Paradigmatic Relations

Part Two
16 December 2020
 Synonymy
Terminology:

Synonymy & Near-synonymy

Synonyms & Near-synonyms

Linguistic system (in theory, no redundancies)

Cf. land vs country vs soil vs state

Compare synonymy and polysemy (see previous lecture)

Synonymy Polysemy

(similar meaning, different form) (same form, different meaning)

land vs country master1 vs master2

 Synonyms
(different form, similar meaning)
Near-synonyms always have something in common, and there is always something
that distinguishes one from the other.

a) Native vs foreign words

b) Different dialects
c) Different styles or registers
d) Different emotive meanings
e) Different collocational restrictions
Native vs foreign words

Foreign words are often but not always more formal

brotherly fraternal
buy purchase
world universe

Do they mean the same thing?

Are there any differences in style?
Are there any collocational restrictions?
Different dialects

fall autumn

Do they mean the same thing?

Is their referential meaning the same?
Is their social meaning the same?
How about their affective meaning?
Different styles or registers

a) nasty smell / an obnoxious smell / ’orible smell

b) gentleman / man / chap

c) pass away / die / pop off

Different emotive meanings

statesman politician

How different is their emotive/evaluative meaning?

How about their collocational restrictions?
Is their referential meaning the same?

Importance of context: e.g. politician

a) a person who is professionally involved in politics
b) a person who acts in a manipulative way, typically to gain advancement within an
organisation
Collocational restrictions

rancid addled sour

What is their referential meaning?

Rancid: smelling or tasting unpleasant as a result of being old and stale

Addled: rotten
Sour: spoiled because of fermentation
What is their common referential meaning?
Collocational restrictions (cont.)

rancid addled sour

Which adjective goes with which one of the nouns?

a) of foods containing fat or oil

b) of food, especially milk
c) of an egg
* rancid eggs, *addled bacon, * sour bread
Closeness and overlaps

Mature = fully developed, full grown

[mature woman, mature trees, mature reflection, mature work]
due for payment
[bill is mature]
Adult = a person who is fully grown or developed [accompanied by an adult]
a person who has reached the age of majority [18+]
Ripe = (of fruit/grain) dvl to the point of readiness for harvesting & eating
(of cheese/wine) fully matured
(of smell/flavour) rich, intense, or pungent [ripe flavours of wine]
(or female fish/insect) ready to lay eggs or spawn
Due = expected or planned for at a certain time [the baby’s due in August]
(of a payment) the installment is due, + a number of other meanings
True synonymy test

Two words are true synonyms only if they are interchangeable in all contexts,
which is almost impossible (remember the value of a linguistic sign!)

deep profound
deep sympathy or profound sympathy (both OK, so interchangeable)
deep water OK but *profound water is not (so not interchangeable)

In fact, they are interchangeable only in reference to emotions.

Check other senses of profound
Look up the words in a dictionary
Always!
Check the thesaurus
If not, clashes in TL

examples of clashes:

član is a member, but not if what is meant is an article of law

prilog is an adverb, but not if what is meant is a side dish, or

an attachment

otkup is ransom, but not if what is meant is buy-in

and hundreds of other examples in real life and on the Internet

Hyponymy

Terminology:
Hyperonym (superordinate)
Hyponym
Formula: hyponym is kind of hyperonym

vehicle ‘means of transport’

bicycle ‘means of transport with a high and narrow surface on which sb
sits, with two wheels one after another, which sb moves with legs,
used for moving on the ground’
Entailment in hyponymy

 in specific utterances the entailment is from a hyponym to a hyperonym:

I saw a boy > I saw a child
 in generic sentences, it is the other way round:
Boys are nuisance does not entail Children are nuisance.

No rules for terminology sets:

 sheep superordinate for ram, ewe, lamb
 dog superordinate for dog, bitch, puppy
 giraffe superordinate for male giraffe, female giraffe, baby giraffe
Antonymy

 (1) graded scale of comparisons

 
wide/narrow old/young big/small
graded against different norms according to the items discussed
e.g. ‘not many people were present’ (cf. football match v. meeting)
wide stripe v. wide road
small elephant v. small mouse
hot/cold but also hot/warm/cool/cold
 
marked v. unmarked terms
How high is it? (low is marked)
How wide is it? (narrow is marked)
the same member (the unmarked term) is used for nouns –
e.g. height, weight (cf. lowness, narrowness)
 (2) complementarity (two-term sets)
 
male/female
married/single
alive/dead

 if X is not a male, X is female etc.

but this is not the case with gradable antonyms X is not wide ≠ X is narrow
some are not ‘symmetrically reversible’, e.g.
more /less does not apply to brilliant / stupid
 relational opposites (‘converses’)
they make up synonymous sentences when their arguments change places, e.g.
Peter is the parent of Michael > Michael is the child of Peter.
common in areas of the vocabulary having to do with reciprocal social roles
(doctor : patient; master : servant;) and kinship relations (father/mother :
son/daughter) and temporal and spatial relations
 
 verbs: buy/sell; lend/borrow; rent/lend ; own / belong to; give / receive;
in Grammar: Passive
 nouns: husband/wife; parent/child
 adv. above/bellow; in front of / behind; north of/ south of
Taxonomic sisters

 classification systems, such as colour adjectives

e.g. red and blue are sister-members of the same taxonomy and therefore
incompatible, e.g. His car isn’t red, it’s blue.
Meronymy

 part-whole relationship between lexical items

X is part of Y, or Y has X
 
finger meronym (or partonym) and hand holonym
nail is a meronym of finger, and finger of hand (transitive)
 
pane is a meronym of window and window of room, but pane is not a
meronym of room, we cannot say A room has a pane.