Lexical Semantics – Lexical Relations, Semantic Features (I)

- Lexeme – word
- Lexical – related to words
- Lexical semantics is the study of how meaning is encoded in words (as opposed to other
linguistics structures like syntax or intonation.)

Semantic Features
a) The hamburger ate the boy
b) The table listens to the radio
c) The horse is reading the newspaper
- The oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactic structure.
According to the basic syntactic rules for forming English sentences, we have well-
formed structures.
NP V NP
[The hamburger] [ate] [the boy]

- This sentence is syntactically acceptable, but semantically odd.

- Since the sentence is perfectly acceptable, we may be able to identify the source of the
problem.
- The components of the conceptual meaning of the noun hamburger must be significantly
different from those of the noun boy.
- The kind of noun that can be the subject of the verb ate must denote an entity that is
capable of ‘eating’.
- The noun hamburger does not have this property and the noun boy does.
- We can make this observation applicable by trying to determine the important features of
meaning that any noun must have in order to be used as the subject of the verb ate.

Feature = animate being

boy: + animate [+ = has the feature]
hamburger: − animate [ − = doesn't have the feature]
 Table Horse Boy Man Girl woman
Animate - + + + + +
Human - - + + + +
Female - - - - + +
Adult - - - + - +

- The word girl involves the elements [+ human, + female, - adult]

- Syntactic analysis + semantic features:
The is reading the newspaper
N [+human]

Lexical Relations
- Synonymy
- Antonymy
- Hyponymy
- Homophones
- Homonyms
- Polysemy
- Metonymy
- Collocations

- What is the meaning of the word conceal?

- What is the meaning of shallow?
- What is the meaning of Rose?
- By answering these questions, we are characterizing the meaning of each word, not in
terms of its component features, but in terms of its relationship to other words.
- Words can have relationships with each other:
The same as large (big) - Synonymy
The opposite of small (big) - Antonymy
A kind of animal (dog) - Hyponymy

Synonymy (sameness of meaning)

- Different lexemes which have the same meaning or denotation.
 - They are not absolute synonyms (those that could be used in all contexts), rare, almost
impossible.
- Examples: almost/nearly, big/large, broad/wide, buy/purchase, cab/taxi, car/automobile,
couch/sofa, freedom/liberty.
- They can often, though not always, be substituted for each other in sentences.
What was his answer?
What was his reply?
- The idea of “sameness” of meaning is not necessarily ‘total sameness’.
- In many occasions, one word is appropriate in a sentence, but its synonym is odd.
Sandy had only one correct answer on the test. ✓
Sandy had only one correct reply on the test. ×
Synonymy cont.
a) Different associations: politicians/statesmen (positive connotation); hide (object)/
conceal (secret); liberty (formal)/ freedom (emotionally related)
Some words may be said to differ only in their meaning, their ‘cognitive’ meaning,
remains the same.
b) Collocations: rancid occurs with bacon/butter, and addled with eggs = gone bad
Some words are collocationally restricted i.e. they occur only in conjunction with other
words.
c) Partial overlapping: mature (adjective) possible synonyms: adult, ripe; deep or profound
may be used with thought but only deep with water.
Many words are close in meaning, or their meanings overlap. A loose sense of
synonymy. This is the kind of synonymy that is exploited by the dictionary maker. Some
words are interchangeable in certain environments only.

Synonyms can differ:

a) Regional variants: fall-autumn
b) Style: die-pass away-pop off (differing in degrees od formality)
- Some sets of synonyms belong to different dialects of the language.
- For instance, the term fall used in the United States and in some western countries of
Britain where others would use autumn.
 - Words are also used in different ‘styles’ or ‘registers’
Formal vs. informal uses
My father purchased a large automobile.
My dad bought a big car.

Antonymy (oppositeness of meaning)

- Antonyms are two forms with opposite meanings.
- Examples: alive/ dead, big/small, fast/slow, happy/sad, hot/cold, long/short, male/female,
married/single, old/new, rich/ poor, true/false.
- There three types of antonyms:
a) absolute – mutually exclusive pairs of words. Negation of the first member is equal to
the meaning of the second e.g. true/false, dead/alive, odd/even
Sometimes they could be gradable by adding more.
b) gradable – something inserted between two words.
e.g. cold – tepid - warm – hot
c) relational – do not imply negatives of each other but specific relations, e.g. tie/untie
(reverse), above/below (prepositions), teacher/pupil (nouns), borrow/lend, buy/sell (diff.
end of a process)

