INTRODUCTION TO LEXCIAL SEMANTICS: WORD MEANING 1

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INTRODUCTION TO LEXCIAL SEMANTICS WORD MEANING
(1)

• LING 2003 Semantics
• Lecture 3
• 25 September 2006

By Dr. Olga Zayts zayts_at_hkucc.hku.hk
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Last lecture recap

• Discussed two approaches to meaning
• referential (denotational approach) the meaning
  of words, phrases and sentences is described in
  terms of relationship between the language and
  the world
• representational approach words, phrases and
  sentences denote something because they are
  associated with something in the speakers/
  hearers mind.
• Third approach semantics should concentrate on
  sense relationships within a language between
  languages lexical semantics.

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Todays lecture overview

• Scope of lexical semantics.
• What is a word?
• Lexical meaning vs. grammatical meaning.
• Are there any limitations/restrictions on the
  possible meanings of a word?
• Defining same/different meanings of a word tests
  
• Homonymy vs. polysemy.
• Synonyms.
• Types of opposites.

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Scope of lexical semantics

• Structure of lexical meaning
• Semantic structures (meanings) of words and how
  the meanings of words are interrelated in the
  language
• Semantic structure of dictionaries

Closely interrelated
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What is a word?

• A number of well-known problems in identifying
  words difficulties in differentiating between
  words/ morphemes/phrases.
• Condition 1
• A word - a minimal meaningful unit?
• Example 1
• Adjective firm something fairly hard, solid,
  cf. the word confirm, firm - a morpheme no
  lexical meaning.
• Same phenomenon exists in other languages
• Rus. ??? vat (a large container for holding
  liquids)
• Also ??? - a morpheme as in the following
• ?????????? people leaving in the city of Rostov
• c??????????? people leaving in the city of
  Sverdlovsk
• Morpheme ??? - no lexical meaning.

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What is a word?

• But
• Example 2
• ??????? ???? ? ??????????????
• Lit. shop for film and photo accessories
• ???? is a morpheme, but it has got its own
  lexical meaning.
• Example 3
• This phenomenon occurs in mono- and polysyllabic
  words.
• Mono is a morpheme but it has got its own
  lexical meaning.
• We cannot rely only on the criterion of a minimal
  meaningful unit when defining a word.

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What is a word?

• Condition 2
• A word can be moved about in a sentence, or its
  position relative to other constituents in a
  sentence can be altered by inserting new
  constituents.
• Example 4
• Our topic is Lexical semantics.
• Our topic today is Introduction to lexical
  semantics.
• Introduction to lexical semantics is our topic
  today.
• In Example 4, our, topic, is, lexical and
  semantics are words.

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What is a word?

• Condition 3
• A word cannot be interrupted or have its parts
  reordered.
• Example 5
• INTRODUCTion
• (or IntroDUCTion Latin prefix root)
• Our todays topic is Introduct to lexical
  semantics ion.

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What is a word?

• German several types of prefixes separable and
  inseparable (trennbar und untrennbar), plus dual
  prefixes that can be both separable and
  inseparable.
• Example 6
• Wann fangen Sie an? (When do you begin?)
• Heute ruft er seine Freundin an. (Today hes
  calling his girlfriend).
• Are anfangen and anrufen not words?

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What is a word?

• Condition 4
• Words have a characteristic internal structure
  they normally have no more than one root.
• Example 7
• BUTTER-FLY
• BLACK-BOARD
• Some words have no lexical root at all the, and,
  of
• Alan Cruse (2000) prototypical word.

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What is a word?

• Example 8
• Dances
• Dancing
• Danced
• Same word or different words?
• Dances, dancing and danced are different word
  forms of the same lexeme (Saeed lexeme/ semantic
  word), dance.
• Lexical semantics is concerned with
  words-as-lexemes.

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Lexical meaning vs. grammatical meaning

• Dances, dancing and danced have the same lexical
  meaning and different grammatical meaning
• Dances 1st person sg, Present Simple, dancing
  Participle 1 danced Participle 2.
• The meaning of words is a combination of the
  lexical meaning and the grammatical meaning.
• It is sometimes difficult to draw a borderline
  between lexical and grammatical meaning.
• Lexical meaning is studied by lexical semantics
  and grammatical meaning is the concern of
  grammatical semantics.

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Are any limitations/restrictions on the possible
meanings of a word?

• Example 9
• (Cruse, 2000 91)
• Is it possible to find a language where the word
  with the following meaning exists?
• To face west on a sunny morning while doing
  something quickly
• Normally in a language words have a wider
  meaning, and words are polysemous (have more than
  one meaning).

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Zipfs law

• A Harvard linguist George Kingsley Zipf has
  formulated the law, which is known as Zipfs
  second law it concerns the number of meanings
  of a word
• If m is the number of meanings a word has, then
  it is proportional to the square root of f, where
  f is the frequency of a word in a large corpus.

