The Empirical Investigation of Synonymy and the Implication for Science

Abstract

Philosophers, linguists, and psychologists have long been interested in synonymous expressions, often for rather different reasons. The philosopher’s interest in synonymy is related to its interest in logical truth; if two expressions are synonymous, then a sentence in which one expression is exchanged for a synonymous expression will retain the same truth value. Traditional philosophical problems like analyticity, contradiction, etc. are tied up with this problem. Linguists, especially lexicologists and lexicographers, have been interested in synonymy. The task of the lexicologist is to show what the relationship is between expressions in a language, and synonymy is one of these relationships. Psychologists have been interested in similarity of meaning rather than synonymy per se in order to determine how people learn, store, and use information, including information about speakers’ knowledge of their language. Notions like generalization and concept formation often refer to perceived similarity, and similarity of meaning is thought to reflect perceived similarity of stimuli.

I wish to thank Keith Lehre, Christine Tanz, and Robert M. Harnish, and participants at the conferences for their helpful and insightful discussions of both the conceptual and experimental issues involved in synonymy. All shortcoming are mine.