SENSE RELATIONS 2

By group 2

OPPOSITENESS AND DISSIMILARITY OF SENSE AND AMBIGUITY

INDAH HARTANTIDEWI MUSLIMAH

POETRI ARDIFAMERY PUSPITA

TRI WULANDARIFAISAL RAMANDIKAAHMAD ROMMARIS

RIZA UZROTULLAILATUL CHURIAH

INDAH MUSTIKA

Sense Relations

{oppositeness of

Meaning}

Individual predicates

{Antonymy}

Whole sentences

{contradictoriness}

Antonymy

BINARY ANTONYMS CONVERSESMultiple Incompatibles

(systems)

GRADABLE

ANTONYMY

Antonymy

The traditional view of antonymysimply ‘oppositeness of meaning’not adequate

Some words may be opposite in meaning indifferent waysSome words have no real oppositesE.g. Thick is not the opposite of thin in the same way as dead is

the opposite of alive4. basic types of antonymy (or semantic incompatibility).

BINARY ANTONYMS

BINARY ANTONYMS are predicates which come in pairs and betweenthem exhaust all the relevant possibilities. If the one predicate isapplicable, then the other cannot be, and vice versa.

Another way to view this is to say that a predicate is a binary antonym ofanother predicate if it entails the negative of the other predicate.

E.g.true and false are binary antonyms.

If a sentence is true, it cannot be false. If it is false, it cannot be true. Alternatively, if something is true, this entails that it is not false. If it is

false, this entails it is not true.

Also Called Complementarity

BINARY ANTONYMY

The natural way to pair off pairs of antonyms → is a long the same dimension

man vs woman → (along the male/female dimension)

CONVERSES

If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (orpeople) and some other predicate describes the samerelationship when the two things (or people)are mentioned inthe opposite order, then the two predicates are CONVERSESof each other.

E.g. Parent and child are converses,because X is the parent of Y (one order)describes the same situation (relationship) as Y is the child of

X (opposite order).

Semantic Fields

• Miniature semantic systems

In antonymy & converseness

The antonyms come in pairs or more between them, the members of a pair of binary antonyms fully fill the area to which they can be applied.

E.g. the sex system in Englishfemalemale

Multiple Incompatibles(systems)

a) All the terms in a given system are mutually incompatible↘e.g. a playing card cannot belong to both the hearts suit and the spades suit

b) together, the members of a system cover all the relevant area. ↘e.g. And besides hearts, clubs, diamonds, and spades there are no other suits.

There are large numbers of, open-ended systems of multiple incompatibility.

GRADABLE ANTONYMY

• Two predicates are GRADABLE antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of values (a scale which typically varies according tothe context of use).

• E.g. Hot and cold are gradable antonyms.

Between hot and cold is a continuous scale of values, which may be given names such as warm, cool, or tepid. What is called hot in one context (e.g. of oven temperatures in a recipe book) could well be classed as cold in another context (e.g. the temperatures of stars).

• Gradability test:

→ Check whether a word can combine with(very, or very much, or how? or how much?)

E.g. →How tall is he? Is acceptable→How top is that shelf? is not acceptable.

Hot warm Cool Tepid cold

contradictoriness

contradictoriness

A proposition is a CONTRADICTORY of another proposition if it is impossible for them both to be true at the same time and of the samecircumstances

The definition can naturally be extended to sentences thus: a sentence expressing one proposition is a contradictory of a sentence expressing another proposition if it is impossible for both propositions to be true at the same time and of the same circumstances.

Alternatively (and equivalently) a sentence contradicts another sentence if it entails the negation of the other sentence.

e.g. This beetle is alive is a contradictory of This beetle is dead.

The Relationship between Contradictoriness & Antonymy

(Incompatibility)

Statement AGiven two sentences, both identical except that:(a) one contains a word X where the other contains a word Y,

and (b) X is an antonym of Y (or X is incompatible with Y), then the

two sentences are contradictories of each other (i.e. contradict each other).

Does it work correctly for all the previous types?We shall not pursue the matter here!

Ambiguity

Describing and explaining ambiguities in words and insentences → is one of the goals of a semantic theory.

A word or sentence is AMBIGUOUS when it has morethan one sense. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two (ormore) paraphrases which are not them selvesparaphrases of each other.

e.g. We saw her duck is a paraphrase of We saw her lowerher head and of We saw the duck belonging to her, andthese last two sentences are not paraphrases of eachother. Therefore We saw her duck is ambiguous.

Ambiguity

1- A sentence is a particular string of words associated with oneparticular sense →a sentence cannot be ambiguous SomesemanticistsE.g. The chicken is ready to eat → represents two differentsentences

2- We adopt a usage that has been current inrecent LinguisticE.g The chicken is ready to eat →is a single ambiguous sentence

This is essentially a matter of terminology.

