Hyponymy in english texts and some contrasts with that in vietnamese = hiện tượng bao hàm trong các văn bản tiếng anh

Classification of meronymy ………32 2.5.3.3.Characteristics of meronymy ………...32 Chapter III: Contrastive Analysis of Hyponymy in English Texts and those in Vietnamese – some applications i

Vinh University Department of foreign languages

i

Acknowledgements

First of all, I would like to express my deep thanks to the heads of the Foreign Languages Department who awarded me the opportunity to do this thesis

To complete the thesis, I have received great help and encouragement from my teachers, my parents and my friends Without their help, I could not have finished my study

With my deep gratitude, I want to express my thanks to my family and

my relatives for their encouragement

I would also like to thank my classmates and my friends who were very kind to give me useful ideas and documents

Especially, I would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor – Mrs Trần Thị Ngọc Yến (M.A) for her great support and helpful advice on

my study, without which the study would not have been completed

Vinh, April 2008

ii

Abbreviations

(*) : Impossible / not use

E.g : For example

i.e : That is to say

|=> : Unilateral entailment / unilaterally entail

=> : Entailment / entail

iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements……….i

Abbreviations… ii

Table of contents……… iii

Part A: Introduction……… 1

1 Rationale of the study……… 1

2 Aims of the study………2

3 Scopes of the study……… 2

4 Methods of the study……… 3

5 Design of the study……… 3

Part B: Development……….4

Chapter I: Literature Review……… 4

1.1 An overview on Contrastive analysis……….……… 4

1.2 Text Analysis………5

1.2.1 What is a text? 5

1.2.2 Characteristics of texts……… 5

1.2.3 Theories of text analysis study……… 6

1.3 Cohesion and Coherence……… 7

1.3.1 Cohesion in texts……… 7

1.3.2 Coherence in texts……… …… 8

1.3.3 The relationship between Cohesion and Coherence………10

1.4 Cohesive devices in English texts………10

1.4.1.Definition………10

1.4.2 Types of cohesive devices……… 10

1.4.2.1 Grammatical devices……… 10

1.4.2.2 Lexical devices……… 12

2.1 Definition of hyponymy……….13

2.2 Kinds of hyponymy………16

2.2.1 According to semantic criterion……… 16

2.2.2 According to parts of speech criterion……… … 16

2.3 Features of hyponymy………19

2.3.1 Most nouns can appear as hyponyms……… 19

2.3.2 Entailment……… 19

2.3.3 Intensive and Extensive……… 23

2.3.4 Hyponyms can make substitution……… 24

2.3.5 Hyponymy is a transitive relation……… 25

2.3.6 Synonymy – a special case of hyponymy……… 25

2.4 Structure of hyponymy……… 25

2.5 Hyponymy in the relation with other Hierarchies……… 27

2.5.1 Hierarchies……… 27

2.5.2 Hyponymy and taxonymy……… 28

2.5.2.1 Definition of taxonymy………28

2.5.2.2 Characteristics of taxonymy……….29

2.5.3 Hyponymy and Meronymy……….30

2.5.3.1 Definition of meronymy……… 30

2.5.3.2 Classification of meronymy ………32

2.5.3.3.Characteristics of meronymy ……… 32

Chapter III: Contrastive Analysis of Hyponymy in English Texts and those in Vietnamese – some applications in English teaching and learning 3.1 General Introduction……… 33

