3) Meaning Flashcards
What does the term “meaning” mean?
what a language user actually communicates through their choice of words in a particular context
What are the two types of meaning?
grammatical and lexical
Name two components of lexical meaning
denotative and connotative meaning
What are the types of meaning according to G. Leech?
conceptual, connotative, social, affective, reflected, collocative, thematic
What are the three main components of semantic meaning?
the context in which a sentence is used, the meanings of the words in the sentence, its morphological and syntactic structure
What does semantics focus on?
focuses on the literal meaning of words, phrases or sentences
What is pragmatics?
the study of language from the point of view of the users
What are the fundamental semantic concepts?
synonymy-antonymy, hyponymy-hyperonymy, ambiguity, entailment, tautology, contradicts, contradiction
What is the Principle of Compositionality?
the semantic meaning of any unit of language is determined by the semantic meaning of its parts along with the way they are put together (exception - idioms)
What does Lexical Semantics study?
the study of basic building blocks of meaning (morphemes, words), often concerned with polysemy
What are “arguments”?
elements which are needed in order to complete the meaning of a predicate
What are “modifiers”?
they add meaning to a phrase, but are not needed to complete the meaning of that phrase
What are “quantifiers”?
they can function syntactically as arguments but they do not refer to particular objects or individuals (e.g. nobody, some dogs, most Dutch people)
When can occur a scope ambiguitiy?
if a sentence contains more than one scope-bearing element
What are the two types of modality?
epistemic (reference to facts that we know) and deontic (more about rules, right and wrong, obligations)
Name four key pragmatic concepts
indexicality, anaphora - cataphora, exophoric reference, presupposition
What are “indexicals”?
words whose semantic meanings depend in a direct way on the context of use (e.g. demonstratives this, that, etc.)
What is exophoric reference?
situational, outside text
What is anaphora?
the process of a linguistic unit deriving its interpretation from some previously expressed unit or meaning
Who came up with The Cooperative Principle?
H. P. Grice
What does The Cooperative Principle claim?
that all speakers, regardless their cultural background, adhere to a basic principle governing conversation
The Cooperative Principle is subdivided into _____________ classified into ____________
conversational maxims, four categories
Name the four conversational maxims
quantity, quality, relevance, manner
Who came up with the “speech acts”?
J. L. Austin
What are performatives?
utterances that are used to do things or to perform acts
What are constatives?
utterances used to make statements
Name the three levels of speech act
locutionary acts, illocutionary acts, prelocutionary acts
What are the two forms of Saphir-Whorf hypothesis? Which one is strong and which one is weak?
linguistic determinism - strong (language determines how individuals think and what they talk about), linguistic relativity - weak (language influences how individuals think and what they talk about but not that much)
