R. Albu, Semantics.

Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

Sense Relations
A basic postulate in semantics is that linguistic meaning is a relation. Word meanings can be defined
by relating them to their referent or to each other.
The REFERENCE of a word/an expression is its direct relation with the extra-linguistic world.
When we say that an expression refers to something, we mean that it picks out an actual or imagined
entity or state of affairs from the world. The same expression may have different reference in different
contexts and at different times, e.g., the president, my neighbour, now, Anns boyfriend...
The SENSE of a word/an expression is its place in a system of semantic relations with
other words/expressions in the language. We say a horse is a mammal; a couch is a sofa; scarlet is a
kind of red; Venus is a planet; weak can be related both to coffee and to a human person.
For discussion:
1. Discuss with your teacher the reference of the following expressions: morning star, evening star,
planet Venus. Here are their respective senses: Venus is the planet second in order from the Sun and
nearest to the Earth; morning star is a bright planet seen in the eastern sky when the sun rises; and
evening star is a bright planet seen in the western sky when the Sun sets.
2. Discuss with your teacher: weak coffee vs. strong coffee; black coffee vs. white coffee.
Note: Apart from reference and sense, semantic terminology also operates with such notions as:
extension (= the class of actual or imagined objects or states of affairs an expression may be used to refer to
Meyer 2005: 147)
intension (= those properties which define an expression, its mental content independent of context. It may
roughly be equated to sense. Meyer 2005: 147)
denotation (a. reference b. extension c. sense/intension d. both intension and extension. The denotation of an
expression is its context-independent, objective basic meaning, also called descriptive meaning and contrasts with
connotation. Meyer 2005: 147-8)
connotation (= the variable, subjective, often emotive part of the meaning of an expression. Meyer provides the
following example: night denotation: the dark part of each 24-hour period, when the sun cannot be seen;
connotation: lonely, uncanny, romantic...)

Sense relations are of two kinds: paradigmatic relations and syntagmatic relations. The
former are relations between substitutable members of the same part of speech; the latter are relations
between expressions of typically (but not necessarily) different parts of speech that can be put together
in grammatically well-formed constructions.
The linguistic relational framework is structured along two axes, the syntagmatic and the
paradigmatic. On the paradigmatic axis the language elements are mutually exclusive within one and
the same linguistic sequence. At the same time they can be potentially substituted for each other. The
relation can be described in "either ... or" terms. (Martinet calls it 'opposition'. Lyons speaks of
substitutional relations. Meyer speaks of exchangeability.) This kind of relation is not directly
observable within a language chain. In the following examples the words separated by slashes are in a
paradigmatic relation. They cannot normally co-occur since they occupy the same slot in a language
sequence (phrase or clause). She was very sad/unhappy/happy. I almost/nearly fell over. I had
coffee/tea/juice for breakfast. See you on Sunday/ Monday/ Tuesday/... If one item has been chosen, the
other one(s) has (have) been left aside. The language elements situated on the syntagmatic axis are in a
"both ... and" relationship, i.e. they co-exist within the same language sequence (phrase or clause). These
relations are directly observable in the spoken or written chain. (Martinet speaks of 'contrast'. Meyer
speaks of the linear combinability of expressions. We sometimes say that the two items collocate.)
I. PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS
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R. Albu, Semantics. Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

NON-HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS
1. (Quasi)Identity: Synonyms and Paraphrases
Synonymy is the first sense relation that people notice. Synonymy means sameness of meaning.
Does he wear a turban, a fez or a hat?
Does he sleep on a mattress, a bed or a mat, or a cot,
The Akond of Swat?
Can he write a letter concisely clear,
Without a speck or a smudge or smear or blot,
The Akond of Swat?
Edward Lear, "The Akond of Swat"

