Lexicology

Week 3 – Words and their meaning

Word - “an uninterruptible unit of structure consisting of one or more morphemes and which
typically occurs in the structure of phrases”. fixed sequence of sounds used to convey an idea, thus
communicating a meaning, not accepting any insertion of further material (although a morpheme may
be inserted)
‘simple’ words (cat, man, out)
‘minimum free forms’ (Bloomfield)
When words comprise more than one morpheme, they may be either complex – broken down into one
free form and one or more bound forms: e.g. cat-s, hasti-ly, slow-er
or compound words – consisting of more than one free forms: show + room, coat+ hanger.
1. From the semantic point of view, word is believed to be a unit of single meaning
2. syntactic point of view words are supposed to possess a fixed internal structure
3. phonological point of view pauses, stress which are produced by speaker...(as stress in
English is not fixed to any particular syllable, we cannot rely on it as a determining factor)
Interpretations of word
1. morphological object – word is constructed out of morphemes by word-formation processes of
affixation and compounding (driver);
2. syntactic atom – word is considered to be an unit of syntax and is thus indivisible into smaller
meaningful units, i.e. morphemes;
3. listeme – word as a linguistic expression is memorized and stored by speakers as listed object;
4. phonological word – word understood in terms of sound, being an equivalent for the spoken
language to the orthographic word for the written language.
Furthermore, Peter Matthews (1974) distinguishes the following conceptions (ibid.):
1. phonological word – being composed of sounds;
2. ortographic word – being composed of letters;
3. lexeme/ dictionary word – having its own entry and content being usually realized by one or more
morphological words;
4. grammatical word/grammatical word-form (GWF) – refers to any of the several forms which a
lexical item may assume for grammatical purposes or functions.
EXAMLE: give away consists of

- two orthographic words,

- two phonological words,
- one lexeme, but can assume several GWFs such give away, gives away, giving away etc.
onomastic word - which establishes a unique reference in terms of naming
lexicographic word - understood in terms of dictionary entry,
statistical word - that is important in terms of occurrences when counting type/token ratio in
computational linguistics
It is also possible to organize words along the following lines:

- variable (appearing in several possible forms such as drives, driving, drove)

- invariable words (appearing in one stable form only: since, when, seldom);

- primary (consisting of a single morpheme: man, give, baby)

- secondary words (compounds and derivations: girly, old-manish, door-knob);

- actual (any word used by the speech community)

- potential words which are produced by productive word-formation patterns, but are not
institutionalized yet, i.e. are not part of the inventory of a given language (*arrivation vs.
arrival).
5. MEANING RELATIONS IN THE LEXICON
- the relation of identity would correspond to that of synonymy between lexemes;
- the relation of inclusion to that of hyponymy/hyperonymy;
- the relation of overlap to that of semantic compatibility/affinity;
- the relation of disjunction to semantic incompatibility/disaffinity between lexemes.
Paradigmatic relations include synonymy, antonymy, polysemy, homonymy and hyponymy.

1. Synonymy
Synonymy - words that are not absolutely identical but just similar in their (conceptual) meaning,
belonging to the same part of speech and being interchangeable in some contexts only
Absolute synonyms, i.e. words agreeing in their denotation, connotation and distribution except for
the following:
kind – sort;
some specialized terms: fricatives – spirants, nouns – substantives, gorse – furze;
some out-dated expressions: wireless – radio, scenarist – script writer.
Cognitive synonyms (also known as loose or partial synonyms) whose denotative meaning is
identical but their connotative meaning and stylistic features are considerably different.
Ideographic synonyms differ in the shades of meaning or degree of intensity, e.g. satisfy – please,
astonishment – surprise, stout – fat – plump.
Synonyms may differ in:

- intensity: greater intensity is many times accompanied by expressive or stylistic

connotations, e.g. compare cry, shout, scream, screech, yell, howl, squall

- a single seme: ‘jump’ and ‘leap’ are regarded as synonymous but a substantial difference is
that while the former implies a change in a vertical position, the latter implies a change in the
horizontal one as well, which is an additional seme.

- phraseology: beat about/around the bush, rack/cudgel your brain, cast/fling/throw a stone,
build castles in Spain/in the air, be up to one’s ears/eyes/neck, not give/care a damn

Most English synonyms form a double scale pattern: native word – loanword, e.g. help (Anglo-
Saxon) – aid (French), or a triple scale pattern, e.g. begin (Anglo-Saxon) – commence (French) –
initiate (Latin), forming lexical doublets or triplets, respectively.

