Class 3/19/09

Today we discussed semantics, specifically these relationships: hyponymy, antonymy, part/whole, converseness, and synonymy.  

Hyponymy describes terms which are referents of a superordinate term.  For example, grape, pear, apple, banana, and tomato are all hyponyms of the hypernym fruit.

Antonymy refers to opposite notions such as large and small or old and young.  There are gradable and nongradable antonyms.  For example, the examples I already gave are gradable because the terms are relative.  A 90 year old woman may be described as old when compared with a newborn baby, but as young when compared with the age of the Earth.  However, some antonyms are nongradable.  The book gives the example of single and married.  One cannot be more married or more single than anyone else.  Furthermore, they are complementary antonyms, because nobody can be described as both single and married.

Part/whole relationships are pairs of words in which one word is, quite simply, a part of the other.  For example, nose and face or root and plant.  Although the relationship is hierarchical like hyponyms, hyponyms refer to kinds, not parts.

Converseness, like antonymy, refers to oppositeness, but specifically refers to reciprocal relationships.  For example, father is the converse of daughter and vice versa, but father is an antonym of mother, not a converse, because the father is not a parent to the mother.

Synonymy has to do with two words that mean the same thing linguistically.  An example is big and enormous or little and itty-bitty.  However, because of social and affective meanings, there are very few true synonyms.  For example, someone could be described as a big fish in a little pond, but nobody would ever say he or she was an enormous fish in an itty-bitty pond.  The social context of the statement makes the word pairs not truly synonymous.

We ended the class by discussing the quiz and the writing sample project.  The end of the semester is approaching fast... I can't believe we only have four weeks left!