Antonyms:
1. Gradable – opposites along a scale (e.g. big/small)
Two predicates are GRADABLE antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous
scale of values (a scale which typically varies according to the context of use).
a) Used in comparative structures
e.g. I’m bigger than you.
A pony is smaller than a horse.
b) The negative of one member of a gradable pair doesn’t necessarily imply the other.
e.g. My car isn’t old ≠ My car is new
2. Non-gradable – direct opposites (e.g. male/female, married/single, true/false)
a) Comparative structures are not normally used.
e.g. dead  *deader *more dead
 b) The negative of one member of a non-gradable pair does imply the other member.
e.g. My grandparents aren’t alive = My grandparents are dead

Hyponymy
- Hyponymy – when the meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another.
- HYPONYMY is a sense relation between predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) such
that the meaning of one predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.
- Examples: animal/dog, dog/poodle, vegetable/carrot, flower/rose.
- The meaning of red is included in the meaning of scarlet.
- Red is the superordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of red (scarlet is a kind of red).
- The concept of ‘inclusion’ involved in this relationship is the idea that if an object is a
rose, then it is necessarily a flower.
Rose is a hyponym of flower.
- The relationship of hyponymy = the concept of ‘is kind of’
e.g. “an asp is a kind of snake”
- Looking at the diagram, we can say that “horse is a hyponym of animal” or “ant is a
hyponym of insect”
animal = superordinate (= higher level)
insect = superordinate
- The 2 or more words that share the same superordinate term are co-hyponyms
Dog & horse are co-hyponyms and the superordinate term is animal.

- Not only words of ‘things’ but also words of ‘actions’

- e.g. punch, shoot, stab are co-hyponyms of the superordinate term injure.
Prototypes
- A PROTOTYPE of a predicate is an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of the
kind of object which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate. In other
words, the prototype of a predicate can be thought of as the most typical member of the
extension of a predicate.
- “The characteristic instance” of a category is known as the prototype.
- Bird: pigeon & sparrow are closer to the prototype than ostrich & penguin.
- Clothing: shirts are closer than shoes.
- Furniture: chair is closer than stool

Homophones
- Homophones – two or more words with different forms and the same pronunciation
- Examples: bare/bear, meat/meet, flour/flower, pail/pale, right/write, hole/whole,
to/too/two.

Homonyms
- Homonyms – two or more words with the same form and pronunciation that are
unrelated in meaning.
Examples:
bank (of a river)/bank (financial institution)
mole (on skin)/mole (small animal)
pupil (at school)/pupil (in the eye)
race (contest of speed)/race (ethnic group)
- A case of HOMONYMY is one of an ambiguous word whose different senses are far
apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way with respect to a
native speaker’s intuition.
- Homonyms are words that have separate histories and meanings but have accidentally
come to have exactly the same form and pronunciation.

Polysemy
 - Polysemy – two words or more with the same form and pronunciation, and with related
meanings.
- A case of POLYSEMY is one where a word has several very closely related senses. In
other words, a native speaker of the language has clear intuitions that the different senses
are related to each other in some way.
- Examples:
Head – the object on top of your body
Head – the person at the top of a company or department
Foot – of person/ of bed/ of mountain
Flight – passing through the air/ power of flying/ air journey/ unit of the Air Force/ volley
- It is possible for two terms to be distinguished via homonymy and polysemy:
Date – something we eat
Homonyms
Date – a point in time
Date is polysemous in terms of:
a) A particular day and month (on a letter)
The date on the letter was 30th of August 1962.
What’s today’s date?
b) An arranged meeting (appointment)
Let’s set a date to come over and visit. Polysemy
c) A romantic meeting (with someone we like)
I’ve got a date with Andrea tomorrow night.
d) A person (the person we like)
Can I bring my date to the party?

Metonymy
- METONYMY is a kind of non-literal language in which one entity is used to refer to
another entity that is associated with it in some way.
a) Container-contents relation
Water/bottle (e.g. He drank the whole bottle)
Can/juice
b) Whole-part relation
 Car/wheels (e.g. My wheels are parked out back) / house/roof
c) Representative-symbol relation
The president/the White House (e.g. The White House has announced…)
King/crown
- Using one of these words to refer to the other is an example of metonymy.
- Other examples include:
10 Downing Street protested…
Answering the door
Boiling a kettle
- Making sense of such expressions often depends on context, background knowledge and
inference.

