Semantics Flashcards
Semantics
How we create meaning with words, phrases and expressions.
Grammatical Semantics (Cruse 2011)
Relevant to Syntax. Grammatical Words (The, Or, etc)
Logical/Formal Semantics (Cruse 2011)
Study of the relations between natural language and formal logical systems
Lexical Semantics (Cruse 2011)
Study of content words and their relations
Sentence Meaning
What a sentence or word means e.g what it counts as in relation to the language concerned e.g ‘Can you tell me the time’ would mean ‘Do you have the ability to tell the time’
Speaker Meaning
What the speaker means or intends to convey when they are using a piece of language e.g ‘Can you tell me the time’ would mean ‘Could you let me know what the time is’
Utterance
Spoken unit which carries meaning. It should have a pause before and after it and it can also have short pauses for intonation and breath during it.
Sentence
String of words put together by the grammatical rules of language. We do not speak in sentences meaning they are not necessarily physical events but we use sentence to capture physical events
Sentence Fragments
Incomplete sentence
Proposition
Part of an utterance and that utterance must be a declarative utterance (stating a fact, state of affairs etc) They rest on truth values. Also important to know that just because something contains a lot of jargon, does not mean it is necessarily true
Propositional Content
A part of a sentences meaning that can be reduced to a proposition. If there is even a small element of truth within a sentence, there is propositional content.
Reference
The relationship between language and the real world; part of every language. A thing or people exist in the world. Even something or someone that does not exist and we believe they are available.
e.g My son is on that tree. My son is a referent, and that tree is a referent.
Sense
The relationship inside a language, such as intra linguistic (within a language) relations.
e.g An important sense relationship between these pairs is synonymy: pretty/beautiful - giant/huge - huge/tall/long
e.g Pavement in British English. Sidewalk in American English. These two sentences have the same sense
Synonymous
A word or phrases that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrases in the same language. Some people believe that there is no such thing as a ‘true synonym’
Can a word have different senses in different contexts?
Yes it can
e.g For example, the bank has said that it will not give me a loan. I walked along the bank of the Nile. Word bank has different meanings in these sentences here
Can alike sentences have a different sense?
Yes they can
e.g The chicken is ready to eat. The chicken is ready to be eaten. The chicken is ready to eat something. These sentences have different senses.
Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression that has a reference almost, probable, if and above doesn’t refer to a thing in the world but they all have a sense.
Circularity
An issue that occurs when trying to define a word
Referring Expression
This is only for utterances, and they’re used to talk about specific people or objects. However, an example such as ‘men do not act like animals in good company’ the noun men is not specific meaning it is not a referring expression.
Equative Sentence
Asserts the identity of two referents of two referring expressions e.g:
JOE BIDEN is the PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES
THE PERSON TO MY LEFT is JIM
Predicator
Taking a simple declarative sentence and identifying the referents. They can also be described as the state or process by which referring expressions are involved in. We often strip away forms of the verb ‘be’ to identify a predicator. A predicator can be realized by a verb, an adjective, a noun phrase (not a referring expression), a pronoun and even a preposition. Predicators can not be conjunctions or article determiners
e.g the predicators in these sentences:
Donald is a CROOK . Grosvenor East is BEHIND John Dalton
Extension
The extension of a one place predicate is the set of all individuals to which that predicate can truthfully be applied
e.g The extension of window in the set of all windows in the universe
The extension of house is the set of all houses
The extension of red is the set of all red things
Set (Extension Theory)
A set is something which can be come across when exploring extension theory. Sets refers to a collection of things – so house in the phrase I want to a buy a house will be part of a set of houses that we think about – which might include 2 up 2 downs, mansions, bungalows etc..
Prototype
A prototype of a predicate is an object which is held to be very typical of the kind of object which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate
e.g A man of medium height and average build between 30 and 50 years old, with brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristic or defects could be a prototype of the predicate man in certain areas of the world
Stereotype
Speakers of a language have in their heads:
1) An idea of bare sense of any given predicate
2) A stereotype of it
The stereotype of a predicate is a list of the typical characteristics or features of things to which the predicate may be applied
Referring and Denoting
In Semantics, the action of picking out or identifying individuals/ locations with words is called referring/denoting.
Denote is used for the relationship between a linguistic expression and the world (the property of the word), while refer is used for the action of a speaker in picking out entities in the world (what speakers do)
Saeed (2003) argues that humans can identify or denote meanings by referring to identities in the world all around
Lyons (1977) Differentiates between the terms referring and denotation by pointing out that referring is what speakers do while denoting is a property of words
Referential (Denotational) Approach
Theories of meaning can be called referential when their basic premise is that we can give the meaning of words and sentences by showing how they relate to situation (is the action of putting words into relationship with the world)
Nouns are meaningful, because they denote entities or sets of individuals
There is a casino on Graftan Street
There is not a casino on Graftan Street
The difference in meaning arises from the fact that the two sentences describe different situations
Representational Approach:
Theories of meaning can be called representational when their emphasis is on the way that our reports about reality are influenced by the conceptual structures conventionalised in our language
It proposes to define meaning in terms of the notion, the concept or the mental image of the object or situation as reflected in man’s mind
It means our ability to talk about the world depends on our mental models of it. In this view a language represents a theory about ability: about the type of things and situations in the world
Non-referring expressions
There are linguistic expression which can never be used to refer (so, very, if not)
Predicate
A predicate as opposed to predicator is any word which can function as the predicator of a sentence. For example, bank as a decontextualized example would be considered a predicate
Synonymy
The relation that holds between two predicates (single word or part of a word which carries the specific information) or more that have the same sense.
