UNIVERSITATEA SPIRU HARET

FACULTATEA DE LITERE
SINTEZA DE EXAMEN
LIMBA ENGLEZĂ CONTEMPORANĂ
(SEMANTICĂ)
anul al III-lea, semestrul 1

1.The Relationship between Language, Thought and Reality

Long before linguistics existed as a discipline, thinkers were speculating about the nature
of meaning. For thousands of years, the question ‘what is meaning?’ has been considered central
to philosophy. More recently it has come to be important in linguistics, as well.
1.1 Extension and Intension
The impossibility of equating a word's meaning with its referents has led to a distinction
between extension and intension or Serin and Bedeutung. The extension of a term corresponds to
the set of entities that it picks out in the real world. The term ‘extension’ is often used
synonymously with ‘denotation’. Sometimes, denotation is understood not only in its narrower
sense which covers the relation between nouns or noun phrases and groups of individuals or
objects, but also the relation between words belonging to other word classes and extra-linguistic
phenomena they relate to. Thus, verbs denote situations, adjectives denote properties of
individuals and objects and adverbs denote properties of situations.(Kortmann, 2005: 197)
The extension of "tiger" is the set of tigers in the real world. Intension corresponds to the
inherent sense of a term, to the concept that is associated with it. For instance, the intension of
woman involves notions like "female" or "human".
Two terms can have the same extension and yet differ in intension (meaning). For
example, the compound terms "creature with a heart" and "creature with a kidney" have the same
extension because (we assume that) every creature with a heart possesses a kidney and vice
versa. Nevertheless the reverse is impossible: two terms cannot differ in extension and have the
same intension.
Putnam (1975: 135) claims that this impossibility reflects the tradition of the ancient and
medieval philosophers who assumed that the concept corresponding to a term was just a
conjunction of terms, and hence that the concept corresponding to a term must always provide a
necessary and sufficient condition for falling into the extension of the term.
The term whose analysis caused all the discussions in medieval philosophy was GOD,
thought to be defined through the conjunctions of the terms "Good", "Powerful", "Omniscient".
The philosopher Putnam supports Frege's view/stand against psychologism according to
which the psychological state of the speaker determines the intension of a term and hence, its
extension. He argues that extension is not determined by psychological state.
Extension is determined socially (is a problem of sociolinguistics) and indexically and in
its turn determines intension.
If concepts (intensions) were more important than extensions (then we would expect that
when concepts associated with a term no longer applied to the members of its extension) , then
that term would be replaced by another to refer to the extension. Knowing the meaning of a word
is to acquire a word, i.e. to associate it with the right concept.
1.2 Sign-sense-reference (referent)
Contributions to semantics have come from a diverse group of scholars, ranging from
Plato to Aristotle in ancient Greece to Putnam and Frege in the twentieth century.
According to Frege (1970: 57) a sign is any designation representing a (proper) name
which has as its reference a definite object (the word object is taken in the widest sense), not a
concept or a relation.
 The regular connection between a sign, its sense and its reference is of such a kind that to
the sign there corresponds a definite sense and to that in turn a definite reference while to a given
reference (an object) there does not belong only a single sign. For example, Aristotle (the referent)
can be denoted by these signs: the pupil of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great.
The same sense has different lexicalizations in different languages or even in the same
language (pass away - die - kick the bucket).
To the sense does not always correspond a reference, i.e. in grasping a sense one is not
certainly assured of a reference (e.g. sign words such as unicorn, dragon, elf, fairy, World War
III, have no referents in the real world even though they are far from being meaningless)
Frege maintains that the reference and sense of a sign must be distinguished from the
associated idea (concept) which is subjective: "if the reference of a sign is an object perceivable
by the senses, my idea of it is an internal image arising from memories of sense impressions
which I have had […] . Such an idea is often saturated with feeling; the clarity of its separate
parts varies and oscillates. The same sense is not always connected, even in the same man with
the same idea".
Ogden and Richards (1921) argue that the symbol corresponds to the Saussurian "signifiant"
(signifier). They use the term reference for the concept that mediates between the symbol/
word/expression and the referent. The triadic concept of meaning was represented by Ogden and
Richards in the form of a triangle.
Most linguists agree that a sign (word or expression) expresses its sense, stands for and
designates its reference. By means of a sign we express its sense and designate its reference.
sense