There are not only words that sound the same but have different meanings (homonyms); there are also
words that sound different but have the same or nearly the same meaning. Such words are called
synonyms. There are dictionaries of synonyms that contain hundreds of entries, such as:
pedigree/ancestry/genealogy/descent/lineage
impulse/incentive/stimulus/spur
accompany/escort/convoy/conduct/attend/chaperone/see/show
prattle/babble/tattle/jabber/prate/run off at the mouth
It has been said that there are no perfect synonyms, that is, no two words have exactly the same
meaning. Still, the following pairs of sentences have very similar meaning:
(a) He's sitting on the sofa. / He's sitting on the couch.
(b) I'll be happy to come. / I'll be glad to come.
(c) Tale and tail are homonyms. / Tale and tail are homophones.
Some individuals may use sofa instead of couch and furniture specialists may even distinguish between
the two, but if they know the two words, they will understand both sentences and interpret them to
mean the same thing. The degree of semantic similarity between words depends to a great extent on the
number of semantic properties they share. Sofa and couch refer to the same type of object and share
most, if not all, of their semantic properties. Similarly, although glad and happy are not absolute
synonyms, the overall message of the two sentences in (b) is practically the same. Finally, in (c) the
word homophone appears as a synonym for the word homonym. (Cf. the paragraphs on homonymy
above.)
Synonyms distinguished by level of formality (often reflecting origin)
Informal (Germanic, monosyllabic)

Formal (Latinate, polysyllabic)

buy

purchase

ask

request

mad

insane

Synonyms that represent the same concept and can be used interchangeably can be called real
synonyms, whereas those that represent the same concept but are used differently (different levels of
formality, different geographic distribution, different temporal distribution) can be called quasisynonyms.
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Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

For discussion:

Discuss the levels of formality (stylistic-functional differences) in the case of: die, decease, pass away,
kick the bucket
Compare Twinkle, twinkle, little star... and Scintillate, scintillate, minuscule asteroid!
Note the regional distribution of such lexemes as pavement sidewalk, drapes curtains... Add
examples of your own.

There are words with many semantic properties in common which are neither synonyms nor near
synonyms. Man and boy both refer to male humans; the meaning of boy includes the additional
semantic property of "youth", whereby it differs from the meaning of man. Thus the semantic system of
English permits you to say A sofa is a couch or A couch is a sofa but not A man is a boy or A boy is a
man, except when you want to describe boylike qualities of the man and "manlike" qualities of the
boy.
Notes:
1) We have already discussed polysemy. We know that a word may have several closely related but slightly

different meanings. Such a word is said to be polysemous. It is not unusual for a polysemous word to share one
of its meanings with another word, a kind of partial synonymy. For example, mature and ripe are polysemous
words which are synonyms when applied to fruit, but not when applied to animals. Deep and profound are
another such pair. Both may apply to thought, but only deep applies to water.
2) Many synonymic series have a central word, the dominant synonym, characterized by. 1. high-frequency of
usage; 2. broad combinability; 3. broad general meaning; 4. lack of connotation.
E.g. to produce to create to fabricate to make to manufacture.
3) Sometimes words that are ordinarily opposites can mean the same thing in certain contexts; thus a good scare
is the same as a bad scare. Similarly a word with a positive meaning in one form, such as the adj. perfect, when
used adverbially, undergoes a weakening effect, so that a perfectly good bicycle" is neither perfect nor always
good. "Perfectly good" is closer to "adequate".

