Chapter 6

Question 1

semantics

Answer 1

the study of linguistic meaning

Question 2

lexical

Answer 2

a subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expressions

Question 3

compositional

Answer 3

a subfield of semantics that studies the meanings of phrasal expressions, and how those meanings of phrasal expressions, and how those meanings arise given the meanings of the lexical expressions they contain and how they are syntactically combined

Question 4

referents

Answer 4

an actual entity or an individual in the world to which some expression refers

Question 5

sense

Answer 5

a mental representation of an expression’s meaning

Question 6

reference

Answer 6

a component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entities in the outside world. The collection of all the referents of an expression.

Question 7

dictionary style definition

Answer 7

when dictionaries themselves cannot be the true sources of word meaning

Question 8

mental image (definition)

Answer 8

a conception of a word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning

Question 9

usage-based definitions

Answer 9

a characterization of a word’s sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language

Question 10

prototype

Answer 10

for any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set

Question 11

hyponymy

Answer 11

a meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word X is included in the reference of some other word Y. X is then said to be a hyponym of Y, and conversely

Question 12

hyponym

Answer 12

a meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word X is included in the reference of some other word Y. X is then said to be a hyponym of Y, and conversely

Question 13

hypernym

Answer 13

sister terms; the meaning relationship between words

Question 14

sister terms

Answer 14

words that, in terms of their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy

Question 15

synonymy

Answer 15

a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same

Question 16

antonymy

Answer 16

a meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense oppositve

Question 17

complementary

Answer 17

pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither; and such that saying of something that it is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second word.

Question 18

gradable

Answer 18

words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale

Question 19

proposition

Answer 19

the sense expressed by a sentence. Characteristically, propositions can be true or false.

Question 20

truth value

Answer 20

either true or false. the reference of a sentence

Question 21

entailment

Answer 21

a relationship between propositions where a proposition p is said to entail another proposition q just in case p is true, q has to be true as well

Question 22

mutual entailment

Answer 22

the relationship between two propositions where they entail one another

Question 23

incompatible

Answer 23

the relationship between two propositions where it is impossible for both of them to be true simultaneously

Question 24

principle of compositionality

Answer 24

the notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined

Question 25

compositional

Answer 25

the meaning of a phrasal expression that is predictable from the meanings of smaller expressions it contains and how they are syntactically combined

Question 26

intersective adjectives

Answer 26

an adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modifies

Question 27

relative intersection

Answer 27

type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 28

subsective adjectives

Answer 28

adjectives whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun they modify refers to

Question 29

anti-intersection adjectives

Answer 29

an adjective whose referents are not in the set referred to by the noun that it modifies

Question 30

converses

Answer 30

antonyms in which the first word of the pair suggests a point of view opposite to that of the second word