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Meanings of a word

• Russian linguist Vladimir Vinogradov, The
  Russian language. The grammatical study of a
  word two tasks are particularly difficult in
  linguistics writing a grammar book and compiling
  a lexicon.
• Example 10
• Same or different meanings?
• To receive letters
• guests
• I forgot the car keys at home yesterday.
• This sonata is in the key of E flat major.
• His house is on the south bank of the river.
• He is a bank manager.

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Defining same/different meanings of a word
identity test

• A number of tests that allow us to be more
  objective in defining same/different meanings of
  words
• 1) The identity test deals with the anaphoric
  back-reference of a word.
• Example 11
• He is a bank manager. He is responsible for
  various financial operations in the bank
  supervision of day-to-day banking operations,
  processing financial data, visiting business
  customers, etc.

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Identity test

• Example 12
• His house is on the south bank of the river. On
  the north side of the river there is a big
  amusement park.
• Example 13
• She had a light coat on (although it was quite
  cold outside).
• Light not warm
• Light not dark
• Example 14
• He was very funny (and everybody couldnt stop
  laughing).
• Funny haha
• Funny peculiar

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Sense relationships of a word

• 2) Sense relations of a word
• The noun bank in the bank of a river is a meronym
  (part whole relationship) of river
  co-meronyms mouth, source, bed. The word bank in
  the bank manager does not have the same
  co-meronyms different words.

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Autonomy test

• 3) Autonomy test this test refers to the usage
  of the word in one of the senses when another
  sense is denied
• Example 15
• (Cruse, 2000 107)
• Dog 1) canine species
• 2) male of canine species
• I prefer dogs to cats.
• I prefer dogs to bitches.
• (Read more about these and other tests in Cruse
  (2000)).

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Lexicographers face the problem of
  differentiating between different senses of words
  when compiling dictionaries.
• The problem of ambiguity of meaning is known as
  homonymy and polysemy.
• Polysemy is the property of a word with more than
  one meaning
• Homonymy is the relation between two or more
  expressions which have the same form but
  different meanings.

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• In traditional lexicography a polysemic word is
  entered as one entry in a dictionary with its
  several meanings, but unrelated homonyms are
  entered separately.
• Example 16
• (OALD, 1989 72)
• Bachelor 1) unmarried man
• 2) person who holds a first university
  degree
• (Note the two words are related historically
  both come from a Medieval Latin word
  Baccalaureatus).

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Cruse (2000110) There is a motivated
  relationship between polysemous senses.
• Different types of polysemy
• E.g., autohyponymy when a word has a general
  sense and a more specific restricted sense
• Example 17
• I do not like dogs or cats. (General sense)
• This is not a dog, it is a bitch. (Specific sense)

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• E.g., autosuperordination (superordinate - a
  generic word) e.g., man referring to human race
  cow, as in the field of cows, referring to both
  cows and bulls, etc.
• Please refer to task 1 (Task sheet)

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Example 18
• Mine is a long and sad tale! said the Mouse,
  turning to Alice, and sighing.
• It is a long tail, certainly, said Alice,
  looking down with wonder at the Mouses tail
  but why do you call it sad? (L. Carroll, Alice
  in Wonderland).
• Tail, tale - homonyms

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Homonyms are not homogenous. Complete homonyms
  have the same pronunciation and the same form,
  e.g. bank.
• A word in its actual use is unlikely to be
  ambiguous, the ambiguity disappears in the
  context.
• Homonymy is not limited by the relation between
  nouns (Allan, 1986)
• Example 19
• His wants are few.
• He wants a nice house.
• Homonymy between the noun lexeme want plural
  morpheme, and the verb lexeme want third
  person singular subject agreement.

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Sentences can also be homonymous
• Example 20
• Flying planes can be dangerous.
• He hates boring students.

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Homonymy

homophony (same pronunciation but different
meaning) E.g. knot not a eh ad add allowed
aloud be bee berry bury
homography (same spelling but different
meaning). E.g. bank converse Invalid present tear

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Homonymy vs. polysemy

• Homonyms may appear due to a change in
  pronunciation. For example, see and sea were
  pronounced differently before the Great Vowel
  Shift in English.
• Other reasons for homonyms
• Ellipsis (He hates boring students, where it is
  impossible to avoid ambiguity unless the sentence
  is extended).
• Euphemisms (bull, for an animal and a euphemistic
  shortening for bullshit).
• Homonyms can also arise across different
  dialects.
• Homonyms are often grammatically distinct bull
  as an animal is a countable noun one bull
  three bulls, but as a euphemism it is
  uncountable a load of bullshit.

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Synonyms

• The relation of sameness in meaning.
• Griffith (2006) explains synonyms in terms of
  two-way (forward and backward) entailment.
  Entailments are propositions that follow than a
  given proposition is true.
• Example 21
• Impudent cheeky
• a. Andy is impudent.
• b. Andy is cheeky.
• c. (a b) (b a)
• d. Andy is impudent but he isnt cheeky.
• e. Andy is cheeky but he isnt impudent.
• ??? Are huge and big synonyms?

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Synonyms

• The relation of synonymy is not homogeneous
• absolute synonyms
• non-absolute synonyms.

