Orð og tunga - 01.06.2012, Blaðsíða 17
Matthew Whelpton: From human-oriented dictionaries
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2.4 Meronymy-holonymy
Meronymy is the part-relation. For instance, nose is a meronym (Ice-
landic: hlutheiti; Greek meros 'part' + omjtna 'name') offace; conversely,
face is the holonym (Icelandic: heildheiti; Greek holos 'whole' + onyma
'name') of nose. The meronymy relation raises the important issue of
modality: whether the relation actually must hold or merely can hold.
With natural-kind hyponymy, the relation is necessary: every mare
is a horse and no mare is not a horse. With meronymy, the relation is
often one of possibility rather than necessity. So, for instance, mero-
nyms of face include beard, which is only possible on some faces and
never necessary. This shows that meronymy in WordNet is not even
associated with typicality, as beard is not a typical part of face in gen-
eral: women's faces don't typically have beards and even for men's
faces beards would only be typical in some cultures.
2.5 Antonymy
Antonymy is the relation of oppositeness and is important for the
classification of adjectives.
(4) If the water is hot, then the water is not cold, and vice
versa.
Hot is the antonym (Icelandic andheiti; Greek anta 'opposite' + onyma
'name') of cold and vice versa. It turns out, however, that not every
adjective has an antonym, even when it is a synonym for an adjective
that does. For instance, torrid is a synonym of hot (hot/torrid weather);
hot is an antonym of cold; yet torrid is not an antonym of cold. Adjec-
tive networks in WordNet therefore often have a "bicycle" structure
(cf. Figure 2).
blistering tropical
torrid / scorching
\ /
v \ / ^
baking _____hot <------------
sultry stifling chilly crisp
sizzling sweltering 9eiict frosty
frigid
glacial parky
----------> cold arctic
Figure 2. The "bicycle" structure ofantonymy in WordNet