sign referent/reference
Identical linguistic expressions may have different referents in different contexts and at
different times (e.g. the Pope, my neighbour, I, you, here, there, now, tomorrow). (Meyer, 2002:
104). These expressions are called expressions with variable reference.
To identify who is being referred to by pronouns like “she”, “I”, “you”, etc., we certainly
need to know a lot about the context in which these word were uttered. These words whose
denotational capability needs / requires contextual support are called deictic words. (The term
deixis comes from Greek and means roughly ‘pointing’).
The sense of a linguistic expression is its content without reference, those features and
properties which define it. For example, the sense of “girl” is a bundle of semantic features:
/+human/, /-adult/, /+female/.
The referent of a sign may differ from the sense. For instance, the referent of “evening
star” is the same as that of morning star, but not the sense. Therefore the designation of a single object
can also consist of several words or signs. Other instances of references denoted by several signs
are "the pupil of Plato", "the teacher of Alexander the Great" referring to Aristotle or "The Prime
Minister of Great Britain" and "the leader of the Conservative Party", both referring (in 1989 at
least) to Margaret Thatcher. Although the last two expressions may have the same referent we
would not say that they have the same sense. No one would maintain that the phrase " The Prime
Minister of Great Britain" could be defined as "the leader of the Conservative Party" or vice
versa.
Besides expressions with variable reference, there are expressions with constant
reference (e.g. the Eiffel Tower and the Pacific Ocean) and non-referring items, that is, they do
not identify entities in the world, such as so, very, maybe, if, not, all.
 The same sense has different lexicalizations in different languages (E. table, Fr. table, G.
Tisch, It. tavola) or even in the same language (pass away, die, Kick the bucket).
The association of two or more forms with the same meanings (synonymy) and the association
of two or more meanings with one form (homonymy and polysemy) show that one can hardly find an
ideal language in which words are defined by a one-to-one relation between signified and signifier.

1.3. Types of signs

The relationship between a sign and what it represents (or, in Saussurian terminology between
a signifier and its signified) can be of three types: (1) a relationship of similarity (e.g. between a
portrait and its real life object or a diagram of an engine and its real life engine), (2) a relationship of
close association, not infrequently causal association (e.g. the smoke as an indication of fire) and (3) a
conventional link, an arbitrary relation.
Starting from these types of relationship that may hold between a sign and the object it
represents, C. S. Peirce makes a distinction between iconic, indexical and symbolic signs. An iconic
sign or icon (from Greek eikon 'replika') resembles the referent and provides a perceptual (e.g. visual,
auditory, etc.) image of what it stands for. This type of sign is a highly motivated one.
An indexical sign or index (from Latin index 'pointing finger') stands for what it points to (e.g.
spots indexical of a disease like measles, fever indexical of flu, etc.). An index is partially motivated to
the extent that there is a connection, usually of causality, between sign and referent.
A symbol (from Greek symbolon 'a token of recognition') or symbolic sign does not have a
natural link between the form and the thing represented, but a conventional link. Peirce's symbol is
the most arbitrary kind of sign: the word in language, the formula in mathematics and chemistry, a
military emblem, the dollar sign, a flag, red circles in television, etc.
As the etymology of the word suggests, the term used in linguistics is understood in the sense
that, by general consent, people have agreed upon the pairing of a particular form with a particular
meaning. In language, the notion of arbitrariness holds true for most of the simple words; however,
new words (compounds, derivatives) built on already existing linguistic material and therefore are
partially motivated. The notion of motivation refers to non-arbitrary links between a form and the
meaning of linguistic expressions.
In terms of their degree of abstraction, the three types of signs can be ordered from the most
'primitive' to the most abstract. Indexical signs, which are said to be the most 'primitive' (Dirven and
Verspoor, 1998: 3) are restricted to the 'here' and 'now' and are based on a relation of contiguity
between form and meaning. Body language (e.g. smiling), traffic (e.g. ) and advertising (e.g. ) are
areas providing examples of such signs.
Iconic signs are more complex in that their understanding requires the recognition of similarity
between form and meaning. Road signs picturing children, animals or various vehicles or scarecrows
in the fields which birds take for real enemies are some instances of iconic signs.
Symbolic signs, based on a relation of convention between sign and meaning, are the
exclusive prerogative of humans. As it has been acknowledged, people have more communicative
needs than pointing to things and replicating things; we also want to talk about thinks which are more
abstract in nature such as events in the past or future, objects that are distant from us, hopes about
peace, etc. This can only be achieved by means of symbols which humans all over the world have
created for the purpose of communicating all possible thoughts (Dirven and Verspoor, 1998: 4).
The three types of signs presented so far underlie the structuring of language, i.e. within
language, we may recognize principles that are similar to these types of signs; the principle of
indexicality (occurring when we use 'pointing' or deictic words), the principle of iconicity (showing up
in similarities between the order of events and the word order in the sentences we use to describe
them) and the principle of symbolicity accounting for the purely conventional relation between the
form and the meaning of signs.
2. Language dynamics and form – content interactions
LEXICAL CHANGE – It is a process of language dynamics that may occur both in diachrony
and in synchrony.
It may be language-internally determined (most word formation rules – derivational rules,
compounding rules ─, and inflectional rules – provided that a certain lexematic valence is
associated with them –) or it may be triggered (influenced) by external (or at least
extralinguistic)
factors (borrowing, coining, extension).
Form is always affected (or even effected), a subsequent more or less significant
modification (or, pairing the form of new words, emergence) of content being the result of the
process (with the exception of inflectional processes, the semantic and lexematic status and
significance of which is often contested – see further).
SEMANTIC CHANGE (SEMANTIC SHIFT, SEMANTIC FLEXIBILITY) – It is a process
of language dynamics observable only in diachrony.
It may be caused by various extra-linguistic (socio-cultural) factors.
Meaning (content) is the dimension that is subject to change, while form is preserved, or it
is slightly (and slowly) modified, more often than not as a consequence of specialisation
between competing meanings, or in accordance to the changes in the general (phonological,
morphological) rules that may occur during the evolution of the language in question.
INFLECTIONAL RULES – These are rules that apply to a stem by adding grammatical
affixes only. They underlie morphological variation.
The result consists in different word-forms of the same given lexeme (i.e. the grammatical
paradigm of the lexical item).
STEM = A base to which only inflectional affixes can be added.
e.g.: cry – cries;
friendship – friendships
BASE = A morpheme or combination of morphemes. It is a form (neither necessarily smallest
nor initial) to which something can be added.
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e.g.: grammatical – grammatically
– ungrammatically
ROOT = The smallest initial entity to which something can be added. It is the central
morpheme to which other peripheral morphemes can be added. Most of the roots are free, and
only few are bound.
e.g.: boy – boys, boyhood, boyish;
-cert- – certify, certified, certain, certainly, uncertain, certainty
Note: Inflectional affixes (only suffixes in English) –
-s1 (plural), -s2 (3rd person singular), ’s (synthetic genitive),
-ed1 (past), -ed2 (-en) (perfective), -ing (progressive),
-er (comparative), -est (superlative) –
are class-maintaining (i.e. they do not trigger a shift to another word class).
They are usually taken to be preserving the lexical meaning, too, and changing only the
grammatical meaning.
Nevertheless, it seems that such an account can be valid only to the extent to which an
evident change of inherent semantic feature (for instance, from [- complete] to [+ complete]
or from [- set] to [+ set]) can be neglected in certain analytic circumstances.
e.g.: build – built;
tool – tools
Inflectional rules are extremely productive in language.5
PRIMARY WORD FORMATION – The processes within this group are characterised by
their not operating on a basis of pre-existing (in that language and/or with a somehow related
meaning) lexemes.
Semantically, the occurring processes can be summed up as follows: the appearing (the
discovery) of a new referent and/or the ascend in the need to refer to a certain entity trigger
the creation of a new ‘label’, i.e. a lexeme normally involving a form – content association.6
COINING – It is the genuine process of producing words out of nothing. The less developed is
the language, the more intensive is the process of coining.
e.g.: duke – coined in the 17th century;
jazz – coined in 1909
Onomatopoeic words are easier to coin.
e.g.: beep
Scientific progress may also trigger coining.
e.g.: semantics (M. Brèal, 1897)
EXTENSION – It is a kind of semi-primary process of word formation. It can be defined as the
production of new common nouns out of proper names.
e.g.: sandwich, watt, xerox
The change of content being quite significant and triggered by extra-linguistic factors,
extension comes close to the semantic change process of broadening (see further), which is
also sometimes called ‘extension of meaning’. Moreover, it has to be noted that some studies
in lexicology treat semantic change processes as ‘semi-primary (semantic) processes of word
formation’.
BORROWING – It resides in the taking over (and the gradual adapting to the native
wordformational
and morphological rules) of words from other languages.7
e.g.: malaria, balcony, casino (Italian);
cannibal, guitar, mosquito (Spanish);
kindergarten, noodle (German);
czar, vodka, polka (Russian)

