NMTS-Group2
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
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
- General Semantics Learning Center
- A general overview, granted by Det Informationsvidenskabelige Akademi
- WordNet, granted by the Princeton Univesity (By clicking on 'browser', you have access to a highly dense database of English words, all saved with a full descirption of their semantic relation)
- Semantic Relations and the Lexicon: Antonymy, Synonymy, and Other Paradigims
Links with non-scientific background (please handle with care)
- Antonym Finder, can also be used for synonyms and definitions
- A good page to illustrate the difference between synonym and antonyms (with examples)
Our e-learning objects
Our wiki pages
- homophony (definition in Basic Glossary)
- contradiction (definition in Basic Glossary)
- complementarity (definition in Basic Glossary)
- hypernym (definition in Basic Glossary)
Our podcasts
<mediaplayer>http://youtu.be/M7pvAmLtOSk</mediaplayer>
Our materials for an interactive whiteboard
Our pictures
Anna
Katarzyna
Verena
Ulrike
Our exercises
Example
Meaning relations among words or sentences. Which meaning relation holds between the following words or sentences? Your answer should be of the form: Word/sentence A is an X of word/sentence B.
a. A: I saw Martha at the anniversary party. B: It was Martha that I saw at the anniversary party.
b. A: plane B: cockpit
c. A: piano B: musical instrument
d. A: Vera is an only child. B: Olga is Vera’s sister.
e. A: My cousin Tom is a teacher. B: My cousin Tom teaches at the community collage for living.
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
Synonyms
Choose the best synonym for the following words:
1. ambassador
a) revolt
b) combatant
c) refugee
d) general
e) representative
2. enthusiasm
a) passion
b) goal
c) will
d) entertainment
e) desire
3. result
a) decision
b) cause
c) outcome
d) data
e) grade
Antonyms
Now, it's time for antonyms! Look for the best match for the following:
1. competition
a) contest
b) unification
c) cooperation
d) team
e) sport
2. melt
a) warm
b) thaw
c) cool
d) glacier
e) freeze
3. 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 15 sentences, each part of a special kind of semantic relation. Can you describe the semantic relationship expressed by each of the following sentences? Click on the sentence to check your solution.
(Hint: 6x contradiction [3x within the sentence], 3x entailment, 4x ambiguity (there are several subcategories!) and 1 paraphrase)
Comment: With contradiction you need two sentences, one contradicting the other. Your examples seem to be such that individual sentences are self-contradictory. This is different. Keep this in mind, i.e., change the description of the exercise or the examples.
1. George is a pig.
2. That is a large bat.
3. That is a well-known club.
4. My brother married a doctor. My male sibling joined in wedlock with a physician.
5. The corpse is alive.
6. Professor Mulhausen went to his office. Professor Mulhausen went to the university.
7. My husband keeps forgetting things. Thank God I'm a widow.
8. Jane ate a piece of chicken. Jane ate a piece of poultry.
9. My brother is an only child.
10. He unintentionally committed perjury.
11. She wore a colorless pink dress.
12. He dusted the plants.
13. Othello killed Desdemona. Desdemona died.
14. He descended from the ground floor to the attic.