Chapter 6 Semantics

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language

Question 2

sense

Answer 2

mental representation of an expression’s meaning

Question 3

reference

Answer 3

relationship of an expression to the world

Question 4

referents

Answer 4

entity or individual in the world to which some expression refers

Question 5

mental image definition

Answer 5

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

Question 6

usage-based definition

Answer 6

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

Question 7

hyponymy

Answer 7

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

Question 8

hypernym

Answer 8

meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word X is included in the reference of some word Y. Y is the hypernym of X.

Question 9

synonymy

Answer 9

occurs when two words have exactly the same reference

Question 10

Antonymy

Answer 10

occurs when two words have meanings that are related, yet these meanings contrast with each other in some significant way. “opposites”

Question 11

complementary (pairs)

Answer 11

Two words X and Y are complementary antonyms if there is nothing in the world that is part of both X’s reference and Y’s reference. “If not X, then Y”

Question 12

gradable (pairs)

Answer 12

Two words X and Y are gradable antonyms if there is nothing in the world that is part of both X and Y but in this case, not X does not necessarily mean that it is Y.

Question 13

reverses

Answer 13

pairs of words that suggest some kind of movement, where one word in the pair suggests movement that undoes the movement suggested by the other.

Question 14

converses

Answer 14

have to do with two opposing points of view; for one member of the pair to have reference, the other must as well. (i.e. lend/borrow)

Question 15

proposition

Answer 15

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

Question 16

truth value

Answer 16

either true or false

Question 17

truth conditions

Answer 17

the conditions that would have to hold for a proposition to be true

Question 18

entailment

Answer 18

In entailment, if proposition expressed by sentence A is true, then the proposition expressed by sentence B is also true

Question 19

mutual entailment

Answer 19

when two propositions entail one another

Question 20

incompatible

Answer 20

describes situation in which it is impossible for both propositions to be true. The truth conditions for one are incompatible with the truth conditions for the other.

Question 21

principle of compositionality

Answer 21

the meaning of a sentence (or any multi-word expression) is a function of the meanings of the words it contains and how these words are syntactically combined

Question 22

compositional

Answer 22

predictable from the meanings of the words and their syntactic combination

Question 23

pure intersection

Answer 23

the relationship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such that each picks out a particular group of things, and the reference of the resulting phrase is all of the things that are in both the reference set of the adjective and the reference set of the noun

Question 24

intersective adjectives

Answer 24

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

Question 25

relative intersection

Answer 25

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

Question 26

subsective adjectives

Answer 26

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

Question 27

non-intersection adjectives

Answer 27

adjective whose reference is a subset of the set that the noun it modifies refers to, but that does not, in and of itself, refer to any particular set of things

Question 28

anti-intersection adjectives

Answer 28

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

Question 29

lexical semantics

Answer 29

studies the meanings of lexical expressions

Question 30

compositional semantics

Answer 30

studies the meanings of phrasal expressions and how those meanings arise given the meanings of the lexical expressions they contain and how they are syntactically combined