TITLE On the Nature of Synonyms: end This Littie Piggie Kay 79

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CS '502 S03

0 170 802

TITLE

AUTHOR

Barnett, George A.

On the Nature of Synonyms: end This Littie

PUE DATE

Kay 79

'1/4.70 TE

3(4 p. ;

Piggie....

Paper present ed at the Annual Meeting of

Eastern Communication Associa ti on (Philadelphia,

Pennsylvania, may 5-7, 1979)

MF 01/PCO2 Plus Postage...

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DFSfiFIPTOPS

Behavior Theories; Higher education; Language

Attitudes; language Pesea roil; *Lang cage Usage ;

Language Variat ion: linguistic Theory;

Multidimensional Scaling; *Semantics; *Word

Frequency

DENTIFIE_%7PS

*s ynon yens

ABSTRACT

An experiment was conducted to investge.te the nature

synonyms by using multidimensional scaling. The selected concept

pig" and three of its synonyms--11hcg," "boar," and "swine."

w as

ir he se terms vary in their frequency of use in English, which makes

possible to explore a behaviorally based theory of meaning. Subjects

ere -randomly assigned to one of four conditions where they p erformped

irec t pair comparisons with one of the four "pig" terms, a series of

barnyard d animal names, att.ributes, and a concept of self. The means

ese four groups were entered into a multidimensional analysis.

cf

En contra st to the logical assumption that synonymous words would

oaf

produce identical multidimesional spaces, the re sults, in fact,

sugge st that the four "pig" terms are not rea3.1y equivalent, varying

systematically in their meanings, in their use, and in their relation

o positive attributes. The systematic variance in their meanings is

such that each concept Is distancte from self on the multidimensional

s cale is inversely related to the frequency at which the concept: is

used in English. This further suggests t hat mea.ning is behaviorally

governed, and that any symbol's meaning is a r empirical question

`hose answer de pen -is on me asurino tha actual users of that symbol.

( kith or in)

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ductions supplied by EDRS are the best that can be made

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U

S 0 EP AN TPA(

T OF ME ALTII.

EDUCATION .WELFARE

NTIONAI, INSTITUTE OF

EDUCATION

TH.; DOCUMENT HAS BEEP/

01/CED EXACTLY AS N EC tivc

REC.I70.c NOM

THE PERSON ON ONCAka&TION ON 'GINATINO if POINTS OF VIEW Co opiNioNs

stA TED 0.0 NO rreccs94AILT REPRE5EP4 T OFF ICIAL NA IIONAL INSTITUTE OF

EOLICA TION POSIT ION OF FOLIC

'PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS

MATERIAL RAE BEEN GRANTED BY

George A. Barnett

TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESCUE

INFORMATION CEN TER (ERIC!

ON THE NATURE OF SYNON

TBIs LITTLE FIGGIE.

George A. Barnett

Communication Research Laboratory

Department of Language, Literature,

Communication

Rens laex Polytechnic Institute

Txoy, N.Y. 12181

Presented to the Eastern Co nunication Association, Philadelphia,

Nay 4-7, 1979.

The author would like to thank David R. Brandt, Janes W. Dinkelacker,

Joseph Woelfel, Tracy Tuffillaro, Michael Thompson and Robert Oldendorf

without whom this paper would not have been possible.

ON TE-IE N Tri RE OF

va THIS LITTZ E

ABST \CT

This paper investigates the nature

multidimensional scaling

( IDS).

'c synonyms through tbe- use of

While

ening of any word may be defined.

pattern of relationship or dissimOarit

by

a theoretical problem arises with syn try

concept and

.

om all other lexical items,

Be a-

the discrepancy of any

self is zero, it logically follows that if two symb ols

synonyms that their discrepancy should also be zero.

But a symbol's meaning

Thus, while two words may refer to the

is dependent on. host the word is used.

e referent they may be used differently and therefore have different meanings.

An experiment was conducted to investigate the nature of synonyms.

The

selected concept was PIG and three of its .synonyms, HOG, BOAR and SWINE.