SECONDARY WORD FORMATION PROCESSES (MAJOR and MINOR) – Starting

out from pre-existing words, they reside in several means of enriching the vocabulary of a
language on the account of the internal resources of that language.
- MAJOR WORD FORMATION PROCESSES – They are highly productive processes.
DERIVATION – It is based on derivational rules. The process consists in adding derivational
affixes and it is grounded on the principle of lexical relatedness.
Lexical Relatedness – The conformation to this principle means that the words in question
share elements of both form and meaning.
e.g.: clear – unclear [± clarity, transparency, etc]
vs: large big (they share elements of meaning [+ excess in size] but not of form)
or: table able (formal resemblance, but no semantic relatedness)
Derivation (affixation) includes two basic types: a) SUFFIXATION;
b) PREFIXATION.
Derivational affixes can be: 1) class-maintaining; 2) class-changing.
e.g.: 1) child – childhood (nouns);
real – unreal (adjectives)
2) hospital (noun) – to hospitalise (verb);
to rely (verb) – reliable (adjective)
Most of the prefixes are class-maintaining, the exceptions being: a-, be-, en-.
e.g.: way (noun) – away (adverb, adjective);
head (noun) – to behead (verb);
able (adjective) – to enable (verb)
Suffixes are either class-maintaining or class-changing, but they are class-determining.
e.g.: relation (noun) – relationship (noun); mercy (noun) – merciless (adjective);
friend (noun) – friendly (adjective); real (adjective) – really (adverb);
noise (noun) – noisy (adjective); to change (verb) – changeable (adjective)
Derivational rules are less productive than inflectional rules but more productive than
many other word-formation processes.
As far as the modifications of content are concerned, affixation proves to be either
relatively systematic (due to the class-determining feature of numerous such processes)
e.g.: fever / feverish / feverishly (noun / adjective / adverb ↔ [+ entity] / [+ property] / [+ manner
of action])
or at least selectively predictable (in respect of the meaning(s) employed by a given affix or
group of affixes).
e.g.: employer, dealer, keeper ([+ agent]); to unlock, to unfold ([+ the reverse of the action]);
unusual; irregular; careless ([+ absence of property / entity], [+ negative meaning /
connotation])
COMPOUNDING – It is a process based upon the combination of at least two free morphemes.
The resulting meaning is more or less significantly different from the sum of the meanings
of the components.
Compounds can be: a) WELDED (or ‘SOLID’), i.e. forming one graphical word;
b) HYPHENATED;
c) SEPARATE GRAPHICAL WORDS (or ‘OPEN’)
e.g.: a) newspaper, pullover, blackboard, bedroom,
fisherman, toothbrush, footstep, fingerprint;
b) forget-me-not, merry-go-round, frost-bitten,
man-made, go-getter, self-possessed,
newly-born, pen-friend, three-storeyed;
c) washing machine, bus stop, examination session, virgin forest,
domino theory, swan song, waste-paper basket
Unlike welded (solid) compounds, hyphenated ones still evince traces of an internal
structure (in terms of word class and of semantic valence), which become overt in some
instances of morphological behaviour.
e.g.: passers-by
vs: brothers-in-law
CONVERSION (ZERO-DERIVATION) – It is a change of word class, (in most cases) without
any
formal change within the word.
It is a very productive word formation process.
e.g.: fear (noun) – to fear (verb), doubt (noun) – to doubt (verb);
to cover (verb) – cover (noun);
empty (adjective) – to empty (verb)
Partial and marginal conversion are characterised by minor changes of form.
e.g.: scissors (noun) – to scissor (the material) (verb);
import (noun) – to import (+ stress shift) (verb)
The content modifications triggered by zero-derivation are relatively systematic, in a way
similar to class-changing affixation.
e.g.: love / to love (noun / verb ↔ [+ entity] / [+ action])
Idiosyncratic modifications, however, are not excluded.
e.g.: to break / break (the core meaning of the noun is rather ‘interruption, discontinuity’ than
‘crack’ or ‘piece’)
- MINOR WORD FORMATION PROCESSES – They are usually unpredictable but not
rare processes, and this is true especially of certain stylistic registers of contemporary English.
CLIPPING – It is frequent in less formal stylistic registers. The process consists of a syllabic
shortening of the initial word.
There are three kinds of clipping: a) BACK-CLIPPING;
b) FORE-CLIPPING;
c) FORE-AND-AFT CLIPPING.
e.g.: a) lab (< laboratory), ad (< advertisement), chimp (< chimpanzee);
b) phone (< telephone), burger (< hamburger);
c) flu (< influenza), fridge (< refrigerator)
BLENDING – The process resides in the fusing of elements of two words.
e.g.: motel (< motor + hotel), smog (< smoke + fog), brunch (< breakfast + lunch)
ACRONYMY – It is the process of forming new words – having their specific reference – by
(usually) combining the initial letters of several pre-existent words, which come to be
associated in a relatively stable syntagm.
The letters in question (frequently) no longer maintain the “spelling” pronunciation, i.e.
they are no longer read separately but as forming one phonetic word.