Defining ‘sentence

Ambiguity

In the case of words and phrases, a word or phrase isAMBIGUOUS if it has two (or more) SYNONYMS that are notthem selves synonyms of each other.

e.g. Trunk is synonymous with elephant’s proboscis and withchest, but these two are not synonyms of each other, so trunk isambiguous. Similarly coach is synonymous with trainer andwith charabanc (or bus) but these two are not synonyms ofeach other, so coach is ambiguous.

→Predicates word cannot be ambiguous, according to this definition.

Ambiguous words

(the closeness, or relatedness, of the senses of the

ambiguous words)

Homonymy

(different senses)

Polysemy

(closely relatedsenses )

HOMONYMY

A case of HOMONYMY is one of an ambiguous word whose different senses are far apart from each other and not obviously related to each other in any way with respect to a native speaker’s intuition.

Mug (drinking vessel vs gullible person)Bank (financial institution vs the side of a river or stream)

Homonymy seem very definitely to be matters of mere accident or coincidence → There is no obvious conceptual connection between the two meanings of either word

POLYSEMY

A case of POLYSEMY is one where a word has several very closelyrelated senses. → In otherwords, a native speaker of the languagehas clear intuitions that the different senses are related toeachother in some way

E,g. guard (person who guards, sentinel vs solid protective shield,e.g. Around machinery)

Explanation: Both contain the concept of protection againstdanger.

Homonymy & Polysemy

Polysemy is much more common in human language →most words have related variations in sense that depend onthe particular linguistic context in which they are used. It is nearly impossible to draw a clear line betweenhomonymy and polysemy → they occupy places along agraded continuum of meaning

homonymy polysemy vagueness

Vague Words

A vague word appears to have one basic sense (monosemy)which is nevertheless flexible enough to allow for minorvariations in meaning or use which are not particularlyentrenched in the mind of the speaker.

Homonymy

E.g.sage. we had to resort to the

Latin botanical label(cheating) → synonymy is

usually a relation between words(and phrases) in the same language.

EXAMPLE

It is not always possible to find an exactly synonymous phrase for a given word

→ yet it is possible to indicate different senses of a word by giving different environments in which the word may be used

E.g. Grasshas two senses which are

indicated by the following environments:(a) Please keep off the grass.(b) The informer grassed on his partners-in-crime.

Homonymy

In many cases, a word used in one sense belongs toone part of speech, and used in another sense, itbelongs to a different part of speech.

E.g. longIn the sense of yearn → a verbIn the sense of not short → an adjective

The Relationship Between Ambiguous Sentences & Ambiguous Words

Statement AAll sentences which containone or more ambiguouswords are ambiguous, andevery sentence whichcontains no ambiguous wordsis unambiguous.

Statement BSome sentences whichcontain ambiguous words areambiguous while others arenot, and some sentenceswhich contain no ambiguouswords are ambiguous whileothers are not.

Statement CSome sentences whichcontain ambiguous words areambiguous while some arenot, but all sentences whichcontain no ambiguous wordsare unambiguous.

Statement DAll sentences which containambiguous words areambiguous, but somesentences which contain noambiguous words are alsoambiguous while others arenot.

Sentence Ambiguity

Structurally

(Grammatically

Ambiguous )

Lexical Ambiguity

LEXICAL AMBIGUITY

Any ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a

word is a LEXICAL AMBIGUITY.

E.g. The captain corrected the list

STRUCTURALLY (or GRAMMATICALLY) AMBIGUOUS

A sentence which is ambiguous because its words relate to each other in different ways, even though none of the individual words are ambiguous, is STRUCTURALLY (or GRAMMATICALLY) AMBIGUOUS.

E.g. The chicken is ready to eata question of ‘what goes withwhat’ in a sentencecan be shown by usingconstituency diagramssquare brackets around therelevant parts of the sentence(or phrase).

e.g. The phrase old men and women is structurally ambiguous. It is synonymous with women and old men and with old men and old women. We represent these two senses with square brackets thus:(1) [old men] and women

old [men and women]The first diagram indicates that old modifies only men, and the second

Things that Must not be Confused with Ambiguity

A phrase is REFERENTIALLY VERSATILE if it can be used to referto a wide range of different things or persons.

E.g. She tall and short (adjectives)Mountain and hill (nouns)Aunt → does not have more than one sense → can be used to refer to more

than one distinct member of a kinship system.The pronoun she can be used to refer to any female person. On a given

occasion she might be used to refer to Mary, on another occasion to Lucy, etc.,but this does NOT mean that she is ambiguous, because although it is used torefer to different people this is not a matter of a difference in sense.

There is no absolute distinction or line drawn between them +interchangeable depending on the occasion

Referential vagueness is not the same thing as ambiguity