[Lexicog] Synonymy

[Christopher Brewster]

Synomyns are used to justify making a distinction between 'words' and
'concepts'.
Supposedly a given concept could be expressed by different synonyms.

I work with ontologies so often I am obliged to fall in line in what I
write.
What I really feel is that there are only words which sometimes overlap in
meaning to a greater or lesser extent.

But real/complete synonyms whether within or across languages never exists.

For some reason this position is incomprehensible to most people I work
with.

Christopher Brewster


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Natural Language Processing Group,
Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield
Tel: +44(0)114-22.21967  Fax: +44 (0)114-22.21810
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Sheffield   S1 4DP   UNITED KINGDOM
Web: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~kiffer/
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A definition is the enclosing a wilderness of an
idea within a wall of words.---  Samuel Butler









  _____

From: Fritz Goerling [mailto:Fritz_Goerling at sil.org]
Sent: 12 April 2005 23:46
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: RE: [Lexicog] Synonymy


It is my pet peeve as a Bible translation consultant when teams answer to my
question
about the meaning of two ""synonymous"" words "they mean the same." I speak
one
African language fluently and have no problem to convince speakers of this
language
that certain words do not mean the same, by generating examples in which one
word has to be used over another. But this becomes a challenge in other
languages
which I do not know when the translators say "no, they are just the same."
What
usually helps is to use an example from a common language (national or trade
language) which shows how so-called "synonyms" differ connotatively.

FWIW,
Fritz Goerling



Wayne wrote:

      What kinds of experiences have you all had when trying to elicit
      synonyms
      from speakers of a language?

      Do you sometimes get a response something like, "Oh, there is a
      little
      difference between those words," confirming what many lexicographers
      and
      semanticians has claimed, that there are seldom true synonyms in a
      language?

      Wayne
      -----
      Wayne Leman
      Cheyenne website: http://www.geocities.com/cheyenne_language

I'd think more likely would be "no, they are just the same." That's what I
might answer for English "own" and "possess", for example. But then you
start investigating their actual usage, and you find that they are not
completely substitutable for each other. Then the fun begins to find out
why.

Mike Cahill



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