2.1. Paradigmatic relations of lexical units
There are two major groups of paradigmatic relations of lexical units, and namely words:
1. The relations of inclusion, or hierarchical relations (hyponymy, meronymy and serial relations);
2. The relations of compatibility (synonymy, antonymy and incompatibility).
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1. The first, most obvious type of hierarchical semantic relationship between words is hyponymy, or hypero-hyponymic relations. Hyponymy is based on inclusion - the relation of words that can be described as 'the kind of relation. Thus, since a tulip is a kind of flower,/lower is a kind of plant, etc., the words tulip, flower and plant are in a hyponymic relationship:
Hyponymy is the most efficient way of explaining meaning in a dictionary. The noun canary, for example, may be defined as 'a finch that is characteristically green to yellow and is bred for song'. Finch is 'a songbird that is small and has a short bill'. Songbird is 'a bird that utters a characteristic musical song'. And bird is 'an animal that is warmblooded, has feathers, wings, and a bill, and usually can fly'. Summing up the definitions we may arrive to the following hierarchy:
In this hierarchy the word at the bottom, canary, is subordinate la finch. It has a more specialized meaning and is a hyponym [Gk 'under'+name] to finch. In its turn, finch is a hyponym of song-bird, and song-bird is a hyponym to bird.
This hierarchy may be read not only from the bottom to the top (this hierarchy should be called hypo-hyperonymic) but also from the top to the bottom (it will be called hypero-hyponymic then). In this case the word at the top bird is the superordmate - the lexeme with a general meaning, or a hyperonym [Gk ' above 4-name] for songbird; songbird is a hyperonym tot finch and finch is a hyperonym for canary. (The terms hyperonym and hyponym were first used by John Lyons /Lyons 1963: 69-71/).
Hyponymy is the most pervasive type of semantic word relationship structuring large parts of the lexicon. It is observed in various parts of speech but most typical hyponymy is in concrete nouns.
One should also mention quasi-hyponymy, a relationship which takes place between some nouns and especially between some adjectives and verbs when the real hyperonym is missing in the language system. Thus, a word cutlery is a quasi-, or pseudo-hyperonym for knife, fork and spoon as it in contrast to them it belongs to a different lexico-grammatical class: the class of non-countable nouns. Coloured is a quasi-hyperonym for
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colours of spectrum green or yellow, or red because it includes black which can hardly be called the colour of the spectrum.
The second, less studied type of hierarchical relations between words is more difficult 1o describe. It is meronymy - the relations of parts to the -whole (in some works these relations are called partonomy). Meronymy is a second major type of lexical hierarchy. The division of the human body into parts serves as a prototype for all part-whole hierarchies, where finger is a mcronym of hand, and hand is a meronym of
arm:
These relations are diverse (cf. the relations between a finger and a hand - visible, more or less clear-cut, but non-detachable; a handle and a door - visible, clear-cut and detachable; a chin and a face - not clearly cut, non-detachable.
Words having meronymic relations can be described with a frame 'A has В': 'a body has an arm', 'an arm has a hand' a hand has fingers'; 'a car has wheels; a book has pages'; 'a saw has teeth', etc. But due to ambiguity of the word to have this frame is too general. It includes different attributes:
A car has wheels ('includes as its detachable part'), A woman has a husband ('acquires but hardly has a possession of), A sound has a pitch of voice ('is characterized by').
Another frame describing meronymy is 'something is apart of something'. But this is also too wide because other types of conceptual relations that are not meronymic may be described with this frame. For example, Changing diapers is part of being a mother.
Only proper meronyms satisfy both frames. In a case of meronymy it is possible to say:
A car has wheels and
A wheel is part of a car.
In relations between words similar to meronymy, called meronym-like, or quasi-meronymical, only one of the criteria may be used. Thus, it is impossible to say
*A husband is a part of a woman or
*Being a mother has changing diapers.
Quasi-meronymical relations that can be described with only one of the frames, often occur between non-concrete entities as in France - Europe (France is part of Europe but not *Europe has France).
The third very specific type of hierarchical relationship is serial but it can hardly be called inclusion. Serial sense relations have variations - graded and cyclical series. The commonest example of a graded series is military ranks (Private, Lance Corporal,
Corporal, Sergeant, Staff Sergeant, Warrant Officer 2nd Class, Warrant Officer Is1 Class, 2"rf Lieutenant, Lieutenant, Captain, Major, Lieutenant-Colonel, Colonel, Brigadier, Major-General, Lieutenant-General, General, Field Marshal - are military ranks in the British Army). Another example is an open number system as in one, two, three ... . The best example of cyclical serial relations between lexemes, which, in contrast to graded series, are not open-ended, are seasons of the year (winter, spring, summer, autumn) or days of the week which repeat as soon as they end.
