Unit 2 Activities

LEXICOLOGÍA Y SEMÁNTICA INGLESAS (15/10/20)
UNIT 2: MEANING, ISSUES FOR FURTHER THOUGHT AND EXERCISES
1. What semantic relations are involved in the following pairs of lexemes?
a) maximum, minimum: antonymy

b) left, right: antonymy
c) east, west: antonymy
d) mad, crazy: synonymy
e) borrow, loan: antonymy
f) brotherly, fraternal: synonymy
g) parent, child: antonymy
h) single, married: antonymy
i) open, shut: antonymy
j) converse, chat: synonymy
k) learned, erudite: synonymy
l) appear, disappear: antonymy
m) mobile, cell phone: synonymy
n) sane, insane: antonymy
2. Find synonyms (try and find at least two for each) for the following english words: faithful,
believe, stretch, break, ground, before, injustice and habit. Are your synonyms exact or
approximate? In the case of approximate synonyms, explain the meaning differences, and
comment on any differences in their syntactic behaviour.
faithful: devoted, constant, loyal

believe: trust, think, faithful
stretch: expand, amplify, extent
break: separate, fall apart, split
ground: soil, earth, floor
before: earlier, previously
injustice: unfairness, iniquity
habit: ritual, practice
They are slightly different to the target words and show different syntactic behaviour. earth and
ground overlap in meaning , both used in reference to the material making up the surface of our
planet. But, they are not exact synonyms as earth can be used in reference to the whole planet
whereas ground not.
3. English has a number of verbs relating to cooking, among them the following ones: cook,
fry, boil, steam, bake, sear, grill, barbeque and toast. Suggest a set of semantic features that
distinguish these verbs from one another, and provide a full feature description of each verb.
This verbs can form subgroups. We can find differences in the senses of the words across dialects.
Fry and boil involves liquid, in contrast with the other verbs; we might postulate [+ - liquid]. They
differ from one another in various ways, which might be described as [+ oil] vs [+ water]. Then
steam could be described as [ +water, -liquid]. Verbs as bake, grill and toast differ in terms of the
location of the heat, knowing this we can suggest three features: [+ - surrounding heat], [+ - heat
beneath] and [ + - heat to side]. Sear and barbeque could be distinguished from the others with
features like [+ - intense] and [+ - outside]. For this group, cooking verbs, the identification of
features doesn’t give us much in the way of descriptive value but if we add to the list other verbs
related to cooking, we might find this approach pays off.
4. Suggest semantic features that will distinguish the following verbs of motion: walk, fly, go,
jump, swim, hop, run, crawl, drive, roll and move. Give a full feature description for each verb.
Some features could be:

A) Medium features like [+ - air], [ + -water] and [+ - ground].
B) Manner features like [+ - legs], [+ - goal], [+ - hands], [+ - means] and so on
We might distinguish jump and hop from the others as [+ air] and [+ ground], these two could be
also distinguished as [+ translational] vs [+ shift in place] for example.
- walk: [+legs] [- hands] [+ground] [- air] [-water] [+ - goal] [- means]
- swim: [+legs] [+hands] [- ground] [+water] [- air] [+ - goal] [- means]
- fly: [- legs] [-hands] [- ground] [+air] [- water] [+goal] [+ means (plane)]
- go: [+ - legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [- water] [- air] [+ goal] [+ - means]
- jump: [+legs] [+ - hands] [+ground] [- water] [- air] [- goal] [- means]
- hop: [+ legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [ +air] [- water] [+ goal] [- means]
- run: [+legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [- air] [- water] [+goal] [- means]
- crawl: [+legs] [+hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+ - goal] [- means]
- drive: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+goal] [+ means]
- roll: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+ - goal] [- means]
- move: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ ground] [-air] [-water] [+ - goal] [+ - means]

