chap 4 the meaning of L Flashcards
agent
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent does the action described by the verb: e.g., George in George hugged Martha.
analytic
Describes a sentence that is true by virtue of its meaning alone, irrespective of context: e.g., Kings are male.
anomaly
A violation of semantic rules resulting in expressions that seem nonsensical: e.g., The verb crumpled the milk
antecedent
A noun phrase with which a pronoun is coreferential: e.g., the man who is eating is the antecedent of the pronoun himself in the sentence The man who is eating bit himself.
argument structure
The various NPs that occur with particular verbs, called its arguments: e.g., intransitive verbs take a subject NP only; transitive verbs take both a subject and direct object NP.
arguments
The various NPs that occur with a verb: e.g., Jack and Jill are arguments of loves in Jack loves Jill.
classifier
A grammatical morpheme that marks the semantic class of a noun: e.g., in Swahili, nouns that refer to human artifacts such as beds and chairs are prefixed with the classifiers ki if singular and vi if plural; kiti, ‘chair’ and viti, ‘chairs.’
co-refer, coreference
The relation between two noun phrases that refer to the same entity.
complementary pairs
Two antonyms related in such a way that the negation of one is the meaning of the other: e.g., alive means not dead.
compositional semantics
A theory of meaning that calculates the truth values or meanings of larger units by the application of semantic rules to the truth values or meanings of smaller units.
contradiction
Describes a sentence that is false by virtue of its meaning alone, irrespective of context: e.g., Kings are female.
contradictory
Mutual negative entailment: the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the falseness of another sentence, and vice versa: e.g., The door is open and The door is closed are contradictory sentences.
cooperative principle
A broad principle within whose scope fall the various maxims of conversation. It states that in order to communicate effectively, speakers should agree to be informative and relevant.
count nouns
Nouns that can be enumerated: e.g., one potato, two potatoes.
deixis
Refers to words or expressions whose reference relies on context and the orientation of the speaker in space and time: e.g., I, yesterday, there, this cat.
discourse
A linguistic unit that comprises more than one sentence.
ditransitive verb
A verb whose complement contains a noun phrase and a prepositional phrase: e.g., give in he gave a cat to Sally. Some ditransitive verb phrases have an alternative form with two noun phrases in the complement as in he gave Sally a cat.
entailment
The relationship between two sentences, where the truth of one necessitates the truth of the other: e.g., Corday assassinated Marat and Marat is dead; if the first is true, the second must be true.
eventive
A type of sentence that describes activities such as John kissed Mary, as opposed to describing states such as John knows Mary.
experiencer
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent perceives something: e.g., Helen in Helen heard Robert playing the piano.
goal
The thematic role of the noun phrase toward whose referent the action of the verb is directed: e.g., the theater in The kids went to the theater.
gradable pair
Two antonyms related in such a way that more of one is less of the other: e.g., warm and cool; more warm is less cool, and vice versa.
heteronyms
Different words spelled the same (i.e., homographs) but pronounced differently: e.g., bass, meaning either ‘low tone’ [bes] or ‘a kind of fish’ [bæs].
homographs
Words spelled identically, and possibly pronounced the same: e.g., bear meaning ‘to tolerate,’ and bear the animal; or lead the metal and lead, what leaders do.
homonyms, homophones
Words pronounced, and possibly spelled, the same: e.g., to, too, two; or bat the animal, bat the stick, and bat meaning ‘to flutter’ as in “bat the eyelashes.”
idiom
An expression whose meaning does not conform to the principle of compositionality, that is, may be unrelated to the meaning of its parts: e.g., kick the bucket meaning ‘to die.’
illocutionary force
The intended effect of a speech act, such as a warning, a promise, a threat, or a bet: e.g., the illocutionary force of I resign! is the act of resignation.
implicature
An inference based not only on an utterance, but also on assumptions about what the speaker is trying to achieve: e.g., Are you using the ketchup? to mean “Please pass the ketchup” while dining in a café.
instrument
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent is the means by which an action is performed: e.g., a paper clip in Houdini picked the lock with a paper clip.
lexical semantics
The subfield of semantics concerned with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words.
lexicon
The component of the grammar containing speakers’ knowledge about morphemes and words; a speaker’s mental dictionary.
linguistic context
The discourse that precedes a phrase or sentence that helps clarify meaning.
marked
In a gradable pair of antonyms, the word that is not used in questions of degree: e.g., low is the marked member of the pair high/low because we ordinarily ask How high is the mountain? not *How low is the mountain? In a masculine/feminine pair, the word that contains a derivational morpheme, usually the feminine word: e.g., princess is marked, whereas prince is unmarked.
mass nouns
Nouns that cannot ordinarily be enumerated: e.g., milk, water; *two milks is ungrammatical except when interpreted to mean ‘two kinds of milk,’ ‘two containers of milk,’ and so on.
maxims of conversation
Conversational conventions such as the maxim of quantity that people appear to obey to give coherence and sincerity to discourse.
metaphor
Nonliteral, suggestive meaning in which an expression that designates one thing is used implicitly to mean something else: e.g., The night has a thousand eyes, to mean ‘One may be unknowingly observed at night.’
negative polarity
An expression that is grammatical in the presence of negation, but ungrammatical in simple affirmative sentences: e.g., any in James does not have any money but *James has any money.
paradox
A sentence to which it is impossible to ascribe a truth value: e.g., this sentence is false.
paraphrases
Sentences with the same truth conditions; sentences with the same meaning, except possibly for minor differences in emphasis: e.g., He ran up a big bill and He ran a big bill up
performative sentence
A sentence containing a performative verb used to accomplish some act. Performative sentences are affirmative and declarative, and are in first-person, present tense: e.g., I now pronounce you husband and wife, when spoken by a justice of the peace in the appropriate situation, is an act of marrying.
performative verb
A verb, certain usages of which result in a speech act: e.g., resign when the sentence I resign! is interpreted as an act of resignation.
phrasal or sentential semantics
The subfield of semantics concerned with the meanings of syntactic units larger than the word.
polysemous
Describes a single word with several closely related but slightly different meanings: e.g., face, meaning ‘face of a person,’ ‘face of a clock,’ ‘face of a building.’
pragmatics
The study of how context and situation affect meaning; the study of extra-truth- conditional meaning.
predicate
A cover term for verbs, adjectives, and common nouns.
presupposition
Implicit assumption about the world required to make an utterance meaningful or relevant: e.g., “some tea has already been taken” is a presupposition of Take some more tea!
principle of compositionality
A principle of semantic interpretation that states that the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence depends on both the meaning of its components (morphemes, words, phrases) and how they are combined structurally.
proper name
A word or words that refer to a person, place, or other entity with a unique reference known to the speaker and listener. Usually capitalized in writing: e.g., Nina Hyams, New York, Atlantic Ocean.
reference
That part of the meaning of a noun phrase that associates it with some entity. That part of the meaning of a declarative sentence that associates it with a truth value, either true or false. Also called extension.
reference resolution
in computational pragmatics, the computer algorithms that determine when two expressions have the same referent: e.g., identifying the referents of pronouns; also the mental process determining the referent of a pronoun or other kind of deictic word or phrase
referent
The entity designated by an expression: e.g., the referent of John in John knows Sue is the actual person named John; the referent of Raleigh is the capital of California is the truth value false. Also called extension.
