Lexical meaning - ambiguity, vagueness, indeterminacy Flashcards
3 ways in which meaning of words may be difficult to determine
Distinction between
AMBIGUITY,
INDETERMINACY/generality and
VAGUENESS
Lexical ambiguity
> 1 word used to refer to more than one thing
difficult to specify word’s relation to world/relation to other expressions IF meaning not clarified
EG Duffy discovered a mole.
A. Duffy discovered a small burrowing animal.
B. Duffy discovered a long dormant spy. (Saeed, J. 1997:61)
C. Duffy discovered a small raised blemish on his skin.
Indeterminacy/generality:
a word can have ‘variable’ reference but a single
sense
• See Kroeger’s (2018, Ch. 5) examples of kinship terms
• COUSIN is indeterminate as it refers to either the male or female offspring of
a parent’s sibling
• French: cousin vs cousine
• UNCLE is indeterminate as to whether it is a mother’s or a father’s brother or
the husband of a parent’s sibling
• Mandarin distinguishes ‘father’s elder brother’ (bóbo), ‘father’s younger
brother’ (shushu),, ‘father’s sister’s husband’ (guzhàng), ‘mother’s
brother’ (jiùjiu), ‘mother’s sister’s husband’ (yízhàng) (Koroeger, 2018:83)
DIFF LANGS LEXICALISE VARIOUS DISTINCTIONS
lexical • Vagueness
a property of words that describe phenomena on a continuum
• Tall, bald, red vs orange
> vague terms also often RELATIVE
• Tall baby vs tall basketball player
Vagueness = lack of clear borderlines for the denotation
of terms
• When does something cease to be tall/red/bald?
• Problem for logic & truth conditional theories of meaning
• Difficult to decide exactly when the term ceases to be true of an
object
• Problem of ‘borderline cases’
• Ambiguous words cannot apply in their different senses
simultaneously
• They are antagonistic (Cruse, 1986:61)
• Thus they are sources of puns
IDENTITY TEST
CONTRADICTION TEST
It was a terrible summer for humpty dumpty, but he had a great fall
since they are ANTAGONISTIC, they clash in coordinate structures:
ZEUGMA
1. Mary and her visa expired on the same day. (Kroeger, 2018:85)
2. He opened his mind and his wallet every time he went out with her
Identity test: • Ambiguous words need same interpretation in conjoined sentences >Bob saw her duck. > Bob saw her duck and so did Pete. • No ‘crossed’ readings
Contradiction test
• X and/but not X: if T then X is ambiguous
> I’ll lie but I won’t lie.
> But: #He is my cousin but he isn’t my cousin.
Ambiguity vs vagueness and indeterminacy
Compare with cases of indeterminacy/generality and vagueness:
• Bill is her cousin and so is Lilly.
• Baby Harry is tall, and so is his Dad.
lexical ambiguity: POLYSEMY
polysemic word: has more than one sense
plain: (1) ‘a level area of land’; (2) ‘easy, clear’; (3) ‘undecorated’, ‘not good
looking’
lexical ambiguity: HOMONYMY
homonymic words: happen to sound the same but have different meanings:
‘I’, ‘eye’, ‘aye’
Ambiguity: polysemy vs homonymy - etymology
figurative use important in semantic change
• A difficult criterion to apply: earlier meaning may no longer be relevant
• Silly (adj):
• Old English gesælig “happy, fortuitous, prosperous” (related to sæl
“happiness”), from Proto-Germanic *sæligas (source also of Old Norse sæll
“happy,” Old Saxon salig, Middle Dutch salich, Old High German salig,
German selig “blessed, happy, blissful,” Gothic sels “good, kindhearted”).
Context normally disambiguates/clarifies meaning
• Not such a problem for speakers (but for computers!)
TRANSLATION: ambiguity often source of errors
Some figurative uses of language
Metaphor
Metonymy/Synechdoche
METAPHOR: talking about a thing using another domain • E.g. ideas as food • That class gave me food for thought. • His idea is half-baked. • Let me chew on this idea for a while
METONYMY/SYNECHDOCHE: substitutes a word of phrase for another, a
part for a whole or vice versa
• The suits had their meeting
Lexical sense relations: synonymy
If two propositions entail each other, they are equivalent
• ‘x is taller than y’ and ‘y is shorter that x’
• Another way of expressing this latter relation is to say that the 2
sentences are synonymous
LEXICAL SYNONYMY: Sharing Entailments:
- buy
- purchase
TRUE lexical synonymy is rare:
• These women at the back would like to talk to you
• These ladies at the back…
• These chicks at the back…
SAME INFO (reference) but DIFF CONNOTATIONS/SOCIAL SIGNIFICANCE
• “I am strong minded; you are obstinate; he is a pig-minded
fool.” (B. Russell)
Lexical sense relations: antonymy
complementaries vs gradable/polar antonyms
ANTONYMS ARE OPPOSITES!
• Different types:
• Consider the relation between the members of the following two pairs:
• dead & alive
• tall & short
» Both pairs denote opposite qualities; which adjectives can be modified by
‘neither…nor?’
• *When I found the lost dog, it was neither alive nor dead.
BUT
• Joanne is neither tall nor short.
Dead & Alive - COMPLEMENTARIES: if one is true of an individual the other is not
Tall & Short - GRADABLE ANTONYMS: denote opposite poles on a continuum
• Polar antonyms can be easily used in their comparative forms
regardless of e.g. the size of any two objects
Pseudocomparatives
- pseudocomparatives
- Two properties: ‘being big/tall’ vs ‘having a certain size/height’
Overlapping antonyms:
BETTER - both good & bad things (overlapping antonyms)
WORSE - only bad things (true comparative)
EQUIPOLLENT ANTONYMS: not poles on a continuum, but DISTINCT PROPERTIES
EG: Happy and Sad
>They’re both happy, but Jo is happier than Al.
> *They’re both happy, but Al is sadder than Jo.
HAPPY = TRUE COMPARATIVE
» They’re both sad, but Al is sadder than Jo.
» *They’re both sad, but Jo is happier than Al.
SAD = ALSO TRUE COMPARATIVE : if you are sad you can’t have any
degree of happiness
- The tea in both cups is hot, but:
- the tea in the red cup is cooler (*colder) than the tea in the blue cup.
- The tea in both cups is cold, but:
- the tea in the red cup is warmer (*hotter) than the tea in the blue cup.
Warm and Cool: PSEUDOCOMPARITIVES - degrees of temperature
Hot and Cold: EQUIPOLLENT ANTONYMS
Paradigmatic relations of opposition: summary
COMPLEMENTARIES : “neither…nor” doesn’t work (cf. ‘dead’ and ‘alive’)
POLAR ANTONYMS: “neither…nor” OK
NEUTRAL TERM: “How X…?” OK (cf. ‘how tall/*short…?’)
OVERLAPPING ANTONYMS: one neutral term, the other describes a more
restricted property
» PSEUDOCOMPARATIVE: Comparative of neutral term
» REAL COMPARATIVE: Comparative of the non-neutral term
EQUIPOLLENT ANTONYMS
> Each member of the pair denotes a distinct property
> Each is a true comparative
Neutral term
• What’s the difference between:
• How tall is Joanne?
• How short is Joanne?
»tall is the neutral term