Unit 11Sense Relations:

Oppositeness and dissimilarity of sense

and ambiguity

Entry Test

• analytic/synthetic/contradiction

• synonymy/hyponymy

• paraphrase/entailment

• Synonymy is to paraphrase as hyponymy is to entailment.

Introduction

• A traditional view of antonymy is that it is simple ‘oppositeness of meaning’.

• This view is not adequate, as words may be opposite in meaning in different ways.

• We will not talk of simple oppositeness of meaning, but will define four basic types of antonymy.

Exercise

• What would you say are the opposites of the following?hot: male:thick: dead:buy: lunch:lend: liquid:

• Hot is not the opposite of cold in the same way as borrow is the opposite of lend.

Binary Antonym

• Binary antonyms are predicates which come in pairs and between them exhaust all the relevant possibilities.

• If the one predicate is applicable, then the other cannot be, and vice versa.

exercise) chalk - cheese; same - different; copper - tin; dead - alive; love - have

• Sometimes two different binary antonyms can combine in a set of predicates to produce a four-way contrast.ex) man, boy, woman, girl adult/non-adult, male/female ex) bachelor, spinster, husband, wife married/unmarried, male/female

Converse

• When two things/people can be mentioned in the opposite order, then the two predicates are converses of each other.ex) parent-child X is the parent of Y = Y is the child of X, buy-sell; below -above; love - have, conceal - reveal

Multiple incompatibility

• In binary antonymy and converseness, the antonyms come in pairs.

• incompatibility between more than two members

• In multiply incompatible system, all the terms in a give system are mutually incompatible & the members of a system cover all the relevant area.ex) season, week, cards, month

Open-ended system

• Besides hears, clubs, diamonds and spades, there are no other suits.

• color names

• plant names

• names of metals

• vehecle system

• flower system

Gradable antonym

• Two predicates are gradable antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of values.

• A good test for gradability is to see whether a word can combine with very/ very much, or how/how much.

• tall - short; clever - stupid; top - bottom; love - hate

Exercise

• Binary/Multiple/Gradable/Converse

• cat - dog (M)

• easy - difficult (G)

• good - bad (G)

• deciduous - evergreen (B)

• pass - fail (B)

• urban- rural (B/G)

Contradictory

• Antonymy is a relationship between predicates, and the corresponding relationship between sentence is contradictoriness.

• Given two sentences, both identical except that: (1) one contains X where the other contains Y, and (b) X is an antonym of Y, then the two sentences are contradictories of each other.

Exercise

• John murdered BillBill was murdered by John

• John murdered BillJohn did not kill Bill

• Mary is Ann’s parentMary is Ann’s child

• This doorhandle is brassThis doorhandle is plastic

Ambiguity

• A word or sentence is ambiguous when it has more than one sense. – A sentence is ambiguous if it has two

paraphrase which are not themselves paraphrases of each other.

– A word or phrase is ambiguous if it has two synonyms that are not themselves synonyms of each other.

• The chicken is ready to eat.

• Visiting relatives can be boring.

• The thing that bothered Bill was crouching under the table.

• The captain corrected the list.

Homonymy

• A homonymous word has some different senses which are far from each other and not obviously related to each other.

• Cases of homonymy seem very definitely to matters of mere accident or coincidence.– mug: drinking vessel vs. gullible person

Polysemy

• A polysemous word has several very closely related senses. – mouth (of a river vs. of an animal)– cup (drinking vessel vs. brassiere cup)– Earth/earth

• In practice it is impossible to draw a clear line between homonymy and polysemy.

• clear cases– tail (of a coat vs. of an animal) (P)– lip (of a jug vs. of a person) (P)– steer (to guide vs. young bull) (H)– punch (blow vs. fruit) (H)

Lexical/Structural Ambiguity

• Structural AmbiguityAny ambiguity resulting from structural relationships between words or phrases

• Lexical ambiguityAny ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word

• A phrase is referentially versatile if it can be used to refer to a wide range of different things or persons. ex) she

• referential vagueness ex) hill-mountain

Summary

• Oppositeness of meaningbinary antonymy, converseness, gradable antonymy, multiple incompatibility

• Contradictoriness

• Lexical/structural ambiguity

• Polysemy

• Referential versatility

• Referential vagueness