5. List as many hyponyms as you can of furniture. Draw a hierarchical diagram showing the
hyponymic relations among the words.
Table, chair, desk, bookcase, wardrobe, cupboard, bed, seat, sofa, lounge chair, mirror, couch.
In the drawing, most of these words would be directly below furniture on a tree diagram, we
include table, chair, bookcase, etc Also, under chair we would place lounge chair and maybe seat
as they are types of chairs.
6. Make up a list of meronyms of car and show the meronymic relationships among them on a
hierarchical diagram. Are there any instances of transitivity in these terms?
We could find meronyms like: wheel, headlight, seat, engine, windscreen wiper, piston, carburetor,
axle, bulb etc.
There could be some instances of transitivity in the terms of carburetor which is a part of the
engine, but it is possible to say The engine/car has a carburetor and also The carburetor of the
engine/car. Another example could be The car has headlights or the headlights of the car
7. How would you describe the meaning of mouse? Then, do the following:
a) Think of actual uses of mouse in sentences. What other senses do you need to identify to
account your examples.
b) Which senses would you identify to be polysemies of a single lexical term, and which
would you suggest belong to another lexeme. Do you think any of your polysemies might
be better treated as instances of vagueness? Why or why not?
Mouse: small rodent animal that typically has a pointed snout, large ears and eyes and also a long
tail, it is a mammal. Mouse could also be a part of a computer, it is a small handheld device which
is moved across a flat surface to move the cursor on a computer screen.
Mouse could be use as in the sense of animal, as part of a computer but also as “timid person” or if
we say “library mouse” would be a person who likes reading and reads a lot.
The fact that the plural of mouse (part of the computer) is mouses rather than mice (animal) suggests
that this could be a distinct lexeme. Also this plural characteristic allows us to identify these
different words
- The little mouse likes cheese

- He is a library mouse, he spends his afternoons reading
- I was deciding between many mouses but I finally bought the cheaper one
- We saw many mice while staying in the farm, they looked very afraid
8. Look up some word in your dictionary. Find the lexical items in the definition (focus on the
first sense if more than one is given) that are the most closely related semantically to the word,
and look up their definitions in the dictionary . Continue this process and see how long does it
take you to get back to your original word. Draw a diagram to show how the headwords are
linked.
The word try has attempt under the first sense. Attempt has two main components as alternatives,
one one hand we have try and on the other we have one that involves the term effort which takes us
to strength and energy. From energy, we get to ability, strength and eagerness; from ability we get
to capacity and power; from capacity we go straight back to ability.
STRENGTH
TRY ATTEMPT EFFORT
ENERGY ABILITY CAPACITY
EAGERNESS POWER

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LEXICOLOGÍA Y SEMÁNTICA INGLESAS (15/10/20)

UNIT 2: MEANING, ISSUES FOR FURTHER THOUGHT AND EXERCISES

1. What semantic relations are involved in the following pairs of lexemes?

a) maximum, minimum: antonymy

faithful: devoted, constant, loyal

Some features could be:

- walk: [+legs] [- hands] [+ground] [- air] [-water] [+ - goal] [- means]

- swim: [+legs] [+hands] [- ground] [+water] [- air] [+ - goal] [- means]

- fly: [- legs] [-hands] [- ground] [+air] [- water] [+goal] [+ means (plane)]

- go: [+ - legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [- water] [- air] [+ goal] [+ - means]

- jump: [+legs] [+ - hands] [+ground] [- water] [- air] [- goal] [- means]

- hop: [+ legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [ +air] [- water] [+ goal] [- means]

- run: [+legs] [- hands] [+ ground] [- air] [- water] [+goal] [- means]

- crawl: [+legs] [+hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+ - goal] [- means]

- drive: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+goal] [+ means]

- roll: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ground] [- air] [- water] [+ - goal] [- means]

- move: [+ legs] [+ hands] [+ ground] [-air] [-water] [+ - goal] [+ - means]

- The little mouse likes cheese

ENERGY ABILITY CAPACITY

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