English Linguistics.

Unit 4 Mª del Rosario Caballero

UNIT 4: SEMANTICS

4.1. WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

Semantics is the study of meaning in human language, from the meaning of the smallest
meaningful units in a language such as morphemes to the meaning of complex units like
sentences in textual contexts. However, meaning is a very complex notion. For instance, in
everyday communication we use the words meaning and to mean in different contexts and for
different purposes. For example:
1. The word perplexity means ‘the state of being puzzled’.
2. Rash has two meanings: ‘impetuous’ and ‘skin irritation’.
3. In Spanish espejo means ‘mirror’.
4. I did not mean that he is incompetent, just inefficient.
5. The meaning of the cross as a symbol is complex.
6. I meant to bring you my paper but left it at home.
Moreover, if we go beyond exploring the meaning of words and examine the meaning of
sentences, things get more complicated. A few examples will illustrate why we need to
develop a precise way of talking about meaning. Consider these sentences:
7. I went to the store this morning.
8. All dogs are animals.
The truth of sentence 7 depends on whether or not the speaker is in fact telling the truth about
going to the store; nothing about the words in the sentence makes it inherently true. By
contrast, sentence 8 is true because the word dogs refers to entities that are also described by
the word animals; its truth depends solely on the meaning of the words dogs and animals.
Now compare the following pairs of sentences:

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9. You are too young to drink.

10. You are not old enough to drink.
11. Matthew spent several years in northern Tibet.
12. Matthew was once in northern Tibet.
The sentences 9 and 10 basically ‘say the same thing’ in that the first describes exactly what
the second describes. We say that they are synonymous sentences, or that they paraphrase
each other. In 11 and 12 the first sentence implies the second, but not vice versa. Now
consider the following sentences:
13. The unmarried woman is married to a bachelor.
14. My toothbrush is pregnant.
These sentences are well formed syntactically, but there is something amiss with their
semantics. The meanings in 13 contradict each other: an unmarried woman cannot be married
and, certainly, not to a bachelor. The sentences thus present a contradiction. Sentence 14 is
not contradictory but semantically anomalous: toothbrushes are not capable of being
pregnant. To diagnose precisely what is wrong with these sentences, we need to distinguish
between contradictory and anomalous sentences.
Finally, examine sentences 15 and 16:
15. I saw her duck.
16. She ate the pie.
Sentence 15 may be interpreted in two ways: duck may be a verb referring to the act of
bending over quickly, or it may be a noun referring a type of animal. These word meanings
give the sentence two distinct meanings. Because there are two possible readings of 15, it is
said to be ambiguous. On the other hand, 16 is not ambiguous but has an imprecise quality at
least when considered out of context: we know that the subject is female but we don’t know
who is referred to by she or which pie was eaten, although by using the definite determiner
the the speaker indicates that s/he has a particular pie in mind. The sentence, out of context, is
then vague in that certain details are left unspecified.
These observations illustrate that meaning is a multifaceted notion. The purpose of
semantics is to distinguish among the different ways in which language means. Hence,
semantics is not only a very broad field of inquiry, but is the most diverse field within
linguistics. Moreover, semanticists have to have at least some kind of knowledge about other
disciplines, such as philosophy and psychology, which also investigate the creation and
transmission of meaning.

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The questions that semanticists attempt to answer, then, are:

• What are the components of word meanings?

• How do word meanings relate to each other?
• How do the meaning of discrete words combine to create more complex meanings (in
phrases and sentences)?
• Why does a string of words mean one thing while a similar string of words may mean
something very different?
• How can a single string of words mean more than one thing?
• When can two distinct sentences mean the same thing?
• What is meaning, anyway?
In this unit we will only cover some of the general concepts dealt with in semantics and some
of the notions discussed when exploring word meaning, and will leave the meaning of
sentences in context for unit 5 (Pragmatics).

4.2. BASIC CONCEPTS: WORD MEANING

Language communicates information about the world around us: we can talk/write about
people, places, concrete objects, and abstract ideas. We can also assert that these things have
certain properties or stand in certain relationships to one another (e.g. ‘is purple’, ‘is singing’,
‘is the sister of’, or ‘is located at’). A language is thus a system of symbols that are used to
represent objects and states of affairs in the world.
One aspect of linguistic meaning, then, is the information content of language: what
language tells us about the real world. This is usually known as reference: the relationship
that holds between language and the world. Second, meanings are things that are grasped,
stored, and assembled in the minds of people. Therefore, meaning is also a cognitive and
psychological phenomenon. The mental representation that we have of what a word or phrase
is often known as sense. Sense will tell us, among other things, about how the meanings of
various words in our mental lexicons are related to each other.

