File 6: Semantics Flashcards
Semantics
the branch of linguistics and logic concerned with meaning. There are a number of branches and subbranches of semantics, including formal semantics, which studies the logical aspects of meaning, such as sense, reference, implication, and logical form, lexical semantics, which studies word meanings and word relations, and conceptual semantics, which studies the cognitive structure of meaning.
Lexicon
the complete set of meaningful units in a language.
Contemporary semantic theory
a theory which assigns semantic contents to expressions of a language.
Pragmatics
the branch of linguistics dealing with language in use and the contexts in which it is used, including such matters as deixis, the taking of turns in conversation, text organization, presupposition, and implicature.
Lexical semantics
a subfield of linguistic semantics. The units of analysis in lexical semantics are lexical units which include not only words but also sub-words or sub-units such as affixes and even compound words and phrases.
referent
the thing that a word or phrase denotes or stands for.
hyponymy
a word or phrase whose semantic field is more specific than its hypernym.
hypernymy
A word with a broad meaning constituting a category into which words with more specific meanings fall; a superordinate.
synonymy
the state of being synonymous.
antonymy
the sense relation that exists between words which are opposite in meaning.
compositional meaning
the principle of compositionality is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them.
Pure intersection
The relationship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such that each picks put 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.
Principle of Compasionality
is the principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its constituent expressions and the rules used to combine them.
Reverses
a word that reads the same backwards as forwards, then a semordnilap is a word that spells out a different word when read backwards
Idioms
word combinations that have a different figurative meaning than the literal meanings of each word or phrase.
Complementary Antonyms
no continuous spectrum between odd and even but they are opposite in meaning
Incompatible
the most general type of semantic relation between lexical items, the meaning of which entails exclusion
Gradable Antonyms
one of a pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum.
Non-Intersection Adjectives
is where it gets a little weirder. Non-intersective adjectives are descriptors that may or may not describe their noun.
non-intersection adjective
descriptors that may or may not describe their noun.
Anti-Intersection Adjectives
descriptors that negate the noun—the described noun cannot be a member of its own set.
Converses
relational antonyms are pairs of words that refer to a relationship from opposite points of view, such as parent/child or borrow/lend.
relative intersection
the reference of the adjective has to be determined relative to the reference of the noun; ex: all mice, big mice; all whales, big whales. subsective adjectives.
Prototypes
a cognitive reference point, i.e the proto-image of all representatives of the meaning of a word or of a category.
Homograph
each of two or more words spelled the same but not necessarily pronounced the same and having different meanings and origins.
Homophone
each of two or more words having the same pronunciation but different meanings, origins, or spelling.
Polyseme
A word or phrase that has multiple meanings, or, more specifically, multiple etymologically related meanings.
Heterophone
a word that has a different pronunciation and meaning from another word but the same spelling.
Heterograph
words that sound the same as other words, but they have different spellings and different meanings.
Mental Image definitions
an experience that, on most occasions, significantly resembles the experience of perceiving some object, event, or scene, but occurs when the relevant object, event, or scene is not actually present to the senses.