3.1.1 Cohesion ……… ……… ………33

3.1.1.1 Definition……….33

3.1.1.2 Comparison between Concepts Cohesion in English and in Vietnamese……….33

3.1.1.2.1 Differences………33

3.1.1.2.2 Similarities………34

3.1.2 Cohesive devices……….34

3.1.2.1 Cohesive devices in English……….35

3.1.2.2 Cohesive devices in Vietnamese……… 35

3.2 A contrastive analysis between English Hyponymy and Vietnamese Equivalence……… 37

3.2.1 Similarities……… 37

3.2.2 Differences……… 38

3.3 Applications in English teaching and learning ……… ……… 40

3.3.1 Vocabulary……… 40

3.3.2 Grammar……… 41

3.3.3 Discourse analysis……… 42

3.3.4 Practices……… 42

Part C: Conclusion………45

References

Appendix

Part A: Introduction

1 Rationale of the study

In the course of integration, English has become a vital device for communication in all fields It is considered the bridge to bring people from different countries closer As a result, English has been being taught widely in Vietnam Learning English does not mean learning grammar and vocabulary only We also have to know how to use its cohesive devices effectively in communication

In fact, there have been so many studies surveying cohesive devices in texts such as “Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers” by Micheal Mc Carthy, “Grammatical Incoherenence” by L.K, “Discourse Analysis” by G Brown, etc However, most of them are about familiar terms that we know well like synonymy, antonymy, reiteration…, very few about hyponymy, a relatively new term (Oxford English Dictionary) referring to the relationship between a specific word and a general word when the former is included within the later

Therefore, we find it very interesting and useful to do a study on hyponymy, not on English lexical devices as generally Hyponymy is an important study for at least two major reasons: one of those reasons is that understanding hyponymy helps people define and differentiate many words used in everyday life Hyponymous relationships form the basic framework within standard dictionaries For instance, experienced dictionary users know that they can trace many hierarchical paths of increasingly abstract hypernyms through a dictionary, e.g starting with “cheddar”, one path of hypernyms would be “cheese”, “food”, “metarial”, “substance”, “essence” A different path leading to the same abstract hypernym would be “sapphire”,

“corundum”, “mineral”, “substance”, “essence”

Another major reason for this hyponymy study is its usefulness in building one‟s stock of vocabulary The process of learning sets of hyponyms begins in childhood, when infants soon recognize both similarities and differences in the meanings of sounds (Crystal, pp.167,430) Later in life, people intuitively use the concept of hyponymy to add words to their vocabulary

For all these reasons, we have decided to choose the topic:

“Hyponymy in English texts and some contrasts with that in Vietnamese”

for the graduation thesis Through a contrastive analysis, we can enrich our knowledge about hyponyms in both languages in order to help students learn English well

We hope that this study will contribute a small part in teaching and learning Hyponymy

2 Aims of the study

The study targets to:

- Give a systematical presentation of hyponyms in English and their equivalent ones in Vietnamese

- Make a contrast between English and Vietnamese, and then find their similarities and differences between the two languages

- Help Vietnamese students of English have a basic foundation of hyponymy

in their second-language acquisition

3 Scope of the study

Having been demanded to do the study on lexical devices, but in the scope of this paper we just only focus on hyponymy with its definition, types and characteristics as well as its relation with taxonymy, synonymy, and meronymy

We are not ambitious to take all registers of texts into consideration, in stead, the scope of the investigation is limited to only English humorous and

joke stories to make a quantitative analysis on the frequency of hyponymy that we will study in the thesis

4 Methods of the study

With the aims above, in the course of writing paper, we have followed the procedure below:

 Collecting and synthesizing all information about hyponymy in English and in Vietnamese

 Analyzing materials (English humorous and joke stories) to illustrate for the characteristics of hyponymy

 Comparing and contrasting English hyponyms with those in Vietnamese to find out the differences and similarities between them

5 Design of the study

The study consists of three main parts:

Part A entitled “Introduction” outlines the background of the Graduation Thesis In this part, we provide some information about the reasons for choosing the subject, the aims, the scope, the methods and the design of the study

Part B entitled “Development” comprises three chapters Chapter I called “Literature Review” provides all concepts related to the study Chapter

II entitled “Hyponymy in English texts” is the main section of the study Chapter III is about “Contrastive analysis of hyponymy in English texts and those in Vietnamese one and some applications in English Teaching and Learning.”

