 How can we define the meaning relations between the words of a language? The branch of semantics concerned with this question is referred to as lexical semantics, and it constitutes the focus of this e-lecture. In particular, we will look at sense relations in general, and we will then define the main sense relations from synonymy to myronomy. Let us first of all locate the topic of sense relations within semantics. Now within semantics, with its main branches of word semantics, sentence semantics, and utterance semantics, word semantics seeks to explain the phenomenon of meaning in natural language by means of defining the nature of word meaning. There are two ways of looking at word meaning resulting in two branches of word semantics. Reference or referential semantics, and sense or lexical semantics. While reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements and the non-linguistic world of experience, sense relates to the complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves. It is concerned only with intra-linguistic relations. For this reason, some linguists refer to this field as lexical semantics. We will concentrate on sense, that is, the definition of the meaning relations between the words or more precisely the lexemes of a language. The logician Gottlob Freger was the first to distinguish two dimensions of our semantic knowledge of an expression, its sense and its reference. Sense is represented in our minds in terms of concepts. Hence, words or lexemes are better conceived of as labels for concepts rather than objects. A number of linguists have equated sense with sense relations by defining the sense of a linguistic expression as the set or network of sense relations that hold between it and other expressions of the same language. These sense relations are central to the way speakers and hearers construct meaning. There is disagreement among linguists about the number of sense relationships at the level of words or, as I already said, to be more precise the level of lexemes. The most common view defines three sense relations. Synonymy, Antonomy and hyponymy. Some linguists include even a fourth relationship, namely Myronomy. While others, and that is a more extended view, prefer hyponymy as one relationship, which includes then Myronomy and incompatibility as a second semantic or sense relationship. Let's now look at these sense relations in detail and let's start with synonymy. Synonymy is traditionally defined as sameness of meaning. It can, however, be maintained that no two words or lexemes have exactly the same meaning. It would seem unlikely that two such elements would survive in a language. There are at least five dimensions, according to which possible synonyms can differ. There are dialectal differences. The example over here is autumn and fall. They both have the same semantic core, yet they are used in different varieties or dialects of English. We can find stylistic differences such as between gentleman and chap. Again, they have the same semantic core, however, they use depends on stylistic aspects. Statesmen and politician involve the difference referred to as emotive difference. Again, same semantic core, but their emotive extensions are different. And some lexemes require specific contexts or collocations. They are collocational restricted. You can have rancid butter and adult eggs, but not vice versa. And last but not least, we have cases of semantic overlap, such as the two adjectives ripe and mature. With these differences in mind, synonymy can best be defined as relatedness in meaning. That is, two words or lexemes have identical semantic cores, but different extensions. Intuitively, some pairs of synonyms are more synonymous than others. Thus, three degrees of synonymy are often distinguished. Absolute synonymy, partial synonymy, some sort of overlap, and near synonymy. Let us now look at the second relationship, autonomy. The term autonomy is used for oppositeness of meaning. In contrast to synonymy, autonomy is a very regular feature of natural language and can be defined fairly precisely. Here you have antonym pairs such as hot and cold or pass and fail. Since there are many ways in which lexical items can stand in opposition to each other, some linguists reject the term autonomy and suggest the term incompatibility instead. According to this view, synonymy would be defined as a converse relationship of incompatibility. Now, there are several ways in which lexical items can stand in opposition to each other. Let us look at these more closely. One possibility is referred to as gradable autonomy. Now, this is a relationship between opposites where the positive of one term does not necessarily imply the negative of the other. In other words, the opposition is a matter of degree rather than absolute. This type of opposition is usually associated with adjectives such as wide, old, tall, hot, etc. The items in a set of gradable antonyms are all mutually exclusive. They are all gradable and they represent different points along a scale according to which they can diver. Here is an example of such a scale. Now, we have the antonyms, hot and cold, but between them there are several possibilities. Cold, for example, is a very low temperature. Cool is a bit higher, tepid is somewhere in the middle, warm is even higher and hot is the highest of these terms. The items are implicitly comparative terms and their definition varies according to the reference and according to the norm against which the reference is being assessed. For example, look at the term hot in a hot bath versus a hot drink. Well, certainly both involve different degrees of hotness. A second type of antonyms is referred to as non-gradable or binary antonyms. Now, this type of antonyms differs from gradable antonyms in that the opposition is absolute. There are just two incompatible terms in the set. One is the opposite of the other. Each of the following pairs exhibits this either or relationship. For example, dead versus alive or male and female or pass and fail. However, as you all know, speakers can always alter these two term classifications to create special effects. Take the dead alive dichotomy. You can say something like he's very much alive or you can say something like after the match we were almost dead. And then look at this sentence. Zombies are neither dead nor alive. They are undead. Gradable? Well, that's actual language use. Incompatibility, another type of antonomy, can be thought of as a relation of exclusion. Incompatibles are terms which denote categories which share no members. If something is a dog, then it is not a cat, a mouse or an elephant. Sentences with incompatible terms will thus contradict each other. A well known example is the set of color terms where, for example, the meaning of blue is incompatible with the meaning of red as well as with the