A summary of Meaning relations (CH 5) in Understanding Semantics by Sebastian Lbner Hyponymy The meaning relation Hyponymy proper can

be defined as follows: an expression A is a hyponym of an expression B if the meaning of B is part of the meaning of A and A is a subordinate of B. In addition to the meaning of B, the meaning of A must contain further specifications, rendering the meaning of A, the hyponym, more specific than the meaning of B. If A is a hyponym of B, B is called hyperonym of A. Hyponymy is a relation between words that results from a relation between their meanings and leads to a relation between their denotations: the meaning of the hyponym contains the meaning of the hyponym is a subcategory of the denotation of the hyperonym. Examples of Hyponymy are numerous. One group consists of pair of subordinates and superordinates in hierarchies. Another group of cases is constituted by pairs of simple lexemes and compounds containing the simple lexeme as their second part, such as sentence meaning (hyponym)- meaning (hyperonym). Pairs of hyponyms beyond any doubt are expressions resulting from simple syntactic combinations such as adding and adjective to a noun or an adverb to a verb. Regular compounds One of the major mechanisms of word formation, i.e.: the part of grammar that rules the formation of new words out of the ones available in the lexicon, is (morphological) composition. It allows, among others, the formation of compound nouns out of two nouns. For regular compounds, there is a corresponding semantic rule which can be described as follow: a regular compound has two parts, the first is called modifier, the second the head; the modifier adds a specification to the meaning of the head noun. The meaning of the modifier is also bound into the meaning of the compound, but not in the same way as the meaning of the head. Therefore the resulting meaning relation between the compound and the modifier is not Hyponymy. Rather, the meaning relation is a special relation to be defined in terms of what the referents of modifier and compound have to do with each other. Oppositions There are different kinds of opposites. The intuitive notion of opposites covers a range of different meaning relations. Antonyms Two expressions are called antonyms if they denote two opposite extremes out of a range of possibilities. The prototypical examples are pairs of adjectives such as: old/young, old/new, big/small, thick/thin, good/bad, light/dark, difficult/easy. Their meanings can be illustrated by means of a scale of age, size, diameter, quality, brightness, difficulty, etc., which is open on both sides.

There are adjectives which denote the upper section, the other the lower section of the scale. There is a neutral middle interval where neither expression applies. Every value on the scale that lies above the neutral interval counts. Antonyms are logical contraries but not contradictories: the negation of one term is not equivalent to the opposite term. Words for the neutral case are rare and rather artificial recent inventions (middleaged, medium sized). Normally, the neutral case can only be expressed by cumbersome expressions as neither difficult nor easy. Antonymous are called scalar adjectives. They are gradable and therefore allow for the full range of adjectival forms and constructions: comparatives (bigger than), superlative (biggest), equative (as big as), or modifications such as very big. In very many cases, the antonym of an adjective is formed by prefixing un- or its Latin-origin equivalent in/im/ir/il: pleasant/unpleasant, likely/unlikely, adequate/inadequate In each case, the unprefixed adjective is felt to be positive, not in the sense of an expressive meaning part, but as intuitively denoting the section at the upper end of the scale, while the prefixed opposite is the negative counterpart at the lower end of the scale. We shall see below that pairs of this form (A vs un-A, etc.) are not necessarily antonyms. The prefixation also occurs with pairs of expressions that form a different type of opposition. Antonymy is not restricted to adjectives. There are antonymous pairs of nouns such as war/peace, love/hate and some antonymous pairs of verbs: love/hate, or encourage/discourage; adverbs such as always/never Directional opposites Pairs such as in front of/behind, left/right, above/below have much in common with antonyms. For each such pair there is a point of reference from which one looks in opposite directions on a certain axis. The type of opposition represented by in front of/behind is called directional opposition. Directional opposites are related to opposite directions on a common axis. Further examples that involve the vertical axis are: top/bottom, high/low, up/down, upstairs/downstairs and many more. Examples related to the primary horizontal axis are forwards/backwards, advance/retreat. A similar axis is the time axis. We talk about things happening before vs latter a certain time, or later vs earlier. Thus pairs such as before/after, past/future, since/until, yesterday/tomorrow, last/next, precede/follow are directional opposites related to the axis time. A further case is provided by the verb tenses past and future: the past tense locates the situation expressed before the now of the utterance, the future tense locates it after now. Also related to time are pairs of directional opposites like tie/untie, pack/unpack, wrap/unwrap, dress/undress, put on/put off and many more. One member denotes the coming about, or bringing about, of a certain state, while the other member denotes a process or action by which the state is ended. Complementaries The type of opposition represented by aunt/uncle, buy/rent or buy/steal is known as complementary opposition. Complementary opposites are logically complementary: the negation of one term is equivalent to the other term. Each expression denotes one out of the only two possibilities in some domain of cases. In this domain, complementary opposites represent an either-or alternative. Complementary adjectives are not gradable, they do not permit the comparative, superlative, equative form or modification. Prefixation is also used for the formation of complementary opposites. Complementarity more typically occurs with nouns, e.g. pairs of terms fr persons of