Consider these two scenarios:

A man has lost his dog, a collie named Sadie. He walks into his county dog shelter
and says to the person at the reception desk: “Excuse me. I’m looking for a dog”.
A man who has never had a pet before decides to buy a dog. He isn’t sure what kind
he wants, so he goes to his county dog shelter and says to the person at the reception
desk: “Excuse me. I’m looking for a dog”.

The man in each scenario uses exactly the same sentence, but one man intends the sense
component of the meaning of a dog, whereas the other man intends the reference component of
the meaning of a dog. Which is which? How do these two scenarios differ from each other?

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These two aspects of meaning –information content and mental representation, i.e., reference
and sense– are complementary: we need both. The ability to store linguistic constructs in our
minds would be less useful if we couldn’t use them to identify and talk about things in the
world. By the same token, language would not be possible without the mental ability to
abstract information about things in the world and integrate our perceptions of them with our
other thoughts and observations. We will not have fully understood the phenomenon of
meaning until we understand these two aspects. Moreover, both reference and sense underlie
a major division in semantics: lexical semantics (focused on the meaning of words) and
compositional semantics (focused on the way in which word meanings and syntactic
structure combine to determine the meanings of phrases and sentences).

Consider the following sentences and decide whether the underlines phrases are
referential or non-referential. Justify your answers.
1. Can you recommend a good western for kids?
2. Last night I saw a good western on the Sky channel.
3. She’d buy a new Ford Fiesta if she found one on sale.
4. She test-drove a new Ford Fiesta that she liked.
5. I’m searching for the best Chinese restaurant in the city.
6. On Tuesday, I ate at the best Chinese restaurant in the city.

Finally, reference and sense do not cover everything related to meaning in lexical semantics.
The notions that are often debated in semantics are described in the next section.

Denotation and Connotation

The concept traditionally linked with referential/information meaning is denotation, which

involves equating the meaning of a word or phrase with the world entities to which it refers.
For instance, the word ‘winter’ denotes the season between autumn and spring. Although a
word’s denotation is clearly connected to its meaning in some ways, they cannot be one and
the same thing. This is because there are words which have no referents in the real world even
though they make sense.

Think of words with no referents in the real world. Which is their meaning? How do you know?

Another notion closely linked with the concept of meaning is connotation, that is, the set of
associations that a word’s use can evoke. For instance, for people from the north of Europe or
North America, the term ‘winter’ evokes thoughts of snow, bitter cold, lack of light, and the

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like. But what would happen if a person from such places regularly spent winter in, for
instance, Argentina? Would the term evoke the same ideas? We must therefore look beyond
connotation for our understanding of what meaning is.

Extension and Intension

In order to illustrate the problems of reducing meaning to reference and/or the denotation-
connotation distinction, consider the following two sentences:
17. In 1981 Anwar El Sadat was assassinated.
18. In 1981 the President of Egypt was assassinated.
Here the same person is referred to by a name, Anwar El Sadat, and by a definite description,
the President of Egypt. These two expressions would share the same referent at a given point
of time, but we would probably want to say they have different meanings. If so, there is more
to meaning than reference and/or denotation (as well as connotation). Likewise, you may refer
to the woman who lives next door to you by various expressions like my neighbour, Pat’s
mother, Michael’s wife, the Head of the Language Department at University of Castilla-La
Mancha, the nuisance next door, etc. It seems clear that while these expressions might all
refer to the same person, they differ in meaning. Indeed, it is possible to know that some
expressions refer to an individual but be ignorant of others that do. We might understand
expressions like the President of the US and the Commander-in-Chief of the US Armed
Forces but not know that they both refer to the same man.
The impossibility of equating an element’s meaning with its referents has led to a
distinction between extension and intension. As shown below, whereas an expression’s
extension corresponds to the set of entities that constitute a category (i.e., the entities the
word/expression picks out in the world or its referents), its intension corresponds to its
inherent sense, the attributes that define it.

