Semantic Relations in Language

Semantic Relations

• In any language, lexemes can have semantic relationships.
• Relations can be semantic or formal and semantic.

Types of Semantic Relations

• Lexical relations
• Sentential relations
• Lexical relations, or meaning relations, describe how lexemes relate in language.
• These relations include the suffix "-onym," from the Greek for "name".

Synonymy

• Two expressions are synonymous if they have the same meaning.
• Total synonymy includes all meaning variants for two lexemes and all meaning dimensions, including descriptive, social, and expressive meaning.
• Total synonymy is difficult to find.
• Expressions with the same meaning but different regional preferences, OR expressions and their abbreviations, are examples of synonymy.
• Examples: lift & elevator, airplane & aeroplane, compact disc & CD, NP & Noun Phrase
• Partial synonymy includes many cases where two lexemes may have one or more meaning variants in common.
• Examples: hide & conceal, spectacles & glasses

Antonymy

• Two expressions are antonyms if they express two opposite extremes out of a range of possibilities.
• Adjective antonyms are formed by prefixing "un-" or its Latin-origin equivalents "in-," "im-," "ir-," or "il-".
• Examples: pleasant/unpleasant, adequate/inadequate, rational/irrational, likely/unlikely, probable/improbable, logical/illogical.
• Antonymy is not restricted to adjectives: war/peace, love/hate
• Antonymous verb pairs: love/hate or encourage/discourage.
• "All/no(thing)" is antonymous, as are pairs of adverbs: always/never, often/seldom, everywhere/nowhere.

Directional Opposition

• Two expressions are directional opposites if they express opposite cases with respect to a common axis.
• Examples: in front of/behind, top/bottom, high/low, up/down, upstairs/downstairs, uphill/downhill, rise/fall, ascend/descend, forwards/backwards, advance/retreat, before/after, past/future, since/until, yesterday/tomorrow, last/next, precede/follow

Hyponymy

• An expression A is a hyponym of an expression B, and B is a hyperonym of A.
• Hyponymy is a “kind of” relationship.
• The meaning of B is a proper part of the meaning of A.
• A is a logical subordinate of B; A entails B.
• Hyponymy is a relation between lexemes or complex expressions that results from a relation between their meanings and gives rise to a relation between their denotations.
• Examples: parrot & bird, apple & fruits, verb & word, Pepsi & beverage, car & vehicle, tree and oak, citrus and orange, music and opera, colour and blue, male and man, shape and round, toy and doll, person and self, beverage and tea, cattle and cow, sport and tennis, material and paper, condition and health, dessert and icecream, satisfaction and comfort, move and go, food and meat, cat and tiger, game and pinball, season and summer, genre and prose, thought and planning, feeling and passion, amusement and show, superhero and superman, age and oldness, religion and Islam, coffee and espresso, act and communication, activity and work, animal and bear, star and sun, message and offer, emotion and love, metal and gold, furniture and table, parent and mother, time and day, wind and breeze

Meronymy

• A part-whole relationship.
• Examples: finger & hand; seed & fruit; door & house

Summary of Relations

• Antonyms: Opposites
• Synonyms: Similar Senses
• Hyponyms: Subordinates (type of or kind of)
• Meronyms: Part-Whole relations

Sentential Relations

• Lexical relations are not sentential relations; entailment is an example of sentential relations.
• Lexical relations are sense, meaning, or semantic relations that describe how meanings and lexemes relate.
• In order to understand lexical relations, we form groups of lexemes called lexical fields.
• A lexical field contains lexemes of the same word class whose meanings have something in common. There are two types of lexical fields:
• Lexical pair
• Lexical set

Binary Antonyms

• All binary antonyms constitute lexical fields, also called a two-term semantic system, such as:
• Male & female (the gender system)
• True & false (the truth system)
• Multiple-term Semantic System: If a system has more than two items.
• Examples: Monday, Red, One

Types of Lexical Sets

• Hierarchical: arm includes hand, which includes finger and thumb.
• Sequential: numbers (one, two, three, etc.).
• Cyclical: January, February, etc.; Sunday, Monday, etc.; spring, summer, autumn, winter.

Linguistic Relations

• Formal relation (structural relation): paint & painter
• Semantic relation (sense relation): Father & mother
• Both

How to Analyze Lexical Relations

• Semantic Field Theory: Lexemes are classified according to shared and differentiating features.
• Semantic field of Death: Pass away & die
• Semantic field of animal: Pet & wild
• Semantic field of kinship: Husband & wife
• Truth-conditional Semantics analyzes lexemes by comparing sentences that include these lexemes, with a relation between propositions.
• Entailment
• Paraphrase
• Contradiction

Entailment

• If proposition A is true, proposition B must be true.
• If B is true, A is not necessarily true.
• If negation cancels the second sentence, it is entailment.

Paraphrase

• Paraphrasing is to give the same proposition in a different way and with the same meaning. There is sameness of sentence meaning.
• Paraphrase is to sentences as synonymy is to predicates.
• Two sentences (A & B) are paraphrases if A implies B and B implies A, demonstrating mutual entailment.

Ways of Showing Paraphrase

• Using synonyms
• Using Antonyms
• Changing the word order

Contradiction

• If A is true, B is false.

