Chapter 6: SemantiCS COmmentarY On aCtiVitieS AWS
Chapter 6: Semantics COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES Activity 6.2 A semantic description of English needs to include the information such as shoes, boots and sandals are kinds of footwear; footwear is a type of clothing; boots are not sandals; shoes have soles; and part of the sole of a shoe is the heel. Encyclopaedic knowledge in this area covers shoe sizes and prices, materials commonly used for making soles, the height of different kinds of boot, how shoes can be decorated, the desirability of shoes designed by Jimmy Choo and so on. It is the business of shoemakers, cobblers, sales assistants and fashionistas. Activity 6.3 Intuitively, it seems more promising to define thief as ‘one who steals’. Steal can then be explained in terms of ‘unauthorized taking’, and take seems a basic sort of word. By contrast, starting by saying that steal means ‘doing what a thief does’ leads to the problem of explaining the meaning of thief without making use of the word steal. (It would be unsatisfyingly circular to claim that stealing is ‘doing what a thief does’ while at the same time offering ‘one who steals’ as an explanation for the meaning of thief.) Activity 6.4 First sentence (4a): It’s a sandal. Second sentence (4c): It’s got a sole. Sentence (4a) entails (4c): a thing that is a sandal must have a sole; and if it hasn’t got a sole it can’t qualify to be called a sandal. Activity 6.5 (a) The inference that she must be in the water when she is swimming in the sea is an entailment. Being in fluid is a necessary condition for swimming. The entailment cannot be cancelled without contradiction, and that is a test for entailment: !She is swimming in the sea but she is not in the water. (Remember that ! at the beginning of a sentence signifies that the sentence has a serious meaning problem.) (b) When (ii) is false, then sentence (i) must be false. If she is not even in the water then she cannot be swimming in the sea. Confirm that this fits the definition of entailment given earlier. (c) If (ii) is true, then she might – or might not – be swimming in the sea, we cannot tell; for example she might be in the bath. Again, have a look at how this fits the definition given for entailment. Activity 6.6 Fly ‘move through the air’ is a hyponym immediately under the superordinate move; march ‘walk in formation’ belongs under walk; massacre ‘violently kill many people’ under kill; watch ‘look at attentively’ under look at.
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Chapter 6: Semantics COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES
Activity 6.9 Converses – see Examples (14) and (15): faster/slower and precede/follow. Incompatibles – see Example (16): sparrow/wren, rise/fall and be stopping / be starting. Antonyms – see Example (18): light/heavy and cheap/expensive. Complementaries – see Example (20): right/wrong. Here is the pattern of entailment that establishes rise/fall as members of a set of incompatible co-hyponyms: The temperature rose entails The temperature did not fall (in that period). The temperature fell entails The temperature did not rise (in that period). But The temperature did not rise does not entail The temperature fell (in that period). The temperature did not fall does not entail The temperature rose (in that period). The temperature might have remained constant, which is why we do not get entailments from the negative sentences here. Maybe you listed faster and slower as antonyms. That is correct, because faster and slower have the entailment pattern of Example (18): This jetfoil is faster than that hovercraft entails This jetfoil is not slower than … That hovercraft is slower than this jetfoil entails That hovercraft is not faster … And (because the two kinds of vessel could be equally fast): The jetfoil is not slower than the hovercraft does not entail The jetfoil is faster … The hovercraft is not faster than the jetfoil does not entail The hovercraft is slower … It is important that, even though faster and slower are antonyms, you should see that they are also converses. Note too that, because faster and slower already have the suffix {-er}, they do not pass the tests for gradability: !fasterer, !more faster, !very faster etc.
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Chapter 6: Semantics COMMENTARY ON ACTIVITIES
Activity 6.9 Converses – see Examples (14) and (15): faster/slower and precede/follow. Incompatibles – see Example (16): sparrow/wren, rise/fall and be stopping / be starting. Antonyms – see Example (18): light/heavy and cheap/expensive. Complementaries – see Example (20): right/wrong. Here is the pattern of entailment that establishes rise/fall as members of a set of incompatible co-hyponyms: The temperature rose entails The temperature did not fall (in that period). The temperature fell entails The temperature did not rise (in that period). But The temperature did not rise does not entail The temperature fell (in that period). The temperature did not fall does not entail The temperature rose (in that period). The temperature might have remained constant, which is why we do not get entailments from the negative sentences here. Maybe you listed faster and slower as antonyms. That is correct, because faster and slower have the entailment pattern of Example (18): This jetfoil is faster than that hovercraft entails This jetfoil is not slower than … That hovercraft is slower than this jetfoil entails That hovercraft is not faster … And (because the two kinds of vessel could be equally fast): The jetfoil is not slower than the hovercraft does not entail The jetfoil is faster … The hovercraft is not faster than the jetfoil does not entail The hovercraft is slower … It is important that, even though faster and slower are antonyms, you should see that they are also converses. Note too that, because faster and slower already have the suffix {-er}, they do not pass the tests for gradability: !fasterer, !more faster, !very faster etc.