Phrase Extension Intension

Spanish Prime Minister J.L. Zapatero Leader of governing party
Capital of England London City containing the seat of government
(an image or idea) of someone dressed
in red and wearing a very long white
Santa Claus/Father Christmas Ø
beard who gives children presents at
Christmas

However, although the concept of intension allows for explaining the meaning of terms like
‘Santa Claus’ for which no real referent exists, it is problematic for explaining the meanings

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of very basic terms like ‘dog’, which can be used to refer to animals of very different sizes,
shapes and colours (i.e., attributes). In other words, which attributes (intension) make us
regard both Chihuahuas and St Bernards as belonging to the same ‘dog’ category (extension)?

Sense

As already introduced, sense is the meaning of words in relation to other words within the
vocabulary system of the language. For instance, a single referent like the moment when the
sun starts rising in the horizon has two names: dawn and daybreak. In fact, by studying the
relationships of individual items linguists can build up a picture of the overall structure of a
language’s vocabulary.

4.3. SENSE RELATIONS

A language’s lexicon is an intricately structured system, with a dense web of relationships

among its members. There are many ways for words to be related semantically. There are
various sense relations. Here we will discuss six basic types: hyponymy, part/whole
relationships, synonymy, antonymy, polysemy and homonymy.

Hyponymy

This is a relationship of inclusion, where words are ‘organized’ in a taxonomical or

hierarchical way. The relationship may be formalised as ‘X is a type/kind of Y’. For instance,
claret is a type of wine and this, in turn, is a type of drink or beverage. Similarly, cars, trucks
and vans are types of vehicles. Subordinate (and specific) terms like wine and car are called
hyponyms, whereas drink and vehicle are the superordinate terms or hypernyms in the
category.

vehicle

car bus bicycle sleigh lorry van

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Now, do the same with the verb to cook:

cook

toast

Hyponymous relationships stack very well. For example, poodle is a hyponym of dog; dog is
a hyponym of canine; canine is a hyponym of mammal; mammal is a hyponym of vertebrate;
vertebrate is a hyponym of animal; and so on. Any words that occur at the same level of any
given hierarchy are called sister terms. For instance, in the mammal hierarchy, sheep and
cow would be sister terms. However, cow and poodle are both mammals, yet are not sister
terms because the set that defines poodle does not fit inside the cow set, but belongs to the
dog set.
In other words, hyponymy may exist at more than one level. Thus, a word like blue is a
hyponym in the hierarchy of colour (the hypernym), yet it can also have hyponyms such as
turquoise, aquamarine or royal blue since these are all types of blue (and, accordingly, blue
would be their hypernym). We thus have a hierarchy of terms related through hyponymic
relationships (i.e., multiple layers of hyponymic hierarchies). Complete the following
hierarchy:

animal

bird insect mammal

Part/Whole relationship (Meronymy)

A second important hierarchical relationship between words is one found in pairs such as
hand and arm or room and house. In each pair, the referent of the first term is part of the
referent of the second term. We can identify this relationship by using sentence frames such

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as ‘X is part of Y’ or ‘Y has X’, as in a page is part of a book or a book has pages. Compare
the following:

face
organ

mouth ckeek nose eye

eye kidney heart lung

Draw a diagram showing the part/whole hierarchy of the noun dress:

dress

Synonymy

Synonyms are words or expressions that have the same meaning in some or all contexts. For
instance, movie, film and motion picture all have the same referent in the world (extension)
and therefore are usually taken to be synonymous terms. To address the notion of synonymy
more formally, we can say that term A is synonymous of term B if every referent of A is a
referent of B and vice versa (e.g. every movie is a film and vice versa). However, many
linguists have pointed out that ‘true’ synonymy is very rare in language. More often, one finds
words which are similar in their meaning, but differ in the way they are used in context. Thus,
walls are high, but not tall, and children may be tall but not high. The examples below
illustrate some differences between apparently synonymous words:
• Two words may be close in meaning and yet not collocate with the same items.
Example: begin and start: native speakers of English would accept (a) but not (b) or
(c):

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(a) The baby began/started to cry

(b) *I couldn’t begin my car; the battery was flat.
(c) *Before the world started, only God existed.
• Words may have different syntactic behaviour. Example: leave and depart:
The plane leaves/departs from Gatwick.
We left the house at six.
*We departed the house at six.
• Words may belong to different contexts and situations (registers). Examples: toilet and
loo; cigarette and fag.
• Words may be used in different countries speaking the same language. Example: lift
and elevator.