2. Alongside hierarchical relations between words, relations of compatibility - partial semantic overlapping of units on the same level of abstraction - are also considered to be the chief type of paradigmatic relations.
There are three major types of semantic relations of compatibility between words, they are a) synonymy, b) antonymy, c) incompatibility. All of them are based on some common semantic features, some 'sameness' of word meanings, while their other features do not clash. No inclusion is observed; words are on the same hierarchical level.
a) Synonymy is the most obvious type of compatibility. Synonymy presupposes a certain identity. If X is Z then Z is X, that is, for example, if eyeglasses are spectacles then spectacles are eyeglasses. To symbolize words' mutual and symmetric implication of the words we may use the sign of similarity ~ and state that eyeglasses ~ spectacles. Yet many scholars point out that words rarely are 100 per cent similar and interchangeable. Words may share the basic componential features but be different along other lines.
b) Antonymy is a relation of semantic opposition that can be symbolized with the double-headed arrow <-». The term 'opposition' is rather vague. It includes reversible relationship of words (husband-^wife, buy*-+sell), directional opposition (come<-*go, arrive^depart), or complementary relationship (alive*~*dead, male^>female). The most typical autonomy is observed in cases of polar opposition (cold<->hot, big+->small).
c) Incompatibility (96) is the relation of mutual exclusiveness of a set of co-hyponyms - words under the same hyperonym, or co-meronyms - words under the same meronym. The words denoting the same whole but are neither synonyms nor antonyms. For example, the words cat^dogfilion^elephant within the major superordinate animal, or words denoting sister-parts of a whole like bathroom, bedroom, kitchen, sitting room, stairs, porch denoting different parts of a house are mutually exclusive, or incompatible.
So far we have discussed the basic primitive, or primary paradigmatic sense relations. More distant paradigmatic relations, derived by logical inference, occur between such words as horse and oat, tea and kettle.
It should be stressed that one and the same word may demonstrate different types of relations of hierarchy and compatibility towards different words in the lexicon as demonstrated with the word eyeglasses, which is as a node in a word-net
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,All these types of semantic relationship of words provide the basis for uniting them into various lexical-semantic groups and groupings.
3. Structure of the English lexicon] |
When semantically coherent words express their sense relations syntagmatically they contract collocations — word groups of different degree of stability and idiomaticity: a dog barks/bites/sits', a maiden voyage/flight/speech; castle in the air (see also Chapter 6). ,
Words that have indirect sense relations and occur in one sentence or situation though not
necessarily in the form of a collocation make up a thematic group (kill, die, murderer,
crime; cinema, film, to be on, screen, cinema goer).
Of special interest for understanding the lexicon structure are groups of words that have { common semantic components on the paradigmatic level and display the sense relations ' I of hierarchy, compatibility or both
I. Groups of words based on one type of semantic relations
The most obvious lexical-semantic groups in the lexicon include words that are the closest in semantic space, and are either similar or opposite m meaning. They are synonyms and antonyms.
1. Synonyms
The term 'synonym' comes from Greek and means 'having the same name'. One of the standard definitions of synonyms is that they are words of the same part of speech, different m their sound-form, but similar in their denotational meaning and interchangeable at least in some context. Words entertainment and amusement are synonyms though only amusement park will be a correct collocation in English. Win is similar to gain though they say to gain his friendship, but to win a victory. The so-called 'perfect synonyms', words with identical meanings that can substitute each other in all contexts, are very rare, otherwise they would have created unnecessary redundancy of lexical means and violated the leading language principle of economy.
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Synonymy is a relation between words rather than concepts. That is why synonyms may stand for the same concept but be different in stylistic register (happen and befall, insane and barmy), or in dialectal variation (autumn and fall), emotional colouring and a slight difference in the degree or size of the concept (idea) (big and gigantic) or in collocational restrictions (rancid and rotten; to embellish, to garnish, to adorn, to decorate) and accordingly be stylistic, ideographic or collocational synonyms.
English is extremely rich in synonyms. This is partially due to an abundance of borrowings, especially from French and Latin. A characteristic synonymic set in English is a pair of words, one of which is native, and the other is French, Latin or Greek (brotherly ~ fraternal; bodily ~ corporal; buy ~ purchase, near ~ close). Sometimes there is a triple set of synonyms: begin (OE) ~ commence (Fr) ~ initiate (L).
One should also be aware that since synonymical relations are observed on the level of minimal naming units, in case the word is polysemantic, each of its senses may have its own synonym. Thus, the noun beam in the meaning of 'a long piece of heavy timber suitable for use in construction' has synonyms plank, board, rafter, joist but its lexical-semantic variant 'a shaft of light' has synonyms ray, streak, flash, and gleam.