Lexical Relations

SEMANTIC

Martina Putri A.       121112160

Ismia Rahmah           121112163

Winda Perwita          121112175

SUMMARY

3.5 Lexical Relations

Lexicon can be said as a network rather than a listing of words as in a published dictionary. Lexical field is an important organizational principle in the lexicon. It is also a group of lexemes which belong to a particular activity or area of specialist knowledge. As we can see that the vocabulary used by doctors must be different with the vocabulary chosen by the students. Dictionary recognizes the effect of lexical fields by including in the lexical entries labels, such as medicine, banking, etc. There are some types of lexical relations, below:

3.5.1 Homonymy

Homonyms are unrelated senses of the same phonological word. There are two distinguish type of homonyms, they are:

·         Homographs; sense of the same written words

·         Homophones; Senses of the same spoken words

In homonyms, we can distinguish different types depending on their syntactic behavior and spelling, such as:

1.      Lexemes of the same syntactic category with the same spelling. e.g: Bank ‘as the side of the river’ and Bank as the financial institution.

2.      Lexemes of the same category with different spelling, e.g: Ring and wring

3.      Lexemes of different categories with the same spelling, e.g: bear (noun) à animal, and bear (v)à carry

4.      Lexemes of different categories with different spelling, e.g: not and knot

In addition, the variations in pronunciation have made not all speakers have the same set of homonyms.

3.5.2 Polysemy

Actually, there is a main distinction between the homonymy and polysemy. Both of them; either homonymy or polysemy are dealing with the multiple senses of the same phonological word, but polysemy is invoked if the senses are judged to be related. Polysemy senses are listed under the same lexical entry, while the homonymous senses are given separate entries. What the best thing to identify the polysemy is the ‘relatedness’ factor.

For example which is taken from the book about the word “Hook (n)”, there are some meanings of hook, some of them are (1) a piece of metal of material usually metal, curved, or bent and used to suspend or pull something or (2) short for fish hook, and many more à they are still related each other.

However, in word “hooker”, there are two meanings of that word; the first is a commercial fishing boat using hooks and lines instead of nets. And the second is the person or a thing that hooks. à It is unrelated each other.

However, speakers may differ in their intuitions and their historical fact. Their intuition may contradict the each other.

3.5.3 Synonymy

Synonyms are different phonological words which have the same or very similar meanings. For example:

Couch with Sofa

Lawyer with Attorney

Large with Big

According to the Palmer (1981), synonyms often have the different distributions along a number of parameters. Synonyms may belong to the different dialects and become synonyms because the speakers are familiar with the words. For example, Irish English said ‘press’ while the British English said ‘cupboard’, those words are become synonyms based on the different dialects.

Moreover, other words may belong to different registers; the style of language, colloquial, formal, literacy, etc. The synonyms also may portray the positive or negative attitude of the speaker. For example; he naïve or gullible more critical than the ingenious.

There are some factors that affects the synonyms, they are:

1.      Region aspect

English-Speaking said the police as the; police, officer, cop, copper, etc, Irish English use the phrase ‘the guards’, British English ‘the old bill’, and American ‘the heat’

2.      Formality aspect

Of course that slang term used in colloquial context instead of more formal terms such as Police officer.

3.      Speaker’s attitude

Speaker’s attitude is the further distinguishing factors, such as the words use, fuzz, pigs, and many are revealing the negative speaker attitude, while the cop seems so natural.

3.5.4 Opposites (Antonymy)

Antonyms are words which are opposite in meaning. It is useful however to identify several different types of relationship under a more general label of opposition.

ü  Simple antonyms

This is relation between words such that the negative of one implies the positive of the other.

E.g. dead/alive, pass/fail, hit/miss.

ü  Gradable antonyms

This is the relationship between opposites where the positives of one term does not necessarily imply the negative of the other.

E.g. Rich/Poor, Young/old, and many

ü  Reverses

This is a relation between terms describing movement, where one term describes movement in one directionà and the other the same movement on the opposite direction ß. Such as come/go, ascend/descend, and many

ü  Converses

This is a relation between two entities from alternate viewpoints

Such as, own/belong to, above/ below, and employer/ employee

In this case, we can assume that the relations above are part of speaker’s knowledge which is explained through the paraphrase.

ü  Taxonomic Sisters

- The term antonym sometime describes the words which are at the same level of the taxonomy.

- Taxonomies are classification systems,

Such as:

- The colors: red orange yellow green purple blue brown; we can assume that orange and yellow are the sister members of the same taxonomy.

3.5.5 Hyponymy

Hyponymy is the relation of inclusion. A hyponym includes the meaning of a more general word. The more general term is called the superordinate or the hypernym.

For example:

Aunt and sister are hyponym of woman

Bird and elephant are hyponym of Animal

Hyponymy is a vertical relationship in taxonomy while taxonomic sister are in horizontal relationship. As the example below:

Women

                                                                                                            Grand mother

                                        Sister               aunt                    mother

3.5.6 Meronymy

Meronymy is a term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items.

For example:

Motorcycle

                                                                                                              Review mirror

                                     Wheels             engine                 lamp

·         Thus, engine and wheels are meronyms of motorcycle

Meronym hierarchy are less clear cut and regular than taxonomies, it is, as the example above, necessary show that the part is to the whole. Meronymy also differs from the hyponymy in its transitivy. Hyponyms are always transitive but meronym may or may not bet.

What the important thing is that the networks to identify the meronymy are lexical. It is conceptually possible to segment an item in countless ways but only some divisions are coded in the vocabulary of a language.

