Coping with overlaps

At one time, linguists hoped it might prove possible to split lexical items up into their component parts. Word meanings, like phonemes (Chapter 5), were assumed to be made up out of a stock of basic components. The word bull might consist of the compo­nents male/bovine/adult, as opposed to cow which would be female/bovine/adult, and calf which would be bovine/non-adult. The attempt to divide lexical items into component parts is

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known as componential analysis. It feels fairly familiar because dic­tionaries often perform a similar type of analysis in an informal man­ner. For example, in the Concise Oxford Dictionary, mare is defined as 'female of equine animal'.

Componential analysis, it was thought, accounted naturally for overlaps, since one could point to components which were apparently shared by overlapping words: cow, princess and tigress overlapped because they shared the component fkmale. And this type of analysis could also be extended to verbs:

die become not alive

kill CAUSE BECOME NOT ALIVE

murder intentionally cause human being become not

ALIVE

slaughter intentionally cause animate being become not

ALIVE

Unfortunately, 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, and the whole approach wrongly suggests that if we looked a little more carefully, we might be able to sort out all of them. The words 'component' and 'componential analysis' have therefore faded out of fashion. Nowadays, people tend to talk of words having semantic properties, which is somewhat more satisfactory, since it does not imply that these properties are building blocks which need to be assembled.

Synonyms and opposites

To gain a fuller understanding of how lexical items hang together within a language, we need to look at the different types of relation­ship which exist between words. For example, the synonyms and opposites of a word can give valuable insights into its links with the rest of the vocabulary.

Lexical items can be regarded as synonymous if they can be inter­changed without altering the meaning of an utterance:

He snapped the twig in half. He broke the twig in half.

By studying interchangeable items, a linguist can build up a picture

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of those with similar meanings.

Note however that perfect synonymy is rare. That is, it is very unusual for two lexical items to have exactly the same meanings in all contexts. Occasionally, such synonymy is found between formal and informal vocabulary items. For example, rubella is the term found in medical literature for the disease that is more generally known as German measles. But, usually, a lexical item only partially overlaps another, and the two are synonymous only in certain contexts. To return to the words snap and break:

He snapped his fingers.

does not mean the same as

He broke his fingers.

And although

He broke the record for the 100 metre sprint.

is an acceptable sentence,

He snapped the record for the 100 metre sprint.

would seem unusual to most English speakers.

The study of opposites is more complex, as there are several differ­ent types of opposites. For this reason, the word 'antonym' has been avoided. Some writers use it for all types of opposite, others for one kind only.

The most obvious type is a pair of words in which the negative of one implies the other:

He is not married: he is single. He is not single: he is married.

A second type of opposite is one which is not absolute, but relative to some standard. Small and large, for example, always imply some comparison:

Wliat a large mouse! (=what a large mouse in comparison to a normal-size mouse)

What a small elephant! (=what a small elephant in comparison to a normal-size elephant)

A third type is when one word is the converse of the other. The choice of one opposite rather than another depends on the angle from which you view the situation being described:

I give you the book: you take the book.

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