{"id":{"repo_id":"uiuc","oai_identifier":"oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23226"},"canonical_url":"https://search.dev.ndltd.org/etd/uiuc/oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/23226","repository":{"repo_id":"uiuc","name":"University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign","base_url":"https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh"},"display":{"title":"In opposition to an organized lexicon: Pragmatic principles and lexical semantic relations","abstract":"This dissertation argues that what are traditionally called lexical relations (antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, etc.) are not strictly part of linguistic knowledge. Instead, these semantic relations among words are shown to be predictable from more general cognitive principles. Special attention is paid to the case of antonymy, since arguments that lexical relations are specified in the lexicon have crucially relied on antonymy data. However, such treatments fail to account for the fact that antonymy and other lexical relations are context-dependent. A pragmatic Principle of Opposition is introduced which requires that antonyms (i.e., opposites) (a) comprise a binary set, (b) share all contextually-relevant properties but one, and (c) describe incompatible conditions/objects/events/situations. The oft-cited cases of big/little and large/small are discussed in detail in order to test this principle. In order to show that markedness relations need not be specified in the lexicon, a scalar treatment of gradable adjectives is provided which accounts for the asymmetric distribution of so-called 'marked' and 'unmarked' adjectives. This dissertation also argues that synonymy is a subtype of a more general similarity relation and that other so-called lexical relations merely reflect relations among the things that the related words refer to. None of these relations among words can be represented within lexical entries, since all depend on the particular senses of the related words in context. Since the senses of words cannot be simply listed in the lexical entry (because there are an unlimited number of them), relations among specific senses cannot be represented in the lexical entry either. Thus, like reference (Nunberg 1978), relations among lexical items are a pragmatic matter, depending on knowledge of what the words are used to refer to, what qualities the referents have, and what aspects of the referent or its name are relevant to the context at hand.","abstract_html":"This dissertation argues that what are traditionally called lexical relations (antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, etc.) are not strictly part of linguistic knowledge. Instead, these semantic relations among words are shown to be predictable from more general cognitive principles. Special attention is paid to the case of antonymy, since arguments that lexical relations are specified in the lexicon have crucially relied on antonymy data. However, such treatments fail to account for the fact that antonymy and other lexical relations are context-dependent. A pragmatic Principle of Opposition is introduced which requires that antonyms (i.e., opposites) (a) comprise a binary set, (b) share all contextually-relevant properties but one, and (c) describe incompatible conditions/objects/events/situations. The oft-cited cases of big/little and large/small are discussed in detail in order to test this principle. In order to show that markedness relations need not be specified in the lexicon, a scalar treatment of gradable adjectives is provided which accounts for the asymmetric distribution of so-called 'marked' and 'unmarked' adjectives. This dissertation also argues that synonymy is a subtype of a more general similarity relation and that other so-called lexical relations merely reflect relations among the things that the related words refer to. None of these relations among words can be represented within lexical entries, since all depend on the particular senses of the related words in context. Since the senses of words cannot be simply listed in the lexical entry (because there are an unlimited number of them), relations among specific senses cannot be represented in the lexical entry either. Thus, like reference (Nunberg 1978), relations among lexical items are a pragmatic matter, depending on knowledge of what the words are used to refer to, what qualities the referents have, and what aspects of the referent or its name are relevant to the context at hand.","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Murphy, M. Lynne"],"institution":"University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign","degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":"Linguistics","degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Green, Georgia M."],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2011,"date_issued":"2011-05-07T14:06:39Z","date_published":"2011-05-07T14:06:39Z","updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:21Z","subjects":["Language, Linguistics","Psychology, Cognitive"],"languages":["eng"],"rights":["Copyright 1995 Murphy, M. Lynne"],"rights_urls":[],"identifier_entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9624446","(UMI)AAI9624446"],"render_values":[{"text":"AAI9624446","href":null,"code":true},{"text":"(UMI)AAI9624446","href":null,"code":true}]}]},"links":{"outbound_url":"http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23226","outbound_label":"Handle","outbound_source":"dc:identifier"},"metadata_groups":[{"id":"people","label":"People","entries":[{"key":"dc:contributor","label":"Contributor","values":["Green, Georgia M."]},{"key":"dc:creator","label":"Author","values":["Murphy, M. Lynne"]}]},{"id":"academic_context","label":"Academic Context","entries":[{"key":"dc:date","label":"Dc Date","values":["2011-05-07T14:06:39Z","10000-01-01","1995"]},{"key":"dc:type","label":"Dc Type","values":["text"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_discipline","label":"Discipline","values":["Linguistics"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_level","label":"Degree Level","values":["Dissertation"]},{"key":"thesis:degree_name","label":"Degree Name","values":["Ph.D."]