Chap 2: language Flashcards
what are the 2 important linguistic functions of language?
- Conveying information
- expressing or evoking feelings
what is cognitive meaning?
A terminology that conveys information
what is emotive meaning ?
A terminology that expresses or evokes feelings
what is a value claim?
its a claim that something is good, bad, right , wrong or better etc…
why do people use emotive terminology often ?
- it obscures the fact that a value claim is being made
- gives psychological momentum to that claim= intellectual laziness
how can cognitive meanings be defective?
because some can be vague and ambiguous
what is vagueness?
when a sentence lacks preciseness so it is impossible to tell if the expression applies or not
what is ambiguousness?
when a word can be interpreted as having more than one clearly distinct meaning in a given context.
what is a verbal dispute ?
its a dispute that arise over the meaning of language
what is a factual dispute ?
its a dispute that arise over a disagreement about facts.
what is a term? what does it consist of?
its any word or arrangement of words that can serve as the subject of a statement.
they consist of proper names, common names and descriptive phrases
what are the 2 kinds of cognitive meaning of terms?
intentional and extensional
what is a intensional meaning?
it consists of the qualities or attributes that the term connotes
what is a extensional meaning?
it consists of the members of the class that the term denotes
what is a conventional connotation?
its the attributes that the term commonly calls forth in the minds of competent speakers of the language.
what is empty extension?
its a non existent members in a certain time, a class that has no members.
what is increasing intension
when each term in the series connotes more attributes the the one preceding it.
what is decreasing intension
its the reverse of increasing intension
what is increasing extension?
when each term in the series denotes a class having more members than the class denoted by the term preceding it
what is decreasing extension?
reverse of increasing extension
what is a definition
its a group of words that assigns a meaning to some word or group of words.
what does a definition consist of?
- definiendum = words that is supposed to b defined
- definiens = words that does the defining
how many types of definitions are there and what are they?
there are 5 types of definitions.
1. stipulative definitions
2. lexical definitions
3. precising definitions
4. theoretical definitions
5. persuasive definitions
what is a stipulative definition?
it assigns a meaning to a word for the 1st time. it could be coining a new word or giving a new meaning to an old word.
its purpose is replacing a more complex expression with a simpler one, or to set up secret codes.
there is no such thing as a “true” or false stipulative definition.
and it cannot provide new information.