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Understanding Adjective Meanings and Relations

This document provides an overview of different types of relationships between adjectives: 1. Synonyms refer to words that are equivalent in meaning such that replacing one with the other does not change the sentence's literal meaning. 2. Complementaries are adjective pairs whose meanings divide their relevant domain, allowing entailments from affirmative to negative sentences and vice versa. 3. Antonymy indicates a sense relation where the affirmative of one adjective is equivalent to the negation of the other, as shown through sentence entailments. The difference from complementaries is that antonyms do not allow entailments from negative to affirmative.

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Samuel Matsinhe
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57 views2 pages

Understanding Adjective Meanings and Relations

This document provides an overview of different types of relationships between adjectives: 1. Synonyms refer to words that are equivalent in meaning such that replacing one with the other does not change the sentence's literal meaning. 2. Complementaries are adjective pairs whose meanings divide their relevant domain, allowing entailments from affirmative to negative sentences and vice versa. 3. Antonymy indicates a sense relation where the affirmative of one adjective is equivalent to the negation of the other, as shown through sentence entailments. The difference from complementaries is that antonyms do not allow entailments from negative to affirmative.

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Samuel Matsinhe
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Universidade Eduardo Mondlane

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences


ELT-Day Shift: 4th Year-EDL III

Name: Samuel Matsinhe


Lecturer: Carlos Manuel

Adjective meaning
The meaning of adjectives in this chapter is described on the basis of three main points: the various
sense relations between adjectives, with much emphasis on relationships of similarity and
oppositeness; A short description of how adjectives express different levels of qualities; The account
for meaning which result from adjectives modifying nouns.

Sense relation between adjectives


A sense of a word affects the entailments carried by the sentence in which the word is used.
Therefore, the entailment potential of words is indicated by sense relations between the words.

Synonymy
Synonymy refer a type of sense relation between words which is equivalent to sense. When a word
replaces another word in a sentence and the literal meaning of the sentence is not changed, we can
say that such words synonymous.

My mother is beautiful

My mom is beautiful

My mum is beautiful

The words mother, mom, mum are synonyms of each other. The three sentences above carry the
same meaning; therefore, they are called paraphrases. Paraphrase is possible if the meanings of the
sentences entail each other.

i. It is impolite to interrupt
ii. It is rude to interrupt

The sense relation of synonymy between rude and impolite can be analysed in terms of possible
entailments between these paraphrased sentences. The entailment shown below is called two-way
entailment and it is the defining feature of synonymy.

It is impolite to interrupt it is rude to interrupt. So is possible if we go the other way:

It is rude to interrupt It is impolite to interrupt.

In two-way entailment both of the arguments are reasonably acceptable thereby the sentences are
synonymous with each other.
Complementaries
Complementary is a sense relation between adjectives pairs whose meanings divide their relevant
domain. Below is an example of complementary terms which are explained on the basis of
entailments possibilities.

My book is the same as yours My book is not different from yours.

My book is not different from yours My book is the same as yours

My book is different from yours My book is not the same as yours

My book is not the same as yours My book is different from yours

Complementaries allow us to get entailments from affirmative sentences to negative sentences vise-
versa. They also two-way entaiments

Antonymy

In order to account for the meaning that arise from sense relation between the words silent and
noisy, let us consider the following sentence entailments they occur:

a) The street was noisy yesterday The street was NOT silent yesterday

b) The street was silent yesterday The street was NOT noisy yesterday

The sentence meaning in a) entails NOT b) and the sentence meaning in b) entails NOT a). Antonymy
indicates the sense relation between words whose meaning is described by entailments which show
that the affirmative of the first is equivalent to the negation of the other, as show by examples
above.

The difference between complementary and antonymous words lies on the that fact the latter only
hold propositions from affirmative to negative, never the other way round as show by
complementary terms. The reason for that is; while complemetaries divide their meaning in
complete, there is middle ground between antonymous words. The street was NOT noisy yesterday
does not entail that The street was silent yesterday.

Converses
Converses is a sense relation between antonymous words which occur in comparative forms. Let us
look at an example and demonstrate the pontet

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