SEMANTIC

What is lexical semantics?

Lexical semantics deals with a language's lexicon, or the collection of words in a language. It is concerned with individual words (unlike compositional semantics, which is concerned with meanings of sentences.) 

Of the many ways that lexical semantics can be studied, we'll look in general terms at the meaning relationships that word meanings have with one another and the semantic features that help to differentiate similar words. Lexical semantics focuses on meanings in isolation, that is, without attention to their contribution to reference or truth conditions.

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Meaning Relationships

There are many ways for two words to be related. We've already seen a number of ways:

• morphologically related: lift/lifted which both share the same stem
• syntactically related - write/paint both verbs
• phonologically related - night/knight, which share the same pronunciation.

Another way two words can be related is semantically. For instance, the word pot is intuitively more closely related semantically to the word pan than it is so the word floor. The reason, clearly, is that both pot and pan have meanings that involved the act of cooking, while floor does not in any obvious way.

What kinds of semantic relationships are there?

a. homonyms 

Homonyms, also called homophones (meaning "same sound") are pairs of words that have different meanings with identical sounds. For example:

fair/fare

pair/pare

boar/bore

capitol/capital

to/too/two

Homonyms are words that have different histories, called a word's etymology, and probably had different pronunciations back in history. For example, the words fair and fare are pronounced identically today but have completely different origins:

fair	gloss: visually beautiful, become clear and sunny, other meanings from: ME fair, fager from OE faeger "clear"
fare	gloss: "a transportation charge, food and drink, others from: ME faren "to travel, go" from OE faran

(ME = Middle English, a period from about 1066 to the 1400s)
(OE = Old English, from AD 400 to 1066) 

Here's another example:

pair	gloss: two corresponding things designed for use together from: ME paire from OF from Latin paria "equal things"
pare	gloss: to trim off an outside, excess, or irregular part of from: ME from MF parer "to prepare or trim" from Latin parare "to prepare"

(MF = Middle French, from approx. 1400 - 1611)
(OF = Old French, from approx. AD 842 - 1400)

By the way, the etymologies of words also help to explain spelling. For example, the silent letters k and e in the word knife were pronounced at one point in history but were lost over time. We'll look at historical linguistics in an upcoming module.

B. hyponyms

We can say that word X is a hyponym of word Y if in all possible scenarios, X's set is always contained in (is always a subject of) Y's set. Koa, oak, and cedar as well as wood are hyponyms of tree.

Consider the words poodle and dog. Suppose that the current set of poodles includes Princess. The current set of dogs will then include at least this dog and possible others as well (such as Buttercup the Rottweiler and Killer the Chihuahua.) Dog is a hyponym of animal; poodle is a hyponym of dog.

animal dog poodle Princess

C. synonyms

Two words are synonymous is they have similar meaning and are often used interchangeably. But look a little closer at common synonyms, and you'll realize that the two words aren't always 100% the same and interchangeable.

100% same	quick/rapid, sick/ill, couch/sofa
regional	tap/faucet/spigot, skillet/pan, hot cakes/pancakes, soda/pop
formality	pass away/die/pop off
emotion/political	freedom fighter/guerrilla/terrorist
legal	kill/manslaughter/murder

D. antonyms

Two words are antonymous if their meaning is opposite. There are several ways a pair of words can be opposites. 

• Contradictory pairs are words that are nearly complete opposites -- everything is one or the other:

married/unmarried

visible/invisible

alive/dead

over/under

• Scalar antonyms or gradable pairs are words that are not completely polar opposites because each word has no endpoint and can very from one person to another (so, for example, hot can mean one thing to one person and something else to another person):

hot/cold

good/bad

strong/weak

happy/sad

short/tall

E. ambiguous

Words that have double meanings are ambiguous. Many words have more than one meaning such as bank (of a river, a financial institution) and glasses (eyeglasses, sunglasses, drinking glasses.) Notice the many meanings of the word trunk in this cartoon

F. anomalous

Anomalies are nonsensical words and phrases: His cheeseburger has bad intensions and My printer doesn't like me.

 

Activity

Mod 4 Activity 9 Lexical Semantics

Try your hand at meaning relationships. Follow these directions to complete this activity successfully. Review the meaning relationships above. Download and complete Mod 4 Activity 9 (.doc). Save as yourlastname_mod4activity9. Be sure to save as Word .doc or ,.docx or rich text .rtf. Do not save as .wps, wpd, or .html. Submit this activity as an attachment in the assignment drop box by the calendar deadline.

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Semantic Features

Another way of analyzing lexical meaning is to decompose word meanings into more basic parts. This process is called lexical decomposition. The idea is that most words have meanings that are "built up" from simpler meanings.

For example, the words mare, stallion, hen, and rooster all have the common meaning of ANIMAL in them. We could say that these four words share the common semantic feature ANIMAL. In addition, mare and hen share the common feature FEMALE while stallion and rooster share MALE. 

Another illustration of lexical decomposition comes from causatives. Consider these pairs of sentences, which use the intransitive verbs boil, open, bake, and turn and their transitive counterparts:

The water boiled.	Robin boiled the water.
The door opened.	The wind opened the door.
The cake baked.	Robin baked the cake.
The car turned.	Robin turned the car.

We can analyze the meaning of the verbs in terms of causes. In Robin boiled the water, the transitive verb boil can be analyzed as X CAUSES Y to BOIL. 

The late Stan Starosta at UH Manoa introduced his brand of semantic features as a series of plus or minus characteristics to compare words. Once we graduate students learned about semantic features, we began to see them in nearly every word we ever heard or read.

For example, consider the difference in meaning between cement and concrete. Although many of use them interchangeably, they actually mean different things. Dr. Starosta might have explained the differences as:

cement	+ wet (or - dry)
concrete	- wet (or + dry)

The difference between cement and concrete is that cement is a wet while concrete is dry. There are other ways to describe the two words (cement is a mix combined with water while concrete is the hardened after-product), but you can see how narrowing words down to their basic differences opens up a new way in which to view words.

hide	- bad intentions
conceal	+ bad intentions (you don't want the person to find what you've hidden)
murder	- prominence
assassinate	+ prominence (you can't "assassinate" a janitor)

Activity

Mod 4 Activity 10 Semantic Features

Semantic features help us to define words that have similar characteristics. Follow these directions to complete this activity successfully. Review the info on semantic features above. Download and complete Mod 4 Activity 10 (.doc). Save as yourlastname_mod4activity10. Be sure to save as Word .doc or rich text .rtf. Do not save as .wps, wpd, .docx, or .html. Submit this activity in the assignment drop box by the calendar deadline.