When synonyms occur in otherwise identical sentences, the sentences will be paraphrases. Sentences
are paraphrases if they have the same meaning (except for possibly minor differences in emphasis).
Thus the use of synonyms may create lexical paraphrase, just as the use of homonyms may create
lexical ambiguity.
Sentences may also be paraphrases because of the structural differences that are not essential to their
meanings, e.g.,
The girl kissed the boy. / The boy was kissed by the girl.
Although there may be a difference in emphasis in these two sentences (in the second the emphasis is on
what happened to the boy, whereas in the first the emphasis is on what the girl did), the meaning
relations between the verb kiss and the two noun phrases are the same in both cases, and on this basis
the two sentences are paraphrases of each other.
2. Oppositional relations
The most important non-hierarchical relations are the oppositional relations, e.g., systematic vs.
unsystematic.
A general notion is that of incompatibility, i.e., the exclusion of one meaning from another; it is the
primary semantic relationship on the paradigmatic axis.
Distinction should be made between:
A. Incompatibility (which implies a close semantic link), e.g. silly vs. clever, intelligent
B. Non-identity (no link), e.g., wise, well-clad, red.
Within the wider concept of incompatibility there is the concept of oppositeness of meaning.
Traditional semantics calls it antonymy, and further subdivides it into complementarity, antonymy
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Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

proper (gradability), reversibility. A fourth type, converseness, superficially looks like a case of
antonymy, but it is essentially different from the other three. (See below.)
As a rule, man is a fool;
When it's hot, he wants it cool;
When it's cool, he wants it hot;
Always wanting what is not.
Anonymous
The meaning of a word may be partially defined by saying what it is not. Male means not female. Dead
means not alive. Words that are opposite in meaning are often called antonyms. Ironically, the basic
property of two words that are antonyms is that they share all but one semantic property. Beautiful and
tall are not antonyms; beautiful and ugly, or tall and short are. The property they do not share is
present in one and absent in the other.
There are several kinds of opposites:
Complementary pairs (also called binary pairs or simple antonyms):
alive/dead present/absent awake/asleep
They are complementary in that not alive = dead and not dead = alive, and so on, that is, they do not
allow for gradations between the extreme poles of a semantic axis. They are in a contradictory
contrast.
Gradable pairs of opposites (gradable antonyms):
big/small hot/cold fast/slow happy/sad
With gradable pairs the negative of one word is not synonymous with the other. They are said to be in a
polar contrast. (This type of oppositeness is also called polar antonymy, i.e., antonymy in the
narrowest sense.) For example, someone who is not happy is not necessarily sad. It is also true of
gradable antonyms that more of one is less of another. More bigness is less smallness; wider is less
narrow, and taller is less short.
Another characteristic of many pairs of gradable antonyms is that one is marked and the other is
unmarked. The unmarked member is the one used in questions of degree. We ask, "How high is it?"
(not: "How low is it?") How old are you, "How tall is she?" We answer "One thousand feet high", I
am twenty (years old) or "Five feet tall" but never "Five feet short", except humourously. High, old
and tall are the unmarked members of high/low, old/young and tall/short.
For discussion:
Sometimes one lexical item can be found at one end of two different scales. Discuss old, thin and short in this
perspective

Notice that the meaning of these adjectives and other similar ones is relative. The words themselves
provide no information about size. Because of our knowledge of the language, as well as of things in
the world, this relativity normally causes no confusion. Thus we know that a "small elephant" is much
bigger than a "large mouse".
Relational opposites (converses):
give/receive buy/sell teacher/pupil above/below
Such opposites display symmetry in their meaning. They actually represent the same event/relation
from contrasting perspectives. If X gives Y to Z, then Z receives Y from X. If X is Y's teacher, then Y
is X's pupil. (Notice the paraphrases, i.e. the synonymous sentences.) Pairs of words ending in -er and
-ee are usually relational opposites. If Mary is Bill's employer, then Bill is Mary's employee. Other
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R. Albu, Semantics. Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

pairs: buy/sell, husband/wife.

Note: To complicate things, we can discuss offer/accept, offer/refuse, accept/refuse. In the first two
cases one can speak of converseness; the third is a case of complete contradiction, i.e.,
complementarity. Notice also that, of the two pairs brother/sister and husband/wife, only the second
pair is of the relational type, for husband presupposes wife.
Comparative forms of gradable pairs of adjectives often form relational pairs. Thus, if Sally is taller
than Alfred, then Alfred is shorter than Sally. If a Cadillac is more expensive than a Ford, then a Ford is
cheaper than a Cadillac.
Note: If meanings of words were indissoluble wholes, there would be no way to make the interpretations that we
do. We know that big and red are not opposites because they have too few semantic properties in common. They
are both adjectives, but big is the semantic class involving size, whereas red is a colour. On the other hand,
buy/sell are relational opposites because both contain the semantic property "transfer of goods or services", and
they differ only in one property, "direction of transfer".

