3.

PARADIGMATIC RELATIONS AMONG LEXICAL UNITS: SENSE

RELATIONS

3.1. Synonymy

3.1.1. The concept

-Synonymy is used to mean 'sameness of meaning'. It is difficult, if not

impossible, to find absolute synonyms: in most cases, synonyms are alike in
respect of 'central' semantic traits, but differ in what we may describe as 'minor'
or 'peripheral' traits.
-Evidence of the non-absoluteness of synonymy: clarificatory and contrastive
uses of synonyms:
He was cashiered, that is to say, dismissed.
He was murdered, or rather executed.

-It is difficult to find accurate synonyms. Most synonyms are plesionyms.

-Plesionyms are loose synonyms, which yield different truth conditions, but with
which negation sounds odd in cases such as This car doesn't have a motor; it
has an engine.
-Plesionyms usually appear in 'clarificatory' constructions:
It wasn't foggy last Friday - just misty.
You did not thrash us at badminton - but I admit you beat us.
-Plesionyms show differences of several types:
a) degrees: of size (boat: ship); of intensity (like: love...)
b) probabilities: paper: article (technical treatment / intent of publication);
c) emphasis in components: all: every: each (totality / individuality).
-Gradual shading of plesionymy into non-synonymy: fog and mist, mist and
haze are all plesionyms, but fog and haze are not.

3.1.2. Dialectal and stylistic differences between synonyms

These differences are independent from truth-conditions.

-Dialectal differences
Certain synonyms differ from others in their association with a given regional,
social or age dialect:
-Regional dialects, for instance, British English in contrast to American English
(autumn: fall; lift: elevator) or to Scottish English (glen: valley; wee: small).
-Social dialects, from 'working classes' to 'upper classes' (scullery: kitchen:
kitchenette; lavatory: toilet).
-Age dialects (wireless: radio; swimming-bath: swimming-pool).

-Stylistic differences
-These are varieties according to register, i.e. to varieties of a language used by
a single speaker, which are considered appropriate to different occasions and
situations of use. Main distinction: formal / informal. This distinction is noted
especially between words of Latin and of Germanic origin (brotherly: fraternal,

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buy: purchase...), and between one-word verbs and phrasal verbs (do up:
decorate, put off: delay).
-Related to differences in style are differences in emotive meaning (baby:
infant). Emotive words can be evaluatively positive (which is often the case with
familiarity markers: see Unit 25) or negative (horse: nag; car: banger...; taboos
and their corresponding euphemisms).

3.1.3. Collocational differences between synonyms

-Synonyms have different collocational restrictions (i.e. co-occurrence

restrictions not due to presupposed meanings): for example: die, pass away
and kick the bucket are all synonyms, but the last two only occur when the
affected is a person.
-Flouting collocational restrictions for metaphoric effect.

3.2. Inclusion

3.2.1. Hyponymy

-Hyponymy is the lexical relation corresponding to the inclusion of one class in

another (hyponym/superordinate).

-Normally a sentence unilaterally entails other sentences in which a hyponym is

substituted by its superordinate: This is a dog : This is an animal. However, the
relation is the converse within the scope of a negative or universal quantifier
(all, every, each), or if they form part of a conditional clause or other
expressions of contingency (It is important to avoid red : scarlet socks).

-A hyponym is often equivalent to a paraphrase in which a superordinate is

syntactically modified: queen / female monarch. But in many cases this
paraphrasis is difficult: elephant, mouse, crocodile...

-Difference between 'folk' and 'expert' taxonomies (for example, concerning

animals).

-Terms related by hyponymy are organized in hierarchies. Co-hyponyms are

those terms which occupy a given level of a hierarchy. Superordinate terms
tend to be non-count: cutlery: knife, fork, spoon; furniture: table, chair... In
certain cases, the same word belongs to more than one level, thus being
polysemous: dog can mean any animal of the canine species, or only the male
ones. There are cases of co-hyponyms without a term for the superordinate
level: watch / clock; fingers / toes.

-Prototypical and peripheral members of hierarchies: clothes: trousers, skirts,

shirts... (central), shoes, sandals... (peripheral). Possibility for saying: I bought
several clothes and a pair of shoes.

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3.2.2. Meronymy

-Meronymy is the semantic relation between a lexical item denoting a part and
that denoting the corresponding whole (meronym - holonym). Co-meronymy
is the relation between lexical items designating sister parts.
-Metonymy often involves the use of meronymy:
-Whole for part: France refused to let Picasso be French.
-Part for whole (synecdoche): We need many hands to help.

-Canonical versus facultative meronyms/holonyms, depending on their

obligatoriness or optionality (for example: finger is a canonical meronym of
hand, and museum is a facultative meronym of town).