Part C entitled “Conclusion” which expresses a brief overview on the achievements of the thesis and some suggestions for further studies

The last pages of the thesis are “References” with list of material sources

Part B: Development

Chapter I: Literature Review

1.1 An overview on Contrastive analysis

Language is a social phenomenon, it has a close relationship with culture Moreover, language itself is a complex system Thus, studying language requires the knowledge of linguistics In general, linguistics consists

of three main branches: descriptive linguistics, comparative linguistics and theoretical linguistics Contrastive analysis is a sub branch of comparative linguistics

According to Carl James (1980), “Contrastive analysis is a linguistic enterprise aimed at producing inverted two-valued typologies, and founded on the assumption that languages can be compared”

The term “contrastive” itself implies that a contrastivist will be more interested in differences between languages than in their likenesses There are

two kinds of contrastive analysis: the contrast of languages (or exterior comparison) and the contrast of signs (or interior comparison).The contrast of

languages is the way to compare languages with one another This language is the base and the other is the means of contrast and the final goals are to find out their specific features.The contrast of signs is the research in the inside relationships of languages such as categories, structural systems, functions and so on

Contrastive analysis seems to appear for a long time – at the end of the nineteenth century Basically, it has developed in three periods: Contrastive analysis relates to historical linguistics, descriptive linguistics and typological linguistics However, nowadays, contrastive analysis really carries distinct

features It applies the knowledge of pure linguistics according to its own standards of selection and evaluation It means that contrastive analysis belongs to applied linguistics that based on pure linguistics and relates to many other sciences such as psychology, sociology, biology, philosophy, etc Therefore, when using contrastive analysis, we can get the ability of discovering the great amount of specific features about structures as well as new and interesting phenomena of contrasted languages that are very difficult for us to recognize if they are studied in the view of monolinguistics Hence,

“Applied contrastive analysis” will be applied as the purposes and requirements of the thesis

1.2 Text Analysis

1.2.1 What is a text?

To draw an appropriate definition of a text seems to be hard because there are many ways to understand a text Nevertheless, to serve the aim and demand of the topic, the following definition of texts may be the most acceptable one

A text is the unity of content, structure and speaker‟s certain attitude It concludes many sentences which are linked together by content and grammatical – lexical cohesion

1.2.2 Characteristics of texts

According to linguists, there are two ways to classify texts:

-Texts according to channel (oral and written texts)

-Texts according to structure message (literary, humanistic, scientific-technician, juridical, administrative, advertising, colloquial, and journalistic)

A text may be known as a semantic, syntactic and pragmatic structure constituted for several levels of organization Studying the characteristics of text means finding out the elements or components which play an important role to create a text Hence, we can find methods and devices which create these characteristics

Texts are likely to have two properties: Coherence and Cohesion

 Coherence property is to give the sensation that through internal textual structure connected by the theme and rheme

 Cohesion property is a group of mechanism connecting the parts of

a text

An example of a text would probably be the following:

John is our next-door neighbor He is an old man but still healthy and funny He also joins in social activities Besides, he often helps his neighbors

The above example is a texture because it makes coherence by the

connection of its themes: “John” and “He”, and rhemes: “is our next-door

neighbor / an old man but still healthy and funny / also joins in social activities / often helps his neighbors” In addition, the unity of content and

structure in the example is also shown by grammar cohesion: “John = He”

1.2.3 Theories of text analysis study

Text analysis may be defined as a methodology which particularly emphasizes on how to approach a text

It can be divided into the following kinds:

 Content analysis:

According to Stember (2001), this type of text analysis is a „systematic,

replicable technique for compressing many words of text into fewer content

categories based on explicit rules of coding‟

Hereafter, we will explain in details about written texts analysis as well as its

application in linguistics in general and in language teaching in particular

The reason for us to choose written texts, not oral ones, is that written texts are easier to conduct than the scrutiny of oral texts For written texts, more data are available in different genres and they are produced by many people in different backgrounds with different purposes that interest not only linguists but also teachers and literary scholars Therefore, each of them would have different ways to approach this field of study Moreover, it is commonly viewed that one of the major concerns of written text analysis is the relation of neighboring sentences