The overall meaning (slightly) differs from the sum of the meanings of the initial words.
e.g.: NATO, laser (light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation)
REDUPLICATION* – It is a process based on repetition of elements.
The duplicate can be: a) identical (more rarely); b) similar in form.
e.g.: a) bye-bye, squeak-squeak;
b) ding-dong, teeny-weeny (Η tiny, very small), tittle-tattle (Η idle talk, gossip),
walkie-talkie, hocus-pocus, tiptop (Η first class, the very best)
BACK-FORMATION* – It consists of the creation of a word from another by deleting a
segment
of the existing word, which segment resembles an affix. From this point of view, it appears as
the “reverse” of derivation.
e.g.: editor → to edit; lazy → laze
DEFLECTION* – It is sometimes considered as a special kind of marginal conversion, since it
presupposes a formative cross-word-class relation, more often than not the change being
obtained after a minimal alternation in the root.
e.g.: food → to feed; blood → to bleed
*Reduplication, back-formation and deflection are sometimes listed under MAJOR
WORDFORMATION
processes, in spite of their reduced productivity in contemporary language. The
grounds for this are: reduplication was once productive, back-formation seems to be the
counterpart of derivation, deflection comes close to conversion.
ABBREVIATION – It is NOT A WORD FORMATION PROCESS PROPER, as no new
word is the
result of it. It can be related, however, to the mechanisms of clipping and acronymy.
Unlike clipping, abbreviation is not always syllabic, the shortening operation being merely
constrained by the goal of still recognising the initial word.
e.g.: betw. (< between), constr-s (< constructions), rel-ships (< relationships)
Such abbreviations are subject to significant variation.
When abbreviation consists in reducing the words to the initial letters only, it differs from
acronymy in that no new word and overall meaning emerge, this being also signalled by the
often preserved “spelling” pronunciation.
e.g.: AD (< Anno Domini), NP (< Noun Phrase), i.e. (< id est)
Such abbreviations are more or less fixed by convention.
SEMANTIC CHANGE PROCESSES can be most generally grouped as:
a) ‘QUANTITATIVE’ CHANGES; b) ‘QUALITATIVE’ CHANGES
- a) Quantitatively, the meaning of a lexeme can undergo processes of:
1) BROADENING (sometimes termed as ‘generalisation’) – The original meaning is being
semantically widened over the years.
e.g.: - pigeon (ME) = young dove; pigeon (ModE) = any variety of the whole family
of birds scientifically called Columbidae; dove (ModE) = a small variety of
(ModE) pigeon
- aunt (EME) = father’s sister only; aunt (ModE) = father or mother’s sister
- barn (ME) = building for storing only barley; barn (ModE) = building for
storing any agricultural product
2) NARROWING (Η ‘specialisation’) – The original meaning gradually becomes more restricted
in reference.
e.g.: - meat (OE) = food; meat (ModE) = food consisting of animal flesh
- hound (EME, LME) = any kind of dog; hound (ModE) = hunting dog
- b) Qualitatively, the meaning of a lexeme can undergo processes of:
1) DEGRADATION (‘pejoration’, ‘deterioration’) – The meaning depreciates in time, acquiring
“negative” connotations.
e.g.: - cunning (ME) = knowledgeable; cunning (ModE) = clever in a sly way
- villanus (Latin) = a farm servant; vilain / vilein (ME) = a serf with some rights
of independence; villain (ModE) = scoundrel, criminal
2) ELEVATION (‘amelioration’) – The meaning undergoes an “upward” shift, improving its
referential value(s).
32
e.g.: nice (13-16c.) = foolish, stupid; nice (14-16c.) = lascivious, loose; nice (15-16c.)
= extravagant, elegant, rare, strange; nice (16-17c.) = effeminate, shy, tender,
delicate; nice (17-18c.) = over-refined; nice (16-19c.) = careful, precise, intricate;
nice (18-19c.) = appetising; nice (17-20c.) = refined, cultured; nice (18-20c.) =
agreeable, pleasant
Mixed processes may frequently occur during the evolution of a language.
e.g.: doēr (OE) = wild animal; deer (ME) = any kind of animal (generalisation);
deer (ModE) = ruminating animal from the family Cervidae (specialisation)
Some works in lexicology list semantic change processes under ‘semi-primary word
formation processes’.
A more complex and significant process of semantic change is frequently termed as
‘semantic shift’ (for instance, a change to the opposite of the initial meaning).
e.g.: - silly (ME) = happy, innocent, simple; silly (ModE) = foolish
- vir- (Latin) = ‘manliness’; virtue (EME) = power, magical strength;
virtue (LME) = virginity (in women)
- board (ME) = wooden plaque; board (ModE) = 1) meals (‘board and lodging’),
2) committee, group of executives
Metaphoric and metonymic expansions of meaning appear to be rather complex
processes of semantic shift (pertaining to figurative language), and not simple processes of
broadening.
e.g.: They decided to put a ceiling on the income of party leaders.
In present-day Britain The Crown is no longer a decision-taking institution of
the state.
Any adolescent boy dreams to have his own wheels.
Abbreviations: OE = Old English;
ME = Middle English;
EME = Early Middle English;
LME = Late Middle English;
ModE (PE) = Modern (Present-day) English

