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by comparing predications that can be made about the same referring expressing. Its task is to account for the meaning relations between different expressions in a language
Lexical Fields
Geeraerts (1994) :set of semantically related items that belong together on the basis of their meaning. Bussmann (1996): the meaning of the words in a lexical field delimit each other. Kastovsky (1981) : the lexemes of a lexical field must belong to the same part of speech [e.g. verbs or adjectives] and can be distinguished from each other because of minimal opposition that exists among them. Lbners (2002) :the words in a lexical field are interrelated by precisely definable meaning relations and that the group of of words is complete in terms of the relevant meaning relation
whole relationship)
Structural paradigms : man, woman, boy and girl
to determine the semantic features that differentiate the members of the set from one another using the square brackets
stool chair bench sofa : piece of furniture; furniture
for sitting
having a back
Kinship is universal since all humans are related to other humans through blood ties and through marriage, but kinship systems differ from society to society.
Four primitive features:
parent, offspring, sibling and spouse. The components male and female indicate as M and F. Definitions of eight predicates :
father : M parent; mother : F parent brother : M sibling; sister : F sibling son : M offspring; daughter : F offspring husband : M spouse; wife : F spouse
one of the words includes the meaning of the other word. The relationship between each lower term and the higher term (super ordinate) It is not restricted to objects, abstract concepts, or nouns. It can be identified in many other areas of the lexicon. It involves the logical relationship of entailment e.g. There is a horse entails that There is an animal.
Synonyms are different words with identical or very similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous The state of being a synonym is called synonymy.
verbs, adjectives, adverbs or prepositions), as long as both members of the pair are the same part of speech.
Some examples of English synonyms are: student and pupil (noun) petty crime and misdemeanor (noun) buy and purchase (verb) sick and ill (adjective) quickly and speedily (adverb) on and upon (preposition)
Synonyms are defined with respect to certain senses of words; for instance, pupil as the "aperture in the iris of the eye" is not synonymous with student.
adjectives skinny, thin, slender may have the same meaning but they differ in connotation.
Two or more terms can be synonymous only if they are
compatible with the same subjects, for instance : hard subject is synonym with difficult subject but difficult is not a synonym of hard in hard chair.
Antonyms are opposite in meaning, and when they occur as predicates of the same subject the predications are contradictory. Antonyms may be :
nouns (Communist-non-Communist), verbs (advance-retreat) antonymous pairs of adjectives are specially numerous (high-low, wide-narrow, thick-thin, deep-shallow).
them, exhaust all the relevant possibilities. Being "not X" automatically means being "Y" and being "not Y" means being "X", if X and Y are complementary antonyms. Examples: dead/alive on/off married /unmarried.
opposite ends of a continuous scale of values (a scale which can vary according to the context of use).
With gradable antonyms it is possible to be both "not X"
Examples:
Non-binaries pairs :
the truth of either member of the pair entails the falsity of the
Binaries pairs :
the truth of either member of the pair entails the falsity of the
hyponym
Relational antonyms (Converses) Pairs in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed. ( parent and child, teacher and student, or buy and sell ) Converseness requires the two arguments, theme and association, to be of about the same size, rank or importance. Common converse pairs include :
Kinship and social roles : husband-of/wife-of; employer-of/employee-off. Directional opposites : above/below; in front of/ behind; left-of/right-of; before/after
kind of converseness that use a single term. Symmetry expressed by predicate (different degrees of saturation). Symmetrical predicates are adjectives combined with a preposition with, from or to :
A and B are congruent (with each other) A and B are different (from each other) A and B are equivalent (to each other)
each other.
A combines X and Y A combines X with Y and Y
Quantifiers :
as subject (first term) as object (second term).
Transitions Transitions predicates express movements from one place to another, respectively the Source and the Goal.
Predicates of transitions have arguments in the roles of theme or
actor, source, goal and path, though the last three are not necessarily expressed in a sentence for example :
The bus goes from Greenville to Stratford by way of Compton. theme source goal path The boat drifted over the water from one place to another. theme path source goal
Predicates that are specialized in meaning : marked Predicates that are general in meaning : less marked.
For example:
Transfer
Some predicates express transfer, causing
the movement of an entity from one place or person to another place or person. Predicates of transfer have the same argument roles plus an agent. There are two sorts of transfer verbs that can be distinguished, the first one is in which the agent moves and the other one in which the agent does not move.