3.5.7 Member Collections

This is a kind of relationship between the word for a unit and the usual word for a collection of the units, in example:

Ship à Fleet

Tree à Forest

Bird à Flock

3.5.8 Portion- Mass

This is a kind of relation between a mass noun and the usual unit of measurement or division, in example:

Drop of Liquid

Grain of Salt

Sheet of Paper

3.6 Derivational Relations

·         Derivational means: The process by which words are formed from existing words or bases by adding affixes, as singer from sing or undo from do, by changing the shape of the word or base, as song from sing, or by adding an affix and changing the pronunciation of the word or base, as electricity from electric.

·         2 examples of Derivational Relations as type of lexical relations: a) Causative Verbs and b) Agentive Nouns

3.6.1        Causative Verbs

·         In 3 Semantic choices:

 1) State: - The road is wide (adjective describing state)

 2) Change of State: The road widen (verb describing change of state)

 3) Causative: - The City Council widened the road (verb describing the cause of this change of state)

·         In English lexicon there are number of different ways:

a)      The gates are open (adjective)

b)      The gates open at nine (intransitive verb)

c)      The porters open the gates (transitive verb)

ü  Despite having the same shape but those three words are grammatically distinct.

·         In the inchoative and causative verbs are morphologically derived from the adjective:

a)      The apples are ripe

b)      The apples are ripening

c)      The sun are ripening the apples

·         Another element in this relation can be adjective describing the state which is result of the process called RESULTATIVE

·         It usually in past participle form e. g : closed, broken, tired, lifted.

·         The full set of this relation can be seen in: hot ( state adjective) heat (inchoative verb) heat ( causative verb) heated (resultative adjective)

3.6.2        Agentive Nouns

As we know that Agentive Nouns means derived from verbs or actions and ends in the written forms –er or –or. This nouns means the entity who/which performs the action of the verbs for examples: teach (verb) – teacher. In other hand some nouns do not obey the informal rule given such as in the example footballer is not derived from a verb to football.

Another example above such verb: Fly – object: pilot. A person who fly an aeroplane is not a flyer but a pilot. This kind of convention called elsewhere condition in morphology. Other agentive nouns which have to be listed in the lexicon are those for those there is no base verb for example : noun = meter : instrument for making measurements which no longer has an associated verb mete.

3.7.          Lexical Universals

The lexicon is one area where the differences between cultures are apparent and this raises the question whether there are any universals of lexical semantics. Then, it makes two notions:

-          Are there any universals of lexical organization or principles?

-          Are there any lexemes that have correspondence in all the languages in the world?

Those question above lead us to three important studies:

·         Berlin and Kay (1969): the study of colour terms in different languages

·         Swadesh (1972): core vocabulary of different languages

·         Wierzbicka (1992) : Universal Lexemes (semantic primes)

                                        

3.7.1.      Colour Terms

Berlin and Kay (1969) investigated the fact that languages vary in the number and range of their basic colour terms. Though there are various ways of describing colours, including comparison to objects, languages have some lexemes which are basic in the following sense:

      Basic colour terms:

-       The term is monolexemic à terms like blue grey are not basic

-       The term is not a hyponym of other colour term à English red is basic, scarlet is not.

-       The term has wide applicability.--> this excludes term like English blonde.

-       The term is not semantic extension of something manifesting that colour. à turquoise, gold, and chestnut are not basic.

      Basic Colour term systems

Brent Berlin and Paul Kay (1969) catalogued the color terms of 98 different languages. They presented speakers of different languages with an array of 329 color chips.

-       Every language has at least two basic color terms

basically: dark (“black”) and light (“white”)

Bassa is a two-color language ( Danià New Guinea)

-        Languages with three color terms add red (Tiv à Nigeria ; Pomo à Hokan )

-        Languages with four color terms add green or yellow (Hanunoo à Austronesian, phillippines)

-        Fifth color term: either green or yellow (Tzetal à Mayan;Mexico)

-        Sixth color term: blue (Tamilà Dravidian; India)

-        Seventh color term: brown ( Nez perceà Penutian;Idaho)

-        The rest: purple, pink, orange or gray ( Lebanese Arabic, English)

      The color term hierarchy

{white and black}< red < {green or yellow→green and yellow}< blue < brown < { purple, pink, orange, gray.}

Berlin and Kay (1969) also found evidence suggesting that there is a standard order in which basic colour terms are added to languages. The hierarchy above shows the claim in a relation A

In conclusion, the perception of the colour spectrum is the same for all human beings but that languages lexicalize different ranges of the spectrum of naming. As Berlin and Kay’s work represents, the selection is not arbitrary and languages use the same classificatory procedure. Berlin and Kay’s work can be interpreted to show that there are universals in colour naming and thus forms a critique of the hypothesis of linguistic relativity.

3.7.2.      Core Vocabulary

Core vocabulary could be used to trace lexical links between languages to establish family relationship between them. The implication of this approach is that the membership of the core vocabulary will be the same or similar for all languages. Thus, comparison of the lists in different languages might show cognates, related words descended from a common ancestor language.

i.e.: Cushitic language Somali has “two” as “laba” and “nose” as “san”. However, Kenyan Cushitic language has “two” as “lsama” and “nose” as “sam”. The conclusion, the example above shows cognates.

3.7.3.   Universal Lexemes

The only way to create definitions of things that are not biased by culture is to use a natural semantic metalanguage consisting of words that are found, with the same fundamental meaning, in every language in the world, and are themselves indefinable. Linguists of Natural Semantic Language rely on Semantic Primes for analysis (that is, simple, indefinable, and universally lexicalized concepts) and reductive paraphrase (that is, breaking complex concepts down into simpler concepts). Simply, the basic idea is that we should try to describe complex meanings in terms of simpler ones.

             List of Semantic Primes