Sunteți pe pagina 1din 18

Week 3 Lexical semantics and word meaning

Lexical relations (antonymy, polysemy, meronymy, synonymy)

Traditional aims of lexical semantics: a structuralist approach


To represent the meaning of each word in the language To show how the meanings of words in a language are interrelated

Words (orthographic words)


Lexemes (semantic words)

Troubles with words

Word-a minimum free form, a smallest unit of speech although many forms lie on the borderline between bound forms and words A lexical entry (lemma) can contain several lexemes or senses

Collocation- tendency of words to occur together repeatedly


Collocations undergo a fossilization of meaning until they become idioms p.60

Homonymy- unrelated senses

Homonyms are morphologically unrelated senses of the same phonological/orthographic word (same pronunciation/spelling): a. homographs (same spelling eg. saw (n), saw (verb, past tense) and b. homophones (same pronunciation eg. no, know, rose (n), rose (verb, past tense))

Homomorphs (same morphological form but different syntactic function (eg. fast (Adj), fast (Adv))

Polysemy-related senses Synonymy-similar senses


Polysemy- multiple senses of the same phonological word Polysemous senses are listed under the same lexical entry p.64 Synonymy- different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings True synonyms are rare, there are mostly near synonyms

Synonyms can have different connotations and can belong to different registers (styles of language that belong to different situations) eg. die, kick the bucket

Antonymy-opposites

Words which are opposite in meaning


Simple antonyms (binary pairs): the positive of one implies the negative of the other (eg. pass/fail, dead/alive, hit/miss) Gradable antonyms (two major identifying characteristics with intermediate terms in between) (eg. hot, (warm, tepid, cool) cold Reverses (antonyms between terms describing movement in opposite direction)- (eg. up/down, go/return, right/left

Converses (terms which describe a relation between two entities from alternate viewpoints) eg. own/belong to, employer/employee)- part of the speakers semantic knowledge that can be arrived at through paraphrasing Taxonomy- classification system (eg. Monday-Sunday, numbers, colors etc.)

Hyponymy (relation of inclusion)

A hyponym includes the meaning of a more general word (eg. dog, cat hyponyms of animal) Also, male-female, adult-young relationships

Meronymy (part-whole relationship)

Reflects hierarchical relationships (x is a meronym of y if x has y)


(y) Book- cover, page, jacket (x)

Car- wheel, engine, door, window


Member-collection relationship (eg. ship, fleet; tree, forest; bird, flock

Portion-mass relationship (eg. drop of liquid, grain of salt, lump of coal)

Extensions of meaning-literal and non-literal meaning

Literal meaning- neutral, fairly accurate way

Non-literal (figurative) meaningdeliberately talking in untrue or impossible terms in order to achieve special effects

Figurative use of language

Metaphor (personification, proverbs)- is based on resemblance, irony,

Metonymy (based on contiguity, association),


Hyperbole (overstatement), Litotes (understatement) eg. I couldnt disagree less, That was no big deal.

Metaphor

Transferred meaning, not merely decorative features but an essential component of our cognition Metaphors involve:

a. source domain (usually concrete and familiar),


b. target domain (abstract, less structured) and c. a set of mapping relations or correspondences (epistemic and ontological) The meaning of a word constructs a semantic field (core-periphery) The semantic field of a word is the set of sememes (distinct meanings) expressed by the word. For example, the semantic field of "dog" includes "canine" and "to trail persistently" (also, to hound). Examples: anger is heat or fluid in container, more is up less is down, linear scales are paths p.207-209 (Cruse)

Metonymy (responsible for regular polysemy)

Relies on an (actual, literal) association between two components within a single domain

Strategy of reference

Patterns of metonymy

a. b.

1. Container for the contained The kettles boiling. Room 44 wants a bottle of champagne. The car in front decided to turn right.

c.

2. Possessor for Possessed/Attribute Where are you parked? Shares fall 10% after Enron.

a. b.

3. Represented entity for Representative


England won the World Cup in 1966. The government will announce new measures.

a. b.

a.

4. Whole for Part (Synecdoche) I am going to fill up the car with gas. Do you need to use the bathroom?

b.

5. Part for Whole (Synecdoche) a. The are too many mouths to feed.

b. I noticed several new faces tonight.

6. Place for institution (Synecdoche) The White House announced. The Kremlin said..

a. b.

S-ar putea să vă placă și