Semantic Fields and Synonymous Pairs (TM1)

Glossary:

Semantic field - A group of words which all relate to the same subject or concept.

Synonymous pair – Here actually a quasi-synonymous pair, i.e. words that seem to have the same meaning but cannot be used interchangeably.

Task 1. Review the following semantic fields:

I. Arriving at some goal: reach, accomplish, achieve, attain, gain

II. LOOKING OVER: check, examine, inspect, scrutinise

III. WAYS OF WALKING: roam, wander, trudge, plod

IV. CONSIDER: count, reckon, deem, think of, conceive, regard, look on

and synonymous pairs:

I. bare or barren

II. shade or shadow

III. flare or flash

IV. save or spare

Search Elspeth Davie’s short story The Time Keeper (TM1) and underline the words from the SFs and SPs that appear in the text. Pay attention to the context in which they appear.

Task 2. Look for other interesting semantic fields that may be derived from the text of the story.

Task 3. Prepare for creating a cognitive map for each semantic field

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_map

Task 4. Using the relevant dictionaries analyse each word from the SFs according to the following lexical relations and take detailed notes:

a) Hyponymy and hypernymy - In linguistics, a hyponym is a word or phrase whose semantic field is included within that of another word, its hypernym (sometimes spelled hyperonym outside of the natural language processing community).

Example: “fling” is a hyponym of “throw”, and “throw” is the hypernym of “fling”.

b) Synonymy and quasi-synonymy – Synonyms (also metonyms) are words with the same or similar meanings. Words that are synonyms are said to be synonymous, and the state of being a synonym is called synonymy.

Example: “cast”, “toss”, “hurl”, and “fling” are (quasi-)synonyms.

c) Antonymy – A word of opposite meaning.

Example: a possible antonym of “cunning” is “gullible”.

d) Paronymy - Relationship between words with related derivations but different syntactic use.

Example: besides the verb “throw” there is also a noun “throw” as well as other derivatives such as “thrower”, “throwing”, etc.

e) Homonymy (Homography and Homophony) – Homonyms are, in the strict sense, words that share spelling and pronunciation but may have different meanings. Thus homonyms are simultaneously homographs (words that share the same spelling, regardless of their pronunciation) and homophones (words that share the same pronunciation, regardless of their spelling).

Example: “construction” < construct is a homograph of “construction” < construe; “peak” is a homophone of “peek”.

f) Polysemy – Polysemy is the capacity for a sign (e.g., a word, phrase, etc.) or signs to have multiple related meanings (sememes), i.e., a large semantic field. It is usually regarded as distinct from homonymy, in which the multiple meanings of a word may be unconnected or unrelated.

 

Example: the word “throw” has a number of meanings:

throw (verb)

1. propel (something) with force through the air by a movement of the arm and hand.

"I threw a brick through the window"

2. send suddenly into a particular state or condition.

"he threw all her emotions into turmoil"

3. send (one's opponent) to the ground in wrestling, judo, or similar activity.

"in the final Arnaud was too strong, and threw Hughes twice"

4. form (ceramic ware) on a potter's wheel.

"further on a potter was throwing pots"

5. have (a fit or tantrum).

"occasionally a small child will throw a tantrum when denied something"

6. give or hold (a party).

"he threw a huge farewell party for them"

7. (of an animal) give birth to (young, especially of a specified kind).

"sometimes a completely black calf is thrown"

 

g) Idiomaticity – Idiom is an expression whose meaning is not predictable from the usual meanings of its constituent elements, as kick the bucket or hang one's head, or from the general grammatical rules of a language, as the table round for the round table, and that is not a constituent of a larger expression of like characteristics, e.g. the words in semantic fields.

Example: the verb “throw” participates in idiomatic expressions, e.g. to throw cold water on smth/smb, and phrasal verbs, e.g. to throw oneself into, to throw oneself on, to throw oneself at.

h) Register is the difference between formal and informal language used in different social settings.

Example: “propel” is high register, “throw” is neutral register, “lob” is low register.

Task 5. Prepare for semantic feature analysis of synonymous pairs

4. Run each word from the SPs through a simple search of the British National Corpus: http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ This will yield a random selection of 50 hits from various standard-language sources. Inspect closely the data and think of semantic features that characterise the meaning of each particular use of the explored word.

Example:

BNC data: A0L 3327 And I do not give you permission to fling yourself at her feet, grab her hands and weep into her palms.

Semantic features for the verb “fling”: suddenly, unexpectedly, forcefully