5.9.2 Oppositeness of Sense

The second semantic relation is antonymy, which is the sense relation that exists between lexemes which are opposite in meaning. Brown defines antonymy as “a relation in which two lexemes share all relevant properties except for one that causes them to be incompatible” (p.26), which is polarity of meanings. The lexemes freedom and book cannot be compared because they do not share a common semantic ground on which they are contrasted. However, antonyms may realize their relation in the context where items share a common ground or if they hold the same sense. This feature depends on the context and situation; for example, in discussing a color, dull and bright are antonymous, but if dull characterizes a person, then the antonym of dull is sharp or bright. If dull is used in reference to blades or knives, then the antonym of dull is sharp. There are several ways where lexemes can be opposites. One of them is complementary or contradictory pairs. Complementary antonyms are the ones whose “senses completely bisect some domain” (Brown, p.26). Complementary antonyms do not have a middle ground; they are absolute opposites. There may exist only two possibilities—either one or the other. “The items complement each other in their meaning, and thus are known as complementary antonyms” (Crystal, p. 165). The examples of complementary antonyms are the following: man—woman, girl—boy, married—single, dead—alive, win—lose, exit -- entrance, sink -- float, true -- false, pass -- fail, legal—illegal, and others. The second group of antonyms is called gradable or polar antonyms, which includes “the concept of scale between two endpoints” (Tserdanelis & Wong, p. 225). If two antonyms are opposite in meaning and at the same time there can be seen endpoints of some scale (temperature, height, size, age, and others), then they are gradable antonyms. Gradable antonyms have a middle ground. The examples of gradable antonyms include the following: toward – away, hot—cold, good—bad, slow—fast, rapid—slow, and others. One solution to gradable antonyms is to treat the items as polysemous, “having relative and absolute senses in contrary and complementary relations, respectively (Brown, p.26), e.g., hot—warm—cold. The third group of antonyms is based on the oppositeness, where one item presupposes the other, and this oppositeness is called converseness. Some scholars call this type of antonyms as relational antonyms (Denham & Lobeck, 2010, p. 296; Tserdanelis & Wong, p.225). The examples of these antonyms are husband—wife, buy—sell, above –below, over—under, parent-child, teacher—student, doctor—patient, friend—enemy, lawyer—client, day—night, begin—end, and others. There cannot be a husband without a wife or a doctor without a patient, and there cannot be a parent without a child. Converseness presupposes that each antonym describes the same relation or activity from a different side. All languages have antonyms, and antonyms share the same types of relation.

5.9.3 Meaning Categories: Hyponymy

The third kind of semantic relation is hyponymy. “A hyponym is a word whose meaning is included, or entailed, in the meaning of a more general word” (Denham & Lobeck, 2010, p.298). Hyponymy may be explained as the relation between specific and general lexemes and phrases, e.g., house is a hyponym of building. Georgios Tserdanelis and Wai Yi Peggy Wong view this relation as “the loss of specificity” (p.225). It indicates moving from specific (a rose, tulip, and petunia) to general (flower). The relationship between the lexemes can be seen in the diagram:

plant hypernym

hyponym

flower hypernym

crocus rose begonia daffodil hyponyms

Flower and plant are super-ordinate terms, or hypernyms. Flower is the hypernym for crocus, rose, begonia, and daffodil; however, it is a hyponym of plant as well.

It should be noted that not all lexemes have hypernyms; for example, nightclub or balloon may not have hypernyms other than vague names such as a place and a thing. Sometimes, it is difficult to assign hypernyms to abstract nouns.

Like other semantic relations, hyponymy can be subdivided into two subtypes: taxonomic and functional hyponymy (Miller, 1998b, as cited in Murphy, p. 219). Taxonomic relation can be illustrated in the following example: cow is in a taxonomic relation to animal, but cow is in a functional relation to livestock (a cow functions as livestock). However, functional relation is not necessarily a logical relation because not every cow is livestock, not every knife is a weapon, and not every dog is a pet.