Structural semantics: words and other words

The basic principle of a structural semantic approach to word meaning is that words do not exist in isolation: their meanings are defined through the sense relations they have with other words. That such relations have psychological validity for individuals is indicated by the degree of uniformity unravelled by responses to word association tests.

In these tests, individuals¹³ are given a word and asked to record the word with which, for them, it is most immediately associated. Typical responses are as follows (from Deese, 1965):

Stimulus Typical response accident car

alive dead

baby mother

born die

cabbage vegetable

table chair

careless careful

Such associations are organized structurally in rather less incoherent a way than may at first appear. Some of the main networks between words can be classified. For example (from Slobin, 1971):

contrast or antonymy wet–dry similarity or synonym blossom–flower subordinate classification animal–dog coordinate classification apple–peach superordinate classification spinach–vegetable

What’s in a word 33

These relationships can be more fully classified along the following lines:

1 Synonymy – This is essentially a bilateral or symmetrical sense relation in which more than one linguistic form can be said to have the same conceptual or propositional meaning. This does not mean that the words should be totally interchangeable in all contexts; but where synonyms are substituted changes in the propositional meaning of the sentence as a whole do not occur. For example, sub-senses of house, abode, domicile, home are synonyms in some contexts; in the sentence What an impressive ——— of books, the words range, selection, choice are synonymous. However, stylistic differences limit substitutability. And in an absolute sense there can be no such thing as, nor any need for, totally substitutable synonyms.

2 Antonymy – As we have seen there are different kinds of contrasts in meaning, but basic to antonymy is a notion of semantic opposition or unrelatedness. Demarcations within antonymic sense relations can be made as follows:

(a) Complementarity – This is where the presence of one sense compon-ent excludes another. For example, the relationship between alive and dead is such that to use one logically entails the denial of the other. An entity cannot be both simultaneously and there is no continuum or gradation between the terms. Other examples would be single–married; male–female. Thus, we can say he is ‘rather tall’

but not ‘rather married’ (see antonymy below).

(b) Converseness – These are contrastive lexical relations where there is a measure of logical reciprocity, e.g. husband–wife; the sentence he is her husband, can be ‘reversed’ to produce the reciprocal correlate she is his wife. Converseness contrasts with ‘complementarity’ in that there is interdependence of meaning. Other examples would be buy–sell; above–below. But see Lyons (1977, p. 280ff).

(c) Incompatibility – This refers to relational contrasts between items in a semantic field (words which co-occur with reference to a familiar topic). It occurs in such sets as seasons, days of the week, cycles, generic types, etc. For example, rose, daffodil and chrysanthemum;

red, blue and yellow would be incompatibles. The house is red excludes that it is any other colour.

(d) Antonymy – This may now be used as an inclusive term for all the above contrastive sense relations but also, in relation to opposition, in the more restrictive sense of gradable opposites, e.g. hot–cold ; big–small; good–bad, which are all gradable relative to each other with reference to a norm. We must note here, however, that the same word can be antonymous with more than one word depending on different semantic networks, e.g. old can be an antonym of young and of new.¹⁴

3 Hyponymy – Reference above to super- and subordinate relations leads to consideration of what have generally been termed ‘inclusive’ sense relations. Hyponymy is a relationship existing between specific and gen-eral lexical items in that the meaning of the specific item is included in, and by, the meaning of the more general item. In short, hyponymy is a kind of asymmetrical synonymy; its basic organization is hierarchical.

Tulips and roses are co-hyponyms, for example, and are linked by their common inclusion under a superordinate (or hypernym) flower in whose class they belong. The following diagram may illustrate the nature of this relationship:

BUILDING factory hospital House

museum cottage

theatre bungalow

school villa

mansion

Here house is a hyponym of building (which is its superordinate) but it also serves itself as a superordinate of another set of hyponyms. It is usual in dictionary definitions to define a subordinate item in terms of its superordinate, e.g. ‘spinach is a kind of vegetable’. It should be noted, though, that there are certain inconsistencies in the relationship for certain verbs which denote actions or processes. It can be difficult to find a superordinate other than one which is somewhat vague and all-inclusive;¹⁵ for example, buy and steal would be co-hyponyms subordinate to a verb such as get. See also Lyons (1981), for discussion of partial and quasi-hyponymy, as well as Lehrer (1974a). Hasan (1984) also coins the term meronymy to refer to a part–whole relation as in the case of tree, branch and root where branch and root are co-meronyms, named parts of the superordinate tree.

To conclude this section, the word white and its ‘meaning’ will be examined.

The aim is to show how even a very ordinary and widely used word can have a complex relationship with its ‘referents’ and with the other words with which it exists in a structural semantic network. Although colour terms operate in a relatively clear pattern with each other (see Berlin and Kay, 1969), a certain indeterminacy and arbitrariness none the less characterizes the meaning of white, and such semantic features can create, for example, particular problems for language learners. (More extended discussion of the ‘arbitrariness’ of the sign and with particular reference to reading such signs in literary texts is found in Section 5.8.)

Although most languages have a translation equivalent for white, its What’s in a word 35

meanings in English are not easily demonstrated. And to someone learning the word for the first time with no intralingual equivalents to work from, it is clear that merely pointing out objects in the world which possess the property of whiteness will not do. We can indicate visually that snow is white, that cotton-wool is white, or that sugar is white and leave the learner to infer the property in common (though they may come to the conclusion that white is a property of light powderiness). Alternatively, we can list the lexical sets or combinations of words into which white enters, for example, white, grey, silver hair; or the many collocations or idioms of which white forms a part can be listed. These can be learned but it will be apparent that the property denoted by the colour white is not specifically relevant in all of these cases (e.g. white wine is not white) and that culture-specific associations are an important feature of the meaning of several of them. For example, a white wedding does involve the bride in wearing white garments, but there are further associations or connotations of meaning produced, too, most notably those to do with purity and chastity. Thus we can have:

white lie, white elephant, white nights, white coffee, white wine, white wedding, the white of an egg, white-collar worker, white space (technical term for the unused area of paper on a printed page), white man, white magic, white heat.

Most centrally, however, white is probably best learned in a general sense by being shown in relation to other colours along a colour spectrum as, for example, in a game of snooker and, in a very specific sense, in relation to other shades of white (e.g. snow-white, petal-white, cream, off-white and so on) in a paint colour chart.¹⁶

To know the meaning of white it is clear that it makes sense to start with this last dimension first. Meaning is thus primarily relational and the meaning of a word can, in most cases, be best illustrated by reference to the network of meanings which exist between senses and sub-senses of lexemes.

Referential meaning on its own is insufficient and it would, in any case, exclude the other dimensions (associative, cultural, idiomatic) without the knowledge of which we cannot properly claim to know the meaning of the word white. The fit between white and its senses is an arbitrary one. It is almost as if we can say that ‘white is white because it is not red’. As we have seen, however, the structural semantic definition, while important, is still not the whole story; issues of style, connotation, and association noted above receive more detailed discussion in subsequent chapters.