Ex: - John is honest
John is truthful
He was cashiered, that is to say, dismissed.
Cashiered' and `dismissed' are synonyms, while `murdered' and executed' are contrastive synonyms
Arthur's got himself a dog -or more exactly, a cat.
The inherent relationship between `cat' and `dog' is that of contrast, for that reason this sentence is odd.
It is impossible to put an end in the scale of synonyms.
Ex: + rap: tap rap: knock rap: thwack - rap: bang
They are not prototypical synonyms. They are peripheral synonyms
Behind any study of synonymy is the idea of the quest for the establishment of true synonyms. Cruse reviews some apparently true synonyms.
Ex: begin: commence munch: chew hate: loathe
Cruse takes into account the question of the contextual relations. For two words to be true synonymous we need two conditions: equivalence of meaning and equivalence of contextual relations. This is highly problematic because words don't behave like that. They tend to specialize in their contextual relations.
Ex: Begin and `commence' mean exactly the same but in terms of contextual relations they are not.
Johnny, tell Mummy when Playschool begins and she'll watch it with you.
Johnny, tell Mummy when Playschool commences and she'll watch it with you.
Arthur is always chewing gum (+)
Arthur is always munching gum (-)
I don't just hate him, I loathe him (+)
I don't just loathe him, I hate him (-)
Apart from this there are minus aspects we have to take into account
Syntax: two syntactic terms have to behave syntactically the same
Ex: Where is he hiding?
Where is he concealing?
Conceal' needs an argument (DO)
Johnny, where have you hidden Daddy's slippers? (+)
Johnny, where have you concealed Daddy's slippers? (-)
Sense: you have to choose the correct sense of the word if you want to prove that two words are synonymous.
Ex: Arthur's more recent car is an old one (+)
Arthur's most recent car is a former one (-)
He had more responsibility in his old job
He had more responsibility in his former job
2.8 CONCEPTUAL SYNONYMY
Words are felt to be synonymous independently of their contextual relations. Leech makes the distinction between synonymy and conceptual synonymy. The equivalence of meaning of synonymy has to adhere to the equivalence of concepts, independently from the stylistic overtones.
Ex: Steed (poetic) Horse (general) Nag (slang) Gee-gee (baby language) “World Book Encyclopedia S part” Macmillan Publisher 1996 p 134
The concept `horse' is evoked by these words. So these words are synonymous although they are different in their stylistic overtones. This has been strongly criticized because to prove that we all have the same concept is very doubted. Our system of conceptualization may be different from one speaker to other. The most evident example of this is baby language. When a baby says gee-gee he may be saying it to any animal that moves.
So conceptual synonymy is alright but it has faults and objections.
Warwick says that it isn't possible to distinguish semantic meaning and factual meaning. Her lexicographic descriptions are very lengthy because she has into account all knowledge of the world that is, the habitat, size, appearance, behavior, and relation to people…
Componential analysis of conceptual synonymy.
It is an analysis very popular in the 1970's and turned itself to be very useful in the identification of atoms of meaning of words. One of the applications of componential analysis is in the identification of synonyms, because if two words share atoms of meaning, they are synonymous.
Ex: John is a bachelor
John is an unmarried man
Componential analysis serves quite well for the analysis of fairly uncompleted words (nouns, adjectives, some verbs), but there are whole areas of the vocabulary of the language that don't lend themselves for componential analysis.
Barbara Warren makes a distinction between synonyms and variants. She says that we have synonyms if the words have similar meaning and if they are interchangeable without affecting meaning in some context or contexts. Variants are words which have similar meaning but without the interchangeability in some contexts.
Ex: extending Deep far below; profound the surface.
`Deep' and `profound' has always been considered synonyms and it's true they are interchangeable but it's also true that in some contexts one cannot replace the other.
He had a deep / profound understanding of the matter
This river is deep / profound. They are not interchangeable in this context.
