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Lexical semantics
As a first approximation: The meaning (and
relations between the meanings) of words. Pat is a bachelor. Pat is a man. Pat has an unpleasant personality. My sister is a bachelor. Tracy fed my dog. My dog ate. My dog is no longer hungry.
Lexical semantics
What is it about bachelor that tells us (necessarily,
inescapably) about maleness? What is it about feeding that tells us about eating?
Lexical semantics
Our knowledge
about the words (and morphemes) of language can be thought of as a list, as a mental dictionarya lexicon.
A word has spaces written around it. (isnt vs. is not?) A word can stand alone (*the, *a) A word is pronounced separately (dyoowannaeet?) A word expresses a concept (again, *the, *although)
Kick the bucket, get the sack, hit the hay, Turn in, turn on, hand in, write off, Bigger vs. more expansive vs. *expansiver. Im afraid shes gone and Michael Jacksoned herself to the point where she doesnt even appear human anymore (some random comment on some random blog, referring to
John is a student and Mary is too. Mickey is large and Willy is too.
Dimensions of relatedness
Bank1 (the river-side) and bank2 (the financial
institution) are homonyms. Two basically unrelated words that sound the same. And are written the same. And are pronounced the same.
Subdivisions are possible: homographs are written the
same, homophones are pronounced the same. They (very well) might vary by dialect (bury, berry, Barry; Mary, merry, marry). They might share a category (wring, ring) or not (knot).
Polysemy
Where different senses are judged to be
related, we have polysemy rather than homonymy. Sometimes a tough call. Bat1 : implement for striking in certain games Bat2 : furry mammal with membranous wings Sole1 : A sort of flat fish Sole2 : Bottom of a foot or shoe
< solea (Latin) via French.
Synonymy
A thesaurus provides synonymsdifferent words
that share (nearly) the same meaning. True synonyms may not exist, there is pretty much always a difference in register, attitude, dialect, collocation, or lexical relations.
Lawyer, attorney, counsel, Couch, sofa, futon, Little sister, small sister, Police, cop, pig, fuzz,
Antonyms
Antonyms are in opposition, and come in a
number of different flavors. An animal might be alive or dead, but not both. You might pass or fail a test, but not both.
Though we can make sense of undead and half-dead in
fanciful ways.
Antonyms
The opposition can be gradable as well.
Something that is not hot is not necessarily cold, but they are still in opposition. Beautiful/ugly, fast/slow, tall/short, large/small. Or, they can be opposed in a non-binary way (taxonomic sisters): red/green/blue, January/September/November/December.
Hyponymy
Some words are related in an
inclusion relation. Couch, furniture. Capybara/mammal/animal.
Meronymy
Meronymy: Part-whole relations:
Word/sentence/paragraph/page/chapter/book
Derivational morphemes
So, alongside the content words like likely we
have derivational morphemes like un-, together combining to form a word (with a predictable meaning) unlikely.
Recall: unrefaxeristically. Or: antidisestablishmentarianism (opposition to the
disestablishment of the Church of England)
Inflectional morphemes
Derivational morphemes like iN- (impossible, irregular,
incapable, intractable) are often distinguished from inflectional morphemes (walk, walks, walked) in that derivational morphemes carry a heavier semantic load. Inflectional morphemes are agreement (with, e.g., a 3sg subject).
Practically, its a difficult line to draw precisely, but generally
grammatically enforced morphology (agreement, tense/aspect marking) is in the inflectional category. Some linguists in fact argue that the distinction isnt a meaningful one, but that isnt the consensus view.
Derivational morphology
Derivational morphology is also capable of
changing a words category. The road is wide. (adjective) The road widened. (verb) He refaxed the memo. (verb) He is a refaxer. (noun) He acted in a refaxeristic manner. (adjective) He acted refaxeristically. (adverb)
Causatives/inchoatives
A reasonably large class of verbs seem to be
able to alternate between inchoative (change of state) verbs and causative verbs. The door is open. (adjective) The door opened. (verb; inchoative) I opened the door. (verb; causative) I sank the boat, I melted the chocolate.
Causatives
There are languages that have a causative
morpheme that derives feed from eat. English has some too, which come out differently depending on the specific word: We enlarged the photograph. We modernized the house. We opened the door.
Open v. open
How does open in The door opened relate to
open in I opened the door?
Lexical decomposition
We might think of kill as CAUSE-die, of
enter as CAUSE-BE-in, of give as CAUSEHAVE.
Something to ponder
Interestingly, there are some idioms that seems to allow
a certain flexibility:
Tracy gave Pat the boot. Pat got the boot.