NMTS-Group2

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Warning:
The material on this page has been created as part of a seminar. It is still heavily under construction and we do not guarantee its correctness. If you have comments on this page or suggestions for improvement, please contact Manfred Sailer.
This note will be removed once the page has been carefully checked and integrated into the main part of this wiki.

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Wikipage of Group 2

Comments by the NMTS team

  • Glossary entry: Contradiction: complete bibliogr. reference; definition - maybe alter for a slightly better wording. Instead of "A relationship between sentences wherein the truth of one sentence requires the falsity of another sentence." -> "A relationship between TWO sentences wherein the truth of one sentence requires the falsity of THE other sentence."

Overview

Members

Short description of the topic

Our aim is to enlighten the subject of semantic relations. What is a synonym? How can we distinguish polysemy and homonymy? Why are alive and dead complements and not truly antonyms? Those are the questions we want to answer by producing guides and excercises for future students and all those who never understood semantic relations.

References and links

References

  • Cann, R.; Ruth Kempson; Eleni Gregoromichelaki (2009). Semantics - an introduction to meaning in language. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Murphy, M. Lynne. (2003). Semantic relations and the lexicon : antonymy, synonymy and other paradigms. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
  • Lyons, J. (1983). Semantik 2. München: Beck.

Links


Links with non-scientific background (please handle with care)

Our e-learning objects

Our wiki pages

Our podcasts


Three minutes about homonymy: Definition, differences between homophones and homographs and some short examples to test your knowledge. Can you give the correct answer on every question?


Background music: Yann Tiersen - Comptine d'un autre été

Our materials for an interactive whiteboard

http://user.uni-frankfurt.de/~sailer/nmts-wise1213/SemanticRelationsPresentation.notebook%7C Our interactive whiteboard presentation

Our pictures

  • Anna

    Anna

  • Katarzyna

    Katarzyna

  • Verena

    Verena

  • Ulrike

    Ulrike

Test yourself

The following questions are all about certain category groups within basic semantic relation - either between words or between sentences. Choose your answer wisely as more than one answer could be correct. Good luck!

Part 1 - Homophones

Which of the following pairs are homophones? Click on the alphabetic character to check your answers and remember, multiple choice question means that there can be more than one right answer.

a) bight (curve in a coastline) - byte (unit of memory size)
b) bear (animal) – beer (alcoholic drink)
c) haw (fruit)- hoar (venerable)
d) fawn (colour) – fawn (little roe deer)
e) read (present tense) - read (past tense)
f) heal (to cure) - he’ll (short form of he will)

Now it's getting a bit hairier. Same question but the answers are not that easy any more...
a) personal pronoun - part of your face
b) to bend down - ribbon
c) to clean very intensely - someone from Poland
d) past tense of 'to eat' – one-digit number
e) sound of a dog – skin of a tree
f) nearby - to shut
Comment: I like the audio examples in your solutions!

Part 2 - Antonyms and Synonyms

In this section, you have to choose which word is a synonym or antonym of the above. As you're doing a multiple-choice test, please remember that more than one answer could be correct. Good luck!


1.a) Which answer is a correct synonym for 'ambassador'?
a) revolt
b) combatant
c) refugee
d) general
e) representative


1.b) Which is the best antonym match for 'competition'?
a) contest
b) unification
c) cooperation
d) team
e) sport


2.a) Which answer is a correct synonym for 'reverie'?
a) palimpsest
b) phantom
c) daydream
d) curio
e) arbitrator


2.b) Which is the best antonym match for 'mite'?
a) weakness
b) tend
c) bulk
d) drive
e) spider


3.a) Which answer is a correct synonym for 'result'?
a) decision
b) cause
c) outcome
d) data
e) grade


3.b) Which is the best antonym match for 'reality'?
a) dream
b) play
c) reaction
d) fiction
e) fantasy

Part 3 - Relations between sentences

This time, your task is a bit more based on your personal knowledge of semantics. You get 8 sentences, each part of a special kind of semantic relation. Can you describe the semantic relationship expressed by each of the following sentences? For the solutions, mark the following paragraph (which is seemingly empty) with your mouse.

(Hint: 3x contradiction, 3x entailment, and 2 paraphrase)


1. My brother married a doctor. My male sibling joined in wedlock with a physician.

paraphrase, Easy one, right?
The last sentence contains all the information of the first one; you only have to translate it into colloquial English. I told you, that it wasn’t so complicated!

2. Vera has only one dog. Vera’s dogs are called Bert and Oscar.

Great! This is contradiction.


3. My husband keeps forgetting things. Thank God I'm a widow.

Did you know it?
Of course, one cannot be a widow and at the same time complain about your husband still forgetting things. As long as you're not stuck in time and believe your deceased hsuband to be still alive, these sentences contradict each other, right?

4. Jane ate a piece of chicken. Jane ate a piece of poultry.

Found the answer?
 Well, it wasn't that hard as you already had one example of entailment. Chicken is just a subcategory of poultry, therefore Jane does not have any chance to not eat poultry when she enjoys a nice piece of chicken. Absolute impossible!

5. Vera is an only child. Olga is Vera’s sister.

Strike!
Another contradiction! You knew this before, right? Okay, let us summon it up: If you have a sister, you cannot be an only child.

6. I saw Mary at the anniversary party. It was Mary that I saw at the anniversary party.

Another light question, don't you think?
 The second sentence is the paraphrase of the first one. We just change the active sentence into the passive one!


7. Othello killed Desdemona. Desdemona died.

What's your result?
For us, that's an entailment as the death of Desdemona is only an effect of Othello killing her. One sentence causes the other, correct?

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