Studying written text analysis plays an important role in language teaching It provides teachers with systematic knowledge of the ways of describing texts, thanks to which the learner will be aware of characteristic features of texts such as Cohesion and Coherence

1.3 Cohesion and Coherence

1.3.1 Cohesion in texts

Cohesion is easy to be recognized but the way to see it is not absolutely similar among researchers However, they all affirm that cohesion is a necessary part that needs to be focused on in teaching and learning language

One of the criteria that decides whether a series of sentences do or do not constitute a text is the cohesive relationship between these sentences

Cohesive relationship within a text is set up where the interpretation of the same elements in the text depend on that of another

E.g.:

I hate my next-door neighbor I do not want to talk to him

We can see that, the word “him” in the second sentence refers back to the forward word “my next-door neighbor” in the first sentence The two

sentences constitute a text due to the making of cohesion of the anaphoric

function (“Him”)

However, in some cases, a sentence chain has cohesion but it may or may not create a text [for instance, in (1)] or a linguistic unit which does not have cohesion can become a text [as in (2)]

E.g.:

(1) John likes studying maths Maths is taught by Mr Nam Mr Nam loves

Ms Candy Ms Candy does not eat mango

The series of sentences is not a text although being linked by cohesive devices because they are a sentence set having separated meanings

(2) I will go to Phuong‟s party The publisher has published “Phố Quê”

Two sentences above make a text without cohesion because the second sentence is the reason of the first one They can be clarified in such a context

as below:

“The publisher has published “Phố Quê” that Phuong sent to them She is very happy To celebrate this occasion, she will hold a party I will go to Phuong‟s party.”

1.3.2 Coherence in text

Coherence is the feeling that a text hangs together and that it makes sense, and is not just a jumble of sentences

The reader himself has to create coherence We can say that coherence

is very complex and abstract, not easy to recognize To make it clearer, we must put it in texts

 Coherence is used to express the unity of content:

E.g.:

Clara loves potatoes She was born in Ireland

(“Discourse Analysis”, Ngo Dinh Phuong, Nguyen Thi Van Lam : 20)

The sentences are cohesive (Clara – She), but are not coherence They say

about the same subject but the meanings are separate They are not a text

 Coherence is used to express the logical sequence of clauses:

It means that clauses have to match with each other and must be logical

- The first one is at his arm, a part of body

- The second one is in Quang Tri frontier, a place where he fought

 Coherence is used to express the logical sequence of across

sentences:

Things in across sentences have to be arranged according to time (before – after), problem – solution, cause – consequence, etc Therefore, if we put sentences disorderly, these across sentences cannot make coherence of text

E.g.:

(1) I meet him I love him I get married to him I have a baby

In (1), “meet, love, get married & have a baby” are arranged logically in

order of time We cannot say:

(2) I get married to him I love him I have a baby I meet him

Thus, across sentences in (1) can make a text, whereas ones in (2) can not create a text

From that, we can say that coherence is a decisive element of a linguistic unit being a text

1.3.3 The relationship between Cohesion and Coherence

Cohesion and Coherence have the dialectical relationship and it is not easy to distinguish them

Wales (1994:35) defined Coherence as “Semantic Cohesion” and Cohesion as “Textual Coherence”

Notice that, however, cohesion is only guide to coherence, which is created by the reader in the act of reading the text Take the two following sentences as an example:

Clara loves potatoes She was born in Ireland

The sentences are cohesive (Clara = she), but they are only coherent if the

reader already knows the tradition of the Irish in order to assume a effect relationship between the two sentences Cohesion is therefore only a part of coherence

cause-1.4 Cohesive devices in English texts

As mentioned above (1.2.3), written language is more integrated than spoken one because it is achieved by more frequent use of some cohesive devices, which apart from linking clauses or sentences are also used to emphasize important notions that the author wants to convey to the reader

