File 6 semantics key terms

Question 1

anti-intersection adjective

Answer 1

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

Question 2

antonymy or antonym

Answer 2

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

Question 3

complementary antonyms

Answer 3

pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first 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 4

compositional meaning

Answer 4

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

Question 5

compositional semantics

Answer 5

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 6

converses

Answer 6

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

Question 7

entailment

Answer 7

a relationship between propositions where a proposition P is said to entail another proposition Q just in case if P is true, Q has to be true as well

Question 8

gradable antonyms

Answer 8

words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale. Also known as gradable pairs and scalar antonyms

Question 9

hyponymy or hyponym

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

Idiom

Answer 10

a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional

Question 11

incompatibility

Answer 11

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

Question 12

mental image definition

Answer 12

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

Question 13

mutual entailment

Answer 13

the relationship between two propositions where they entail one another

Question 14

non-intersection adjective

Answer 14

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 15

proposition

Answer 15

the sense expressed by a sentence. Characteristically, propositions can be true or false

Question 16

prototype

Answer 16

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

Question 17

pure intersection

Answer 17

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 18

reference

Answer 18

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 19

referent

Answer 19

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

Question 20

reverses

Answer 20

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

Question 21

sense

Answer 21

a mental representation of an expressions meaning

Question 22

sister terms

Answer 22

words that, in terms of their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy, or have exactly the same hypernyms

Question 23

synonym

Answer 23

a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same

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

truth value

Answer 25

either true or false. the reference of a sentence

Question 26

dictionary style definitions

Answer 26

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 27

usage-based definition

Answer 27

a characterization of a word’s sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language

Question 28

lexical semantics

Answer 28

examines the different ways that word senses could be represented in the mind of a language user and discusses the types of reference that words can have, as well as meaning relationships between words

Question 29

compositional semantics

Answer 29

introduces propositions (the senses expressed by sentences), truth values (their reference), and truth conditions, and discusses relationships between propositions

Question 30

compositional semantics: putting meanings together

Answer 30

introduces the principle of compositionality; different ways that lexical meanings combine to give rise to phrasal meaning