Think of more examples of ‘similar’ or synonymous words which differ in any of the
contexts described above.
For each of the following, provide a synonym or near-synonym in the same word class:
Adjective: keen (e.g. sharp), former, juvenile, speedy, speechless, strong, fertile, bare,
petite, inebriated.
Noun: bard (e.g. poet), juvenile, ardour, appointment, tool, agony, matrimony,
designation, rubbish, chief.
Verb: enclose (e.g. fence), kidnap, stammer, seek, praise, clothe, agitate, pester, commit,
inaugurate.

Antonymy

The word antonymy derives from Greek anti- (‘opposite’) and denotes opposition in meaning.
In contrast to synonymy and hyponymy, antonymy is a binary relationship that characterizes a
relationship between only two words at a time. Terms A and B are antonyms if when A
describes a referent, B cannot describe the same referent, and vice versa.
The prototypical antonyms are adjectives that describe opposite notions: large and small;
wide and narrow; hot and cold; married and single; alive and dead. Antonymy is not
restricted to adjectives, however. The nouns man and woman, the adverbs always and never,
or the verbs love and hate are also known as antonyms. However, if you examine all these
pairs closely, you may notice that they illustrate different kinds of oppositeness.
The study of opposites is complex, since there are several different types of opposite. Some
writers use the term antonym for all types of opposite; others use it to refer to only one kind.
In other words, this is a more varied relation than synonymy, where we can find a number of
distinct types:

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• Simple antonyms (also known as complementary antonyms) stand in an ‘either/or’

relationship to each other in that you cannot get both at the same time (e.g. sick and
healthy, dead and alive)
• Gradable antonyms are those which can be placed at the two ends of a scale with a
number of intermediate notions (e.g. adjectives like hot and cold)
• Reverses are words which describe a situation which can be approached from two
different ends (e.g. give and take, come and go)
• Converses are typically words that describe the same relation from a different
perspective (e.g. king and subject, teacher and student)

Think of more examples of each type of antonyms.

For each of the following, provide an antonym in the same word class:
Adjective: palatable (e.g. distasteful), open, outside, haughty, shallow, chilly, entire,
fertile, rare.
Noun: hindsight (e.g. foresight), insider, friendship, failure, freedom, benefit, chaos,
certitude, fecundity.
Verb: ignite (e.g. extinguish), reveal, remember, dishonour, ignore, appear, expand,
cleanse, bend.

Polysemy and Homonymy

In contrast to the notions discussed so far, polysemy and homonymy refer to similarities
rather than differences between meanings. A word is polysemous/polysemic (has ‘multiple
senses’) when it has two or more related meanings. Examples of polysemy include foot which
has the several related meanings: the lower part of the leg; the bottom or base of, say a page, a
mountain or a cliff; and a specific metrical measure. Similarly, plain can mean easy or clear;
undecorated; and not good-looking. All these meanings are related and have a common
source. This is why they are listed together in the same entry in dictionaries. Other examples
include:

Word Meaning A Meaning B

bright shining intelligent
to glare to shine intensely to stare angrily
a deposit minerals in the earth money in the bank

In other words, a polysemous item has multiple senses, each of which is part of the meaning
potential of the word but only one of which will be actually realised in any particular context.
Speakers of a language usually store all the senses of these items in their mental lexicon.

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Homographs have the same spelling but different meanings (and pronunciations), such as
dove ‘a kind of bird’ and dove ‘past tense of dive’ or conduct as a verb and conduct as a noun.
Homophones have the same pronunciation but different senses: sea and see, so and sew, two
and too, plain and plane, flower and flour, boar and bore, bear and bare, or eye, I and aye.
Finally, words are homonymic (homonyms) when they have the same written or spoken form
but have different senses. Examples:

Word Meaning A Meaning B

a flying, mouse-like nocturnal a piece of equipment used in cricket
bat
mammal or baseball
bank a financial institution a small cliff at the edge of a river
club a social organisation a blunt weapon

However, there are difficulties in distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy: How do
we know if we have separate lexical items rather than a single word with different senses?
Using spelling as a criterion is misleading: many sets of words are distinct but have the same
spelling as happens with the words above. One modestly reliable criterion is a word’s
historical origin or etymology: we can consider that two words have distinct meanings if they
derive from different historical roots. The various antonyms and synonyms of words can also
help to decide whether we have polysemy or homonymy: plain as ‘easy, clear’ and plain as
‘undecorated’ share the synonym simple and the antonym complex; therefore, they can be
seen as two senses of the same polysemic word. However, the boundary between homonymy
and polysemy is not clear-cut in some cases.