These

tez,Ls vary- in their frequency of use in English which made it possible to -cpIore

iorally based theory of meaning.

a beh

Subjects were randomly assigned to one

conditions where they performed direct pair comparisons with one of the

"pig" terms, a series of ba nyard animal names, attributes and a concept of self.

The means of :here four groups were entered into a multidimensional analysis.

the four words were in fact synonyms, then the resulting multidimensional

spaces

ld be identical.

The results suggest that these four terms are in fact not equivalent.

Their meanings vary systematically.

The concept's distance from self is

inversely related to the frequency at which that concept is used in English.

The results are than discussed in terms of a behaviorally based theory of meaning

and finally suggestions are made for future research.

OF S

ON THE .NAB tl

AND THIS L TTLE PIGGIE....

TI-MORY

The lo-

a1. thecry behind the use of metric multi

the measurement of meaning and linguisti

,where (Be-

1976; Woelfel, 1977).

s -he

_ensional scaling for

been described else-

Rather than attempt a

ly detailed

discussion here, an adumbration of the theory will he furnished which should

sufficieil_ly acquaint the reader with the theoretic foundations of this research.

The meaning of any word. may be defined by its pattern of relationship or

degree of dissimilarity from all other lexical ites.

of a word may be represented by a 1 X N vector,

represented in the dist

Thus, the definition

I.'.r in, where Sik

1

dissimilarity of concept 1 and k; and the

ing of any set of words by a N X N matri

the distance between concepts i and j.

where any entry Sid represents

Typically, S i=s averaged among a repre-

sentative sample of users of a language to take into account the consensual

nature of that code system (Woelfel, 1975;Bai e

1975).

s matrix has certain mathematical properties which

to multidimensional scaling.

elements are zero

it amenable

It is a sure symmetrical matrix, whose diagonal

(The dissimilarity of concept and itself equals zero by

definition.) and off diagonal elements may be any positive real number.

This

final property makes the precise measeent of meaning possible.

A theoretical problem arises when dealing with synonyms, ire.., words with

equivalent meal ing.

I

Because the discrepancy of any concept and itself is zero,

it logically follows that if two symbols are synonyms, they refer to the identical referent, that their discrepancy should also be zero (Ogden & Richards,

1946).

In teens of word-substitution, if two words are semantically identical,

then the Ia

former

can repl-

nix S) .

relat nsip among t)-Je symbo

1957).

alteration in the inter-

If they are

different, then the first symbol

words are sem- ti

by the second

without

of synonyms, the

not be replaced

'thoz.t. eitering the structure of the relations (Osgood et

The greater the dissimilarity between the terms, the greater the

interrelationship among, the terms will be alte

Thus, it is expected that differences among semantic structures generated

ynanyms should be zero.

with.

with

That is, Si should be equivalent to Si where,

is the semantic structured generated with concept i, and 54, the

mi

semantic structure generated with c

to be synonyms.

pt j.

Concepts i and j are considered

This suggests hypothesis one:

H

1.

Si and

The semantic structures, S

significantly different.

will be

Hypothesis one is couched in terms such that the null hypothesis of no difHowever,

ference is expected.

in

which will allow for falsification, the

theoretical hypothesis is expscted to be rejected in favor of the null.

ittgenstein U953) has pointed out, meaning is dependent on how a word is

used.

Also, empirical investigations using MDS have shown that one's behavior

effects the structure of scaled concepts, such that the more frequently one

performs a behavior

et

the closer that concept is to a concept of self.

al., 1974; 1976; M

ier

1975; Barnett & McPhail, 1979)-

this suggests that the more frequently use_

(Barnett

Linguistically,

f a 1- guage speak or write a

word the closer that lexical iten will be to a concept of self.

Additional-1Y,

synonomous symbols may be used select= vely with different domains such that

one word is used in one semantic domain acid its synonym exclusively in another'

they refer to the same referent.

Thus, while two words may be considered

synonyms, i.e., refering to the same referent, they may in fact have different

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