Ch. 6 Semantics

Question 1

semantics

Answer 1

subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language

Question 2

lexical semantics

Answer 2

deals with the meanings of words and other lexical expressions including, the meaning relationships among them

Question 3

compositional sematnics

Answer 3

concerned with phrasal meanings and how phrasal meanings are assembled

Question 4

sense

Answer 4

the sense of expression can be thought of as a mental representation of its meaning, or some kind of comcept

Question 5

reference

Answer 5

refers to the world. If you have a mental representation of what cats are, you will be able to pick out things in the world associated with cat. Reference expression of cat

Question 6

referents

Answer 6

To know that things in the wold the expression cat refers to. This particular entities in the world to which some expression refers to

Question 7

mental image

Answer 7

a words meaning is stored in our mind as

Question 8

prototype

Answer 8

the default mental image associated with a words tends to be of a typical or ideal example of the kind of thing the word represents

Question 9

hyponymy

Answer 9

one kind of word meaning relation. Like dogs refers to all dogs, while poodle, are dogs, refer to just all poodles. Dog is a hypernym of poodle

Question 10

sister terms

Answer 10

if their reference is, intuitively, on the same level of hierarchy

Question 11

synonym

Answer 11

two words are synonymous if they are exactly of the same reference.

Question 12

antonymy

Answer 12

the basic notion of antonymy is of being opposite in some sense. must have a meaning that’s related but contrast

Question 13

complimentary antonymy pairs

Answer 13

words x and y are complimentary if there is nothing in the world that is part of both X’s reference and Y’s reference

Question 14

gradable pairs

Answer 14

everything must be one or the other or neither but not both

Question 15

reverses

Answer 15

left/right
inside/outside
expand/contract

Question 16

proposition

Answer 16

when a sentence makes an assertion about certain entities to the world, China (country China)

Question 17

truth value

Answer 17

the characteristic having the ability to be true or false s an ability to have a truth value

Question 18

truth conditions

Answer 18

the conditions that that would have to hold in the world in order for some proposition to be true

Question 19

entailment

Answer 19

the propositional expresses that All dogs bark entails the proposition expressed that Sally’s dog barks.

Question 20

mutual entailment

Answer 20

When two propositional entail one another

Question 21

incompatible

Answer 21

both propositions would be impossible to be true. No dogs bark vs. All dogs bark

Question 22

principle of composionality

Answer 22

the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meaning of the words it contains, and how these words are syntactically combined

Question 23

compositional

Answer 23

meanings of multi word expressions are predictable from the meanings of words and their syntactic combination

Question 24

pure intersection

Answer 24

intersection of words like green sweater. All green things and all sweaters

Question 25

intersective adjectives

Answer 25

produce pure intersection like healthy in healthy cow, blue in blue suit

Question 26

relative intersection

Answer 26

reference of the adjectives has to be determined relative to the reference of the noun

Question 27

subjective adjectives

Answer 27

adjectives to describe something like big planets, big feet, etc

Question 28

non intersection

Answer 28

“possible solution” “alleged thief” does not necessarily refer to a real situation

Question 29

anti intersection adjectives

Answer 29

the word “fake” . Must have good characteristics to be the real thing but it is not

Question 30

idioms

Answer 30

expression like “kick the bucket” which does not refer to somebody’s foot an a bucket. A lexical expression with non compositional meaning