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Sense Relations






Another way of relating vocabulary items to each other is by means of the so-called sense relations. Meaning, it is argued, involves on the one hand the relation of reference to extralinguistic reality, and on the other relations of ‘sense’ to other vocabulary items. Four main sense relations have been identified: synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy and incompatibility.

Synonymy and antonymy are concerned with sameness and oppositeness of meaning respectively. So liberty and freedom are said to be synonyms, while freedom and captivity could be classed as antonyms.

However, synonymy is a rather slippery notion, since whether two words are considered to be synonyms depends to a large extent on how the notion of synonymy is defined. The most rigid definition would demand the total interchangeability of words in all contexts of use. This definition would exclude the recognition of liberty and freedom as synonyms, since one can talk about the freedom of speech but not about the liberty of speech. In fact, under this kind of definition few words in the language would have synonyms. […] If two words with approximately the same meaning occur in a language, there is a tendency to make a differentiation in usage, so that the choice between them becomes meaningful and not redundant.

But synonymy can be defined in a much looser fashion as the sameness of core or cognitive meaning. This would exclude emotive meaning, connotations and special usages from the definition. By means of such a definition many words in the vocabulary may be related to each other in terms of synonymy as Roget’s Thesaurus of English words and phrases demonstrates. Roget also operates with the notion of antonymy; the parallel columns on the page of the Thesaurus contain lists of synonyms in a relation of antonymy.

It is possible to distinguish two kinds of antonymy. One kind is illustrated by the pair of opposites tall and short. To say that somebody is not tall does not necessarily imply that they are short, and to say that somebody is not short does not necessarily mean that they are tall. These are gradable antonyms, we can say of someone: He is taller than Jim, but shorter than Alfred. The other kind of antonymy is illustrated by the pair of words buy and sell. These words are said to be converses of each other: if someone buys from someone else it implies that the latter sells to the former. Further examples of converses are: give and receive, husband and wife.

Hyponymy is a paradigmatic relation between words which refers to the inclusion of the meaning of one word in that of another. It implies a superordinate and a subordinate term. For example, the meaning of scarlet is included within the meaning of red; it is said to be a hyponym of red. The meanings of tulip, daffodil and rose are included within that of flower; they are co-hyponyms of flower. The implication of hyponymy is, perhaps, that the vocabulary of a language has a hierarchical organization, with hyponyms of hyponyms of hyponyms as the meaning of the words becomes more general and more inclusive. For example, dog isa hyponym of animal, which is a hyponym of mammal, which is a hyponym of creature. But not all the words in the vocabulary of English can be considered to be ordered in this kind of hierarchy. Many words appear to have no superordinate term in which they are included, e. g. think, colour. The relation among co-hyponyms is one of incompatibility, and this relation applies also to sets of words which have no superordinate term. The colour words, for example, are incompatible: to say that something is red isto deny that it is green, blue, yellow, etc. To say that something is a tree is to deny that it is a shrub, bush, plant, etc. Incompatibility is a relation that holds between items which have a similar meaning, or which refer in the same general area of meaning.






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