WESTERN 1

UNIVERSITY
DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

APPLIED LINGUISTICS

PART II- CHAPTER 12

LECTURED :DR. GLORIA

GROUP 10: 1.DA VUTHY 2. HUSEYIN KIRIK

ACADEMIC YEAR: 2016 - 2017

 Word meaning 2
 Entailment and hyponymy
• Entailment means to involve something that cannot be avoided.
(Oxford Dictionary)
• Hyponymy is A word whose meaning is included in the meaning of another
• more general word ( Google)

• Consider the sentences in (134)

• (134) a. Max managed to finish infinite jest.
b. Max finished infinite jest.

• In these circumstances, we say that (134a) Entails 134b), and a

general definition of entailment appears (135)
• (135) A sentence (S1) Entails a sentence (S2) if and only if
whenever S1 is true, S2 is also true.
 • It is important to be clear that this year relation of entailment does not
obtain between sentences that just happen to be true in the current or any 3
state of affairs.
EX. (136) a. The dodo is extinct
b. Berlin is the capital of Germany.
• Both sentences are true at the time of writing, but it is not the case that (136a) and entails (136b).
• Consider some simpler examples of entailment relations,
which will help us to build up a picture of how the
lexicon might be structured.
(137) a. The thing in the cage is a lion.
b. The thing in the cage is an animal.
(139) a. The thing in the grass is a snake.
b. The thing in the grass is a reptile.
(140) a. The thing in the tree is a sparrow.
b. The thing in the tree is a bird.
• What we have is a relationship of entailment between pairs o
sentences that is due to the presence of particular pairs of
words
• Form: (141) “X” is a lion entails “X” is an animal. 4
When we find this situation, we say that Lion is a Hyponym of animal.

• A very straightforward test for many example of hyponymy is to use here.

• An X is a king / Type of Y.
• A lion is a type of animal, a snake is a type of reptile, etc.
• Recognition of hyponymy as a semantic relation which holds
between some words raises a numbers of issue.
• Firstly, we must recognize that, as well as animal being a
superordinate of lion, it is also itself a hyponym of creature.
Creature
• (144) here: animal bird fish reptile

lion Dog cow Sparrow eagle Trout eel shark Snake lizard newt
ostrich
• lion, dog, cow, etc. are co-hyponyms of the superordinate animal, which, along
with bird, fish and reptile, is a co hyponym of creature. 5

• All the words appearing in the taxonomy in (144) are nouns.

Do members of other word classes enter into hyponymy relationship?

• For Verbs: consider the pairs of examples in here (145) and (146).
(145) a. X borrowed/stole/found/bought Y
b. X got Y
(146) a. X walked/ran/staggered/crawled to Z
b. X moved to Z

In both of these cases, the various sentences in (a) entail the sentence in (b).
 Get
(147) 6

Borrow steal find buy

(148) Move

Walk run stagger crawl

• It is easy enough to come up with a formulation which produces a

simple test for whether a verb X is a hyponym of another verb Y.
 (150) a. Body, arm
b. Arm, elbow 7
c. House, roof
d. Engine, carburetor

• This relationship is meronym

• We also say that arm is a meronym of body and that arm, leg, etc.

body

arm leg

Elbow wrist Knee ankle

 Synonymy or identity of meaning is a semantic relation with which most
readers will be familiar. 8

• To illustrate, consider the pair of lexemes HORSE and STEED.

a. The old lame horse gamely pulled the plough.

(157) b. The old lame steed gamely pulled the plough.

• Obviously, synonymous lexemes exhibit considerable over of meaning.

• Interestingly, the same is true or pairs of words opposite in meaning to
which we now turn.
 Meaning opposite
9
 Opposite of meaning is a pervasive semantic relation in the lexicons of
human language and it comes in several varieties.
• Tall – short, high – low, wide – narrow, fat – thin, old – young, old – new

• We have the entailments here (159) which make explicit that these are
indeed semantic opposites.
(159) a. ‘X is tall´ entails ‘X is not short’
b. ‘X is short’ entails ‘X is not tall´

• Here, the entailments in (160) do not obtain.