3. Componential Analysis

As the term is used in structural lexical semantics, it denominates a method of analysis

consisting in the deconstruction (and, inevitably, reduction) of the meaning associated to a
word up to the ultimate semantically functional elements, that are the contrasting (±)
distinctive features (or semes, i.e. minimal, abstracted units of content – lacking expression).
The method has been developed (Hjelmslev, Jakobson) by analogy with (and applying
the same principles as) the phonological analysis (Trubetzkoy). The cluster of semes forms up
the componential definition of a term, and it represents a larger semantic unit, the sememe,
which is the content dimension of the lexeme.
e.g.: 1) - table = lexeme;
- /'t/ /e/ /i/ /b/ /l/ = sequence of phonemes, forming up the expression
dimension of the lexeme;
- ‘table’ (concept) = sememe, sequence of semes, forming up the content
dimension of the lexeme;
- [+ concrete], [- animate], [+ count], [+ man-made], [+ furniture],
[± square], [± rectangular], [± round], [± four-legged], [± wooden],
[± metal], etc = semes, entering the componential definition of the term;
2) - brother1 (pl. brothers): [+ concrete], [+ animate], [+ human], [+ sibling],
[+ male], [- female], [± adult];
- brother2 (pl. brethren): [+ concrete], [+ animate], [+ human], [+ male],
[- female], [- sibling], [+ adult], [+ member of a religious or social
community]
N.B.: Some of the features in various componential analyses can be in their turn
decomposable, giving rise to hyponymy.
e.g.: mare: [+ horse], [+ female], [+ adult], etc
and: horse: [+ concrete], [+ animate], [- human], [± female], etc
Some or all of distinctive features may be common to several different lexemes in the
vocabulary. Nevertheless, one given cluster of features stands for only one lexeme.
According to Coseriu, semes are the minimal distinctive features of meaning that are
operative within a single lexical field, and they serve to structure the field in terms of various
kinds of binary oppositions.
Classemes, in contrast to semes, are very general sense-components that are common
to lexemes belonging to several different lexical fields. They tend to be not only lexicalised,
but also grammaticalised.
e.g.: animate / inanimate;
male / female;
[± cause], etc
The features that have grammatical relevance are called ‘semantic markers’.
e.g.: [± count];
[± gradable];
[± durative], etc
The general term ‘marker’ (Katz) refers to the features that determine selectional
restrictions.
e.g.: [+ male] in the componential analysis of a term prevents the collocation of that
term with ‘pregnant’
‘Distinguishers’ are the features that apply to a very restricted number of lexemes.
They have no grammatical relevance.
e.g.: [+ rounding] for a verb of cutting like ‘to clip’