Collocation
- A word or phrase which tends to occur with another word or phrase.
Hammer/nail
Table/chair
Needle/thread
Salt/pepper
Break a rule/a promise/a heart

Hyponymy
- Involves the inclusion of meaning
- Hyponymy is defined in terms of the inclusion of the sense of one item in the sense of
another.
- Words are organized in a hierarchical way
- Some words denote more general meanings, while others denote more a specific
meaning.
e.g. flower – more general and is therefore superordinate (hyperonym)
rose – specific and therefore subordinate (hyponym)
dog – general (hyperonym)
bitch, puppy – specific (hyponym)
 - Sometimes there are lexical gaps (the hyperonym is missing)
e.g. move – walk, run, fly
lexical gap – walk, run
- Co-hyponyms are derived from the hyperonym
Colour: yellow, red, blue (navy, sky, dark blue)
- Sometimes one of these hyponyms can branch into other hyponyms – IMMEDIATE
HYPONYMS are yellow, blue…
- There are certain rules when we mention hyperonyms/hyponyms (the sentence makes
sense)
a) If both the hyponym and the hyperonym are present, the sentence does not make
sense
*they keep ducks and other poultry (coordination)
b) If the general term comes first, it does not make sense either
*they keep poultry and ducks
c) If the general term is negated, the sentence does not make sense
*they fed some ducks but did not feed the poultry.

- Meronymy implies a specific kind of hyponymy (part-whole relation)

e.g. body – a homonym which refers to whole
arm and leg are therefore co-meronyms
- Metonymy implies part/whole (i.e. includes meronymy) and representative/symbol
relation or container/contained relation
e.g. king/crown – a symbol to represent a certain institution
president/White House
He drank the whole bottle (container/contained)

Homonymy (related to polysemy)

- One lexeme could have more than one meaning.
- These lexemes are called HOMONYMS
- Two subtypes of homonymy:
a) homophones – the same pronunciation but written differently, different meanings
 e.g. air-her, by-buy, reed-read…
b) homographs – the same pronunciation, written in the same way, different meanings
e.g. bank, bat, trunk
Polysemy
- Lexemes with several meanings, but these meanings should be related, usually
metaphorically
e.g. EAT – food, corrode (metal)
FOOT – a part of the body, of a mountain
LEG – a part of the body, of a table
FACE – a part of the body, of the clock
EYE – a part of the body, of an eagle

Metaphor
- METAPHORS are conceptual (mental) operations reflected in human language that
enable speakers to structure and construe abstract areas of knowledge and experience in
more concrete experiential terms.
- Abridged comparison.
- We’re talking about similarities.
- We start from something familiar to us in order to explain something which is not
familiar.
e.g. mouth of a river, arm of a chair
- objects made by human beings
e.g. cradle of civilization, the river bad
- animals
e.g. bull’s eyes – hitting the center of the target,
catwalk – modna pista

Euphemisms
- An expression used for not pleasant notions with disturbing associations related to death,
illness
e.g. die – pass away
 drug addict – substance abuser
killing of innocents – collateral damage
death penalty – capital punishment
toilet – restroom
- SLANG – is quite often the source of synonyms
e.g. expel – kick out

Semantic Fields
- A set of lexemes grouped together
- A lexical set by grouping all the words formed from the same root:
e.g. nation + al/ist/hood, etc.
- The words in a semantic field share a common semantic property.
- Border-lines between members of one semantic field are not always clear:
e.g. cup-mug-bowl, chair-armchair, bed-sofa-couch
- Most often, fields are defined by subject matter, such as:
a) body parts,
b) landforms,
c) diseases,
d) colours,
e) foods,
f) or kinship relations.
- Internally, these may be organized as a hierarchy (e.g. royalty, military ranks), as a
meronymy (e.g. body parts), as a sequence (e.g. numbers), or as a cycle (e.g. days of the
week, months of the year), as well as with no discernible order.
- The words which are part of a lexical field enter into sense or meaning relationships with
one another.
- Examples of lexical fields: parts of the face;
Forehead, brow, temples
Nose, nostrils, bridge/tip of the nose
Septum, mouth, lips
Eyes, eyebrows, eyelids, eyelashes
 Chin, cheeks,
Jaw, jowls
- Stages of life;
new-born, young adult
infant, adult
nursling, suckling, grown up person
child, kid, senior citizen
toddler, tot, mature person
preschooler, aged person
youngster, senior citizen, senior
adolescent, old {lady, man, person}
youth, sexagenarian
lad/lass, septuagenarian
preteen, octogenarian
teenager, teen nonagenarian
juvenile, minor, centenarian
- Clothing;
dress (cocktail-, strapless-, shirtwaist-), gown (evening-, ball-)
jumpsuit, suit, pantsuit, sports coat
vest, pajamas, nightgown, smoking jacket
bathrobe, tee-shirt, shirt, blouse
undershirt, turtleneck, pants/slacks, trousers
shorts, knickers, cut-offs, skorts
culottes, skirt, peddle-pushers, bloomers
underwear, panties, brassiere, girdle
- Jewelry;
Ring, earring, nose-ring, brooch
Watch, wristwatch, pocket-watch, stud
Pin, pendant, necklace, choker
Crown, tiara, bracelet, anklet
Cufflinks, stick-pin, tie-clasp, belt buckle
- Water;
forms: ice, water, steam, vapor, sleet, rain, snow, hail
bodies of water: ditch, slough, swamp, narrows, strait, inlet, bight, bayou, brine, deep,
firth, loch, tarn, well, reservoir, firth, pool, sea, ocean, lake, pond, bay, inlet, estuary,
fjord, sound, gulf, lagoon, cove, harbor
water in motion: creek, river, waves, billows, stream, rain, brook, rivulet, tributary,
spring
frozen water: ice, snow, crystal, sleet, hail, icicle, iceberg, rime, hoarfrost, glacier
gas: vapor, steam
- We have to take into account the size, shape, materials or we use prototypes: general
mental image in our brain with all important characteristics of a certain object used to
compare items we see.
mental meaning – neutral
- Lexeme
emotional meaning
- Neutral;
kuća – kućica (HYPOCORISTIC)- positive ass. – deminutive
kućerina (PERJORATIVE)- negative ass. – augmentative

