{"id":178,"date":"2006-11-21T15:05:59","date_gmt":"2006-11-21T15:05:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/?p=178"},"modified":"2018-09-04T13:39:03","modified_gmt":"2018-09-04T13:39:03","slug":"sameness-and-difference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/sameness-and-difference\/","title":{"rendered":"Sameness and Difference"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"\u201cIt seems probable, and many semanticists have maintained, that natural languages abhor absolute synonyms just as nature abhors a vacuum<\/em>.\u201d D. A. Cruse<\/p>\n

In my last blog essay, I defined \u201cgirl\u201d as something that could be considered as comprised of the set of semantic features ([+human], [-male], [-mature]). I went on to suggest that other words that have the same set of semantic features would constitute synonyms for \u201cgirl.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now the thesaurus at www.dictionary.com lists the following entries as synonyms of \u201cgirl\u201d:<\/p>\n

babe, baby doll, bird, blonde, bobby-soxer, boytoy, broad, butterfly, canary, chick, coed, cupcake, cutie, dame, damsel, daughter, deb, debutante, doll, female, filly, gal, jail bait, lady, lassie, mademoiselle, maid, maiden, minx, miss, missy, mouse, nymph, nymphet, piece, queen, schoolgirl, she, sis, skirt, spring chicken, teenybopper, tomato, tomboy, virgin, wench, witch, woman<\/p>\n

Just how many of these words are really synonyms, according to our technical definition? Many of these words are disqualified as synonyms because they differ according to the feature [-mature]. They may either be unmarked for this feature, as in the case of \u201cfemale\u201d and \u201cshe,\u201d which are technical superordinates of \u201cgirl,\u201d or they may be positively specified for the feature, in which case they would be antonyms (!) These include the following:<\/p>\n

dame, gal, lady, and woman<\/p>\n

So a first important lesson to be gleaned here is that relatedness does not mean synonymy. There are also many items in the thesaurus listing that contain additional semantic features distinct from \u2018girl,\u2019 yet without all the features constituting \u201cgirl,\u201d making them technical overlaps . . .<\/p>\n

Blonde, daughter, maid, queen, sis, virgin, and witch<\/p>\n

or, in the case of words having all the features of \u2018girl\u2019 and then some, hyponyms . . .<\/p>\n

bobby-soxer, cutie, deb, debutante, schoolgirl, tomboy, and teenybopper<\/p>\n

Items in the list like the following appear to suggest sexual maturity, but not necessarily full social and intellectual maturity, and pose a challenge to our system of features.<\/p>\n

Babe, baby doll, broad, coed, piece, and skirt<\/p>\n

From these examples, it looks like the feature [mature] itself should be broken down further, if we are looking for the basic semantic building blocks of language in these semantic features.<\/p>\n

Many of the words remaining on the short list of potential synonyms for \u201cgirl\u201d are obvious metaphorical usages of words that have quite divergent meanings. If we understand metaphors as words which by definition violate a semantic feature, then we can eliminate the following:<\/p>\n

bird, boytoy, butterfly, canary, cupcake, filly, jailbait, minx, mouse, nymph, nymphet, spring chicken, tomato.<\/p>\n

We are left with the following \u2018pure\u2019 synomyms (I leave it to you to check whether they \u2018cognitive synonyms\u2019 according to Cruse\u2019s definition):<\/p>\n

Damsel, lassie, mademoiselle, maiden, miss, and missy<\/p>\n

Saying that these words \u2018mean the same thing\u2019 or \u2018have the same semantic features\u2019 or are \u2018synonymous,\u2019 does not mean that they are interchangeable, can occur in the same contexts, or are exactly alike. That is because word meaning is only one ingredient in any instance of language use. Critically, in addition to meanings of words, there are speakers of words and referents for words. A speaker who refers to a girl as a \u2018mademoiselle\u2019 is saying something about his own social affliliations, quite apart from the meaning of \u2018girl.\u2019 Likewise, words occur in situations, which are always nuanced. So I can use \u201cmiss\u201d to get a girl\u2019s attention (maybe a young sales clerk at a store), where the use of \u2018girl\u2019 could perform the same function but with less politeness. \u201cDamsel\u201d is conceivable only in a somewhat archaic, poetic context. (Cruse would say that is has a very different \u201cfield\u201d of usage), and \u201classie\u201d may say something about both the regional, dialectal affiliations of a speaker as well as something about the closeness of feeling the speaker has for the referent.<\/p>\n

Recognizing that a language event is more than word \u2018meaning,\u2019 but also people interacting in a variety of relationships and with a variety of social affiliations and communicating in a variety of forms helps us to understand how there can be a significant amount of synonymy, while at the same time no two words are truly alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cIt seems probable, and many semanticists have maintained, that natural languages abhor absolute synonyms just as nature abhors a vacuum.\u201d D. A. Cruse In my last blog essay, I defined \u201cgirl\u201d as something that could be considered as comprised of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56564],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-words-and-their-meanings"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=178"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/178\/revisions\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.uww.edu\/lencho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}