4.Sense Relations : Synonymy and Antonymy

4.1. From concept to word: synonymy and antonymy

Synonymy

According to one definition (usually attributed to Leibniz), two expressions are

synonymous if the substitution of one for the other never changes the truth value of a sentence in
which the substitution is made. By that definition, true or absolute synonyms are rare, if they
exist at all.
Absolute synonyms are defined (Lyons, 1986: 51) as "expressions that are fully, totally
and completely synonyms" in the sense that
(a) all their meanings are identical (full synonymy)
(b) they are interchangeable in all contexts (total synonymy)
(c) they are identical in all relevant dimensions of meaning (complete synonymy)
Actually the very terms 'absolute synonymy', ''full synonymy", ”total synonymy" and
"complete synonymy" (not to mention exact synonymy) are themselves used as synonyms
whether absolute or partial in standard works in semantics or lexicology, usually without
definition.
Without favoring the hair-splitting terminological distinctions, Lyons (1986: 51) insists
upon the importance of (a) not confusing near synonymy with partial synonymy and (b) not
making the assumptions that failure to satisfy one of the conditions of absolute synonymy
necessarily involves the failure to satisfy either or both of the other conditions.
To exemplify the first condition required by absolute synonymy or full synonymy (i.e.
same range of meanings) we will consider the pair big-large, where the former term has at least
one meaning that it does not share with the latter one. If we compare the sentence "I will tell my
big sister" with "I will tell my large sister "we notice that the polysemy of big does not perfectly
overlap with the meaning of large.
The second condition for absolute synonymy, i.e. interchangeability of terms in all
contexts (total synonymy) refers to the collocational range of an expression (the set of contexts
in which it can occur). For example, the members in the pairs busy-occupied, decoration-
ornamentation, liberty -freedom do not always have the same collocational range. There are
many contexts in which they are not interchangeable without violating the collocational
restrictions of the one or of the other. For instance, freedom cannot be substituted for liberty in
'You are at liberty to say what you want'.
Concerning the third condition for absolute synonymy, i.e. identity/similarity of all
dimensions of meaning (complete synonymy), Lyons (1986: 55) distinguishes descriptive
synonymy and expressive synonymy. Two expressions are descriptively synonymous, i.e. they
have the same descriptive propositional/cognitive/referential meaning in and only if statements
containing the other and vice versa. For example, big can be substituted for large in 'I live in a
big house'.
However, in particular instances, synonymous expressions may differ in terms of the
degree or nature of their expressive meaning. Expressive (affective/attitudinal/emotive) meaning
is the kind of meaning by virtue of which a speaker expresses, rather than describes his beliefs,
attitudes and feelings1.
For example, words like huge, enormous, gigantic, colossal are more expressive of their
users' feelings towards what they are describing than very big or very large with which they are
perhaps descriptively synonymous (Lyons, 1986: 54).
As languages seem to vary considerably in the degree to which they grammaticalize expressive
meaning to choose the right word /expression out of a wide range of synonymic terms differing
in their degree of expressivity is a very demanding task for translators. It is the expressive rather
than the descriptive component of meaning that
dominant when we decide to use terms that imply approval or disapproval: statesman vs.
politician, thrifty vs. mean/stingy vs. economical, stink/stench vs. fragrance vs. smell,
crafty/cunning vs. skillful vs. clever. In order to attract the reader and listener's attention headline
and advertisement writers have to be very skillful at using expressive synonymy. Knowing the
expressive meaning of a lexeme is just as much a part of one's competence in a language as
knowing its descriptive meaning.
Although synonymy is fairly irrelevant for the structure of the lexicon of a language, i.e.
a language can function without synonymy, language learners cannot use the language properly.
Without synonymy, language learners cannot use the language properly without knowledge of all
its synonymic resources.

Antonymy

Although there is no logical necessity for languages to have lexical opposites at all
(English would be just as efficient as semiotic system if ther were such pairs as good :ungood,
wide : unwide, far: unfar) antonymy reflects the human tendency to think in opposites, to
categories experience in terms of binary contrast( Lyons, 1977 : 276).
Antonyms have received a good deal of attention from linguists such as Sapir (1944),
Duchacek (1965), Bierwisch (1967), Lyons (1967, 1977), Cruse (1976, 1986), Bolinger (1977),
Lehrer (1982).
Lyons (1977) replaces the term antonymy in the wider sense by "oppositeness" (of
meaning) and distinguishes three different types of oppositeness: a) complementarity b)
anotnymy (in the narrower, restricted sense) c) converseness.