(159) a. ‘X is not short’ entails ‘X is tall’

b. ‘X is not tall’ entails ‘X is short’
 • Pairs of opposites which behave like tall and short with respect to
entailments are known as antonyms and they exhibit the semantic 10
relation of antonym.
(161): Open – closed (of s store); married – single; dead – alive; broken - unbroken

• Here we find analogous entailments to those in(159):

(162) a. The store is open’ entails ‘The store is not closed’.
b. The store is closed’ entails ‘The store is not open’.
• For this case, however, the converse entailments do obtain:
(163) a. ‘The store is not closed’ entails The store is
open.’
b. ‘The store is not open’ entails The store is
closed’.
• Opposite like those in (161) are referred to as complementariness and the
corresponding semantic relation is complementary
 What is “Semantics” ? 11

Semantics is the study of the

meaning that is used to
understand human expression
through language.
 Semantics is a perhaps the most difficult part of the grammar
of a language to learn. 12

 The reason is because, basically meanings in a language are

indefinite/undetermined.

 Remember that language is arbitrary. It is arbitrary because the relationship between

forms and their meanings are sometimes cannot logically proved.

 Language is arbitrary in the sense that there is no inherent relation between the
words of a language and their meanings.
 Semantic Extending
13
- Even when a word is retained in a language, its meaning will often
change over time. Often social change- people change how it’s used.
Here, words get a more general meaning than they once had.
WORDS OLD MEANING NEW MEANING

Aunt Father’s sister Parent’s sister, wife of

parent’s sister.

Manage Handle a horse Handle anything

Holiday Holy day Any day off

 Semantic Features
14
 One way in which the study of basic conceptual meaning might be helpful would be as a
means of accounting for the ‘’oddness’’ we experience when we read sentences such as the
following:

The hamburger ate the boy.

We should first note that the oddness of these sentences does not derive from their syntactic
structure. According to the syntactic rules for forming English sentences we have well-performed
structure.

NP V NP
The hamburger ate the boy
 Semantic Features (cont.…)
15

This sentences is syntactically good, but semantically odd.

Since the sentence The boy ate the hamburger is perfectly acceptable, we may be
able to identify the source of the problem.

The components of the conceptual meaning of the noun hamburger must be

significantly different from those of the noun boy, thereby preventing one, and
not the other, from being used as the subject of the verb ate.

The kind of noun that can be the subject of the verb ate must denote an entity
that is capable of “eating.” The noun hamburger does not have this property and
the noun boy does.
 Semantic Features (cont.…) 16
 This simple example is an illustration of a procedure for analyzing
meaning in terms of semantic features.

 Features such as “+animate,−animate,” “+human, −human,” “+female,

−female,”

 If we had to provide the crucial distinguishing features of the meanings

of a set of English words such as boy, man, girl, woman, we could begin
with the following diagram.
• The important features of meaning that any nouns must have in order to
be used as the subject of the verb ate. 17
• Feature = animate being.
boy: + animate (+ = has the features)
hamburger: - animate (- = doesn’t have the feature)
boy man girl woman

animate
+ + + +
human
+ + + +
female __ __ + +
adult __ + __ +
• The word girl involves the elements [+human, female, -adult ]
• Syntactic analysis + semantic features
• The _________________ ate the hamburger.
N [+ human ]
 Prototype Theory 18
 Prototype theory, in linguistics, provides an explanation for the way word
meanings are organized in the mind.

 It is argued that words are categorized on the basis of a whole range of

typical features.

 For example, a prototypical bird has feathers, wings, a beak, the ability to
fly and so on.

 Decisions about category membership are then made by matching the

features of a given concept against a prototype.
 Prototype Theory ( cont.…)
19
 Given the category label furniture, we are quick to recognize chair as a
better example than bench or stool.

 Given clothing, people recognize shirts quicker than shoes, and given
vegetable, they accept carrot before potato or tomato.

 However, this is one area where individual experience can lead to

substantial variation in interpretation and people may disagree over the
categorization of a word like avocado or tomato as fruit or vegetable.

 These words seem to be treated as co-hyponyms of both fruit and

vegetable in different contexts.