 Substitution:

This type is used in order to avoid repeating the same word several times in one paragraph it is replaced, most often by “one, do, so” “So” and “do” in their all forms might substitute whole phrases or clauses

E.g.:

George did not like work He avoided it whenever possible

(Dancing Letters – Sherlock Homes – Conan Doyle : 198)

Here “he” and “it” have endophoric reference, they refer to “George” and

“work” in the context, which have already appeared in the text

Moreover, the chocolate fountains are not just regular fountains; they more

like rivers full of chocolate and sweets

- Temporality (afterwards, next):

Two types of lexical cohesion are differentiated, namely:

 Reiteration: uses related vocabulary elements in different sentences

in a text to connect these sentences Reiteration means either restating an item in a later part of the text or else reasserting its meaning in two ways as follows:

+ Direct repetition:

E.g.:

George did not like work George avoided it whenever possible

+ Indirect repetition: adopting various forms, particularly:

synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, etc

 Collocation: is the way in which certain words occur together,

which is why it is easy to make out what will follow the first item

Chapter II: Hyponymy in English Texts

2.1 Definition of Hyponymy

Most people are familiar with the terms „synonymy‟ and „antonymy‟ Both

refer to relationships between words

 Synonymy: refers to words having similar meanings, but not

 Antonymy: refers to words having opposite meanings

Most examples of antonymy are adjective pairs, like “cheap / expensive, short

/ tall, light / dark, dumb / clever, fast / slow…”, but we also find pairs of

verbs, such as “rise / fall, reduce / increase…”

Fewer people, however, are familiar with a term that refers to an even

more important sense relationship between words: Hyponymy

The term “hyponymy” is relatively new, being recorded only since the

mid – 1990s (Oxford English Dictionary) However, the study of hyponymy

has quickly proven to be one of the most useful ways of understanding how words relate to each other, an understanding that can lead to clearer communication between users of the English language There are various ways of characterizing hyponymy As follows, we will show some definitions

of it:

 In linguistics:

Any of a group of specific terms whose meanings are included in a more

general term, e.g oak and cedar are hyponyms of tree and also of wood, and

spaniel and terrier are hyponyms of dog

a narrower, more precise meaning

Another name for the generic-specific lexical relation is hyponymy, the relation corresponding to the inclusion of another class

As simple as possible, Cruse (1991) represented hyponymy with the

simple scheme: An X is a Y (X will be said to be a hyponym of Y and, by the

token, Y a superordinate of X.)

It means that, an expression X is a hyponym (i.e an “under name”) of

an expression Y if every thing that falls under Y also falls under X In this

case, Y is called a hyperonym (i.e an “over name”) Examples are dog and

mammal, apple and fruit, refrigerator and appliance, king and monarch, scarlet and red, walk and go

However, these definitions all have the point when they show that hyponymy involves the association between a:

+ Hyponym - a more semantically complex, specific lexical unit (X), and + Superordinate - a less semantically complex, general lexical unit (Y)

It is difficult for students as there are many terminologies that are used

to express hyponymous relation Hereby, we have some words used to call X and Y:

X (Specific things) Y (General classification words)

Examples:

1) “A dog is a kind of animal‟, or simply “A dog is an animal” The specific word “dog”, which is included within, or under, the general word, is known as

hyponym (Greek “under” + “name”) The general word “animal”, which heads

a list of many specific words under it, is a hypernym (Greek “above” +

“name”) In this case, those other specific words, or hyponyms, could include, besides “dog”, a vast number of other animal names, such as “bird”, “horse” and “monkey” Those specific words under the same hypernym are related to

each other called as co-hyponyms

2) “Maple” is a hyponym of “Tree”, and “Tree” is a hyponym of “Plant”

“Maple” inherits the features of its superordinate, “Tree”, but is distinguished from other trees by the hardness of its wood, the shape of its leaves, and the use of its sap for syrup, etc This convention provides the central organizing principle for the nouns in Word Net