-Super-meronyms are related to more than one holonym: nail (hand, foot),
page (book, journal...); super-holonyms are those holonyms of which only a
subset has or can have the meronym in question: flower :sepal, body :
penis/vagina, face: beard.
-The peripheral members of a meronomy are called attachments. Their
absence does not destroy the wholeness of the entity (examples: arm: hand;
door: handle (The arm was all right, but the hand /?the forearm was missing)).
-Meronym-like relations (they concern expectations):
a) Parts of non-temporal states and qualities:
Being slim is a part of being fit.
Self-control is a part of maturity.
b) Features of events, states, etc.
Christmas pudding is a part/feature of Christmas.
Changing nappies of being a mother/father.
Rebelliousness of adolescence.
-Meronyms are mentally triggered, since our mind has scripts, i.e. knowledge
about event sequences, due to knowledge of the world. We have scripts events
that commonly occur in our life, such as going to a doctor's office, a restaurant,
a library or the supermarket. When we speak or write about such events, we do
not normally refer to the details, since we assume that the addressee knows
them (although this knowledge depends on the individual addressee).
-Loose meronyms: Patience is part of my work.

-Meronyms are mentally triggered by frames, i.e. knowledge about event

sequences. Examples: going to a doctor's office, a restaurant, a library or the
supermarket. When we speak or write about such events, we consider the
extent to which the addressee knows them.

3.2. Oppositeness

3.2.1. Preliminary considerations

The relation of oppositeness is easily apprehended by ordinary speakers. Many

languages have a non-learned term for it. Opposites are not so distant as it
might seem: the members of a pair have almost identical distributions, ie. very
similar possibilities of normal and abnormal occurrence, since they differ in only
one dimension of meaning, being identical in respect of all other features.

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3.2.2. Binary antonyms or complementaries

-Binary antonyms are those opposites which exhaustively divide some

conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments, so that what
does not fall into one must fall into the other: true/false, dead/alive, open/shut,
hit/miss, pass/fail.
-Binary antonyms may occasionally have gradable uses:
Peter is more of a bachelor than Paul.

-The domain of binary antonyms is set by the normal presupposition of use of

the words themselves: for instance, lion/lioness are not binary antonyms: if
something is not a lion, we normally do not presuppose that it is a lioness.
However, if you say 'What is in this box is not alive' you think that it contains
something that was once alive (although it depends on discourse conditions).

-There are colloquial expressions for referring to people who tend to categorize
reality in terms of binary antonyms when : manicheism (the good and the bad),
people who live in a black and white world…

-Binary antonyms are, generally speaking, verbs or adjectives.

-In certain cases, binary antonyms form triplets with other terms. In many cases, one of
the members of the pair is preferred, and the other dispreferred (this is not to say that
one is expected and the other unexpected, since expectations vary depending on the
context):

a) Reversives indicate 'change in opposite directions'; they form triplets with a pair of
complementaries, the members of which indicate 'continuance of a state' and 'change
to an alternative state'. The agent is the same in the first and in the other two members
of the triplets. Some examples are: start:keep on: stop; learn: remember: forget; arrive:
stay: leave; earn: save: spend.

b) Interactives have a 'stimulus-response' type of relationship. The verb expressing the

precondition for complementarity denotes an action which has as its goal the elicitation
of the response (by someone else) denoted by its interactive opposite, which, in turn, is
one of the terms of the complementary pair: command:obey:disobey,
request:grant:refuse, invite:accept:turn down, greet:acknowledge:snub,
tempt:yield:resist.

c) Satisfactives: one term denotes an attempt to do something; there is a

corresponding pair of binary antonyms, one of which indicates success and the other
indicates failure. There is no change of agent. Examples: try:succeed:fail,
compete:win:lose, aim:hit:miss. It must be noted that in many areas of everyday life,
such as debating or taking a medicine, the success of failure may be partial.

d) Counteractives are triplets of verbal complementaries of which the first member

denotes an aggresive action, the second represents counteraction, and the third lack of
counteraction. The agent of the first action is different from the agent of the responses.
Examples: attack:defend:submit, charge:refute:admit, shoot (in football): save: let in,
punch: parry: take.

-Complementary adjectives are not normally gradable, but in certain cases they
can be graded: accurate/inaccurate, pure/impure, satisfactory/ insatisfactory,
smooth/rough, etc. These differ from antonyms (which are fully gradable) in that
the negation of the two members of a pair gives rise to contradiction:

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 ?It is neither accurate nor inaccurate (Cf. It is neither long nor short).

3.2.3. Multiple incompatibles

-This label refers to systems of three or more terms that cover an area and are
mutually incompatible. Sometimes the systems are open ended, i.e. they
consist of an indefinite number of terms.

-Examples of systems of this kind are the following:

-seasons: spring, summer, autumn, winter;
-months of the year;
-cardinal points;
-colours, plants or animals (open-ended systems)-

-The terms sometimes admit gradable uses, i.e. orangish-red, bluish-green;

shrubbish tree, etc.

