Semantic Relationship

Semantic RelationsHIP

Defintion of Semantic Relationship :

In the narrow sense are semantic relations relations between concepts or meanings.

The concept [school] should be distinguished from the word ‘school’. [School] is a kind of [educational institution]. This indicates a hierarchical (or generic) relationship between two concepts or meanings, which is one kind among a long range of kinds of semantic relations.

The concept [School] may, for example, be expressed by the terms or expressions ‘school’, ‘schoolhouse’ and ‘place for teaching’. The relation between ‘school’ and ‘schoolhouse’ is a (synonym) relation between two words, while the relation between ‘school’ and ‘place for teaching’ is a relation between a word and an expression or phrase. The relations between words are termed lexical relations. 'School' also means [a group of people who share common characteristics of outlook, a school of thought]. This is a homonym relation: Two senses share the same word or expression: ‘school’.  Synonyms and homonyms are not relations between concepts, but are about concepts expressed with identical or with different signs.

Relations between concepts, senses or meanings should not be confused with relations between the terms, words, expressions or signs that are used to express the concepts. It is, however, common to mix both of these kinds of relations under the heading "semantic relations" (i.e., Cruse, 1986; Lyons, 1977; Malmkjær, 1995 & Murphy, 2003), why synonyms, homonyms etc. are considered under the label "semantic relations" in in a broader meaning of this term.

Some important kinds of semantic relations are:

1.      Synonym

Synonym is the same of words have the same of meaning.

Example :

Able – Capable (Mampu)

I shall be able to help when I get money

She is capable of teaching English to young children

Beautiful – Pretty (Cantik, Indah)

She is a beautiful girl

Fitri has a pretty face

2.      Antonymy

There are three kinds of antonymy:

a.       Gradable antonymy

Two words are opposite in meaning and the negative of the first word is not necessarily means the other and vice versa, they are called gradable antonyms.

e.g. the word “large” and “small” are gradable antonymous words. Not large doesn’t always mean small and not small doesn’t always mean large. There maybe a meaning of rather large or a bit small between large and small.

      b.   Complimentary Antonymy.

            When two words are opposite in meaning and the negative of the first means the other, then they must be complimentary antonyms. E.g. the word “Single and married are complimentary antonyms. Not single means married and not married will always means single. Here the negative of the first word can describe the referent of the second one and vice versa.

c.       Relational Antonymy

When two words seem to be opposite in meaning and have a reciprocal semantic relationship, then they belong to relational antonym or converse words. E.g. two words “father” and “mother” are two relational antonyms or converse word.

3.      Hyponymy

Is the state or phenomenon that shows  the relationship  between more general term,

( lexical representation) and the more specific instances for it.

Examples:
The lexical representation of:
red, yellow, green, blue, purple, black is ( color ). Thus we can say that: " red " is  a hyponym of " color " and so on.

Examples:
clarinet, guitar, piano, trumpet, violin, are hyponyms because they are " musical instruments " but there is not a single word meaning  " musical instrument " that has these  words as its hyponyms .

4.      Polysemy and Homonymy

Homonymy are words that have the same form but different meanings.  There are two major types of homonyms, based upon whether the meanings of the word are historically connected or result from coincidence.

Coincidental homonyms are the result of such historical accidents as phonetic convergence of two originally different forms or the borrowing of a new word which happens to be identical to an old word.  There is usually no natural link between the two meanings: the bill of a bird vs the bill one has to pay; or the bark of a dog vs the bark of a tree. 

      The second type of homonym, the polysemous [pAli∆si‡∆m´s] homonym, results when multiple meanings develop historically from the same word.  The process by which a word acquires new meanings is called polysemy [pAli∆si‡∆mi∆].  Unlike coincidental homonyms, polysemous homonyms usually preserve some perceptible semantic link marking the development of one meaning out of the other, as in the leg  of chair and the leg of person; or the face  of a person vs. the face of a clock.

      Sometimes it is impossible to tell whether two words of identical form are true homonyms (historically unrelated) or polysemous homonyms (historically related), such as ice scate vs. skate the fish: skate--fish (from Old English skata')  ice skate (from Dutch schaat');  deer/dear are historically related (cf. darling, German Tier, animal.)

      Since polysemy is so difficult to separate from true homonymy, dictionaries usually order entries according to 1) the first recorded appearance of word or 2) frequency of meaning use.  This is a problem for lexicographers, the people who study words and write dictionaries.  

5.      Part/Whole Relationship

The second hierarchical relationship among meanings is that of found in pairs of words, where the referent of the first word is included in the referent of the second word. But the relationship is not a hyponymy; it is part of whole relationship. The difference is that in a hyponymy a “hyponym” is a kind of a “hypernym”, but in  part /whole relationship a term or word is a “part” of another term or word.

E.g. “floor, window and wall” are part of room. And “ room” is a part of a house.