Reverses (directional opposites):

push/pull, up/down, come/go, inflate/deflate
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 () for
example, push/pull, come/go, go/return, ascend/descend, up/down, left/right. The kind of contrast
existing between such pairs as come and go is called directional opposition. By extension the term
may be applied to any process that can be reversed; inflate/deflate, expand/contract fill/empty,
knit/unravel, marriage/divorce, learn/forget..
Notes:
1. In English one way of forming antonyms is by adding negative prefixes:
un: likely/unlikely able/unable fortunate/unfortunate
non: entity/nonentity conformist/nonconformist
in: tolerant/intolerant discreet/indiscreet decent/indecent
il-: illegal
im-: immoral, impossible
mis-: misbehave
dis-: displease
For discussion: What happens if the negative suffix -less is added, e.g., tooth+less=toothless?
2. Some words have two antonyms, e.g. both young (of animates) and new (of inanimates) are antonyms of old;
bitter and sour are antonyms of sweet: thick and fat are antonyms of thin, earth and hell are antonyms of
heaven. Some other words may be placed in multiple antonymic relations:
Democrat; Communist
depth: height
Democrat: Capitalist
depth: surface
Democrat; Republican
depth: shallowness
(The particular meaning of these words depends on the particular antonymic relation in which the speaker - tacitly
or arbitrarily - places it. Similarly, the word coloured can be placed either in antonymic relation with white or be
treated as an archilexeme of the colour series. These multiple relations yield another type of polysemy.)

Because we know the semantic properties of words, we know when two words are antonyms,
synonyms, or homonyms, or are unrelated in meaning.
Multiple incompatibles (or antonymic groups)
Sometimes incompatibility involves more than two words/expressions, which together form sets of
terms, such as the set of the days of the week, the set of basic colour terms, the points of the compass,
Logically, they are contraries (if it is Monday it cannot be Tuesday etc.), but, unlike polar antonyms,
they are not related to scales and they are not placed at opposite extremes. They are just members of a
set and often have a common hyperonym. (See below.)
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R. Albu, Semantics. Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

HIERARCHICAL RELATIONS
Hierarchical relations are of two kinds:
generic, i.e., concept A encompasses and is broader than concept B = Inclusion (Hyponymy)
partitive, i.e., concept A is the whole and concept B (one of ) the parts = Meronymy
Inclusion (Hyperonymy/Hyponymy)
The relation of inclusion is between a hyperonym, e.g. pig, and a hyponym, e.g. boar or sow. Pig, in
its turn, is a hyponym of animal. So, X will be said to be a hyponym of Y (and, by the same token, Y
a superordinate or hyperonym of X) if A is f(X) entails but it is not entailed by A is f(Y):
This is a DOG. => (unilaterally entails) This is an ANIMAL.
Lower terms entail higher terms, so that the relationship between dog and animal can be expressed
with the proposition: All dogs are animals. However, as animal is a superordinate of dog, the reverse
proposition does not hold.
Other examples:
This is a STALLION. =>
This is a HORSE.
This is a SCARLET flower. =>
This is a RED flower.
He is a man who MURDERED someone. => He is a man who KILLED someone.
Hyponymy is a vertical relation in a taxonomy, e.g.,
CANINE
WOLF

DOG
POODLE

GIANT

TOY

FOX

(others).