Complementarity

Complementarity can be exemplified by pairs of words like male and female, single-
married. It is characteristic of complementaries that the denial of the one term
implies the assertion of the other and vice versa. For instance, John is not married implies that
John is single and also John is married implies that John is not single.
Although complementaries are not gradable opposites; there are instances that
do not cover all possible cases in real life. Thus there may be other possibilities besides
complementaries, e.g. male and female namely hermaphrodite.
 Cruse (1986:202) claims that complementaries are not normally gradable, that is, they are
odd in the comparative or superlative degree or when modified by intensifiers such as extremely,
moderately or slightly.(e.g. extremely true, moderately female, etc). Nevertheless, he states, there
are instances where one member of the pair lends itself more readily to grading than the other.
Thus, alive is more gradable than dead (very dead, moderately dead, deader than before vs. very
alive, moderately alive, more alive than before). For example, if someone says to us ‘Is X still
alive then?’. And we reply ‘Very much so.’ or ‘And how!’ we are not thereby challenging the
ungradability of dead: alive in the language system. What we are grading, Lyons(1977: 278)
assumes are various secondary implications or connotations of alive.
The same holds true of the pair open-shut where shut is less gradable than open (slightly
shut, moderately shut, more shut than before vs. wide open, slightly open, moderately open,
more open than before).
Besides Cruse (1986: 99) maintains that ‘the relations between dead and alive is not at all
affected by medico- legal uncertainty as what constitutes the point of death. Such referential
indeterminacy afflicts all words, without exceptions. The point about complementaries is that
once a decision has been reached regarding one term, in all relevant circumstances a decision has
effectively been made regarding the other term, too.’
Cruse (1986: 200) believes that complementarity is to some extent a matter of degree and
supports his statement by examples such as ghosts and vampires that existed in a state, which
was neither death nor life. Similarly he says, the existence of hermaphrodites and totally
indeterminate sex weakens the relationships between male and female. An even weaker
relationship would hold between terms such left- handed and right- handed.
Complementaries are, generally speaking, either verbs or adjectives. According to Cruse
(1986 :200) an interesting feature of verbal complementaries which distinguishes them from
adjectival complementaries is that the domain within which the complementarity operates is
often expressible by a single lexical item e.g. the verb command sets the scene for the
complementarity of obey and disobey.
Further examples are born- live- die, start- keep on- stop, learn- remember- forget,
arrive- stay- leave, earn- save- suspend, request- grant- refuse, invite- accept- turn down, greet-
acknowledge- snub, tempt- yield- resist, try- succeed- fail, compete- win- loose, aim- hit- miss.
A final example of lexical triplets involving verbal complementaries are attack- defend-
submit, change- refute- admit, shoot(in football)- save- let in, punch- parry- take.
As can be noticed, the members of the complementary pair represent an active and a
passive response to the original action or perhaps more revealing counteraction or lack of
counteraction.
The same holds true of the pair open- shut where shut is less gradable than open (slightly
shut, moderately shut, more shut than before vs. wide open, slightly open, moderately open, more
open than before).
Over examples of more or less fully gradable complementary adjectives are the pairs
true- false, pure- impure, clear- dirty, safe- dangerous : moderately clean, very clean, fairly
clean, cleaner, slightly dirty, quite dirty, fairly dirty, dirtier, moderately safe, very safe, fairly
safe, safer, slightly dangerous, quite dangerous, fairly dangerous, more dangerous.

Antonymy proper

Antonymy in the narrow, restricted sense of Lyons ( ) is the second subclass of

oppositeness of meaning. The logical relationship is based on the fact that the assertion of one
member does imply the negation other, but not vice versa. In other words, for pairs of antonyms
like good- bad, big- small, high- low, only one of the relations of implication (entailment) stated
for complementarity holds.
 Thus, John is good, implies John is not bad. But John is not good does not necessarily
imply John is bad. Therefore, the negation/ denial of one term does not necessarily imply the
assertion of the other.
In the case of antonymy proper, a third possibility exists. Antonymous adjectives (in the
narrow sense) behave like comparatives, i.e. they are fully gradable unlike complementaries that
are not.

Converseness

Converseness is the third subclass of oppositeness of meaning distinguished by Lyons.

The logical criterion used for the sense relation of converseness is the possibility of permuting
noun phrases functioning as arguments (semantic roles) in sentences which remain otherwise
equivalent; the sentences imply each other and thus have the same meaning. Thus, John bought
the car from Bill implies Bill sold the car to John and vice versa. Schematically, the sentences
may be represented in the following way :
NP1 bought NP3 from NP2.
NP2 sold NP3 from NP1.
As can be noticed, the substitution of lexical converses causes a permutation of NPs
functioning as arguments. The three types of oppositeness of meaning proposed by Lyons (1968)
are based on the relation of lexical implication or entailment. In more recent works (Lyons,
1977; Cruse, 1986) semanticists refined the classical treatment of oppositeness of meaning by
introducing a fourth type, called directional opposition. This fourth subclass is based on the
notion of contrary motion (i.e. in opposite direction ) : up- down, come- go, arrive- depart.

