File 6 Semantics

Question 1

Referents

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

Sense

Answer 2

A mental representation of an expression’s meaning.

Question 3

Samantics

Answer 3

The subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language.

Question 4

Lexical

Answer 4

A subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expressions.

Question 5

Compositional

Answer 5

Studies that 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 6

Referent

Answer 6

An actual entity or an individual in the world to which some expression refers.

Question 7

Word Senses

Answer 7

Mental representation of their meaning.

Question 8

Mental Image

Answer 8

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

Question 9

Hyponymy

Answer 9

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 10

Sister Terms

Answer 10

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

Question 11

Synonymy

Answer 11

A meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same. For example: couch and sofa.

Question 12

Antonymy

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Complementary Antonyms

Answer 13

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 it is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second world.

Question 14

Gradable Antonyms

Answer 14

Words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale.

Question 15

Converses

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Reverses

Answer 16

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

Question 17

Propostion

Answer 17

The sense expressed by a sentence. Characteristically, propositions can be true or false. i.e., have truth values

Question 18

Truth Value

Answer 18

Either true or false. The reference of a sentence.

Question 19

Mutual Entailment

Answer 19

The relationship between two propositions where they entail one another.

Question 20

Incompatible

Answer 20

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

Question 21

Principle of Compositionality

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Idiom

Answer 22

A multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional.

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

Subsective Adjective

Answer 24

An adjective whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun it modifies refers to.

Question 25

Non-Intersection Adjective

Answer 25

An 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 26

Anti-Intersection Adjective

Answer 26

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

Question 27

Meaning Relationships

Answer 27

There are many ways for two words to be related; phonologically, morphologically, syntactically, and semantically.

Question 28

User Based Definitions

Answer 28

It we know what a word means, then we know under what conditions it is appropriate to use it.

Question 29

Dictionary Style Definitions

Answer 29

A dictionary style definition that defines words in terms of other words, but that also reflects the way that speakers of a language really use that word.

Question 30

Combining the meanings of adjectives and nouns

Answer 30

While the adjective and the noun syntactically combine the same way in green sweater, good food, and fake money, we will see that in each of these phrases, their meanings combine differently.