chp 6 semantics

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

the subfield of linguistics that studies the linguistic meaning and how expressions convey meanings. deals with the nature of meaning itself what

Question 2

lexical semantics

Answer 2

meanings of words and other lexical expressions, including meaning relationships among them

Question 3

compositional semantics

Answer 3

meanings of phrases and how phrasal meanings are constructed from lexical meanings, the relationship between sentence meanings (references) and the world

Question 4

sense

Answer 4

a mental representation of an expression’s meaning, some kind of concept

Question 5

reference

Answer 5

an expression’s relationship to the world, collection of referents

Question 6

referents

Answer 6

the particular entities in the world to which some expression refers

Question 7

dictionary-style definitions

Answer 7

words are defined in terms of other words, but also reflect use, the mind is an “idealized dictionary”

Question 8

mental image definitions

Answer 8

words stored as mental images, use them to conceptualize reality

Question 9

prototype

Answer 9

the default mental image as a typical or ideal example of the kind of thing the word represents

Question 10

usage-based definitions

Answer 10

knowledge of when it is suitable to use a word to convey a particular meaning or grammatical relationship

Question 11

hyponymy

Answer 11

X is a hyponym of Y, if the set that is the reference of X is always included in the set that is the reference of Y (when set X is included in set Y, X is a subset of Y) (e.g. poodles are a subset of dogs)

Question 12

hypernym

Answer 12

Y is a hypernym of X, if X is a subset of Y (e.g. dogs are a hypernym of poodles)

Question 13

synonymy

Answer 13

two words have exactly the same reference (may have different senses) (e.g. couch and sofa, quick and rapid, groundhog and woodchuck)

Question 14

antonymy

Answer 14

meanings are related, but contrastive, definition of “opposite” meanings can be complementary pairs, gradable pairs, reverses, or converses

Question 15

complementary pairs

Answer 15

nothing in the world is a part of both X’s reference and Y’s reference (one or the other or neither), stating that something is X generally implies that it is not Y (e.g. married and unmarried, existent and nonexistent, alive and dead, win and lose)

Question 16

gradable pairs

Answer 16

everything is either in one’s reference or the other’s or neithers, saying “not X” does not imply “and therefore Y” (e.g. wet and dry, easy and hard, old and young, love and hate)

Question 17

reverses

Answer 17

suggest some kind of movement, one word “undoes” the other (e.g. left and right, inside and outside, etc.)

Question 18

converses

Answer 18

opposing points of view, both words must have reference (e.g. lend and borrow, send and receive, employer and employee, over and under)

Question 19

proposition

Answer 19

claim expressed by a sentence

Question 20

truth value

Answer 20

the ability of a sentence to be true or false, represents the relationship between the sense expressed by a sentence and the world, the reference of a sentence

Question 21

truth conditions

Answer 21

the conditions of the world that are necessary for a sentence to be true

Question 22

entailment

Answer 22

if proposition A is true, proposition B is true, A entails B (e.g. Ian owns a Ford Focus. Ian owns a car.)

Question 23

mutual entailment

Answer 23

when two propositions entail one another, if A is true, B is true, and vice versa (e.g. Ian has a female sibling. Ian has a sister.) (aka logical equivalence)

Question 24

incompatible

Answer 24

when two propositions can’t both be true (e.g. No dogs bark. All dogs bark.)

Question 25

principle of compositionality

Answer 25

the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of the words it contains, and how these words are syntactically combined (lexical meaning and syntactic structure), related to the design feature of productivity (speakers can produce an infinite number of sentences)

Question 26

com positional

Answer 26

meanings of multi-word expressions are predictable from the meaning of the words they contain and their syntactic combinations

Question 27

idioms

Answer 27

expressions with non-compositional meaning (e.g. kick the bucket)

Question 28

pure intersection

Answer 28

Adj and N each refer to different sets of entities, the meaning of the phrase is the entities that fit in both sets (e.g. green sweater)

Question 29

relative intersection

Answer 29

the reference of the adjective has to be determined relative to the reference of the noun (e.g. tall giraffe, loud explosion)

Question 30

anti-intersection adjective

Answer 30

the reference of the expression that results from the use of an anti-intersection adjective cannot overlap with the reference of the noun