Plant

Tree Glass

Maple Oak…

These examples have illustrated for hyponymy, but we must notice that

X is a hyponym of Y if:

 The sentence "X is necessarily Y" is normal, but

 The sentence "Y is necessarily X" is not normal

E.g.:

"Parrot" is a hyponym of "bird" since

- The sentence "A parrot is necessarily a bird" is normal, but

- The sentence *"A bird is necessarily a parrot" is not normal

(2002) suggested taxonomic hyponymy should be the central role in this

relation This kind will be expressed in detail in the later section

2.2.1 According to semantic criterion

Chaffin et al (1984) argued there were different types of hyponymy

between concepts, and defined six types of hyponymy:

2.2.2 According to parts of speech criterion

Depending on parts of speech, hyponymy can be classified into:

 Noun hyponyms:

- -Fruit: apple, banana, orange, grape…

-Instrument: piano, trumpet, flute, drum…

All the examples work in the test:

Julie is reading a novel implies Julie is reading a text

It is a flute implies It is an instrument

 Verb hyponyms:

- Did she kill him?

Yes, she murdered him

- Is she walking on her tiptoe?

That is right She is moving

- “That boy punched me, mum!”  “That boy hit me, mum!”

 Adjective hyponyms:

- I do not like red ones  I do not like scarlet ones

- You should wear the dark blue instead of the blue one

2.3 Frequency of hypoynmy

Hyponymy can be appeared as nouns, verbs, adjectives as we

mentioned above However, which one of them appears most? We made a quantitative analysis on the frequency of six types of hyponymy

We took 100 contingency English stories from the 100th story to the

200th one in “Humorous stories, Jokes and other stories” (Thanh Hoá - Publisher) and investigated The aim of the survey is to show how frequently people use each type of hyponymy in specific texts, in the 100 humorous English stories in particular

In one text, it might have many hypernyms and their co-hyponyms (nouns, verbs, adjectives), but we just only count one time for each hypernym

The frequency of six types of hyponymy

Times

Chart 2.1: The frequency of six types of hyponymy

The chart shows the using frequency of six types of hyponymy We can see that “Perception” kind account for the highest times (58 times) whereas the lowest is “Activity” with 05 times The second rank belongs to “Action” (40 times) “Function” stands at the third rank, “Geography” is at the forth and “State” the fifth with 25 times, 12 times and 10 times respectively

Through counting the times that each type appears in the texts we found that most of hyponyms belonging to “Perception”, “Function”,

“Geography” and might involve “Activity” are nouns while “State” ones are adjectives and “action” verbs

Frequency Percentage Total of stories

As shown from the table, nouns have been used the most while

adjectives the least In the table, nouns have 98 times (60.1%) of appearing as

hyponymy in the texts, and adjectives 10 times (6.1%) Verbs rank the second

position with 42 times (25.8%) Interestingly enough, the number of times

that hyponymy does not appear is 13 (8%) which is even higher than the

frequency of adjectives Explanations for this phenomenon are that in some

stories there are the only appearance of hyponyms while their hypernyms are

absent, and that there are some too short stories, which have just only 2 – 3

sentences such as in 151 (On what ground?), 164 (Practice)…(See in the

Appendix)

2.4 Features of hyponymy

2.4.1 Most nouns can appear as hyponyms

In English, basing on the parts of speech, there are so many kinds of

words: nouns, verbs, adverbs, adjectives….among which nouns play an

important role It takes a large number in the stock of English vocabulary as

hyponyms

E.g.: To elucidate the relation of hyponyms, some examples will be useful:

- “Honda”  hyponym of “Car”

- “White shirt”  hyponym of “Shirt”

2.4.2 Entailment

One of the most outstanding features of hyponymy is entailment According to NguyÔn Hoµ (2004): “Entailment is a relationship that applies between two propositions, where the truth of one implies the truth of the other because of the meanings of the words involved” Naturally, sentences, not speakers, have entailments Consider the following example:

(a) My wife bought me a very interesting book

(b) My wife bought me a book

Any competent user of English can recognize that if (a) is true, than so is (b) This semantic relation can be detailed as follows: A sentence S1 entails another S2 if, and only if, whenever S1 is true in a situation, S2 is also true in that situation However, (b) does not entail (a), that is, if (b) is true, then (a) is not necessarily true Look at the example, the answer can be found in the meaning of the parts “interesting book” and “book” Our background knowledge will show us that “interesting book” is included in the scope of

“book” and not the other way round So, entailment may be seen as a kind of hyponymic relation

It is not easy to give operational tests for hyponyms One might think about the following:

“A lexical expression α is a hyponym of a lexical expression β if every declarative sentence […α…] that contains α entails the sentence […β…], the sentence where α is replaced by β (but is not entailed by it)”

(Cruse :1991) The condition in the parentheses gives a “strong” notion of hyponymy, one that excludes synonymy We also say that […α…] UNILATERALLY ENTAILS […β…] Hereafter, we will use “=>” for the entailment relation, and “|=>” for the unilateral entailment relation

Consider the following examples:

That is a Stallion |=> That is a Horse

He is a man who Murdered |=> He is a man who Killed someone someone

Even with sentences which are not in the form of: A is f(X); it is often

the case that a sentence containing a hyponym unilaterally entails a parallel sentence, which is identical in all respects except that it contains a superordinate in place of the hyponym:

E.g.:

John punched Bill |=> John hit Bill

She wore scarlet shoes |=> She wore red shoes

It is clear that the condition that we saw in the parentheses is supposed how to work However, it does not give us the right result Consider the following examples:

a John ate an apple |=> John ate a fruit

b John did not eat a fruit |=> (*) John did not eat an apple

The reason is that negation reverses implication relations It is a so-called

“downward - entailing” context There are quite a few other expressions that create downward- entailing contexts, e.g the restrictor of the quantifier

“every” and “the”

a Every kid that ate a fruit will get a dessert |=> Every kid that ate

an apple will get a dessert

b Mary left without taking a fruit |=> Mary left without taking an

apple

However, the criterion for hyponymy does not hold in other cases If

there are two fruits around, one of them an apple, the sentence John ate the

apple does not entail John ate the fruit or John ate the fruits The sentence Mary likes apples does not entail Mary likes fruits (apples might be the only

fruits Mary likes!) And so on

Hence, we must make sure that the hyponym we want to test does not

occur within a downward-entailing context In some cases, unilateral

entailment between two sentences that differentiate only in respect of the

lexical fillers of a particular syntactic slot is often an indication of a

hyponymous relation between the lexical units that causes the “wrong”

direction (i.e from superordinate to hyponym) For examples:

It‟s not red => It‟s not scarlet

All animals are forbidden => All cats are forbidden

If he murdered someone, => If he killed someone, he will

he will be arrested be arrested

If the hyponym and superodinate fall within the scope of a negative, or a

universal quantifier (e.g all, every, each), or if they form part of a conditional

clause or other expression of contingency, then the direction of entailment

will be reversed It means that when any two factors mentioned above are

simultaneously applicable, the entailment is in “normal” direction, i.e from

hyponym to superordinate

+ If negative “not” goes together with universal quantifier “all”:

Not all dogs are dangerous => Not all animals are dangerous

+ Negative “not” goes together with conditional sentence:

I will not get it if it is not scarlet => I will not get it if it is not red

 Problems

Entailment is a complicated feature of hyponymy It created some

confuses for students and linguists As the result, two problems arise when we

try to formulize the definition of hyponymy Firstly, it is difficult to formulate

rules “determining whether, and in which direction, implication holds

between two sentences that differ (…) only in respect of the specificity of a

single lexical item” (Cruse, 1975:27) Typically, hyponymy is expressed as

asymmetric entailment: “It is an apple” entails “It is a fruit”, but not vice