Besides historical factors, other sources of synonymy include the following:

 1. inter-borrowings of words from different varieties of English: candy (AmE) – sweets
(BrE), girl – lass (Scottish).
These days, we can notice a distinctive influx of Americanisms into British English. Very often these
synonymous variants differ stylistically, e.g. averse – allergic; sometimes one form is a traditional
Briticism and the other a new American loan, e.g. leader – editorial, government – administration.

2. formation of different words for the same thing by means of word-formation processes
such as compounding, affixation, or shortening: professor – prof, collapse – breakdown

3. semantic changes in the course of time resulting in euphemistic expressions: drunk –

merry (its connotation faded out so that its sounds less offensive, even milder than ‘tipsy’).

Tautonyms cover dialectal synonyms (valley – dale), slang synonyms (girl – bird) and synonyms
from two standards (BrE pram – AmE baby carriage) which are to be regarded as variants, not
synonyms.

spelling variants: traveling – travelling

pronunciation variants: /di-/ or /dai/ in direction, digest
morphological variants: anxiety – anxiousness
nominal vs. verbal construction: smoke – to have a smoke
doublets due to conversion: reading – read (This was a good read) paraphrases : bitch – a female
dog

Paronyms (also known as false synonyms or pseudosynonyms) refer to words which are derived
from the same root, are kindred in sound form and therefore liable to be mixed but are in fact very
dissimilar in meaning and use and only mistakenly interchangeable : ingenious – ingenuous,
conception – inception, affect – effect etc.

This is in contrast to false friends (faux amis) or interlanguage homonyms between two languages
(e.g. genial – geniálny, chef – šéf, actual – aktuálny in English and Slovak) where two words look the
same but have a different meaning which foreign learners may fail to recognize.

2. Antonymy

Antonyms - are words of opposite meaning; words that are contrary in their denotative
meanings.

Antonyms can convey oppositeness in one of the following forms:

- Complementarities – can be illustrated by pairs of words such as:

male – female, single – married, absent – present, win – lose, permit – forbid etc.
Complementarities convey an either – or relationship and stand in binary opposition. It is
characteristic of the relationship of complementarity between words that the denial of the one
implies the assertion of the other or vice versa (If you don’t win implies that you lose).
Complementarities admit no third possibility of choice and they are not gradable.
 - Antonyms in narrow sense (antonyms proper) – can be exemplified by pairs such
as expensive – cheap, high – low, fast – slow.
Here, the negation of one member of the pair does not imply the assertion of the other. When
I say “Sheila is not fast as a driver”, this does not imply she is necessarily slow. There is
always a third possibility. Antonyms in narrow sense are gradable, as opposed to
complementarities

- Converses – can be illustrated by examples like doctor – patient, husband – wife,

precede – follow, buy – sell, before – after.
The members of the antonymous pair imply each other mutually, they are not gradable and
negation of one does not mean the assertion of the other. Converse antonyms denote one and
the same thing viewed from different points of view (social, family or temporal relations).

Negative words - negative prefixes (in-, un-, dis-), e.g. finite – infinite, certain – uncertain,
appear – disappear. At times, there is some other seme present in the positive member of the
antonymous pair, e.g. unknown – well-known, unprincipled – highly principled.

3. Hyponymy/Hyperonymy

This paradigmatic sense relation relates words hierarchically.

Hyponymy involves the inclusion of a more specific word in a more general word.
Hyponym is a word that denotes a sub-category of a more general term.

hyperonym (a.k.a. archilexeme) - flowers

co-hyponyms – rose, violet, daisy

Quasi hyponymical relations - knife, fork and spoon are quasi-hyponyms of cutlery;

4. Homonymy

Homonymy - refer to two or more words that are identical in phonological or graphemic
form (or in their signifiant, ) but different in meaning (signifié)
they are considered distinct lexemes, mainly because they have unrelated meanings and
different etymologies.

Depending on the kind of formal identity found between homonyms, we distinguish:

- Homophones – they are identical in sound form but different in spelling, e.g.
principal – principle, steel – steal, threw – through, peak – peek, made – maid
- Homographs – they are identical in spelling but different in pronunciation, e.g. lead V – lead
N, tear V – tear N , wind V – wind N , row (queue, line) – row (argument);
- Full homonyms (homonyms proper) – they are uniform in both sound form and spelling but
different in meaning: toast (bread; drink), seal (sea animal, impress); club (place to meet, golf
equipment/weapon).
inter-language homonyms e.g. actual – aktuálny, approbation – aprobácia, script – skriptá etc. in
English and Slovak
Polysemy - polysemy refers to the relation among different meanings of one lexeme.