Meaning of Sentences
- depends on the meaning of the words in a sentence
- Referential meaning seems to be a characteristic of sentences.
- Meaning in terms of sense appears to belong largely to words.
- It is not always a mechanical string of words or WO
- PROPOSITION – a semantic content of a sentence
- A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence
which describes some state of affairs.
- Sentences consist of:
a. PREDICATORS (denoted by the verb; participants) &
b. ARGUMENTS
Ben thinks that [Claire loves flowers.]
 - R (x, y) argument
(denotes predicate)
- THINK (Ben, (love (Claire, flowers)))

Bill wrote a letter to his mother.

WRITE (Bill, a letter, his mother), active/passive R (x, y, z)
- This is called PROPOSITIONAL content of a sentence – we can do some
transformation to get other types of sentences – truth value, whether they are T/F

- Examples:
All lions have a tail.
Every lion has a tail.
All rabbits were eating a carrot.
Every rabbit was eating a carrot.
- These sentences seem to be interchangeable. They are true under exactly the same
conditions, or SYNONYMOUS.

a) Every child was baking a sand cake.

b) All children were baking a sand cake.
- Sentence a) has one reading while sentence b) can be understood in two different ways.
- Either the children each bake their own sand cake, or they are engaged in a collective
baking of a cake.

Semantic Roles
- Instead of thinking of words as ‘containers’ of meaning, we can look at the ‘roles’ they
play.
The boy kicked the ball
- The verb describes an action (kick)
- The noun phrases describe the roles of entities, such as people & things, involved in the
action.
- We can identify a small number of semantic roles (thematic roles) for these noun phrases.
The Theory of Deep Cases
- established by Cr. Fillmore 1960 Case Grammar
- Its task is to explain the relations between arguments in a proposition.
- It is related to arguments and semantic roles.
- Semantic roles (argument)
- Main roles: agent (the doer), patient/affected, recipient/benefective (IO), instrument,
locative, etc.

Sematic Roles:
a) Agent
b) Theme
c) Instrument
d) Experiencer
e) Location
f) Source
g) Goal

The boy kicked the ball.

- Agent – the entity that performs the action (the boy)
- Theme – the entity that is involved or affected by the action (the ball)
- Theme – the entity that is simply being described.
- Although agents are typically human, they can also be non-human entities that cause
actions.
- Such as in NPs denoting
a) A natural force (the wind blew the ball away)
b) A machine (a car ran over the ball)
c) A creature (the dog caught the ball)
- The theme is typically non-human but can be human.
The dog chased the boy.
- The same physical entity can appear in two different semantic roles in a sentence
 The boy cut himself
The boy – agent
Himself – theme
Instrument
- If an agent uses another entity in order to perform an action, that other entity fills the role
of instrument.
The boy cut the rope with an old razor/ He drew the picture with a pencil.
- The NP an old razor & a pencil are being used in the semantic role of instrument.

Experiencer
- When a NP is used to represent an entity as the person who has a feeling, perception or
state, it fills the role of experiencer.
- If we see, know or enjoy something, we are not really performing an action (therefore, we
are not agents).
- We are in the role of experiencer.
The boy feels sad
Did you hear that noise?
The boy – experiencer
You – experiencer
That noise – theme

Agent vs. Experiencer

- According to Ramchand, G.C. (2011):
- Agent – a participant which the meaning of the verb specifies as doing or causing
something, possibly intentionally.
e.g. subjects of kill, eat, hit, smash, kick and watch
- Experiencer – a participant who is characterised as being aware of something.
e.g. subjects of love, like, enjoy, smell, hear

Location
- A number of other semantic roles represent where an entity is located.
 On the table
In the room
- Where an entity is fills the role of location.