3.2.4. Gradable antonyms

-The characteristics of antonyms are the following:

a) Full gradability;
b) Members of a pair denote degrees of some variable property such as length,
speed, weight, accuracy, etc.
c) When more strongly intensified, the members of a pair move, as it were, in
opposite directions along the scale representing degrees of the relevant
variable property (very heavy: fairly heavy; very light: fairly light).
d) The terms of a pair do not strictly bisect a domain: there is a range of
intermediate values which cannot be properly referred to by either term, but only
by a negation of both or an equivalent expression: It's neither long nor short.
e) The values that these terms denote vary highly with the referent to which
they are applied: a long/short river, long/short eyelashes.
f) There are some cases in which gradation is expressed by more than two
lexical items: temperature (cold – cool – warm – hot).
g) The zero point cannot be referred to by these terms: slow, short, cheap
cannot mean zero speed, length or price. It has to be expressed in other ways
(neither fast nor slow, normal pace, average speed…)
h) Certain lexical items form different pairs depending on collocational
restrictions: short / tall, high; thin / thick, fat.

-Subclasses of antonyms:
a) Polar. One member of a pair yields a normal how-question, which is
impartial: heavy: light, fast: slow, high: low, deep: shallow, wide: narrow, thick: thin,
difficult: easy. In most cases, the underlying scaled property can be measured in
conventional units, such as inches, grams, or miles per hour.
b) Overlapping. Both terms of a pair yield normal how-questions, but one term
yields an impartial question, and the other a committed question: good: bad, pretty:
plain, kind: cruel, polite: rude. In overlapping antonyms, one member is commendatory,
and the other is deprecatory.
c) Equipollent. Both terms of a pair yield committed how-questions: nice: nasty,
sweet: sour, proud of: ashamed of, happy: sad. These refer to distinctly subjective
sensations or emotions or evaluations based on subjective reactions, rather than on

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'objective' standards. Some stative verbs share many characteristics with equipollent
antonyms: they represent psychological states and there is a neutral area between the
opposing poles: I neither like nor dislike him. Other examples: despise: admire;
approve: disapprove.

3.2.5. Directional opposites

-Most of the word pairs denoting contrary motions have other common semantic
traits. The most pure ones are adverbs or prepositions such as up:down;
north:south...

-Subclasses of directional opposites:

-Converses are pairs which express a relationship between two entities by

specifying the direction of one relative to the other along some axis: when one
member of the pair is substituted for the other, the new sentence can be made
logically equivalent (a paraphrase) to the original one by interchanging two of
the noun phrase arguments: above: below, in front of: behind, before: after.
Non-spatial converses (metaphorical extensions of spatial notions): ancestor:
descendant, husband: wife, master: servant, predator: prey, guest: host,
teacher: pupil.
-Converse verbs can be two-place verbs (follow: precede) or three-place verbs
(give: receive, buy: sell). Examples of sets three-place converses:
-take sth from sb, relinquish sth to sb, disposess sb. of sth;
-teach sth. to sb, learn/study sth under sb, instruct sb. in sth.
-sell, buy, pay and charge.
-Cases of two or more hypo-opposites standing jointly in a particular relation to
a super-opposite: patient: doctor, dentist...; victim: murderer, rapist...;
-Comparative constructions are pairs of converses: more than / less than; taller
than / shorter than…

-Non-converse directional opposites are the rest of directional opposites.

They may be divided into subtypes:

a) Antipodals, in which each term represents an extreme in one direction along some salient
axis: top: bottom, zenith: nadir. The main axes are the following:
-upward-downward: cellar: attic; source: mouth (of river); head: foot (of person or bed). .
-forward-backward: front : back; tip: tail; beginning: end.
-inwards-outwards: middle / centre: edge / periphery.

b) Counterparts correspond to a deviation or irregularity in an otherwise uniform surface or

shape and its reverse: mound: depression, convex: concave...

c) Reversives are pairs of verbs that denote motion or change in opposite directions (this
component of motion is what distinguishes them from the reversives included in
complementation in Unit 29). They are syntactically divided into the following kinds:
a) intransitive verbs, whose grammatical subjects denote things which undergo changes
of state: appear: disappear, enter: leave, rise: fall.
b) transitives with causative meaning: raise: lower, lock: unlock, pack: unpack.
c) verbs with both possibilities, thus forming ergative pairs: lengthen : shorten, widen:
narrow, lighten: darken.

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3.2.6. Marked and unmarked terms

-The negative terms of an opposition are often formally marked: happy:

unhappy; like: dislike... The morphologically simple term may have an
alternative simple partner: unmarried: single, untrue: false. Sometimes there are
differentiating nuances, in that the morphologically marked word suggests that
the other term was expected: unsafe: dangerous, unclean: dirty, unkind: cruel,
unhappy: sad.
-Cases with formal marking in both members: increase: decrease, accelerate:
decelerate.
-Perceptual salience tends to be associated to the positive term in gradable
concepts: long: short, fast: slow, heavy: light.The perceptually salient terms
are used in neutral how-questions. (Exception. difficult: easy). Think about old:
young. (In past times, and nowadays in many cultures, old was associated with
prestige and power).