in a grafed scale for comparison.
• Since antonyms are graded, there are often intermediate terms. Thus we have
not just hot/cold but hot/warm/cool/cold with the intermediate warm and cool
forming a pair of antonyms themselves.
• A further point is that in each pair one of the terms is the Marked term and
the other is Unmarked in that only one is used simply to ask about or describe
the degree of the gradable quality.
• We may perhaps also include here the pairs of type male/female,
married/single, alive/dead. LYONS treat this in terms of Complementarity, the
items being complementary to each other. To say that something is wide is to
say that something is not narrow and to say that someone is married is to say
that someone is not single.
 Dichotomous Pairs:
• Some gradable antonyms have some characteristics of DICHOTOMOUS PAIRS.
• There are some pairs of adjectives e.g. Honest/dishonest, open/shut that are
gradable in terms of more and less yet in which the deniel of one is usually
taken to assert the other. Thus though we may say Bill is more honest than
John, Bill isn’t honest implies that Bill is dishonest and Bill isn’t dishonest
implies that Bill is honest.
• Some pairs of antonyms are in Sapir’s terms not symmetrically reversible. That
is to say the more and less relationship cannot be applied to them. For
example, more brilliant does not equal less stupid or more stupid, less brilliant.
The terms,though gradable also have an absolute value at one of the ends of
the scale.
 Relational opposites
• Definition with example:
The pair of words which exhibit reversal of
relationship between items are called relational opposites.
LYONS suggested the term Conversensss for those but due
to their essentially relational characteristics, they were
preferred to be called Relational opposites.
Examples are buy/sell, lend/borrow, rent/let,
parent/child, north of/south of etc.
 Symmetry, Transitivity and
Reflexivity
• Symmetric relation:
A relation is symmetric if it holds for the arguments in both [Link] we
have arguments a abd b and a relationship R then a R b entails b R a. Obvious
examples are be married to and cousin for if John is married to Marry, Marry us
married to John and if Bill is Fred’s cousin, Fred is Bill’s cousin.
• Transitive Relation:
A relation is transitive if a R b and b R c entail a R c. If John is in front of Harry
and Harry is in front of Book then John is also in front of Bill.
• Reflexive Relation:
A relation is reflexive if it relates an argument to itself, i.e. a R a. It can be
examplified by equal and resemble (four equals four and John resembles himself).
• It must be noted that the true graded antonyms can be
treated basically in terms of relational opposites. For we
saw that wide can be seen as wider than the norm and
that if a is wider than b, b is narrower than a. The
comparative forms wider and narrower are thus relational
opposites, they are moreover transitive(if a is wider than b
and b is wider than c, a is wider than c) but not
symmetrical or reflexive. Notice , however that as wide as,
as narrow as, etc., are symmetrical, transitive and
reflexive.
 Components
• Definition:
The total meaning of a word being seen in terms of a number of
distinct elements or components of a meaning are called Components. It
purports to offer a theoretical framework for handling all the relationship
we have been discussing.
• Semantics in terms of Components:
The idea that semantics could be handled in terms of Components
has been argued with the investigation of kinship terms. In Spanish for
instance, the sex of people involved is clearly marked with ending “o” for
male and “a” for female.
• English has no markers of sex though the ending –ess occurs in
tigress, lioness,duchess etc. But if we are concerned with semantics
that is not particularly relevant. There is no reason why we should
not attempt to classify the English kinship terms with reference to
the categories such as sex, even if the language does not nark these
terms in the form of words.
• In practice, componential analysis has not been used simply in order
to restate the relations, rather it has been used to bring out logical
relations that are associated with them. Thus by marking man as
+male and pregnant as –male, we can rule out *pregnant male.
 The structure of semantic
theory:
• The componential approach to semantics is basic to Katz and Fodor’s
“The structure of a semantic theory”. They are concerned essentially with
ambiguity, anomaly and paraphrase. The arguments are however based
very largely upon ambiguity upon showing that a sentence may have two
readings. Thus The bill is large is ambiguous until it is disambiguated
by .... But need not be paid.
• Turning to structure of vocabulary, they point out that a dictionary word
distinguish between four meanings of the word bachelor_ a man who
never married, a young knight serving under the banner of
another,someone with a first degree and a young male unmated for seal
duing a mating season.
• These four meanings can however be partly differentiated by what they call “markers”
together with some specific characteristics which are called “distinguishers”.
• The theory has one major drawback. There is, in theory, no limit to the number of
markers that can be established. Any piece of information can be used to disambiguate
and can thus function as a marker. For instance, The bachelor wagged his flippers is
hardly ambiguous – it must refer to the fur seal. The bachelor got his hair wet on the
other hand cannot refer to the fur seal, though it might refer to any of the other three. If
we use the distinguishers test we have, for the fur seal, the markers and the list is
endless.
• Katz later dropped the distinction between marker and distinguishers but the difficulty
remained. However we tackle the problem, we shall be faced with an infinite set of
components because in principle, any piece of information maybe used to disambiguate
a sentence.
The End