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Absolute synonyms

• Absolute synonyms require an absolute identity of
  meaning.
• Cruse (Cruse, 2000 157) absolute synonyms are
  have to be identical in all contexts, i.e. if X
  and Y are absolute synonyms, then in any context
  where X is normal, Y is too in any context where
  X is slightly odd, Y is too in any context where
  X is totally anomalous, so is Y.

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Absolute synonyms

• Very difficult to find examples of absolute
  synonyms
• Example 22
• Ripe/mature
• He is a mature person.
• ?He is a ripe person.
• Deep/profound
• The lake is deep.
• The lake is profound.

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Absolute synonyms

• Among the candidates for absolute synonyms are
  sweater and pullover. It is quite difficult to
  find differentiating contexts for these two
  synonyms.
• NB! Think about the examples of absolute
  synonyms in the languages you know (tutorial 1
  task).
• A context is needed to differentiate between
  absolute/ non-absolute synonyms. There is a
  danger of missing/disregarding a particular
  context when defining two items as absolute
  synonyms.
• The differences in meaning between synonyms can
  be explained by stylistic, regional, emotional or
  other differences.

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Opposites, antonyms

• The term antonymy coined in the 19-th century
  to describe a phenomenon of oppositeness of
  meaning was considered to be the opposite of
  synonymy ? a lot of confusion in semantics
  caused by this approach since opposites are not
  homogenous
• Example 23
• Cold hot
• Male-female
• Husband wife

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Opposites, antonyms

• Terminological difficulty antonyms and
  opposites are often used as synonyms. Saeed
  opposition more general label, several types of
  relationship can be identified under
  opposition
• 1) Gradable vs. ungradable antonyms (Saeed
  simple antonyms)
• -
• cold cool warm hot

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Gradable/ungradable antonyms

• Grading involves comparison. When we compare two
  or more objects with respect to their possession
  of a certain property (Adj in Eng), we can
  inquire whether the objects have the property to
  the same degree or not
• Example 24
• The weather is much colder this week than last
  week.
• A lexeme like male is ungradable
• Example 25
• ?John is as much male as Peter.
• ?John is more male than Peter.

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Gradable/ungradable antonyms

• Both gradable and ungradable antonyms have their
  opposites hot and female.
• The terms contradictories and contraries are
  used in traditional logic to describe the
  difference between lexemes like cold-hot and
  male-female.
• A proposition p is the contradictory of another
  proposition q, if p and q cannot be both true or
  both false
• Example 26
• This is a female cat.
• This is a male cat.
• My tea is hot.
• My tea is cold.

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Antonyms

• (Griffith, 2006) antonyms
• (a NOT b) (b NOT a)

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Gradable/ungradable antonyms

• Normal language behavior ungradable antonyms can
  sometimes be graded in speech. The reasons for it
  are pragmatic.
• Example 27
• John is more of a bachelor than Daniel (i.e. more
  determined never to get married, partying, had
  never had a stable girlfriend, etc.)
• I am more alive now than ever (i.e. feeling more
  energetic, satisfied with my life, etc).

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Conversives

• Another type of opposites. Examples of
  conversives include
• Husband wife
• Doctor patient
• Master mistress
• Before - after
• Above below, etc.

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Conversives

• Converseness may be regarded as two-place
  predicates the sentence John is the husband of
  Mary expresses the proposition the lexical
  converse of which is Mary is the wife of John.
• Converse relations are especially common in areas
  of the vocabulary having to do with reciprocal
  social roles, temporal and spatial relations.

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Reversives

• Another term directional opposites. Examples of
  directional opposites include
• Up - down
• Come - go
• Arrive depart
• Common feature implication of motion in one of
  the two opposite directions with respect to a
  given place, P.

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Reversives

• Reversives are not homogenous
• Come and go imply the movement from/to P
• P ? go
• ? come
• But up/down both imply movement from P
• ? up
• P
• ? down

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Reversives

• The opposition between many reversives will
  include deixis to define the movement up/down we
  need to define our position as speakers (deictic
  center).
• Examples which do not include deixis
• Example 28
• The President arrived in Hong Kong.
• The President departed from Hong Kong.
• Another type of opposites taxonomies
  (red-orange-yellow-green, etc or
  Sunday-Monday-Tuesday-Wednesday, etc) (also
  referred to as non-binary opposites). Read more
  in your course book (p. 68).
• Conclusion opposites are not homogenous and they
  cannot be considered just the opposites of
  synonyms.

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References

• Allan, K. (1986). Linguistic meaning. (Vol.1).
  London New York Routledge and Kegan Paul. (pp.
  146 155).
• Cruse, D. A. (2000). Meaning in language an
  introduction to semantics and pragmatics. Oxford
  Oxford University Press. (pp. 87 114).
• Hurford, J., Heasley, B. (1983). Semantics a
  coursebook. Cambridge Cambridge University
  Press. (p. 125)
• Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary of Current
  English. (1989). Oxford Oxford University Press.

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Homework

• Exercise 3.1, 3.2, 3.4, pp. 80 - 81 (preparation
  for the mid-term quiz)