🔠Intro to Semantics and Pragmatics Unit 2 – Lexical Semantics: Word Meaning & Relations

Key Concepts in Lexical Semantics

• Lexical semantics focuses on the study of word meanings and the relationships between words
• Investigates how words acquire meaning, how meanings change over time, and how words relate to each other semantically
• Explores the mental representation of word meaning in the human mind
• Examines the role of context in determining word meaning and interpretation
• Analyzes the semantic properties of words, such as synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and meronymy
• Considers the interaction between lexical semantics and other linguistic levels, such as syntax and pragmatics
• Applies theories and methods from various disciplines, including linguistics, cognitive science, and philosophy, to understand the nature of word meaning

Word Meaning: Definitions and Theories

• Referential theory suggests that words directly refer to objects, concepts, or ideas in the real world
• Denotational theory proposes that word meaning is based on the set of objects or entities a word refers to
• Conceptual theory argues that word meaning is a mental representation or concept in the mind of the speaker
• Prototype theory posits that word meaning is organized around a central, typical example (robin for the category "bird")
• Exemplar theory suggests that word meaning is based on a collection of specific instances or examples encountered by the speaker
• Meaning postulates are semantic rules that capture the relationships and entailments between words
• Semantic primitives are the basic, irreducible components of meaning that combine to form complex word meanings

Types of Semantic Relations

• Synonymy refers to words with similar or identical meanings (happy and joyful)
• Antonymy describes words with opposite meanings (hot and cold)
  • Gradable antonyms have intermediate points on a scale (warm, lukewarm)
  • Complementary antonyms have no intermediate points (alive and dead)
• Hyponymy is a hierarchical relationship where one word is a subcategory of another (rose is a hyponym of flower)
• Hypernymy is the inverse of hyponymy, where one word is a superordinate category (flower is a hypernym of rose)
• Meronymy is a part-whole relationship between words (wheel is a meronym of car)
• Holonymy is the inverse of meronymy, representing the whole (car is a holonym of wheel)
• Troponymy is a manner relation between verbs (whisper is a troponym of speak)

Sense and Reference

• Sense refers to the linguistic meaning or intension of a word, independent of any particular context
• Reference is the actual object, entity, or concept a word points to in a specific context
• Frege's distinction between sense and reference highlights the difference between the linguistic meaning and the actual referent
• Sense determines reference by providing a set of conditions or criteria for identifying the referent
• Words with the same reference can have different senses (the morning star and the evening star both refer to Venus)
• Words with different references can have the same sense (the current President of the United States changes over time)
• The sense-reference distinction is crucial for understanding the compositionality of meaning and the role of context

Componential Analysis and Semantic Features

• Componential analysis breaks down word meaning into smaller, distinctive semantic features or components
• Semantic features are binary or privative, indicating the presence (+) or absence (-) of a particular attribute
• Features capture the necessary and sufficient conditions for the meaning of a word
• Example: the word "woman" can be analyzed as [+human, +adult, -male]
• Componential analysis helps explain semantic relations, such as hyponymy and antonymy, based on shared and distinct features
• Meaning postulates can be formulated using semantic features to capture entailments and relationships between words
• Criticisms of componential analysis include the difficulty of identifying a complete set of features and the potential for cultural and linguistic variation

Polysemy and Homonymy

• Polysemy refers to a single word having multiple related meanings (the noun "bank" can mean a financial institution or the edge of a river)
  • Regular polysemy involves systematic and predictable meaning extensions (the noun "chicken" can refer to the animal or its meat)
  • Irregular polysemy involves idiosyncratic and historically derived meanings (the noun "sole" can mean the bottom of a foot or a type of fish)
• Homonymy refers to words with the same form but unrelated meanings (the noun "bank" meaning a financial institution and the verb "bank" meaning to rely on)
  • Homophones are words with the same pronunciation but different spellings and meanings (meat and meet)
  • Homographs are words with the same spelling but different pronunciations and meanings (lead as a verb and lead as a noun)
• Distinguishing between polysemy and homonymy is important for lexicography, natural language processing, and understanding the mental lexicon
• Criteria for distinguishing polysemy and homonymy include etymological relatedness, semantic relatedness, and speaker intuitions

Lexical Fields and Semantic Networks

• A lexical field is a set of words that are semantically related and cover a specific conceptual domain (color terms, kinship terms)
• Lexical fields are structured by semantic relations, such as hyponymy, antonymy, and meronymy
• The organization of lexical fields reflects the categorization and conceptualization of the world by a linguistic community
• Semantic networks represent the interconnections between words based on their semantic relations
• Nodes in a semantic network represent words or concepts, while edges represent the semantic relations between them
• Spreading activation theory proposes that the activation of one node in a semantic network spreads to related nodes, facilitating semantic processing
• Lexical fields and semantic networks are used in various applications, such as word sense disambiguation, information retrieval, and semantic similarity measurement

Practical Applications and Examples

• Lexical semantics has applications in various fields, such as lexicography, natural language processing, and language teaching
• In lexicography, understanding word meaning and relations is crucial for creating accurate and informative dictionary entries
• Natural language processing tasks, such as word sense disambiguation and semantic similarity measurement, rely on lexical semantic knowledge
• Language teaching can benefit from a systematic presentation of vocabulary based on semantic relations and lexical fields
• Example: In a text about animals, the word "bat" can be disambiguated using semantic features [+animate, +flying, -bird] to identify the mammal sense
• Example: A thesaurus can be organized based on lexical fields, grouping words related to emotions, colors, or parts of the body
• Example: Semantic networks can be used to generate word associations or to measure the semantic relatedness between words (cat and dog are more related than cat and table)
• Example: Componential analysis can be applied to kinship terms to identify the features [±male, ±parent, ±generation] that distinguish words like father, mother, son, and daughter