4.4. APPROACHES TO MEANING

Although it is relatively easy to determine whether two words or sentences have identical or
different meanings, it is much more difficult to determine precisely what meaning is in the
first place. So far, we have revised some basic notions, but still haven’t answered the
question: What is meaning?
Several schools or approaches have attempted to answer the question. Well-known
approaches include the following:

The Referential Approach

This approach to meaning suggests that meaning should be sought in the extra-linguistic
entity an expression (the smallest expression being a word) picks out in the real world (the

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referent). The main justification for this type of approach is that language is used to talk about
the world and the objects “out there” which attract our attention. From this perspective, the
most natural thing to do in order to interpret messages encoded in language is to look at the
referents, whether objects, classes of objects or situations.
This approach has some problems:
• For some words there are simply no referents (e.g. all functional words, like e.g. a,
and, the).
• Some expressions point to non-existent or fictional referents: elves, gnomes, the King
(in a country with no monarchy).
• The idea, held by some, that things out in the world do not have an inherent structure
and that any structure we perceive is just that, i.e. perceived.

Componential Analysis (or semantic decomposition)

This approach tries to represent a word’s intension by breaking it down into smaller semantic
components. This approach has long been used to analyse the meaning of certain types of
nouns in terms of semantic features. Examples of analysis:
Man [+ HUMAN + MALE + ADULT]
Boy [+ HUMAN + MALE - ADULT]
Woman [+ HUMAN - MALE + ADULT]
Girl [+ HUMAN - MALE - ADULT]

Componential Analysis is most useful for uncovering and representing similarities among
semantically related words. However, it is somewhat inaccurate to speak of the meaning of
words as being ‘composed’ out of a heap of separate components. At best, these so-called
components form only a small part of the overall meaning of the word in question.
Componential Analysis is not very fashionable nowadays. Nowadays, we tend to talk of
words as having semantic properties (which cover some of the sense relations seen above).

Conceptual approach(es) to meaning

These try to relate meaning to mental concepts of some sort. Since concepts don’t have to
correspond to objects in the world and need not be sets of features, these approaches can
avoid some of the problems outlined earlier. However, they have the problem of defining
what a concept is. This is the first question to answer if we want to know how our conceptual
system is organised (and, therefore, we produce and understand meaningful language). Some
basic concepts in all conceptual approaches are the following:

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FUZZY CONCEPTS

We tend to think that the concepts expressed by words and phrases have precise definitions
with clear-cut boundaries that distinguish them from other concepts. For instance, “the
president of the government” is clearly different from other expressions designating a person
in the world. However, think of the adjective rich: How much money do you need to be
considered rich? Likewise, you can call the same object one thing one day and another the
following day, meaning two different things. For example, if you have a glass recipient you
can call it a glass if you use it to drink and a vase if you use it to put some flowers.

PROTOTYPES

A second important thing about concepts is that their members can be graded in terms of their
typicality. Even concepts whose boundaries can be scientifically defined exhibit this type of
graded membership. Good examples of this are the concepts of bird and of fruit. Question:
when you think of a bird and of a fruit which name comes to your mind first? As you have
experienced, for a variety of reasons (some cultural, some personal, some shared widely
across speech communities) certain entities in any given field seem more salient than others,
and will be perceived as ‘classic’ or more central representatives of their class than others, i.e.
as prototypes of that class.
The theory about prototypes suggests that concepts have an internal structure, with the best
or prototypical exemplars close to the core and less typical members arranged in successively
more peripheral regions.

The theory about prototypes suggests that concepts have an internal structure, with the best or
prototypical exemplars close to the core and less typical members arranged in successively
more peripheral regions.