opposite sex, or pairs such us member/non-member, official/non-official. The meanings of two complementaries are identical except for one crucial feature in which they differ. Heteronyms So- called Heteronymy involves more than two expressions. A typical example is the set of terms for the days of the week, the set of basic colour terms for kinds of animals, plants, vehicles, etc. A set of heteronymous terms jointly covers a wider range of possibilities. Logically, two heteronyms are contraries; if x is Sunday, it cannot be Monday But unlike Antonymy, Heteronymy is not related to scales; heteronyms are not opposite extremes, but just members of a set of co-subordinates in larger hierarchies: terms of plants, flowers, animals, birds, breeds of dogs, kinds of clothing Co- hyponyms occurring at the same level in a natural lexicalized hierarchy always form a set of heteronyms. Apart from nouns, there are many fields of heteronymous verbs, such us the different verbs of motion (walk, run, fly, swim) and verbs denoting human activities such us eat, work, sleep, dance etc. Converses This kind of relation is restricted to expressions whose meanings involve two or more elements. Such terms express a relation in the widest sense, e.g. an action involving two participants, a comparison or kinship relation. Converses are defined as follows: two expressions are converses of each other if and only if they express the same relation with reversed roles. Examples are above/below, before/after, borrow/lend, wife/husband, as well as some of the technical terms introduced here: entail/follow from, hyponym/hyperonym. Converses differ from other types of opposites in that they do not correspond to uniform logical relation. The pairs above/below, before/after, borrow/lend, hyponym/hyperonym are contraries. Wife and husband constitute complementaries. Entail and follow from are logically independent because if A entails B it may not be the case that A also follows from B. Some expressions could even be considered their own converses, namely all terms which express symmetric relations, like different from, sibling of, married to. X is different from (a sibling of, or married to) y if and only is different from (a sibling of, married to) x. To the extent that the term opposition is reversed for expressions with different meanings, converseness is restricted to expressions that denote asymmetric relations. One major group of converses is provided by the comparative forms of antonymous adjectives. For transitive verbs, passive constructions provide a general means of conversion. Related to the passive conversion is a productive pattern for pairs of converse nouns in English: noun derivations from verbs with the suffixes er and ee. Many directional opposites, e.g. spatial prepositions such as above/below, to the right of/to the left of, etc. are at the same time converses.

Antonyms: opposite extreme on a scale. Contraries (big/small). Directional opposites: opposite directions on an axis. Contraries (above/below) Complementaries: either- or alternatives within a given domain. Complementaries (even/old, girl/boy). Heteronyms: more than two alternatives within a given domain. Contraries: (Monday/Tuesday). Converses: the same with reversed roles (relations only). Various logical relations (buy/sell, wife/husband)

Lexical fields Most lexical items form groups with other lexemes. Semantic theories of different orientations, in particular structuralist approaches, have tried to capture this phenomenon by the notion of a lexical field. A lexical field is a group of lexemes that fulfils the following conditions: The lexemes are of the same word class Their meanings have something in common They are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations Small fields Some fields are quite small. The meanings of the two antonyms have in common that the both relate to an end section of the same scale, they are related by Antonymy, and the group is complete since there are other adjectives that share this meaning part. Polysemous words with two different antonyms, such as old with its antonyms new and young belong to two different fields old/young and old/new. Strictly speaking, it is not words that belong to lexical fields but words-with-a-certain-meaning. Taxonomies Terms for animals, plants, food or artefacts such as furniture, vehicles, clothes, musical instruments etc. form lexical fields of considerable size. Their underlying structure is a hierarchy with two or more levels: a topmost hyperonym like vehicle, a level of general terms such as car, bicycle, boat, aeroplane and further levels of more specific kinds of cars, bicycles, boats, aeroplanes. Such systems represent a special type of hierarchies called taxonomies (sometimes called taxonyms) are not just arbitrary subordinates but hyponyms that denote sub-kinds. The hierarchy of word class terms is a taxonomy: nouns, verbs and adjectives are kinds of words, count nouns and mass nouns are kind of nouns. Referents of co-hyponyms in taxonomies differ in many properties. Referents of cohyponyms of small, often binary, hierarchies such as sibling/sister/brother differ in only one property. Meronymies Many objects in the world are conceived as a whole consisting of different parts. And correspondingly, our concepts for complex objects contain these parts as elements. One of the best examples of a complex object is the human body with its parts, their subparts and so on. Parts are not only sections of the body but defined in terms of specific functions. The head is the part of the body that carries the most important sense organs: eyes, ears, nose and tongue; it contains the brain. The face forms the front side of the head; it contains the eyes, the nose and the mouth; it serves facial expression. Within the face, the mouth is used for eating, drinking, speaking, breathing, biting, kissing, smiling the tongue serves for articulation A system of this type is not to be confused with hierarchy based on Hyponymy. The vertical lines stand for the part- whole relation. In term of potential referents, it means for example that a potential referent of face is part of a potential referent of head. The technical term for the constituting meaning is Meronymy (from ancient Greek meron)=part, a system based on meronymies is called mareological system, or mereology. If A is a meronym of B, then B is holonym of A (from ancient Greek holos=whole). Meronymies involving nouns can be spelt out with the help of sentences of

the form A has a B, e.g. a head has a face, a face has a mouth Every person has a mother, a weight, and age,and so on, but these are not parts of the person. This is a further important difference between lexical hierarchies and meronymic system: unlike Hyponymy and subordination, Meronymy is not generally a transitive relation. If part is taken in the sense of constitutive part, i.e. something that essentially contributes to making up the whole, then an eye is not a part of the head, as the tongue is not a part of the face