Source and Goal

- Where an entity moves from is the source.
- Where an entity moves to is the goal.
We drove from Jeddah (source) to Riyadh (goal).
I transferred the money from saving (source) to checking (goal).

- All of these semantic roles are illustrated in the following examples:

Mary (experiencer) saw a fly (theme) on the wall (location).
She (agent) borrowed a magazine (theme) from George (source).
She (agent) hit the bug (theme) with a magazine (instrument).
She (agent) handed the magazine (theme) back to George (goal).
“Gee thanks”, said George (agent).
I (agent) took the pen (theme) from her (source) and gave it (theme) to him (goal).
The door (theme) is big.

Rules
1. Coordination of 2 different cases
- e.g. * Bill and the key opened the door.
≠ agent & instrumental objective
2. Hierarchical ordering
e.g. * The key opened the door by Bill.
Instrumental objective agent
* The door opened with a key by Bill. (objective, instrumental, agent)
The key opened the door. (instrumental, objective)
- If the agent is present, it goes first.

Types of Sentential Meanings

 - SENTENCE INTERPRETATION:
a) tautology
b) contradiction or anomaly
c) ambiguity
d) equivalence or paraphrases
e) entailment, presupposition

Tautology
- an assumption in a sentence which follows from the first part of the sentence.
e.g. Bill’s father is older than Bill.
- repeated use of words or phrases that have a similar meaning (saying the same things
twice is unnecessary)
- Examples:
This is a short summary of…
First priority
Necessary requirement
The reason is because…
Say it over again once more
Either it will rain tomorrow, or it will not.
To reiterate again
I ate a tuna fish sandwich.

Contradiction or anomaly
- two propositions which are logically incompatible
- to same that something “is” and “isn’t” at the same time
- e.g. *This square is round.
They amused (requires an animate object) the tulip. (inanimate)
My computer (inanimate) is looking (requires an animate agent) at me with indignation.
Colorless green ideas sleep furiously
Accidentally chase
 - In sentences above, the combination of colorless and green and accidentally and chase
are contradictory.
- In fact, the first sentence can be a good example for both a contradictory and an
anomalous expression.
- While the constituents colorless green are contradictory with each other, the
combination of the subject ideas and its predicate verb sleep is anomalous.

Ambiguity
- The gap between sentences and meaning.
- One sentence can have more than one interpretation related to a structure.
- We distinguish:
a) lexical ambiguity – homonymy
b) sentential ambiguity – structure
- Lexical ambiguity:
e.g. She could not bear children. (bear; can’t stand – have)

- Sentential ambiguity:
e.g. Ann killed the man with the axe.
He saw the girl sitting in the park.

- Word order:
e.g. red brick (colour) / brick red (a person who is red in the face)
- Pun – poetic language (game of words)
e.g. In most gardens they make the beds too soft, so the flowers are always asleep.
Beds – a piece of furniture/a place where one plows flowers

I made her duck.

- Different meanings of this sentence:
a) I cooked waterfowl for her benefit (to eat)
b) I cooked waterfowl belonging to her
c) I created the (plaster?) duck she owns
 d) I caused her to quickly lower her head or body
e) I waved my magic wand and turned her into undifferentiated waterfowl
f) At least one other meaning that’s inappropriate for gentle company.

Headlines
- Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
- Teacher Strikes Idle Kids
- Miners Refuse To Work After Death
- Juvenile Court To Try Shooting Defendant
BOOK TITLE – “How to serve man”
Equivalence or paraphrasis
- Equivalence – related to meaning of sentences which have the same proposition, but the
argument is different
e.g. He sold the computer.
The computer was sold.
- the second sentence is periphrasis of the first.
- Paraphrases – refer to structure or units, different structural distributional arguments
e.g. Dan’s discussion followed Kate’s.
Kate’s discussion precedes Dan’s.
She is a widow.
Her husband is dead.
She doesn’t have a husband.

Entailment and Presupposition

- Entailment – what logically follows from what is asserted in a sentence
e.g. They killed a fox.
The fox is dead.
- Presupposition – related to background knowledge or known facts. The speaker & the
hearer know something during the conversation
e.g. the present king of England
there is no King but a Queen.
Bob’s sister got married.
the person knows that Bob has a sister