Hawks
Robins Storks
Magpies
Pigeons Ostriches
Penguins
Hens

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METAPHOR

The concepts expressed through language are not isolated from each other. Rather, they make
up a giant network, with many interconnections and associations among the various subparts.
A good example of these interconnections involves metaphor, the understanding of one
concept in terms of another. A standard definition of metaphor is that it is a cognitive process
whereby a complex concept (typically abstract) is understood and expressed (verbally, with
images, etc.) in terms of some other (usually more concrete) concept. The concrete concept is
known as the source and the abstract concept is known as the target, and metaphors are often
discussed as a mapping from a source to a target:

SOURCE TARGET
mapping

Examples:

1. As a result of the economic crisis, the Asians will strike back; they will launch an
export offensive. ECONOMIC ACTIVITY IS WAR
Source: WAR
Target: ECONOMIC ACTIVITY
2. My wife whose hair is a brush fire. Whose thoughts are summer lightning. Whose
waist is an hourglass (Breton, Free Union)
Sources: brush fire, summer lighting, hourglass
Targets: hair, thoughts, waist

Metaphors?

3. He fell in love with my sister just after meeting her. LOVE IS A

PLACE/CONTAINER

Source: CONTAINER/PLACE
Target: LOVE

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4. He was boiling with anger. ANGER IS HEAT ► HUMAN BODY IS A

CONTAINER ► EMOTIONS ARE LIQUIDS IN CONTAINER

Source: HEAT, CONTAINER, LIQUID IN CONTAINER

Target: ANGER, HUMAN BODY, EMOTIONS
5. He says: “She is lovely –she’s only a size eight and looks like a cuddly little kitten but
she can be a tigress in bed or in an argument. A PERSON IS AN (WILD) ANIMAL

Source: A TRAIT OF AN ANIMAL ► fierceness, cruelty, wild passion

Target: A TRAIT OF A PERSON ► fierceness, cruelty, wild passion

We have a tendency to think of metaphor as a literary device reserved for the use of literary
authors and poets. In fact, however, there is reason to think that it has a prominent place in the
conceptual system shared by all human beings. The effects of this prominence are seen in the
way in which we use language to talk about various abstract notions. A simple example
involves the concept of time, which we conceptualise metaphorically by treating it as if it
were a concrete commodity or thing. Other metaphors consist of thinking of concepts such as
emotions or psychological states in spatial terms:

THINGS ARE COMMODITIES

You’re wasting my time He’s living on borrowed time
This gadget will save you hours You don’t use your time profitably
HAPPY IS UP; SAD IS DOWN
I’m feeling up I’m feeling down
That boosted my spirits He fell into a depression
My spirits rose Her spirits sank
You’re in high spirits He’s feeling low

These few examples illustrate a more general point about language and meaning. The
innumerably many concepts that we express through language do not all exist independent of
each other. Rather, many concepts are structured and understood metaphorically in terms of
notions more basic to our physical and cultural experience. Thus, time is understood in terms
of a commodity metaphor, happiness in terms of a spatial metaphor, and so on. By studying
how concepts are represented in language we can gain valuable insights into the role of
experience and metaphor in the human conceptual system.
Problems with conceptual approaches
• Mental concepts are elusive things which are not directly available to introspection
• How are concepts acquired and do they evolve? That is, how do children learn
concepts and, once learned, do concepts change or stay the same?

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• If concepts change in the process as children mature, does meaning then evolve parallel
to the evolution of the concept which the expression is related to?

4.5. PRACTICAL CASES AND ACTIVITIES

1) Describe the intensions and extensions of each of these phrases:
1. the President of the US
2. the Queen of England
3. the capital of Portugal
4. men who have walked on the moon
5. the Prince of Wales
6. Princess Leticia’s husband
7. the urban young
2) The following sentences are ambiguous. Describe the source of their ambiguity:
1. They found the peasants revolting.
2. The car I’m getting ready to drive is a Lamborghini.
3. Erika does not like her husband, neither does Natalie.
4. They said that they told her to come to them.
5. Challenging wrestlers will be avoided at all costs.
6. He met his challenger at his house.
3) What are the possible antonyms/opposites of the words ‘light’, ‘rough’, ‘high’ and ‘hard’ in
the phrases below? Think of the contexts where the phrases may appear:

light bag light wind

light colours rough sea
rough texture rough area
rough person rough calculation
high marks high opinion
high building high price
high temperature high winds
hard exam hard chair
hard journey hard work
hard person hard drugs