Ex: Sweet: candy dialectal variants
Decease: pop off stylistic variants
Lady: woman connotative variants
In one context you use one word and in the other you use the other one.
Human 1) lady adult woman 2) female'
The point here is to try and prove that synonyms exist. The result of this research is quiet distressing. There are no synonyms following Warren's definition. What Person did was to scrutinize the use of `deep' and `profound'. His research is especially valid because he bases his research on lexicographic words, corpus data and importance. The wide range of sources and the number of them is what makes this valid.
The conclusions: `Deep' and `profound' show a difference in collocability, that is, they tend to collocate with different words. Deep tends to collocate with words of affection, conviction, feeling, regret, satisfaction, sorrow… Whereas `profound' tends to collocate with words of difference, distaste, effect, failure, influence… They enter different collocations because they mean slightly different things. They specialize in certain areas of meaning and that makes them slightly different. He also talks about metaphorical status. Metaphorically speaking, they can mean position on the one hand or quality of depth on the other. Only `deep' enters for the position metaphor, but the quality of depth can be expressed by both of them.
Ex: deep structure (profound structure)
He was deep (profound) in thought
It was deep (profound) in the Middle Ages
Deep / profound learning
Deep / profound sleep
Intellectual - emotive dichotomy: `deep' and `profound' tend to relate respectively to intellectual and emotive words. The idea is that `deep' tends to collocate with emotive nouns, whereas `profound' tends to collocate with intellectual words.
There is a difference in the degree of depth and intensity of these words. `Profound' is deeper that `deep'. When both are possible, then there is a distinction.
Ex: He has a deep understanding of the matter (`pretty good')
He has a profound understanding of the matter (`very good') Maurer D.W. , High F.C. New Words - Where do they come from and where do they go. American Speech., 1982.p.171
English words associations give us a very useful way to prove this. There are nouns whose inherent meaning is superlative. With such a noun you can only have `profound' because it means deeper.
Ex: profound distaste *deep distaste
Profound repugnance *deep repugnance
Of course in terms of truth-conditions one entails the other one but not vice versa, that is `profound' includes `deep' but not vice versa.
Ex: His profound insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries
His deep insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries.
His deep insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries. *
His profound insight into human nature has stood the test of centuries
Synonymy is understood within mutual entailment (A-B) but `deep' and `profound' doesn't correspond to this. Native speakers feel that `profound' is stylistically more elevated or more formal that deep? So with all this evidence it is impossible to say that they are synonymous. This is why Person gives the following figure as the analysis for them.
Concrete `situated, coming abstract; abstract from, or extending intellectual; emotive far below the strongly; surface emotive.
Stylistic Attributes (SA): informal SA; formal.
In Person's model we have three categories: CC, TA, SA. The thing is that not all words include SA box, so it's left open. Person also reviewed other examples analyzed by Warren.
Ex: child / brat child CC brat TA
Child' and `brat' are an example of connotative variant in Warren. They are given as variants but if we apply the test of hyponymy we see that it works. `Brat' is a kind of `child' but not vice versa. `Brat' includes `child' plus the feature `bad-mannered. Person finds the collocation in which `brat' appears; it tends to appear with adjectives that reinforces this feature of bad-mannered what proves that that atom of meaning (…)
The same happens with `woman' and `lady'.
Ex: She is a woman, but she is not a lady.
She is a lady, but she is not a woman
Person questions the fact that two words can be synonymous out of the blue. He defends contextual information as the key to determine if two words are synonymous or not.
Ex: readable: legible
At to what extent can we say that they are synonyms?
* readable:
(of handwriting or point) able to be read easily'
pleasurable or interesting to read'
* legible:
(of handwriting or print) `able to be read easily'
They are only synonymous when they mean `able to be read easily'
“The child, quite obviously, would not be expected to produce a composition, but would be expected to know the alphabet, where the full stops and commas are used, and be able to write in a readable / legible manner, something like, `The cat sat on the mat'.”
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