},{"key":"thesis:institution_name","label":"Thesis Institution Name","values":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]}]},{"id":"subjects_keywords","label":"Subjects and Keywords","entries":[{"key":"dc:subject","label":"Dc Subject","values":["Language, Linguistics","Psychology, Cognitive"]}]},{"id":"language_rights","label":"Language and Rights","entries":[{"key":"dc:language","label":"Dc Language","values":["eng"]},{"key":"dc:rights","label":"Dc Rights","values":["Copyright 1995 Murphy, M. Lynne"]}]},{"id":"identifiers","label":"Identifiers","entries":[{"key":"dc:identifier","label":"Identifier","values":["AAI9624446","(UMI)AAI9624446","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23226"]}]},{"id":"additional","label":"Additional Metadata","entries":[{"key":"dc:description","label":"Description","values":["This dissertation argues that what are traditionally called lexical relations (antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, etc.) are not strictly part of linguistic knowledge. Instead, these semantic relations among words are shown to be predictable from more general cognitive principles. Special attention is paid to the case of antonymy, since arguments that lexical relations are specified in the lexicon have crucially relied on antonymy data. However, such treatments fail to account for the fact that antonymy and other lexical relations are context-dependent. A pragmatic Principle of Opposition is introduced which requires that antonyms (i.e., opposites) (a) comprise a binary set, (b) share all contextually-relevant properties but one, and (c) describe incompatible conditions/objects/events/situations. The oft-cited cases of big/little and large/small are discussed in detail in order to test this principle. In order to show that markedness relations need not be specified in the lexicon, a scalar treatment of gradable adjectives is provided which accounts for the asymmetric distribution of so-called 'marked' and 'unmarked' adjectives. This dissertation also argues that synonymy is a subtype of a more general similarity relation and that other so-called lexical relations merely reflect relations among the things that the related words refer to. None of these relations among words can be represented within lexical entries, since all depend on the particular senses of the related words in context. Since the senses of words cannot be simply listed in the lexical entry (because there are an unlimited number of them), relations among specific senses cannot be represented in the lexical entry either. Thus, like reference (Nunberg 1978), relations among lexical items are a pragmatic matter, depending on knowledge of what the words are used to refer to, what qualities the referents have, and what aspects of the referent or its name are relevant to the context at hand.","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T14:06:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9624446.pdf: 10769632 bytes, checksum: da5fb55c8c2b79c29ab3a80054cb58ef (MD5) Previous issue date: 1995","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T15:03:02Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:30:02-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"]},{"key":"dc:title","label":"Title","values":["In opposition to an organized lexicon: Pragmatic principles and lexical semantic relations"]}]}],"canonical_facts":{"dc:contributor":["Green, Georgia M."],"dc:creator":["Murphy, M. Lynne"],"dc:date":["2011-05-07T14:06:39Z","10000-01-01","1995"],"dc:description":["This dissertation argues that what are traditionally called lexical relations (antonymy, synonymy, hyponymy, meronymy, etc.) are not strictly part of linguistic knowledge. Instead, these semantic relations among words are shown to be predictable from more general cognitive principles. Special attention is paid to the case of antonymy, since arguments that lexical relations are specified in the lexicon have crucially relied on antonymy data. However, such treatments fail to account for the fact that antonymy and other lexical relations are context-dependent. A pragmatic Principle of Opposition is introduced which requires that antonyms (i.e., opposites) (a) comprise a binary set, (b) share all contextually-relevant properties but one, and (c) describe incompatible conditions/objects/events/situations. The oft-cited cases of big/little and large/small are discussed in detail in order to test this principle. In order to show that markedness relations need not be specified in the lexicon, a scalar treatment of gradable adjectives is provided which accounts for the asymmetric distribution of so-called 'marked' and 'unmarked' adjectives. This dissertation also argues that synonymy is a subtype of a more general similarity relation and that other so-called lexical relations merely reflect relations among the things that the related words refer to. None of these relations among words can be represented within lexical entries, since all depend on the particular senses of the related words in context. Since the senses of words cannot be simply listed in the lexical entry (because there are an unlimited number of them), relations among specific senses cannot be represented in the lexical entry either. Thus, like reference (Nunberg 1978), relations among lexical items are a pragmatic matter, depending on knowledge of what the words are used to refer to, what qualities the referents have, and what aspects of the referent or its name are relevant to the context at hand.","Made available in DSpace on 2011-05-07T14:06:39Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license.txt: 4922 bytes, checksum: 910b249b4beec47e7ab768910c8f966f (MD5) 9624446.pdf: 10769632 bytes, checksum: da5fb55c8c2b79c29ab3a80054cb58ef (MD5) Previous issue date: 1995","Item marked as restricted to the 'UIUC Users [automated]' Group (id=2) by Howard Ding (hding2@illinois.edu) on 2011-05-07T15:03:02Z Item is restricted indefinitely.","Restriction data tranferred 2014-07-01T11:30:02-05:00 Original Data Group with Access UIUC Users [automated] Release Date: none Reason: ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","ETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permission","U of I Only"],"dc:identifier":["AAI9624446","(UMI)AAI9624446","http://hdl.handle.net/2142/23226"],"dc:language":["eng"],"dc:rights":["Copyright 1995 Murphy, M. Lynne"],"dc:subject":["Language, Linguistics","Psychology, Cognitive"],"dc:title":["In opposition to an organized lexicon: Pragmatic principles and lexical semantic relations"],"dc:type":["text"],"thesis:degree_discipline":["Linguistics"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."],"thesis:institution_name":["University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign"]},"updated_at":"2026-07-22T22:25:21Z"}