A Paradigmatic Lexical Relation Study of Analysing Entailment in Identity and Inclusion Relations

Abstract

While paradigmatic lexical/sense relations are traditionally used to analyse the relations between lexical items, the present article adopts a descriptive qualitative method, based on Cruse’s (2000) classification of lexical/sense relations, to find the identity and inclusion relations of two lexical items in two different texts by using the logical entailment relation. The article aims at finding out whether or not lexical items can be substituted by another without changing their meaning; the meaning of one lexical item is included in the meaning of the other; and the validity of these relations in one context can be tested as entailment relations. The study concludes that entailment has a context-bound relation with regard to identity and inclusion relations. Entailment occurs freely with propositional synonymy. Although the two lexical items in near synonymy are close in meanings or related, entailment relation cannot be attained. Entailment in hyponymy is a unilateral relation. i.e., the meaning of one hyponym entails the meaning of the superordinate, but the meaning of the superordinate does not entail the meaning of each hyponym. Entailment in meronymy relation stands if the relation is between patronym to holonym, i.e., the entailment relation does not stand under holonym to partonym.