Semantics (ED 607)

Unit 6

Sense Relations

The sense of an expression is its place in a system of semantics relationships with other expressions in a language.

One of the semantic relationships is sameness of meaning (synonymy). Look at the examples below:

The thief tried to hide/conceal the evidence.You have my profound/deep sympathy.I am going to buy/purchase a new coat.How many kids/children do you have?

Do exercise 1

In considering the sense of a word, we abstract away from any stylistic, social, and dialectical associations the word may have. We only concentrate on what has been called the cognitive or conceptual meaning of a word.

We can talk about sense, not only of words, but also of a longer expressions such as phrases and sentences.

Do exercise 2

Homonymy

A word whose senses are far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way (no conceptual connection between the two meanings).

Mug (drinking vessel vs. gullible person) is an example of homonymy. Punch (blow with a fist vs. kind of fruity alcoholic drink) is also another example of homonymy.

Do exercise 3

AmbiguousA word or sentence is ambiguous when it has more than one sense. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two (or more) paraphrases which are not themselves paraphrases of each other.

We saw her duck.

We saw her lower her head and we saw the duck belonging to her (the two sentences are not paraphrase of each other. Therefore, the example above is ambiguous).

Do exercise 4.

Sense or Reference (Review)

The referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. Every expression that has meaning has a sense, but not every expression has reference.

My son is studying in the libraryTouch your left ear.

Do exercise 5

More on synonymySynonymy is the relationship between two predicates (not between two words i.e. word forms) that have the same sense. Why? Remember that a word may have several senses, such as hide1 (Let’s hide from Mummy), hide2 (Hide your sweeties under the pillow), hide3 (We watched the birds from the hide), or hide4 (The hide of an ox weighs over 50 kilos). So, in the thief tried to hide/concealed the evidence, we deal with hide2 and not in other senses of hide.

Do Exercise 6

Paraphrase

A sentence that expresses the same proposition as another sentence is a paraphrase of that sentence. Paraphrase is to a sentence as synonym is to a predicate.

My father owns a car.The car belongs to my father.

Some countries have no coastlineNot all countries have a coastline.

Do Exercise 7

Hyponymy

A sense between predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) such that the meaning one predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.

The meaning of red is included in the meaning of scarlet. Red is the superordinate term, scarlet is the hyponym of red.

Do Exercise 8

Polysemy

A word which has several closely related meanings.

Mouth of a river and of an animal is an example of polysemy because the two senses are closely related to the concepts of an opening from the interior of some solid mass to the outside.

The same thing also happens to drive a nail and drive a car because both senses have the same concepts of causing something to move in a particular direction.

Antonymy

Do Exercise

A traditional view of antonymy is that it is simply “oppositeness of meaning”, but this is not really true.

Hot is not the opposite of cold in the same way as borrow is the apposite of lend. Thick is not the opposite of thin in the same way as dead is the opposite of alive.

Binary Antonym

Are predicates which come in pairs and between them exhaust all the relevant possibilities. If one predicate is applicable, then the other cannot, and vice versa. True and false are binary antonyms, because if a sentence is true, it cannot be false. If it is false, it cannot be true. Same and different are also binary antonym, because when two things are the same, they are not different.

Do Exercise

Converse

If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (or persons) and some other predicate describe the same relationship when the two things (or people) are mentioned in the opposite order, then the two predicates are converses of each other.

Buy and sell are converses, because if John bought a car from Fred, then Fred sold the car to John.

Do Exercise

Gradable Antonym

Two predicates are gradable antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of a values (a scale which typically varies according to the context of use).

Hot and cold are gradable antonyms because between there is a continuous scale of values, such as warm, cool, or tepid.

Do exercise 9.

Multiple CompatibilityIn semantics we have miniature semantic systems. For example, male and female constitute the English sex system. True and false are the members of truth system. Other systems may have three, four, or five members.

All of the systems are mutually compatible. For example, playing cards cannot belong to both hearts suit and the spades suit only. Besides, clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades, there are no other suits.