English Lexicology

Meaning Relations

Week 10
Instructor: Liu Hongyong
We are going to discuss

 Words that have the “same” meaning: synon

ymy
 Words that have “opposite” meaning: antony
my
 Hierarchies of meaning:
hyponymy and meronymy
 Meaning and word combination:
collocation
Synonymy ( 同义关系 )

 Synonymy is a relationship of ‘sameness of meani

ng’ that may hold between two words.
 Synonyms ( 同义词 ) are traditionally defined as
words having different form but identical or simil
ar meaning.
 Problems with the definition

 It is possible that a polysemous word just shares

one meaning with another word. Are the two wor
ds synonyms?
There are no such
the top of thing as true
something synonymy.

freedom
head: the mental
of choice
upper part ability
of the
body
a person a headmaster 1) chief
a person who 2) boss
leads
3) leader
Problems with the definition
 Besides the denotative meaning, a word may also
have connotative meaning, stylistic meaning, and
affective meaning.

adult: [+human, +adult] formal

grown-up: [+human, +adult] Informal/colloquial

Denotative meaning is the same, but the

stylistic meaning is different. Can they be
called synonyms?
Strict (absolute) synonymy

 Linguists make a distinction between ‘strict’ or

‘absolute’ synonymy and ‘loose’ or ‘relative’
synonymy.
 Strict synonyms refer to two words which are
identical in meaning in all its aspects. They are
interchangeable in all contexts.
 Strict synonyms are very rare, and some linguists
even argue that strict synonyms do not exist.
Strict (absolute) synonymy

 Strict synonymy is uneconomical; it creates

unnecessary redundancy in a language.
 When two words are in danger of becoming strict
synonyms, one of them would either
 change its meaning, or
 fade away from the language and become an
archaic word.
 Loose (relative) synonymy

 When we speak of synonymy, we mean ‘loose’ or

‘relative’ synonymy, where we find not only a
significant overlap in meaning between two words, but
also some contexts where they cannot be used
interchangeably.
discover: be the first one to come across something
find: experience something in some way
John found/discovered the basketball in the grass.

Maria Curie discovered radium in 1898.

*Maria Curie found radium in 1898.
Differences between loose synonyms

 We often take the following things into

consideration when we try to find the differences
between synonyms.
 Different English dialects
 Different stylistic meanings
 Different connotative meanings
Synonyms from different dialects

 Some synonym pairs differ in that they belong to different

dialects of English. Here are some examples of synonyms
from British and American English:

BrE AmE BrE AmE

lift elevator farm ranch
lawyer attorney biscuit cookie
rubbish garbage pavement sidewalk
Synonyms with different
stylistic meanings
 One of a pair of synonyms may be used in a more formal
context than the other. Here are some examples of
synonym pairs.

Informal Formal Informal Formal

die decease daddy father

blame chide guy man

west occidental praise eulogy

Synonyms with different connotative
meanings

 Synonyms may have different emotive associations

(connotative meanings).

famous notorious misuse abuse

(disreputably) (of privilege or
power)
ambiguou equivocal new novel
s (deliberately) (strikingly)
hate loathe obtain procure
(with disgust) (with effort)
Source of synonyms
 Why are there so many synonyms in English?
 The primary reason for this has to do with the heavy

borrowing from other languages, especially from French

and Latin.

English French Latin

ask question interrogate
time age epoch
begin commence
buy purchase
Antonymy ( 反义关系 )

 Antonymy is a relationship of ‘meaning oppositio

n’ that may hold between two words.
 Antonyms can be defined as words which are opp
osite in meaning.
 Major types of antonyms ：
 Gradable antonyms
 Contradictory or complementary antonyms
 Converse antonyms
Gradable antonyms
 Gradable antonyms include pairs like the following:
These pairs are called gr
beautiful ugly adable antonyms becaus
expensive cheap e they do not represent a
more/less relation. The
fast slow
words can be the end-po
hot cold ints of a continuum ( 连
long short 续体 ).
rich poor Since they are gradable,
they allow comparison.
wide narrow
Contradictory (complementary) anton
yms
 Contradictory antonyms include pairs like the foll
owing:

