SENSE RELATIONS BETWEEN
WORDS
1. Synonymy
2. Hyponymy
WHAT TO
STUDY?
3. Antonymy
4. Homonymy and Polysemy
Definition: SYNONYMY is the
relationship between two predicates
that have the same sense.
Example:
1. SYNONYMY • In most dialects of English, stubborn
and obstinate are synonyms.
• In many dialects, brigand and bandit
are synonyms.
• In many dialects, mercury and
quicksilver are synonyms.
In considering the sense of a
word, we abstract away from any
stylistic, social, or dialectal
associations the word may have.
We concentrate on what has been
NOTES called the cognitive or conceptual
meaning of a word.
Examples:
How many kids have you got?
How many children have you got?
SAME OR DIFFERENT?
A word may have many
different senses => each distinct
sense of a word (of the kind we
are dealing with) is a predicate.
NOTES
Synonymy is a relation between
predicates, and not between
words.
Run1
Run2
Run3
Run4
Run5
Run6
Run7
PRACTICE
Synonymy occurs among words
of the same part of speech
Ex: big (a) and large (a)
NOTES Synonymy also occurs between
words of different parts of
speech.
Ex: sleeping (v) and asleep (a)
HYPONYMY is a sense relation
between predicates (or sometimes
longer phrases) such that the
meaning of one predicate (or phrase)
is included in the meaning of the
other.
2. HYPONYMY
Example:
The meaning of red is included in the
meaning of scarlet.
Red is the superordinate term; scarlet
is a hyponym of red (scarlet is a kind
of red).
piglet boar
oak pine
generosity wisdom
sorrow love
kick hit punch
cool yummy tasty
NOTE
PRACTICE
PRACTICE
PRACTICE
PRACTICE
ANSWER
3. ANTONYMY
Do the following entry test
ANTONYMY
Binary
antonyms Converses
4 TYPES OF
ANTONYMY
Multiple
Gradable
incompatibilit
antonyms
y
BINARY ANTONYMS are
predicates which come in pairs and
between them exhaust all the
BINARY relevant possibilities. If the one
ANTONYMS
predicate is applicable, then the
other cannot be, and vice versa.
Ex: true - false
SUGGESTED ANSWER
If a predicate describes a
relationship between two things (or
people) and some other predicate
describes the same relationship
CONVERSES when the two things (or people) are
mentioned in the opposite order,
then the two predicates are
CONVERSES of each other.
Ex: parent - child
(a)all the terms in a
given system are
M U LT I P L E I N C O M PAT I B I L I T Y
mutually incompatible
(b)together, the members
of a system cover all
the relevant area.
Season system
Physical-state system
3
NOTES
• There are large numbers of open-ended systems of
multiple incompatibility
• Ex: the vehicle system, the plant system, the
material system, etc.
• Two predicates are GRADABLE
antonyms if they are at opposite
ends of a continuous scale of
GRADABLE values (a scale which typically
ANTONYMS
varies according to the context of
use).
• Ex: Hot and cold
PRACTICE
TEST
=> Add: very, very much, how much, …
Let’s try with:
• Near
• Cheap
• Beautiful
• Electrical
• Triangular
PRACTICE
AMBIGUOUS WORDS
• A word or sentence is AMBIGUOUS when it has more
than one sense.
• In the case of words and phrases, a word or phrase is
AMBIGUOUS if it has two (or more) SYNONYMS that
are not themselves synonyms of each other.
HOMONYMY AND
POLYSEMY
• A case of HOMONYMY is one of
an ambiguous word whose
different senses are far apart from
each other and not obviously
HOMONYMY
related to each other in any way
with respect to a native speaker’s
intuition.
• Ex: bank - bank
A case of POLYSEMY is one
where a word has several very
closely related senses. In other
words, a native speaker of the
POLYSEMY
language has clear intuitions that
the different senses are related to
each other in some way.
Ex: mouth, eye,…
