Andrew Radford - Linguistics An Introduction [Second Edition]

A difficulty we immediately encounter when we turn to the meanings of

words is that native speakers do not provide the rich source of data we have been relying on in our discussions of phonology and morphology. The contrast between TRANSport (Noun) and transPORT (Verb) is one native speakers will readily

confirm, as is the fact that *singed is not the past tense form of sing, etc. These are judgements of form with which native speakers are comfortable, but meanings

seem much less tangible and correspondingly less open to study by the methods we have used up to now. We, therefore, have to resort to less direct methods for probing the semantic aspect of the lexicon and of lexical entries.

Entailment and hyponymy

Consider the sentences in (134):

(134) a.

Max managed to finish Infinite Jest

b.

Max finished Infinite Jest

Suppose that the sentence in (134a) is true. Then, the sentence in (134b) is also true. There is no possible state of affairs in which (134a) is true while (134b) is 170

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false. In these circumstances, we say that (134a) entails (134b), and a general definition of entailment appears in (135):

(135)

A sentence (S1) entails a sentence (S2) if and only if whenever S1 is true, S2 is also true

Before going further, it is important to be clear that this relation of entailment does not obtain between sentences that just happen to be true in the current or any other state of affairs. Take, for instance, the sentences in (136): (136) a.

The dodo is extinct

b.

Berlin is the capital of Germany

Both these sentences are true at the time of writing this book, but it is not the case that (136a) entails (136b). The definition in (135) contains the word ‘whenever’, and while (136a) was true in 1980, (136b) was not – indeed, in 1980 there was no unified Germany for Berlin to be the capital of. Intuitively, this lack of an entailment relationship between (136a) and (136b) is linked to the fact that there is no meaning relationship between the sentences: knowing that (136b) is true does not help at all in understanding (136a), or any part of this sentence. However, the case of (134 ) is different: knowing that (134 b) is true whenever ( 134a) is tells us something about the meaning of the lexeme MANAGE, and it would be reasonable to conclude of someone who maintained that (134 b) could be false while (134a) was true that they did not know the meaning of this lexeme.

Now consider the sentences in (137):

(137) a.

Max failed to finish Infinite Jest

b.

Max didn’t finish Infinite Jest

Again, we note that (137a) entails (137b), but in this case the entailed sentence contains the negative clitic n’t. The entailed sentences (134b and 137b) are semantic

‘opposites’ and this coincides with the fact that the two lexemes MANAGE and FAIL, while having a good deal in common semantically (they both concern

relations between someone trying to do something and whatever they are trying to do) are themselves ‘opposites’ (exercises 1 and 2).

Let’s now consider some simpler examples of entailment relations, which will help us to build up a picture of how the lexicon might be structured. That the (a) examples in (138–140) entail the (b) examples is uncontroversial: (138) a.

The thing in the cage is a lion

b.

The thing in the cage is an animal

(139) a.

The thing in the grass is a snake

b.

The thing in the grass is a reptile

(140) a.

The thing in the tree is a sparrow

b.

The thing in the tree is a bird

In each case, what we have is a relationship of entailment between pairs of

sentences that is due to the presence of particular pairs of words: lion and animal

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words

in (138), snake and reptile in (139) and sparrow and bird in (140). Focusing on

(138), we have the general schema in (141), where X is an expression which identifies an individual, the thing in the cage, Simba, etc.:

(141)

‘X is a lion’ entails ‘X is an animal’

When we find this situation, we say that lion is a hyponym of animal (equi-

valently lion and animal are in the semantic relationship of hyponymy, sometimes referred to as meaning inclusion). On the basis of (139) and (140), we can also assert that snake is a hyponym of reptile and sparrow is a hyponym of bird.

Looking at the semantic relation from the converse perspective, we say that

animal, reptile and bird are superordinates of lion, snake and sparrow respectively. A very straightforward test for many examples of hyponymy is to use (142): (142)

An X is a kind/type of Y

Thus, a lion is a type of animal, a snake is a type of reptile, etc.

An important property of hyponymy is that it is a ‘one-way’ relation. Thus,

while (138a) entails (138b), it is not the case that (138b) also entails (138a). There are possible states of affairs in which a designated creature is an animal without it being a lion, and, relying on (142), this corresponds to the fact that an animal is not a type of lion. To put this another way, being an animal is a necessary condition for being a lion; it is not, however, a sufficient condition.

Recognition of hyponymy as a semantic relation which holds between some

words raises a number of issues. Firstly, we must recognise that, as well as animal being a superordinate of lion, it is also itself a hyponym of creature. As well as

(141), we have (143):

(143)

‘X is an animal’ entails ‘X is a creature’

This means that for this part of the English lexicon, the taxonomy (a structure in which we meet more general terms as we ascend to higher levels) defined by the semantic relation of hyponymy is multiply layered. Part of this taxonomy is

illustrated in (144):

(144)

creature

animal bird

fish

reptile

lion

dog cow

sparrow eagle ostrich

trout

shark

snake

eel lizard

newt

In (144), lion, dog, cow, etc. are co-hyponyms of the superordinate animal, which, along with bird, fish and reptile, is a co-hyponym of creature.

It is readily apparent that this taxonomy can be further extended at certain points to include another level. For instance, dog has spaniel, corgi, rottweiler, etc. and snake has cobra, viper, anaconda, etc. as co-hyponyms. However, this is not the case for all the items at the lowest level of (144) (e.g. ostrich), and for other cases,

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extension of the taxonomy involves a resort to morphologically complex forms (white shark, blue shark, basking shark, etc.). This is an issue to which we shall return in sections 13 and 15. Examples of taxonomies from other parts of the vocabulary of English are not difficult to find (exercises 3 and 4).

All the words appearing in the taxonomy in (144) are nouns. Do members of other word classes enter into hyponymy relations? For verbs, there are some clear instances. Consider the pairs of examples in (145) and (146):

(145) a.

X borrowed/stole/found/bought Y

b.

X got Y

(146) a.

X walked/ran/staggered/crawled to Z

b.

X moved to Z

In both of these cases, the various sentences in (a) entail the sentence in (b): there is no possible state of affairs in which someone can borrow something and not get it, etc., so we can justify the partial taxonomies in (147) and (148): (147)

get

borrow

steal

find

buy

(148)

move

walk

run

stagger

crawl

Note that we cannot straightforwardly extend (142) to apply to examples such as these. However, if we manipulate the syntax appropriately, it is easy enough to come up with a formulation which produces a simple test for whether a verb X is a hyponym of another verb Y. The sentence in (149) will serve this purpose: (149)