meanings of the other color terms. It should be noted though that incompatibility does not necessarily imply oppositeness of meaning. Red is not the opposite of blue. It's just incompatible with it. Quite interestingly, the color terms do not have a superordinate term. Since the term colored normally excludes black and white, we may have an example of hyponymy. Well, we will return to that issue later. A distinction is sometimes made between ordered and unordered taxonomies. For example, there's no natural way as far as the meaning is concerned to arrange the set of kitchen utensils such as cup and pot and fork and knife in any kind of order. By contrast, the days of the week constitute an ordered taxonomy. The fourth type of autonomy I would like to mention is referred to as relational. Relational antonyms differ from gradeable antonyms in that they are not susceptible to degrees of opposition and from binary antonyms because they're not either or in character. In fact, their opposition involves movement or orientation in opposite directions. For this reason, they are also called directional opposites. There are two subtypes of relational antonyms. We have something referred to as reversives, that is, normally a relationship between verbs describing movement or more generally change in opposite directions. Fall versus rise or push versus pull are two examples. And then we have so-called converses, terms which describe a relation between two entities from alternative viewpoints. If A is above B, then B is below A. If A buys something from B, then B sells something to A. An interesting concept related to autonomy is referred to as the concept of marketness. The members of antonyms pairs are often distinguished with respect to their marketness, where one of the items, the marked term, is said to possess a special mark, which the other, the unmarked or default term, does not have. The notion of marketness is used in a variety of ways by different linguists. Here, we distinguish three major types of marketness. For example, morphological marketness, where one item in a pair of opposites carries a morphological mark that the other lacks. This mark is typically a negative prefix. So let's look at these examples here. Well, let's apply red color to them. And as you can see, we now can add a prefix such as unhappy, impossible, or disregard to create the marked terms. A second type of marketness is referred to as distributional marketness. In sets of gradable antonyms such as long and short, high and low, the unmarked term is the item that can be used in a wider variety of contexts. For example, in questions or quality descriptions. A question would normally be a phrase such as how long is something, how high is something, but only very rarely how short is something and how low is it. Note that for some items, for example, hot and cold, which we discussed earlier on, there is no such pattern. Semantic marketness is a distinction that applies to pairs of opposites in contexts, where the normal opposition between the two terms is neutralized or non-operational. In such contexts, the unmarked term is the one that is used for both items, and its meaning is what is common to the two terms of the opposition. A famous example is the distinction between lion and lioness. In sentences such as the lion and the lioness were hunting together, there is a gender contrast between the two terms, which is neutralized in sentences such as we saw a group of lions in the grass, since the group may well contain both males and females. So the unmarked term lion refers to what is common to lion and lioness. Let's now turn our attention to hyponomy. Hyponomy is a hierarchical sense relationship between lexical items based on the notion of inclusion. A less general term includes the meaning of a more general term. The less general term is called the hyponym. So ant fly and bee are hyponyms to insect, fruit fly, blue fly and brown fly are hyponyms to fly. The more general term is known as the superordinate term or the hyperonym. So the concept insect is the hyperonym to fly. The concept fly is the hyperonym to blue fly and all the other flies. The set of hyponyms, which have the same superordinate term, the same hyperonym are referred to as co-hyperonyms. Whereas their vertical relationship with a hyperonym is one of inclusion. So fly includes insect, bee includes insect and includes insect. Their horizontal relationship is one of incompatibility. Blue fly is incompatible with brown fly and is incompatible with bee. Hyponomy can be defined as a transitive relationship. For example, if A is a hyponym of bee and B is a hyponym of C, then necessarily A is also a hyponym of C. So with our concepts, brown fly is a hyponym of fly, fly is a hyponym of insect. So brown fly is a hyponym of insect. This relationship can also be defined in terms of entailment, something which we will address in our e-lectures on sentence semantics. Oddly, there are some terms, some sets of terms, for example the color words for which no superordinate term, no hyperonym can be found. And then some linguists include the relationship of synonymy within hyponymy and define it as symmetric hyponymy, where A is a hyponym of bee and B one of A. Let's finally look at our last relationship, the relationship of myronomy. Now like hyponymy, myronomy is a sense relation based on the notion of inclusion. This is why some linguists subsume it under the heading of hyponymy. Myronomy describes a part-whole relationship between lexical items. For example, mouth is a part of the face and so is nose. So nose and mouth can be regarded as maronyms of face, where face itself is the hollownum. There are at least two kinds of myronomy. Functional myronomy, where the parts are detachable from the hole. So wings are theoretically detachable from an aircraft, as you know the effect would be a disaster. And then we have continuous myronomy, where part and whole constitute an inseparable or continuous hole. So the flames cannot really be detached from fire. Myronomy is, as I already said, similar to hyponymy in that it reflects a hierarchical relationship between lexical items. However, myronomy is not inclusion as a hole, but in terms of part-whole relationships. A fly is not a part of an insect and a nose is not a kind of face. Well, let us summarize. This e-lecture cannot handle all details of sense relations. For example, we only mentioned but did not discuss the various types of synonymy. However, as an overview and in some cases as a precise treatment of sense relations, this e-lecture may suffice. The next question we have to address is how do we bring reference and sense together and how do we formalize these aspects of word meaning? The answer to this question will be given in our e-lecture, Theories of Word Meaning, where I hope to see you again. Until then, have a nice time.