We examine a naming game with two agents trying to establish a common vocabulary for n objects. Such efforts lead to the emergence of language that allows for an efficient communication and exhibits some degree of homonymy and synonymy. Although homonymy reduces the communication efficiency, it seems to be a dynamical trap that persists for a long, and perhaps indefinite, time. On the other han...

This paper proposes an algebraic way of sentence valuations in a semiring. Actually, throughout the paper only valuations in the ring of integers with usual addition and multiplication are considered. These valuations take into consideration both words and their positions within the sentences. Two synonymy relations, with respect to a given valuation, are introduced. All sentences that are syno...

This article investigates the extent to which synonymy blocking occurs in the synchronic derivation and, more controversially, whether it is predicted by the Elsewhere Condition (‘EC’). It argues that in current Lexical Morphology, EC accurately predicts the presence of ‘ token blocking’ and the absence of ‘ type blocking’, that apparent token-blocking failure is due either to non-synonymy or t...

The ‘prohibitionist’ idea that slurs have the same linguistic properties as their neutral counterparts hasn’t received much support in literature. Here I offer a modified version of prohibitionism, according to which taboo on using is part conventional meaning. conclude with explanations behaviour embedded constructions.

The word “synonymy” is used here in a very broad and untraditional sense; it is not restricted to lexical linguistic signs, i.e., words, but covers also relations of equivalence between units below the word level, i.e., morphemes and non-phonemic signs. For instance, the ending -en in oxen can be regarded as synonymous with the standard ending -s in cows . In my view, semantic description could...

Edges of graphs that model real data can be seen as judgements whether pairs of objects are in relation with each other or not. So, one can evaluate the similarity of two graphs with a measure of agreement between judges classifying pairs of vertices into two categories (connected or not connected). When applied to synonymy networks, such measures demonstrate a surprisingly low agreement betwee...

Two types of similarities between words have been studied in the natural language processing community: synonymy and relational similarity. A high degree of similarity exist between synonymous words. On the other hand, a high degree of relational similarity exists between analogous word pairs. We present and empirically test a hypothesis that links these two types of similarities. Specifically,...

Aedes (Finlaya) pallirostris Edwards is resurrected from synonymy with Aedes (Fin.) formosensis Yamada and the female, male, pupa, and 4th-instar larva are described and compared with closely related species. The synonymy of Finlaya khasiana Barraud is transferred from Ae. formosensis to Ae. pallirostris.