SPANIEL
(others)

COCKER

(others)
SPRINGER

(others0

Meronymy (Gk> meron = part)

The part-whole relation between nouns is also considered a semantic relation. A meronym denotes a
constituent part of, or a member of, something, e.g. frame, fork, wheel, pedal, saddle are meronyms
of bycycle. The superordinate concept, e.g., bicycle, is a holonym.
Home assignment: Make a list with (some of) the parts of a car and their Romanian equivalents. You
may choose to indicate both the British and the American terms.
Notes (optional):
1) Winston extends the notion of meronymy to part-whole-like relations and differentiates six types of
meronyms:
- component-object: branch-tree
- member-collection: tree-forest
- portion-mass: slice-cake
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- stuff-object: aluminum-plane
- feature-activity: paying-shopping
- place-area: Dallas-Texas
(apud Sanda Harabagiu, in EUROLAN'99)
2) The uses of the term paronymy are confusing. For example, boar and sow are paronyms (according to S.
Hervey) or co-hyponyms (according to J. Lyons, apud PILCH in EAS: 293) in respect of their common
hyperonym pig. Likewise, dog, cat, horse, pig are different paronyms of animal. According to D.A.Cruse
(Lexical Semantics, CUP, 1986: 130), paronymy is "the relationship between one word and another belonging to
a different syntactic category and produced from the first by some process of derivation". The derivationally
primitive item is called the base, and the derived form the paronym. Examples: length/lengthen, wide/widen,
deep/deepen, inflate/inflator, cook/cooker, beat/beater. Zero-derived paronyms: hammer (n)/hammer (v); saw
(n)/saw (v). Dictionary definition : A word having the same root (like wise and wisdom) or having the same sound
as another; cognate. Cf. the Romanian meaning! Conclusion: it is safer to avoid the term...

II. SYNTAGMATIC RELATIONS

S-V heart-beat eye-see, mouth-eat/speak)
V-O smoke-cigarette/cigar; eat-(names of food), drink-tea
V-I cut-knife, write-pencil
Adj.-N: dark-night
(Affinity: Ioana se marita. Ion se insoara. Selection: ride a horse, fly a plane; Implication: aquiline implies
nose.)
Syntagmatic sense relations:
Philonyms, e.g., John drinks tea. (They go together normally.) normal combination
Tautonyms, e.g., My male uncle... John drinks liquids. John kicked the ball with his foot. (No new
information = pleonasm) pleonastic combination
Xenonyms, e.g., John drinks morphemes. (= Semantic clash) / dissonantic combination
Cf. We fell upwards. (Superordinate: move. We moved upwards - philonyms.)
In case of incongruity there is no superordinate of either synonym which can restore normality (except,
perhaps, the highest level of generality, e.g., thing, entity)

Rules:
1. Selectional restrictions are rules that account for the acceptability of an utterance in terms of
semantic environment. They are also called co-occurrence restrictions. A violation of the selectional
restrictions of a word results in anomaly: in the mountain eats sincerity both restrictions are
violated, rendering the sentence anomalous. Selectional restrictions are rules that relate syntax to
semantics, but they are also a matter of knowledge of things the world.
Selectional restriction rules can be violated in more than one way. Discuss:
*Water is in love with my friend.
*The girl assembles.
*Happiness is green.
*The boys drank the cake.
*The flatworm got divorced. (PALMER 139)
2. Collocational rules are co-occurrence preferences, e.g., a high mountain, but a tall man.(Cf. *a
tall mountain.) Similarly, we can say a practical joke (not anecdote), of practical importance (not
greatness)
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R. Albu, Semantics. Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

Violation of 1. and 2. leads to (1) incongruity and (2) inappropriateness, respectively.

