Chapter 6 Semantics Flashcards
Semantics
The study of linguistic meaning
Lexical Semantics
A subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expressions
Compositional Semantics
A subfield of semantics that 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
Sense
A mental representation of an expression’s meaning
Reference
A component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entities in the outside world.
Referents
An actual entity or a individual in the world to which some expression refers.
Mental Image Definitions
A conception of a word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning.
Prototype
For any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set
Usage-based Definitions
A characterization of a word’s sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language
Hyponymy
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 hypewnym of Y and conversely, Y is said to be a hypernym of X
Sister Terms
Words that, in terms of their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy i.e., have exactly the same hypernyms
Synonymy
A meaning relationship between words hwere their reference is exactly the same.
Antonymy
A meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite
Complementary Antonyms
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 is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second word.
Gradable Antonyms
Words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale.