LEXICAL

RELATIONS
GROUP 6
 What are Lexical Relations?
● Lexical relations are one of the most important semantic
relations in exploring the meaning of words in English
language.
● Lexical relations describe relations among word meanings.
● The lexical relations is used to indicate any paradigmatic
relation among words. In other words, it is used to analyse
the meanings of words in terms of their relations to each
other within sentences.
 Words & Lexical Items
● A lexical item is a single word, a part of a word, or a chain of
words that forms the basic elements of a language’s lexicon.
● The lexicon is a list of the “words” more accurately, it is a
list of the things sentences are made of.
● Lexical items composed of more than one word, for instance:

● Phrasal verbs: e.g ‘’make up”, “get out”

● Polywords: e.g “by the way”, “inside out”
● Collocations: e.g “absolutely convinced”
● Idioms: e.g “it’s raining like cat and dogs”
 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
• The meaning of the word is slippery
• Native speakers might think, they know the meaning
of a word but they might have vaguest feel (unclear)
and have to use dictionary to check meaning. The
contextual effects seem to pull word meaning in two
opposite directions.
1. Collocation
(The tendency of word to occur repeatedly
together)
2. Idioms
(A group of words in a fixed order that having a
particular meanings of each word understood on its
own)
Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
Collocation
Haliday (1966), compares the collocation pattern of two
adjectives :
- Strong
- Powerful
We can use both of them as
- Strong arguments
- Powerful arguments
But when we observe this two adjectives in different
pattern :
- Strong tea
- Powerful tea (X)
And another different pattern :
- Powerful car
- Strong car (X)
 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
The collocations can go fossilization (Fossilization refers to the
process in which incorrect language becomes a habit and cannot
easily be corrected.) process until they become fixed
expressions.

Example :
We say : We don’t say :
-Hot and cold running water -Cold and hot running water
-They’re husband and wife -They’re wife and husband
-Fish and chips -Chips and fish
-Curry and rice -Rice and curry
 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
Idioms
• Fossilization also occurs in the creation of idioms,
expressions where individual words have ceased to have its
own independent meaning.
• In the expression like :
- Kith and kin
- Spick and span
Not many English speakers would be able to assign a meaning
here about kith or span.
 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
Contextual effects can also pull the word meanings in different
direction, towards creativity and semantic shift. Like for
example the word ‘Run’ can have somewhat different meanings.

there are view example of the word ‘Run’ :

• I go for a run every morning.
• The ball-player hit a home run.
• We took the new car for a run.
• He built a run for his chicken.
• The bears are here for salmon run.
 Problems with Pinning Down Word Meaning
Lexical ambiguity
If the preceding verb phrase has more than one sence, then
which ever sence can be selected in this first full verb phrase
must be kept in the same following do so clause;

For example : Klee discovered a mole.

a. Klee discovered a small borrowing mammal.
b. Klee discovered a long dormant spy.

This meaning that it depends on two different meanings of

mole.
 Homonymy and Polysemy

• Homonymy and polysemy are two similar

concepts in linguistics. Both of them refer to
words having multiple meanings.

• Homonymy refers to the unrelated senses of

the same phonological words. For instance,
meanings of homonyms can’t be guessed since
the words are unrelated.

• Polysemy refers to the coexistence that a

word/phrase has several related meanings.
 Homonymy

• Different types of homonyms can be distinguished by their

syntactic behaviors and spelling, for instance:

a. Lexemes of the same syntactic category with same spelling, e.g.

lie ‘make an untrue statement’ and lie ‘put oneself in a resting
position’.
b. Lexemes of the same syntactic category with different spelling,
e.g. ring – wring, night – knight.
c. Lexemes of the different syntactic category with same spelling,
e.g. the verb ‘fly’ and the noun ‘fly’.
d. Lexemes of the different syntactic category with different
spelling, e.g. not, knot.
 Polysemy

• Polysemy is identified using the criteria of “relatedness”

when the senses are judged to be related under the same
lexical entry, for example:

A : He injured his leg last week.

B : The chair has a broken leg.

The word “leg” here have related meaning for a part of an

object.
 Synonymy and Antonymy

• Synonymy is the notion of sameness of meaning.

According to Saeed (2014), synonyms are
different phonological words which have the same
or very similar meanings. Two words are
synonymous if the substitution of one for the
other does not change the truth value of a
sentence.

• Antonymy are words which are opposite in

meaning. Different types of relationships that
seem to involve words which are at a time related
in meaning yet incompatible or contrasting.
 Types of Synonymy

• Cognitive Synonymy
is a type of synonymy in which synonyms are so similar in meaning that
they cannot be differentiated either denotatively or connotatively that is, not
even by mental associations, connotations, emotive responses, and poetic value.
e.g. Sailor = Seaman, Buy = Purchase.

• Near Synonymy
They bring forth or give sentences with different propositional content.
They may belong to different dialects, registers, styles of language, colloquial,
formal, literary etc. or these may belong to different situations.

e.g. “Peter wasn’t murdered; he was legally executed.” Clearly, “an execution”
is legal, while “a murder” is illegal. Wife or spouse is more formal than old lady
or missus.
 Types of Antonymy

• Simple Antonyms - the negative of one implies the positive of the

other - complementary pairs or binary pairs. e.g. good/bad,
interesting/boring.

• 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. hot/cold, wet/dry.

• Taxonomy Sisters - antonym sometimes describe words which are

at the same level in taxonomy. Taxonomies are classification
systems such as, days of the week, seasons of the year, etc. as
they feature three or more items in the system.
 Types of Antonymy

• Reverses - shows reverse relation in between terms

describing movements, where one term describes movement
in one direction, and the other the same movement in the
opposite direction, e.g. push/pull, come/go, up/down, in/out,
right/left.

• Converses - describe a relation between two entities from

alternate viewpoints, e.g. own/belong to, above/ below,
employer/ employee, husband/wife.
Thank
you 