Week 10: Lexical Semantics

lexical semantics

study of sense, what sense is carried by lexical items and relationship between lexical and syntactic structure

necessary and sufficient conditions

an approach to lexical semantics, meaning as a definition in the lexical entry

conceptual semantics

an approach to lexical semantics, lexical units have no meaning but are rather associated with concepts in our cognitive mechanism

general lexicon theory

an approach to lexical semantics, semantic representation as discrete lexical entries, but lexicon has access to cognitive conceptual module

prototype theory

an approach to lexical semantics, our understanding of sense goes back to its most classical form

lexically ambiguous

a lexical item with more than one sense

polysemy

one word with multiple sense (foot = unit of measurement and body part), figurative sense (a river RUNS through the town)

homonymy

different words that happen to sound the same (row - to pull oars, row - things arranged in a line)

synonymy

if replacing one word for the other does not change the meaning of a sentence (juan filled the bucket, juan filled the pail)

simple/complementary antonym

if replacing one form with the other produces sentences which are contradictory (the light is on, the light is off)

gradable antonym

replacing one member of such a pair with the other produces sentences which are contrary

opposite ends of the spectrum

(my nephew is extremely diligent

my nephew is extremely lazy

my nephew is nether extremely diligent nor extremely lazy)

converse pairs antonym

replaces one with the other, switching the order of arguments, produces paraphrases (Christina is my supervisor, I am Christina’s supervisee)

reverse pairs antonym

2 words that denote motion or change in opposite directions and differ only in respect of directionality

opposite of same syntactic category

(the nurse HEATED the instruments to sterilize them, and then COOLED them)

hyponymy

a generic-specific relationship between two words (food, bread/ animal, dog)

taxonomy

_____ is a type of _____

meronomy

involves a pair of words expressing a part-whole relationship (meronyms of the body: hand, eye, etc)

verb-framed language

a language that encodes path within the verb (El perro entró a la casa, entro shows path within the conjugated verb)

satellite-framed language

a language where path is expressed by other words that modify the verb (the dog ran INTO the house, ‘into’ gives path not ‘ran’)

figure

an entity whose location is at issue

path

the description of a trajectory of motion

manner

specifications about how a figure moves (walked, crawled)

coflation

the ability to combine multiple components of meaning in a single lexical item (the rock ROLLED down the hill)