File 6 Semantics Key Terms and Phrases Flashcards
Semantics
the study of linguistic meanings
Lexical semantics
meaning of words and other lexical expressions
Compositional semantics
phrasal meanings and how they are assembled
Sense
a mental representation of an expression’s meaning
Reference
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
Referents
particular entities in the world to which some expressions refer
Mental Image Defintion
a conception of a word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning
Prototype
for any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set
Usage-Based Defintion
a characterization of a word’s sense based on the way the word is used by speakers of a language
Hyponymy
a meaning relation between words where the reference of some word (X) is included in the reference of another word (Y)
Hypernym
(Y) in reference to the definition of hyponymy
Sister terms
words that, in terms on their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy (i.e. have exactly the same hypernymy)
Synonymy
a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same
Antonymy
a meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite
Complementary antonyms
pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither
Gradable antonyms
words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale
Reverses
antonyms in which one word in the pair suggests movement that “undoes” the movement suggested by the other
Converses
antonyms in which the first word of the pair suggests a point of view opposite to that of the second word
Proposition
the claim expressed by a sentence; the sense expressed by a sentence
Truth value
true or false proposition
Truth conditions
the condition that would have to hold in the world in order for some proposition to be true
Entailment
relationship between propositions where a proposition is said to entail another just in case the ford is true as well
Mutual entailment
when two propositions entail one another
Incompatible propositions
impossible for both propositions to be true
Principle of Compositionality
notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
Compositional meaning
meaning of a phrasal expression that is predictable from the meaning of smaller expressions it contains and how they are syntactically combined
Idioms
a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional
Pure intersection
relation ship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such that each picks out a particular group of things
Intersective adjectives
adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modified
Relative Intersection
type of relationship between adjectives and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference
Subsective adjectives
an adjective whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun it modifies refers to
Non-intersection adjectives
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
