File 6 - Module Seven and Eight, Weeks 11 & 12, Semantics Flashcards
semantics
A subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language
lexical semantics
A subfield of linguistics that studies meanings of lexical expression. (See also compositional Semantics)
compositional semantics
A subfield of semantics that studies the meanings of phrasal expressions, and how those meanings arise given the meanings of 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. The collection of all the referents of an expression.
referent
An actual entity or an individual in the world to which some expression refers.
mental image
A conception of a word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning.
hyponymy
A meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word X is included in the reference of some other word. X is then said to be a hyponym of Y, and conversely, Y is said to be a hypernym of X. (See also Sister Terms.)
hypernym
See hyponymy
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 where their reference is exactly the same. For example, couch and sofa are synonyms.
antonymy
A meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite.
complementary antonyms
Pair of antonyms such that everything must be dscrribed 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.
gradable antonyms
Words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale. (Also known as gradable pairs and as scalar antonyms).
proposition
The sense expressed by a sentence. Characteristically, propositions can be true or false.