These pairs are called

asleep awake contradictory antonyms because
dead alive they represent an either/or
on off relation.

remember forget If you permit some behavior,

win lose then it is not forbidden.
true false Since they are not gradable, they
do not allow comparison.
Converse antonyms ( 逆行 )
 The following are examples of converse antonyms ：
Lend is the converse of borrow
lend borrow and vice versa; i.e. the
husband wife substitution of one member for
above below the other does not change the
before after meaning of a sentence if it is
behind in front of accompanied by the change of
buy sell subject and object.
give receive
parent child John lent Mary five dollars.
speak listen
Mary borrowed five dollars from John.
 Contradictory antonyms
vs. Converse antonyms
Converse antonyms are relation
The bridge is above the river. al antonyms.
The river is below the bridge.
Contradictory antonyms are eith
This behavior is allowed. er/or antonym.
This behavior is not prohibited.

Mary is John’s wife. John is Mary’s husband.

? ？ Mary is not John’s husband.
I don’t forbidden you to intr
I allow you to introduce Mary. oduce Mary.
*You forbidden me to introduce Mary.
Hyponymy( 词义之间的 ) 下义关
系
 Hyponymy is the sense relationship that relates
words hierarchically. The underlying observation
is that some words have a more general meaning,
while others have a more specific meaning, while
referring to the same entity.
We are not going to have any food today.

FOOD We are not going to have any vegetables today.

MEAT VEGETABLE
 superordinate They are subordinate terms. The
y are hyponyms of the superordi
nate term FOOD.
FOOD

FRUIT MEAT VEGETABLE

They are subordinate terms. Th

y are hyponyms of the superord
BEEF PORK MUTTON
nate term MEAT.

CABBAGE CELERY SPINACH

APPLE PEACH ORANGE

Reading from the bottom of the

hierarchy, ORANGE is a ‘kind
of’ fruit, which is a kind of
Meronymy

 Metonymy ( 借喻修辞手法 )
 simile; metaphor; metonym

 Meronymy (the part-of relation)

Meronymy

 Different from the kind-of relation displayed by h

yponymy, meronymy involves part-whole relation
between words.

arm: body An arm is part of a body;

wheel: car A wheel is part of a car.
 排球队 (volleyball team)

二传 主攻 副攻 接应 自由人
Setters Outside h Middle Opposite Liberos
itters hitters hitters

排球队员 (volleyball player)

Hyponyms of ??? 【 kind-of 】

Meronyms of ??? 【 part-of 】

Collocation: a structural relation
( 搭配关系 )
 Collocation refers to a structural or syntagmatic rel
ation. It refers to meaning relations that a word has
with other words in the same sentence.

 If the noun ‘kettle’ occurs in a sentence, there is a h

igh chance that the verb ‘boil’ will also occur, e.g.

I will boil a kettle.

Is the kettle boiling now?
Collocation

 Collocation
 Grammatical collocation (e.g. fond+of, want+to, etc.)
 Meaning collocation (our focus)
 Collocation refers to a meaning relation of predic
table co-occurrence. There is a mutual expectanc
y between two collocated words. The force may b
e weak or strong. We can use corpus to identify t
he collocation patterns.
Example of collocation
(Corpus Data ）
Word: political
(from a small (90,000 word) corpus of obituary texts)
left 2 left 1 right 1 right 2
4 of 4 his 3 career 3 the
2 the 3a 2 life 3 to
3 of 2 courage 3 in
2 into 2 in
2 great
 Syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations

… of his political life in …

private

professional

A word has the sy academic A word has the

ntagmatic relation paradigmatic relation
with its neighbori … with other words
ng words. It is a k which can be used in
ind of collocation the same position in a
relation. sentence. It is a kind
of substitution
relation.