5.Hierarchical Sense Relations: Hyponymy and Meronymy

5.1 Hyponymy

Hyponymy, like incompatibility and antonymy has been one of the topics of lively
interest for lexical semantics since the structuralist period. Although Lyons (1968) declared that
all sense relations were context dependent, they have almost universally been treated (including
by Lyons himself) as stable properties of individual lexical items.
Traditionally, sense relations are defined in terms of entailment, i.e. of the logical relation
between two sentences such that the truth of the second sentence follows from the truth of the
first. On this approach, a sentence like It’s a dog unilaterally entails It’s an animal so dog is a
hyponym of animal. Similarly, I always avoid the red skirts unilaterally entails I always avoid
the scarlet skirts and John punched Bill unilaterally entails John hit Bill. As can be noticed, the
normal direction in the entailment is from hyponym to superordinate.
Hyponymy is one of the most fundamental paradigmatic relations, corresponding to the
inclusion of one class in another. For example, terms such as daisy, daffodil and rose all contain
the meaning of flower. That is to say, they are all hyponyms of flower.
The set of terms which are hyponyms of the same superordinate term are co-hyponyms,
for example, red, black and yellow, in the colour system, or ox, bull, calf that are covered by the
superordinate term cattle.
Another way of describing the relationship is to say that the individual colours are sisters of the
parent term colour or sisters of the parent term cattle.
A hyponym is a word that is more specific (less general), which has more elements of
meaning and is more marked than its superordinate. For example, it can be marked for age
(puppy, kitten, calf, piglet, duckling and cygnet are marked, while dog, cat, cow, pig, duck, swan
are unmarked) or for sex (bitch, drake, bull, hog, sow, cob, pen are marked, while dog, duck,
cow, pig, swan are unmarked). Hence, we can define hyponyms in terms of the hypernym plus a
single feature, as in stallion=’male horse’, kitten=’young cat’.
The more general term with reference to which the subordinate term can be defined, as is
the usual practice in dictionary definitions (‘a cat is a type of animal…’) is called the
superordinate or hypernym. Sometimes a word may be superordinate to itself in another sense.
This is the case with animal, as shown in the figure below. The first occurrence, opposed to
vegetable, is the sense contained in the phrase ‘the animal kingdom’. The second occurrence is
synonymous with mammal, and the third with beast.

Living things

Animal Vegetable

Animal
Bird Fish Insect

Human
Animal

Superordinate terms in turn may become hyponyms in relation to a more general

superordinate term: e.g. cattle is a hyponym of animal. Pairs of lexical items related by
hyponymy are far more frequently found among nouns than among adjectives or verbs.
Hyponymy is a vertical relationship which is fundamental to the way in which we classify
things. Most dictionaries rely on it for the provision of definitions (‘a chair is a type of furniture’,
‘a flute is a type of musical instrument’ and so on). Hyponymy offers a good organizing
principle for vocabulary learning and teaching. Most language coursebooks use this feature of
organization implicitly or explicitly in grouping names of flowers together or garnments or
articles of furniture.

5.2 Meronymy

Meronymy is a term used to describe a part-whole relationship between lexical items. For
instance, cover and page are meronyms of book. We can identify this relationship by using
sentence frames like X is part of Y, or Y has X, as in a page is a part of a book or a book has
pages.
The lexical relation of meronymy, sometimes referred to as partonymy, is usually
informally described as ‘part-whole relation. Croft and Cruse (2004: 151) claim that meronymy
is a relation between meanings, whereas the part-whole relation links two individual entities and
generates chains of elements: A is a part of B, B is a part of C, C is a part of D and so on. For
instance,
A fingertip is a part of a finger.
A finger is a part of hand.
A hand is a part of arm.
An arm is a part of a body.
An important point is that the networks identified as meronymy are lexical: it is
conceptually possible to segment an item in countless ways, but only some divisions are coined
in the vocabulary of a language. Every language has a range of ways of referring to parts of
things. Many of these ways involve specialized lexical items.
Meronymy is similar to hyponymy because it reflects a hierarchical and asymmetrical
relationship between words, represented by the ‘less than’ sign. For example, stanza is a
meronym of poem, but poem is not a meronym of stanza. Or, sonnet is a hyponym of poem but
poem is not a hypomym of sonnet. However, unlike hyponymic relations, meronymic hierarchies
are less clear cut and regular. Meronyms may vary in how necessary the part is to the whole.
Some are for normal examples, for example, nose is a meronym of face, others are usual but not
obligatory, like collar, as a meronym of shirt, still other are optional, like cellar for house.
Meronymy also differs from hyponymy in transitivity. Hyponymy is always transitive,
but meronymy may or may not be. A transitive example is nail, a meronym of finger and finger
of hand. We can see that nail is a meronym of hand as we can say A hand has nails. A non-
transitive example is: pane is a meronym of window (A window has a pane) and window of room
(A room has a window); but pane is not a meronym of room, for we cannot say A room has a
pane. Or hole is a meronym of button and button of shirt, but we wouldn’t say that hole is a
meronym of shirt (A shirt has holes).

Bibliografie obligatorie:

CHIŢORAN, D., Elements of English Structural Semantics, Editura Didactică şi Pedagogică,

Bucureşti, 1973
LEECH, Geoffrey N., Semantics, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1974
LEECH, Geoffrey N., Principles of Pragmatics, Longman, London, 1983
LYONS, John, Semantics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1977
PALMER, F.R. Semantics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1976
STEINBERG, D.D. and JAKOVOBITS, L.A. Semantics, Cambridge University press,
cambridge, Mass. 1971
HALLIDAY, M.A.K. An Introduction to Functional Grammar, Edward Arnold, London, 1994
ZDRENGHEA, Mihai, Introduction to Semantics, University Press, Cluj-Napoca, 1977