Summary of Lexemes

• We know the meaning of a lexeme by:
• its semantic role in language.
• its relation to a pair/set of lexemes.
• the sentential relation it produces in language.

Componential Analysis

• A tool of semantic field analysis to analyse the meaning components of lexemes.
• Words are not the smallest semantic units but are built of smaller components of meaning (semantic features) which are combined differently to form different words.
• Features are the shared semantic characteristics of words, considered universal, language specific, and part of the cognitive and perceptual system of the human mind.
• Examples include capitalizing the feature & placing it in square brackets: [±HUMAN]
• Man, woman, child, boy, girl, and crowd share the feature [+HUMAN]
• Rooster, hen, chick, and flock share the semantic feature of...
• The main distinguishing feature between "brother" and "sister" is the presence or absence of the feature [+male].
• Mother: [+parent, +female]
• Father: [+parent, -female]
• Son: [+child, -female]
• Daughter: [+child, +female]
• Uncle: [+parent's sibling, -female]
• Aunt: [+parent's sibling, +female]
• Nephew: [+sibling's child, -female]
• Niece: [+sibling's child, +female]
• Brother-in-law: [+spouse's sibling, -female]
• Sister-in-law: [+spouse's sibling, +female]
• Mother-in-law: [+spouse's parent, +female]
• Father-in-law: [+spouse's parent, -female]
• Grandmother: [+grandparent, +female]
• Grandfather: [+grandparent, -female]
• Grandson: [+grandchild, -female]
• Granddaughter: [+grandchild, +female]
• Red: [+color, +intensity high]
• Pink: [+color, -intensity high]
• Joy: [+positive, +emotion]
• Sorrow: [-positive, +emotion]
• The difference between "joy" and "sorrow" is represented by the presence or absence of the [+positive] feature.
• Chair: [+seat, +backrest]
• Stool: [+seat, -backrest]
• A lexical item P can be defined as a hyponym of Q if all the features of Q are contained in the feature specification of P.
• Lexical items P, Q, R . . . are incompatible if they share a set of features but differ from each other by one or more contrasting features.

Feature Analysis of Nouns

• There are various subclasses of nouns. These are not exclusive - can be nouns which have all features:
• count, concrete, and collective nouns: Team
• noncount/abstract/noncollective nouns: Truth
• count, concrete/noncollective: Pear
• noncount/concrete/collective: Police
• Semantic features provide a better means for analyzing nouns into subclasses.
• [±COMMON] [±ANIMATE] [±COLLECTIVE] [±COUNT] [±HUMAN] [±CONCRETE] [±MALE] [±COLLECTIVE]
• "[±ANIMATE]" usually refers to animal rather than vegetable life, with a secondary meaning of 'living'.
• Tree [-ANIMATE]
• Beef [-ANIMATE]
• Semantic analysis depends on a conception of the object.
• A university, for example, may be thought of in terms of:

1. The concept (university1)
2. The collective body of people constituting the university (university2)
3. The physical structure (university3).

• Sometimes, features don't help to distinguish nouns: Father/Man.

Feature Analysis of Verbs

• The temporal nature of the verb is referred to as “inherent aspect" or "situation aspect."
• The term "aspect" suggests inherent aspect interacts with verbal aspect (perfective/imperfective aspect).
• There are four semantic features for verbs:
• [±STATIVE] involves change [-STATIVE] or not change [+STATIVE].
• The [-STATIVE] situation requires the input of energy, whereas a [+STATIVE] situation does not.
• [±DURATIVE] goes on in time [+DURATIVE] or occurs at a moment in time [−DURATIVE].
• [±TELIC] has an endpoint or goal which is necessary for the situation.
• [±VOLUNTARY] a matter of an agent's voluntary or willful action (intentional).
• Verbs can be analyzed using the situation type framework:
• States: loves, suspects, resembles, expects, doubts
• Activities: reading, pushing the cart, daydreaming, talking with, staring at, sitting on
• Accomplishments (there is a terminal point): wrote a letter, went to the store, cooked dinner
• Accomplishments Test: if one stops V-ing, then one has not V-ed.
• If Sybil stops writing the letter, then she has not written a letter; she has simply worked on a letter.
• Achievements: reached the top of the mountain, flicked the switch on, solved the problem. They conclude as soon as they begin.
• Achievements are dynamic situations that are conceived of as occurring instantaneously. They are punctual acts or changes of state.

Problematic Issues in Semantics

• Subjective analyses and warrant careful reading and thinking
• Synonymy: there are synonyms and near synonyms
• Large & big
• Dialectal differences
• Postman & mailman
• Lift & elevator
• Different connotations:
• Skinny (negative)
• Thin (neutral)
• Slender (positive)
• Differences in sense relations or collocations:
• Hard & difficult
• It's a hard subject/It's a difficult subject
• But: It's a hard knock/It's a difficult knock???
• Contextual dimension of the word...
• A light package
• A light colour
• Low prices
• Soft cushion
• Soft voice
• Raw fruit
• Raw materials
• Raw weather
• Antonymy: there are binary and non-binary antonyms
• On & off
• Open & shut
• Dead & alive
• Old & young
• Wide & narrow
• Can we say? Very open.... Very old Very narrow Very dead More dead
• Gradable antonyms: how hot is hot?/ how cold is cold? , Loud & quiet????