Kamis, 17 Mei 2012

ambiguity and vagueness


"ambiguity" and "vagueness" are two important concepts for the theory of interpretation.  Some legal texts are ambiguous--they can have two or more distinct meanings.  And some legal texts are vague--they use concepts that have indefinite application to particular cases.  And some legal texts are both vague and ambiguous--they have multiple meanings, some (or all) of which have indefinite applications.  Therefore knowing "vagueness" and "ambiguity" are basic concepts in the theory of interpretation.
  A word is ambiguous if it has several distinct senses.
  Example 1 (English):
1.      I built a run for my chickens.
2.      I go for a run before work.
3.      I hit a home run during the cricket match.
Note: - 2 & 3 both involve the physical act of running.
-      Example 1 has a specialised meaning

  In context, a word can seem to have several distinct senses. Some may appear more related than others.

...and for another example:
  There’s a mole in my garden
  mole1 = small, furry animal living underground
  There’s a mole in the CIA
  mole2 = a spy
-      We can say that mole is 2-ways ambiguous
-      So run is 2-ways ambiguous (2 senses)
-              Ambiguity:
o        In this case, the context will select one of the meanings/senses
o        We often don’t even notice ambiguity, because context clarifies the intended meaning.
-              Vagueness:
o        Context adds information to the sense.
o        Therefore the sense of the word itself doesn’t contain all the information.
o        It is underspecified.
Tests for ambiguity and vagueness
  There are some tests to decide whether meaning distinctions involve ambiguity or vagueness.
  The do-so test of meaning identity
  The synonymy or sense-relations test
  The do-so test:
-       I ate a sandwich and Mary
  The do-so construction is interpreted as identical to the preceding verb phrase
-      I made a run and so did Priscilla
  If “I made a run” = “I ran”, then Priscilla cannot have made a run for her chickens...
  So, again, these are two distinct senses of run.
  ambiguity (several word senses) and vagueness (single sense, with slight variations in context)
The sense relations test
  Basic principle:
  Words exhibit synonymy or similarity of meaning to other words.
  Therefore, if a word is ambiguous, we can substitute it for a similar word in the same context, and see if the meaning stays roughly  the same.
Sense relations examples
i.e:
- I go for a run every morning.
  - I go for a jog every morning.
run1 = physical act of running (similar word: jog)

However it cannot be :
·         I go for an enclosure every morning.
run2 = a closed space for animals (similar word: enclosure)
We can’t substitute one set of words for another and still keep the same meaning.

The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra




The Tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra

Antony and Cleopatra is another love story which is created by the most famous playwright in the world-William Shakespeare. This love story actually has a tragic ending such Romeo and Juliet story. The tragedy of Antony and Cleopatra was written in 1606-1607 in London, England. Then, it was published in 1623 by the First Folio. The setting time of the story is in 40-30 B.C.; and the setting of place is The Roman Empire and Egypt. These stories actually tell us about the relationship between Marc Antony, one of the triumvirs of Rome with the Queen of Egypt known as Cleopatra. Antony has an affair with Cleopatra and made her become his mistress. Actually the Triumvirs are consisted of three members, Antony, Octavius Caesar, and Lepidus. After the Civil War at Philippi, the power holder competition is continuing between Antony and Octavius. Then an agreement was made to decrease the tension. Antony lead the east area consisted of Greece, Macedonia, Anatolia, Syria, Judea to Egypt; Octavius lead the west area include Italy, Spain, Gaul and Germania; while Lepidus receive rations in most of North Africa. Besides, after the Death of Julius Caesar in civil war, Cleopatra is falling in love with Antony. Although Antony is also Married to Octavius’sister-Octavia, Antony is still trying returns to live with Cleopatra and it raise an attack to Egypt. On that Attack, Antony get a news that Cleopatra was died due to that attack. Then, Antony try to suicide himself using the sword. However, the death of Cleopatra is fake. Cleopatra who knows that Antony was dead is trying to suicide herself by let the poisonous snake bit her.   
The plot seems to be the same with Romeo and Juliet story. However, Antony and Cleopatra story is quite interesting for me since the love story is not done by the youngsters, but it done by mature couple who had been left by their mates. This story actually told us about the uncommon relationship between Marc Antony and Cleopatra which is not only romantic, but also historical. In addition, I can see that different background of story bring different tragic sense. This story is not merely told about the romantic side, but also about how the male pride can bring them to the defeat and failure.
There are some parts which I like from this play. The first is the fact that both Marc Antony and Cleopatra are a widower and widow. Marc Antony actually has already married with Fulvia when he has an affair with his mistress Cleopatra. This fact is shown from the first chapter of this story “Cleopatra is thinking. Excellent falsehood! Why did he marry Fulvia and not love her? I’ll seem the fool I am not. “Antony will be himself.” Fulvia actually has already dead of an illness as shown in the certain lines in the play stated” Antony stares down, thinking. “Fulvia is dead.”
The second thing which is impressed me is that the process of the death of Antony and Cleopatra. As I mentioned before, Octavius is trying to be the only person who lead the Rome and change the Position of Julius Caesar. Octavius was angry because Antony left Octavia for Cleopatra. The attack to Egypt gives news that Cleopatra is dead. Antony who heard this news is surely fell so down. He lost his authority against Octavius and he also lost Cleopatra who always love him so much. He decided to suicide himself using the sword.  After the death of Antony, Cleopatra is trying to suicide herself with poisonous snake as imaged in the play,“ As to how she died from the biting of it, what pangs she felt: truly, she made a very good report o’ the snake!... As to how she died from the biting of it, what pangs she felt: truly, she made a very good report o’ the snake!” This is decided by Cleopatra to avoid that she will be paraded in front of the people of Rome by Octavius. “She said that she would rather die in open grave rather than paraded as an object of derision in Rome.”
Then, the third thing that I like from this story is the fact that both Cleopatra and Antony really madly in love each other. It proves when Cleopatra feels so jealous to know that Antony married Octavia. She tries to sent a messenger to see how good Octavia is. When she know that Octavia is less impressive, she get their confident back and try to be the best for Antony till the end of the time.


References:

Analyze Antony and Cleopatra’s relationship, paying close attention to their trust in one another. Retireved 7 April 2012 from http://debbyca.blogsome.com/

Antony and Cleopatra. By William Shakespeare- presented by Paul W.Collins . Downloaded from www.wsrightnow.comwww.wsrightnow.com




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