Malone UI Engl 241 Semantics part III Semantic Relationships Intro to Linguistics Spring 2020.

1. SEMANTICS: LANGUAGE AND MEANING
Part III: Relationships betweenWords

2. SEMANTICS is the study of how language acquires
meaning. It is a complex field, but our overview will
break semantics into four essential parts:
1. Sense and Reference
2.What Definitions Offer
3.Relationships between Words
4.Propositions and Presuppositions

3. SEMANTIC RELATIONSHIPS

4. • One way linguists decipher meaning is by
considering how language accounts for conceptual
relationships.
• If something can be hot, then there most be a
scale of more or less hot. Or something “not hot,”
like,“cold.”
• If somebody is intelligent – then there most be
people who, well, aren’t.
• If we’re capable of seeing color, we need terms
for gradients of color, for different colors, etc.

5. The semantic relationships we will study are:
1. Hyponymy (Hyponyms and Hypernyms)
2. Synonymy (Synonyms)
3. Antonymy (Antonyms: Contrary/Gradable,
Complementary, Reversive, Conversive)

6. HYPONYMY

7. Do you remember the circle diagrams of Sense
and Reference from Part I of the Semantics unit?
If not, go back and visit that now…

8. HYPONYMS AND HYPERNYMS
• It is helpful to think of hyponymy as related to sense and
reference. Hyponymy helps us categories how words are
related hierarchically to one another.
• If COLOR is a hypernym, then possible hyponyms
include magenta, yellow, blue, red, green, etc.
• Let’s review some the diagrams from the Sense and
Reference section…

9. SCHOOLS
Higher Education
Community
Colleges
Four-year
Schools
SFCC NIC
UI BSU
WSU
CATS
Brian’s Cats
Oliver
Quincey
Lily
Simba
Chloe
Penny

10. What are the hypernyms in each diagram? What
hyponyms belong under each hypernym?

11. Well, if institutes of higher education is a hypernym, possible hyponyms
include UI,WSU, BSU, NIC, SFCC, etc.
Look at NIC and SFCC though.Those are hyponyms of Community
Colleges.
What are the hyponyms of Brian’s cats?

12. Why is this useful? Well, hyponymy helps us classify hierarchical
relationships between words. It helps us create taxonomies of
relationships, which linguistics relies on much like biology does. See, for
example, the below diagram representing the taxonomy of “mammal.”

13. Challenge:
What other hyponymies can you think of?

14. SYNONYMY

15. I’ll keep this simple. I know much of our class takes elementary school
concepts that you thought were straightforward and complicates them. So
maybe you’ll be pleased to read that you pretty much got it if you thought,
“Synonyms are words that mean the same thing.”
All I want to do is reiterate something How LanguagesWork mentions on page
179. Remember,“if any two words had identical meanings, there would be no
reason to have both in the language.” Even if synonyms are pretty close
semantically, the social context and slight nuances between words
necessitates having synonyms.
Think of all the synonyms English has for “marijuana.” How does context and
speaker demographic influence the term people use? How have these terms
shifted generationally?
What about the difference between “film” and “movie,” which the book
provides as an example?
What synonyms can you think of for “cell phone?”

16. ANTONYMY

17. Here’s where things get complicated.
Identifying a word’s antonym isn’t as
simple as asking,“Well, what’s its
opposite?”There are four types of
antonymy…
(I’ll borrow some examples from the book to introduce them to
you, mixed with some I come up with).

18. CONTRARY / GRADABLE
ANTONYMS
These are like scales or spectrums. If something is “wet,” we
can GRADE its wetness on a scale… dry, damp, wet,
drenched, etc. Others include:
• Height: Short – tall
• Body Shape: Skinny – Fat
• Texture: Smooth – Coarse
• Age:Young – Old
And SO many more. Can you think of any?
To decide whether you’re looking at a gradable
antonym, ask if something can be,“kind of [antonym].” Can
you be kind of short? Yeah.

19. COMPLEMENTARY
ANTONYMS
Complement (with an “e” not an “i”!) means to
complete something. Here’s the trick to
deciding if you’re looking at a
complementary antonym: You have to be
one or the other.
Take a look at the following:
• Dead / Alive
• On / Off
• In / Out
See, you can’t be kind of one of these (I mean,
unless you really stretch the meaning…).You’re
either alive or dead.You’re either here or away.
Etc.

20. REVERSE ANTONYMS
• To identify reverses, ask yourself,“is this an action that
undoes another?”While “off” and “on” are complements,
to turn off and to turn on are reverses.They undo each
other.
• Marry / Divorce
• Dress / Undress
• Ascend / Descend
• Tie / Untie

21. CONVERSE ANTONYMS
My students tend to get the difference between reverse and converse confused. So
remember, reverses undo each other. But just because something is on, doesn’t mean
another thing is off. Just because somebody is getting married doesn’t mean they are
also getting divorced.
That is not the case with converse antonyms. The trick is with converses, if one thing
is true, then its opposite is necessarily also true! Think of these as opposite forces
related to a relationship.
• If something is in front, then something else must be behind.
• If something is on top, then something must be on the bottom.
• If there is a North there must be a South.
See that shift in perspective from reverses? Remember the example of ascend /
descend as a reverse antonym? In that case, just because something ascends does not
mean something is descending.This is the fundamental distinction between reverses
and converses.

22. CONVERSE RELATIONSHIPS (CONT.)
• I want to mention the book’s example of husband / wife as an example of converse antonyms.
This is complicated. I like this example because it demonstrates the importance of thinking
about antonymy as a relationship between words. I don’t like the example because it isn’t true
that just because there’s a husband there must be a wife.
• From a purely descriptive standpoint (ie. describing what is possible based on real-world
observation), it is possible that the partners may be of any gender. BUT, even even if there are
two husbands, there is a conversive relationship here.The presence of one necessitates
the presence of the other.
• That said, on the level of the word itself, it is difficult to argue that “husband” is the converse of
“husband.”
• This requires context and clear argumentation, and it’s a good example of how in linguistics we
try to describe linguistic relationships, but the terminology we use doesn’t always apply in clear
cut ways.

23. Challenge:
Come up with your own examples for
each of the four kinds of antonymy!

24. END
PPT 3 of 4 written for the Semantics unit.
Engl 241-01, 02, Spring 2020 at University of Idaho.
Professor Brian Malone