CHAPTER 3 NOUN VOCABULARY
D. Incompatibility
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For an example from nature, consider the tree name oak. Part of the meaning of this word comes via the has-relation: a prototypical oak has acorns.
A prototypical oak also has a trunk, but this is by inheritance from tree; and, inherited from plant, a prototypical oak has leaves. Note that the inheritance discussed here passes down through hyponymy. It does not pass down to parts of parts. A prototype in the hand category has a palm and fingers, but that does not lead us to expect prototype palms to have their own palm and fingers! As a final point about interactions between the has-relation and hyponymy, it must be pointed out that part words can enter directly into superordinate and hyponym relations. Wrists, knuckles, knees and ankles are hyponyms of the superordinate joint. Limb is a superordinate for arm and leg. Lid is a hyponym of top – it is the ‘top of a container’.
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contrast: breakfast, lunch and dinner are different from each other within the category of meals; they are eaten at different times of day. The pattern of entailment that provides the test for incompatibility is exemplified in (5.2).
(5.2) a. This is Nameera’s breakfast.
b. This is Nameera’s lunch.
c. This is Nameera’s dinner.
d. (3.9a ⇒ NOT3.9b) & (3.9a ⇒ NOT3.9c) & (3.9b ⇒ NOT3.9a) & (3.9b
⇒
NOT3.9c) & (3.9c ⇒ NOT3.9a) & (3.9c ⇒ NOT3.9b)
e. (NOT3.9a ⇒ 3.9b) & (NOT3.9a ⇒ 3.9c) & (NOT3.9b ⇒ 3.9a) &
(NOT3.9b ⇒
3.9c) & (NOT3.9c ⇒ 3.9a) & (NOT3.9c ⇒ 3.9b)
The six entailments in (5.2d) capture the fact that (provided the reference of This stays constant), if one of the sentences (5.2a–c) is true, then the other two sentences – made by substitution of incompatible words must be false.
The scoring through in (5.2e) indicates that a comparable set of entailments is not available from negative versions of sentences (5.2a–c). Knowing that a particular container in the freezer is not Nameera’s breakfast does not allow one to infer that it must be her lunch; it might be her dinner, or my lunch (or even a frozen birthday cake).
1. Further Points about Incompability
There are entailments from affirmative sentences to negative sentences containing the antonym, but not from negative sentences to the corresponding affirmatives. For example, long and short are antonyms. Notice the way that the following entailments that these two words give us fit the larger pattern shown in (5.1d, e): a long ladder is not short and a short ladder is not long.
However, a ladder that is not long is not necessarily short; it could just be middling in length. And a ladder that is not short is not necessarily long; it could be somewhere between long and short. Antonymy holds between many pairs of adjectives (and adverbs, for example quickly and slowly). It would be correct to say that long and short are incompatible, but, as most semanticists use the special term antonymy for incompatibility between pairs of adjectives (or adverbs), it is easier to keep with tradition. When adjectives occur in larger sets than pairs – as with {black, purple, blue, brown, green, yellow, orange,
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red, pink, white, grey} – then the appropriate term for the relation holding within the set is incompatibility.
Synonyms, introduced in Adjective meaning, yield an exception to the generalisation that hyponyms of a given superordinate are incompatible with each other. The following are all hyponyms of seat: chair, bench, stool, sofa, settee. The relation of incompatibility holds between most of them: for example, if we know that Hazel is sitting on a chair, then we know that she is not (at that moment) sitting on a bench, stool, sofa or settee. If she is on a bench, then she is not (at that moment) on a chair, stool, sofa or settee; and so on. However, sofa and settee, because they are synonyms, are not incompatible with each other. If Hazel is sitting on a sofa, then she is sitting on a settee, and vice versa.
(Non-synonymous) hyponyms of a word immediately superordinate to them are not only incompatible with each other but are also incompatible with hyponyms of their higher-level superordinates. The lists in can be used to illustrate this.
Superordinate Hyponyms
drinking vessel glass, cup, mug
glass wineglass, martini glass, tumbler
cup coffee cup, tea cup
mug coffee mug, beer mug
A tea cup is not only not a coffee cup or any other kind of cup. It is also not a glass or a mug, nor any of the hyponyms of glass or mug. It might seem that this is boringly obvious: no given thing can be something else. That is not true, however. A cup can be a present, a possession, a piece of crockery and various other things. Incompatibility is not pure unconstrained difference.
Incompatibility is difference against a background of similarity.
Remember that hyponyms of any superordinate have as their meaning the meaning of the superordinate plus some modification, for instance a tumbler is a ‘glass without a stem’ and a glass is a ‘drinking vessel made of glass’. In the meaning given here for tumbler, the modifier ‘without a stem’ records the difference between a tumbler and other glasses, and ‘glass’ represents the similarity that the meaning of tumbler has with the meanings of wineglass, martini glass and all the other kinds of glasses.
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