I. THE FREQUENCY OF ENTAILMENT OF MERONYMY
1. The constant principle in the semantic relation of meronymy
1.1 The combination of more than one type of meronymy
When different types of meronymic relations are combined in the same argument, as in the following example, the “part of” relation is not transitive and the inference is not valid because it breaks the rule of constancy of meronymy (Croft & Cruse)
A relation is considered as transitive if the following holds true:
1) Concept X is related to another concept Y in a relation R 2) Y is also related to a third concept Z in the same relation R 3) X also relates to Z via the same relation R.
Thus here is a three-level relation X Y Z (with as a fixed type of relation), that allows to “skip” one level, as the relation holds also true for X Z.
This works for example in the relation-chain “vehicles automobiles racing cars” (with indicating a kind-of relation). In query expansion for information retrieval, expansions along transitive relation chains may include several levels (though it might not always be appropriate), for intransitive relations only a directly related concept can be used for expansion.
In Class 5A at 19:01 on Wednesday 14th in May 2014, when teacher divided the class into four groups and each group had their own task, there was an argument happened between two groups:
Student 1: Lan Thanh, could you help us this sentence? Is it correct?
Student 2: Of course. Let me see
Students 3: No, no see Lan Thanh.
Student 1: I asking Lan Thanh, not you. Not touch in.
Student 3: Lan Thanh in my group. One her nail also our group. Lan Thanh, not help them. We have our tasks. Focus.
It can be seen more clearly how this sort of equivocation works by using a specialized part term in the above conservation to make it clear which meronymic relation is expressed in each premise
(1a) Thanh’s nails are parts of her fingers. (Component-Object) (1b) Her fingers are parts of her hands (Component-Object) (1c) Her hands are parts of her body. (Component-Object) (1d) She is a part of the group. (Member-Collection)
(1e) Thanh’s nails are parts of the group
The falsehood in this example is due to an equivocation on “part of” between (1a) (1b) (1c) and (1d). “Part of” in (1a) (1b) (1c) are understood as a component- object relation in which parts cannot be disconnected, in principle, from the whole to which they are connected. In the mean time, (1d) can be regarded as a member- collection relation in which parts can be disconnected, in principle, from the whole
to which they are connected and dissimilar to each other and to the whole to which they belong. The failure of transitivity in (1e) is due to the mixing of these two types of meronymy, so that the conclusion (1e) is false (as well as strange), since Thanh’s nails are neither components nor parts of the group.
It might be then supposed that equivocation produces strangeness and invalidity in all cases. But consider the following conversation in the lesson of class 5A at 18:46 Wednesday 20th November 2013 when a student from another class asked to borrow a chair from the class 5A; however; one student of class 5A objected:
Student 1: I want borrow a chair teacher?
Student 2: No. My class, my chair. No borrow.
Student 1: The chair is of the centre, not you.
Teacher: Well, dear. There are so many available chairs in our class.
This situation has two combinations:
(2a) I am a member of this class (Member-Collection) (2b) This chair is a part of the class (Component-Object)
(2c) This chair is mine.
(3a) The chair is part of the class. (Component-Object) (3b) The class is part of the centre. (Place-Area)
(3c) The chair is part of the centre.
(3) would seem to be parallel to (1), yet there seems to be nothing strange nor obviously false with the conclusion expressed in (3c). The apparent falsehood of (3c) suggests that two different meronymic relations are involved, a component- object relation in (3a) and a place-area relation in (3b). While chairs are often functional parts or components of classes, the class is merely a place within the centre, not a component of the centre. Since “part of” in (3a) is component-object, while in (3b) it is member-collection, our analysis would appear to predict that (3c) should be invalid and sound strange-but it does not seem to.
The solution to this lies in the vagueness of the term “part.” The surface lexical features of English are not the best guide to the differences among these semantic relations (Wierzbicka, 1984). The term “part” is used to express a variety of quite distinct semantic relations. The vagueness and generality of the term “part”
makes it very easy for speakers of English to slip back and forth between types of meronymic relationships and this semantic slippage is responsible for many cases in which meronymy appears to be intransitive.
“Part” is only the most general of a large number of English terms which can be used to express various kinds of meronymic relations. We have made use of some of these in naming types of meronymic relations. Parts of integral objects tend to be called “components”; collections and groups have “members”; masses are measured into “portions”; activities and processes have “features”; areas can be divided into “places” and so forth. There are at least 40 such part terms, narrower in scope than “part” but with a wide range of application.
The reason (3c) is acceptable is that it is possible to regard the chair as “part”
(in the member-collection sense), of the centre. (3) thus differs from (1) in that the chair, in this context, can accept a sense of “part” (the member- collection sense) which the regular feature of a living person cannot. By itself, (3c) sounds perfectly acceptable, while (1c) sounds strange at best.
However, does (3) also contain a valid inference? While it may in fact be true that the chair might be regarded as a member of the collection in its own right, it does not follow logically from these premises that it is. If we interpret (3c) as expressing the member- collection relation, then we must also assume that the chair is separated from the class, and hence individuated as a separate item in the collection. Since this assumption is not warranted by any information supplied by the premises, the conclusion expressed by (3c) on this interpretation does not follow.
Alternatively, we may interpret (3c) in the component-integral object sense by appealing to a metaphorical use of the term “component” in which the chair is
understood as the centerpiece or prominent example of a collection which has been organized around it. Again, this assumption is not warranted by the premises and the conclusion does not follow.
So long as we are careful to keep to a single sense of “part” in examples like these, it seems that the part-whole relation is always transitive. However, when we inadvertently mix different meronymic relations, transitivity arise. If this hypothesis is correct, we should be able to find cases of the failure of transitivity for each pair of meronymic relationships. We have already demonstrated the failure of transitivity for several pairs.
1.2. Non-meronymic relations (26 cases)