File 6-Semantics

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

the subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language

Question 2

Mental Image Definition

Answer 2

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

Question 3

Sense

Answer 3

a mental representation of an expression’s meaning

Question 4

Reference

Answer 4

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

Question 5

Hyponymy

Answer 5

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, Y is said to be a hypernym of X.

Question 6

Synonymy

Answer 6

a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same. For example, couch & sofa.

Question 7

Antonymy

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Gradable Antonyms

Answer 8

words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale (gradable pairs)

Question 9

Preposition

Answer 9

the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc. Syntactically, this category that consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expressions of category noun phrase

Question 10

Truth Value

Answer 10

either true or false. the reference of a sentence

Question 11

Entailment

Answer 11

a relationship between propositions where a preposition p is said to entail another preposition q is true, q has to be true as well

Question 12

Mutual Entailment

Answer 12

the relationship between two prepositions where they entail one another

Question 13

Incompatibility

Answer 13

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

Question 14

Principle of Compositionality

Answer 14

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

Question 15

Compositional Meaning

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Pure Intersection

Answer 16

the relationships 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 17

Subsective Adjectives

Answer 17

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

Question 18

Non-intersection Adjectives

Answer 18

an adjective whose reference is a subject 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 19

Anti-intersection Adjectives

Answer 19

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

Question 20

Intersective Adjective

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Complementary Anotnyms

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Relative Intersection

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Idioms

Answer 23

a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional

Question 24

Truth Conditions

Answer 24

the set of conditions that would have to hold in the world in order for the proposition expressed by some sentence to be true

Question 25

Reverses

Answer 25

antonyms in which one word in the pair suggests movement that “undoes” the movement suggested by the other

Question 26

Converses

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Compositional Semantics

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Sister Terms

Answer 28

words that, in terms of their reference, art at the same level in the hierarchy, i.e. have exactly the same hypernyms

Question 29

Prototype

Answer 29

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

Question 30

Referents

Answer 30

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