[Lexicog] lexical relation for boar - sow?

[Dick Watson]

I had not heard of 'gender pair' and have been using 'counterpart'. I may switch to 'gender pair' now as it seems to be more easily understood.

 

Dick

 

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From: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com [mailto:lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com] On Behalf Of lengosi
Sent: Sunday, February 26, 2012 2:12 AM
To: lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [Lexicog] lexical relation for boar - sow?

 

  

Thanks for the responses! I'm sorry, but I should have indicated that this is not an English dictionary. I'm trying to help a colleague with a dictionary of an Oceanic language. What I wrote here were glosses, so the hypernym probably isn't as crucial as it might otherwise be.

I can appreciate what you mean about lexical relations being a "messy field", Ron. Especially when one doesn't use a constrained database program (e.g., FieldWorks). My friend has used Toolbox and there are a host of instances of "Syn" being used on one side of a 'lexical relation' and "See" on the other... It's going to be a huge amount of work for him to tidy that up. :-( He also hasn't used semantic domains, so, unfortunately, your suggestion isn't going to work. I'll suggest 'gender pair' and see what he thinks.

Thanks again for your help!

Paul

--- In lexicographylist at yahoogroups.com <mailto:lexicographylist%40yahoogroups.com> , "Ronald Moe" <ron_moe at ...> wrote:
>
> I'm not sure if there is a standard term. I would call them a "gender pair".
> The term "antonym" is overused. There are many types of antonyms. The
> prototypical antonym is a true positive:negative pair like fair:unfair. You
> also need to be cautious when dealing with complex sets of related words. In
> this case you have "pig, hog, swine, boar, sow, piglet, suckling (pig),
> barrow". For many of us "pig" is the hypernym. But technically (or
> archaically) "swine" is the hypernym and "pig" means the young of the
> species. Irrespective of which is the hypernym, all these words are tied
> together in a complex network of lexical relations. Good luck in trying to
> sort out all the relations and recording them in your dictionary. I would
> rather just assign them all to the semantic domain "Pig" and leave it at
> that.
> 
> 
> 
> I find lexical relations to be a very messy field, especially where pigs are
> concerned. (Pun intended.)
> 
> 
> 
> Ron Moe





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