For discussion:
My neighbour/ geraniums died.
My neighbour kicked the bucket/ passed away.
?My geraniums kicked the bucket/ passed away.
*My letters kicked the bucket.
Subtypes and Examples of Lexical Collocations:
Type 1 Pattern: verb+noun, e.g., make an impression, break a code
Type 2 Pattern: adjective + noun, e.g., strong tea
Type 3 Pattern: noun+verb naming an action, e.g., bees buzz, bomb explodes
Type 4 Pattern: noun1 of noun2, e.g., a bouquet of flowers, a pack of dogs
Type 5 Pattern: adverb+adjective, e.g., strictly accurate, sound asleep
Type 6 Pattern: verb+adverb, e.g., appreciate sincerely, argue heatedly
Type 7 Pattern: noun+noun, e.g., company uniform, dress code
Notes on selectional restrictions:
Chomsky (1965) treated them as conditions for syntactic co-occurrence.
Katz and Fodor (1963) treated them as co-occurrence conditions defined on syntactic units such as
nouns and verbs.
Weinreich (1966) speaks of contextual redundancy rules, e.g., own as a predicate requires [+PERSON]
in the initial argument governed by that predicate.
Conclusive note:
Saussure stated the necessity of studying sense relations systematically and supported this desideratum by two
statements:
(1) A network of associative fields covers the whole language and thus structures the apparently amorphous mass
of words (Idea: the systematic nature of language at this level too)
(2) Each word is the centre of a constellation or of a series of constellations. Thus associative fields or families
are formed.

III. FINAL NOTE ON LEXICAL FIELDS

Semantic theories of different orientations (in particular structuralist approaches) have made use of the
notion of a lexical field. A lexical field is a group of lexemes that fulfils the following conditions:
the lexemes are of the same word class;
their meanings have something in common;
they are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations;
the group is complete in terms of the relevant meaning relations. (Lbner 2002: 94)
Small fields:
-of two/three terms, e.g.,

boy-girl (-child) the field of general terms for children

woman-man-adult
stallion-mare-horse
-of four/five/six terms, e.g., man-woman-(adult)-boy-girl-(child) the field of general person (or
human race) terms;
-above-below-in front of-behind-right of-left of six prepositional expressions that form a field of three
opposite pairs that are orthogonal to each other.
Note:
Notice that he names for the seven days of the week are interrelated by a cyclic order, hence the logic of
statements such as If today is Tuesday, tomorrow is Wednesday.

Lexical fields of considerable sizes form taxonomies (of a generic type: X is a Y), e.g., terms for
animals, plants, food or artefacts such as furniture, vehicles, clothes, musical instruments etc.
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R. Albu, Semantics. Part One: Lexical Semantics

Lectures 2-3: Sense relations

Meronymies can also be treated as instances of lexical fields (of a partitive type: X has a Y).
Home Assignment. Choose 1 or 2:
1. a. Use a monolingual dictionary to determine the meaning differences between the quasi synonyms of
English road: street, alley, motorway, lane, country road, avenue, artery, boulevard, highway,
throughway, turnpike.... Identify possible hierarchical relations between some of them.
b.. Identify the quasi synonyms of the Romanian word drum and their specific uses.
c. Discuss the similarities and differences between the ways English and Romanian organize the terms
related to EN road and RO drum, respectively.
2. Study the taxonomy of musical instruments. Focus on one subcategory (branch), e.g., percussion
instruments. Compare the Romanian and the English classifications and establish the equivalence
between terms.

(Final note for the teacher to discuss if there is some time left:
Fuzziness in conceptual categories and word senses
(1) Which is (still) a cup? (Draw a cup, please.)
(2) Boots... and boots
Salience in conceptual domains
(A conceptual domain = any coherent area of conceptualisation, such as meals, space, smell, colour,
articles of dress, the human body, the rules of football etc. etc.)
Animal, canine or dog? (Which of them is the most salient, i.e., used most often?) =>
A basic level term is a word which, amongst several other possibilities, is used most readily to refer to a
given phenomenon.
Folk classifications of conceptual domains:
Levels
Conceptual domains
general level
plant
animal
garment
vehicle
basic level
tree
dog
trousers
car
specific level
oak tree
labrador
jeans
sports car

fruit
apple
Granny Smith