Semantics (2020/2021)

Sense relations (part 2)

Instructor: Dr Aseel Zibin

Synonymy

 Synonyms are different phonological words which have very similar meanings. Some
examples might be the pairs below:
 Couch/sofa boy/lad lawyer/attorney toilet/lavatory large/big
 It is very difficult to find true synonyms (those that share all components of meaning).
 For instance, some synonyms belong to different dialects, e.g. UK and US (lift vs.
elevator), or they could belong to different registers (styles of language, e.g.
colloquial, formal, literary, etc. for instance, wife or spouse is more formal than old
lady.
 Other synonyms may differ in terms of connotations. Consider the following example:

My disabled cousin vs. my crippled cousin

She is slim vs. she is skinny

He is economical vs. he is cheap

 Crippled, handicapped, and retarded have negative connotations and are no longer
used because they are considered offensive.

 Skinny implies that someone is too thin.

 Cheap, frugal, and miserly infers that someone is not generous and is very stingy
with their money.

Exercise 1: Find synonyms for the underlined words/ phrases:

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 1. I am able to speak two languages.

2. Please find attached my CV and cover letter.

3. She is in charge of many departments at work.

4. They are all interviewing for the same job.

5. We are sorry for the delay.

6. He’s free on Tuesday.

7. Don’t forget to bring your résumé to your job interview!

8. Arabic is my mother tongue.

9. She is good with computers.

10. Outside of work, he has many interests.

Antonymy

 Antonyms are words which are opposite in meaning.

 It is useful, however, to identify several different types of relationship under
antonymy.
 There are a number of relations which seem to involve words which are at the same
time related in naming yet incompatible or contrasting. Below is a list of them:

Types of antonyms:

1) Simple antonyms
 There is a relation between words such that the negative of one implies the positive of
the other. The pairs are also sometimes called complementary pairs or binary pairs.
Examples include:

Dead/alive (e.g. of animals)

Hit/miss (a target)

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  So, using these words literally, dead implies not alive, explains the semantic oddness
of sentences like:

? My cat is dead but luckily it’s still alive.

 Of course, speakers can creatively or metaphorically alter these two-term

classifications for special effects: we can speak of someone being half dead, or we
know that in horror films, the undead are not alive in the normal sense.

2) Gradable antonyms
 This is a relationship between opposites where the positive of one term does not
necessarily imply the negative of the other, e.g. rich/poor, fast/slow, young/old,
beautiful/ugly.
 This relation is typically associated with adjectives and has two major identifying
characteristics: firstly, there are usually intermediate terms so that between the
gradable antonyms hot and cold, we can find:

Hot (warm, tepid, cool) cold

 This means, of course, that something may be neither hot nor cold. Secondly, the
terms are usually relative, so a thick pencil is likely to be thinner than a thin girl. A
third characteristic is that gradable antonyms can be identified via using very, so we
can say very hot, very beautiful but we cannot say very married.

3) Reverses
 The characteristic reverse relation is between terms describing movement, where one
term describes movement in one direction and the other the same movement in the
opposite direction, e.g. push/pull.

4) Converses
 These are terms which describe a relation between two entities from alternate
viewpoints, e.g. employer/employee. Thus, if we are told that Helen is David’s
employer, we know that David is Helen’s employee.
 Again, these relations are part of a speaker’s semantic knowledge and explain why the
two sentences below are paraphrases, i.e. can be used to describe the same situation:

1) My office is above the library.

2) The library is below my office.

5) Taxonomic sisters

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  The term antonymy is sometimes used to describe words which are at the same level
in a taxonomy. Taxonomies are classification systems; we take as an example the
colour adjective in English and give a selection below:

Red orange yellow green blue purple brown

 These colours are taxonomic sisters

 We can say that the words red and blue are sister-member of the same taxonomy and
therefore incompatible with each other. Hence, one can say:

3) His car isn’t red, it’s blue.

 Some taxonomies are closed, such as days of the week; we cannot easily add another
day, without changing the whole system.
 Others can be open, such as the flavours of ice-cream old in an ice-cream parlour;
someone can always come up with a new flavour and extend the taxonomy.

Exercise 2: What is the type of antonymy in the following pairs?

temporary/permanent

monarch/subject

advance/retreat

strong/weak

buyer/seller

boot/sandal

assemble/dismantle

messy/neat

tea/coffee

clean/dirty

open/shut

present/absent