4) We have seen that a single form can have two or more meanings. Depending on whether these
meanings are related to each other, this phenomenon involves polysemy or homonymy. Which of
these two relations is exemplified in the forms below?
Grass Herbage used for grazing animals; marijuana
Leech A bloodsucking worm; a hanger-on who seeks advantage
Range A cooking stove; a series of mountains
Key An instrument used to open a lock; an answer sheet for a test or assignment
Reel A spool of photographic film; round device at the butt end of a fishing rod for the line
Race The act of running competitively; people belonging to the same genetic grouping

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English Linguistics. Unit 4 Mª del Rosario Caballero

5) For each semantic relationship specified below, provide one or more examples of words whose
referents have that relationship to the specified word and identify the name of the semantic
category that is used to cover your answer:
Example: fish is the superordinate term (hypernym)
Answer: salmon, trout, cod, tuna are its hyponyms.
1. Irish setter, dalmatian, cocker spaniel are the hyponyms of ________________________
2. tabby, tom, Persian, alley are the hyponyms of __________________________________
3. dog, cat, goldfish, parakeet, hamster are the hyponyms of __________________________
4. knife, fork, spoon are the hyponyms of _________________________________________
5. true is the antonym of ______________________________________________________
6. inaccurate is the antonym of _________________________________________________
7. sister is the converse of _____________________________________________________
8. partner is the converse of ___________________________________________________
9. toe is the part of ___________________________________________________________
10. menu is the whole of _______________________________________________________
11. friend is the synonym of ____________________________________________________
12. teacher is the synonym of ___________________________________________________

6) In what way is each of the following pairs of words related? In cases of hyponymy, indicate
which word is the hyponym and which word is the hyperonym; in cases of antonymy, especify
the type of antonymy illustrated by the terms:
1. shallow deep
2. mature ripe
3. suite sweet
4. table furniture
5. single married
6. move run
7. sofa couch
8. green blue
9. punch touch

7) The following words are used with several senses. Spot these senses and decide whether they
illustrate homonymy, polysemy (metaphorically motivated or not), etc.

cap face row way bed snap

match plot broad bitch bench carriage
sheet brass ring magazine suit
8) Determine whether the words in each of the following sets are polysemic, homonymous, or
metaphorically related. In each case, state the criteria used to arrive at your conclusion. You
may use a dictionary.
1. to run down (the stairs); to run down (an enemy); to run down (a list of names)
2. the seat (of one’s pants); the seat (of government); the seat (of a car)
3. an ear (of music); and ear (of corn); and ear (as auditory organ)
4. to pitch (a baseball); pitch (black); the pitch (one’s voice)
5. to spell (a word); (under) a spell; a (dry) spell
6. vision (the ability to see); (a man of) vision; vision (as a hallucination)
7. the butt (of a rifle); the butt (of a joke); to butt (as a ram)

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English Linguistics. Unit 4 Mª del Rosario Caballero

9) Examine the following sets of sentences, each of which include words or phrases used
metaphorically. For each set of sentences (a) identify the lexical items that are used
metaphorically and (b) determine the basis for the metaphor sets. Use the pattern “The
metaphors in X describe _____________________ in terms of _____________________”.

She gave him an icy stare. the foot of the bed

He gave her the cold shoulder. the hands of the clock
He exudes a lot of warmth towards people. the table legs
They got into a heated argument. the arm of a chair
the eye of a needle
He drops a lot of hints This lecture is easy to digest
The committee picked up on the issue He just eats up the lecturer’s words
She dumps all her problems on her friends Chew on this thought for a while
Although he disagreed, he let it go Listen to this juicy piece of gossip

10) Watch the video clips “Tintos de Navarra”, “KIA”, “PC vs MAC” and “Freixenet
2009” and describe the metaphors in them. Take into account that metaphors may be
expressed via language, images, or sounds.

4.6. ORAL PRESENTATIONS & DISCUSSION

Readings

• Paper “Some Like It Hot” (Polysemy & Metaphor)

• Chapters 1, 2 & 3 from Zoltán Kövecses (2002). Metaphor. A Practical Introduction.
Oxford: OUP.
• Metaphor & emotion. Kovecses
• Multimodal metaphors & emotions. Forceville

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