Richards and Schmidt (2002, p. 533) defines synonymy as ‘a word which has the same sense, or nearly the same as another word’
A pair of words can be synonymous in one context but may not be synonymous in other contexts
Homonymy
Words which are written in the same way and sound alike, but which have different meanings’
e.g Our house is on the west bank of the river. I want to save my first salary in the bank.
Hyponymy
A sense relation between predicates such that the meaning of one predicate is included in the meaning of the other predicate
e.g Cat and animal: The meaning of animal is included in the meaning of cat (the predicate cat in the above example is called hyponym, whereas the predicate animal is called superordinate/hypernym) (cat is a kind of animal)
Co-Hyponyms
A hyponym that is on the same hierarchical level. For example, television, radio, newspaper and the internet are all co-hyponyms of each other with mass communication medium as their hypernym.
Meronymy
The sense relation that describes a part-whole (meronym- holonym)
e.g A cover is a meronym of a book, a finger is a meronym of a hand
Homophones
A word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning and may differ in spelling
e.g - Two/too. Sick/seek. Steal/steel. Back/bark.
Polysemy
A word having two or more closely related meanings.
Monosemy
Refers to a word having only one possible meaning in a language, and which cannot lead to ambiguity
Taxonymy
A sub type of hyponymy (according to Cruise 2004). In his other book (1995, p. 137) he states, ‘A useful diagnostic frame for taxonymy is: An X is a kind/type of Y’. e.g
Poodle: Dog. A poodle is a type of dog
Polysemous
The primary meaning is retained but other related meanings are grafted on to the word
Radiation
This process causes a word to retain its primary meaning, but other meanings are developed from it by analogy or metaphor
Concatenation
There is a chain of meanings, but each are related to the one before it but developing until the original meaning and derived meanings are so different that they qualify as homonyms rather than related meanings of the same word.
Narrowing (Concatenation)
A word may have its meaning narrowed so, for example the word book originally meant any piece of written material inscribed on any material, but the meaning was narrowed to only certain type of bound paper pages
Broadening (Concatenation)
A word may have its meaning extended so, for example, the word bird was originally used only to apply to young birds but has now been broadened to include all.
Trope
Turning a predicate’s meaning into something else. For example, we might expect to see in the media e.g a ‘motif’. This is used in a different sense compared to what we mean by tropes when we talk about Semantics.
Multi Word Expressions
Words which belong together. It’s raining cats and dogs. It wouldn’t really make sense to say ‘It’s raining dogs and cats. Syntactically, the MWE’s idioms are somewhat fixed.
It’s raining horses and mice wouldn’t really make sense? This is perhaps due to the fixation of the term raining cats and dogs.
Idiomatic Expressions
Multi word phrases whose overall meaning are idiosyncratic (specific) and largely unpredictable, reflecting speaker meanings that are not derivable by combining the literal sense of the individual words in each phrase according to the regular semantic rules of the language
Metaphors
Conceptual (Mental) operations reflected in human language that enable speakers to structure and construe abstract areas of knowledge and experience in more concrete experiential terms.
I attacked every weak point in his argument – Argument is a war
The gadget will save you so much time – Time is money
I still have an ace up my sleeve – Life is a game
Literal Sense
How meaning looks on paper. It consists of the meanings of words and sentences being independent of context or occurrence
Formulaic Language/Non Literal Sense
A linguistic term for verbal expressions that are fixed in form, often non-literal in meaning.
Proverbs – Which describe recurrent situation e.g A bird in the hand is worht two in the bush, a stitch in time saves nine)
Phrasal Verbs – Come in, Take off
Binominals – Typically of the form x-Conjunction- y e.g (by and large, black and white, spick and span more or less) or of the form noun-preposition-noun, which conveys plurality (e.g day by day, student after student, face to face)
Lexical Bundles – Identifiable statistically and by intuition as recurrent sequences (e.g a little bit of, you don’t have to, merry Christmas and a happy new year)
Figurative Language
An umbrella term for various linguistic devices such as metaphors and similes.
Target Domain (Metaphor)
The topic or concept that we want to describe through a metaphor
Source Domain (Metaphor)
The concept that we want to draw upon in creating a metaphor
Metonymy
Metonymy is a figure of speech in which a concept is referred to by the name of something closely associated with that thing or concept
Hollywood (Represents associations with the move industry)
Feds (Represents associations with government law enforcements)
Press (Represents associations with news organizations)
Broadway (Represents associations with New York, drama productions and stage fame)
Coast (Represents associations with the seas side, ocean area, regions of land near water)
Booze (Represents associations with alcohol or liquor)
Academics (Represents associations with school, college, university, classes or studying)
Conceptual Blending
It refers to a set of cognitive operations for combining (or blending) words, images, and ideas in a network of ‘mental spaces to create meaning. It is a process of online meaning construction
We take different ideas in our mind, and we mash them together in the form of different networks. We then network these ideas together and push them together to create a way of thinking.
Structural Metaphor
Where the abstract domain is at least partially structured in terms of the more concrete domain. The structural components of a map directly to the structural components of B:
LIFE and JOURNEY
TIME and MONEY
Orientational Metaphor
Give concepts spatial orientation by associating an abstract knowledge area with how human beings understand their orientation in physical space.
UP and DOWN
FRONT and BACK
Ontological Metaphor
Ways of viewing events, activities, emotions, ideas, etc as entities and substances
Container (DEPRESSION is a CONTAINER)
The girl fell into a deep depression
Personification (THEORY is a PERSON)
That theory explains everything you need to know about metaphor
Entailment
A concept that refers to a specific kind of relationship between two sentences.
Entailment means that if one sentence is true, then another sentence would also have to be true: the second sentence would be entailed by the first sentence
Inference
Refers to any conclusions that one is reasonably entitled to draw from a sentence or utterance. Implicature is important in regards to inference
All entailments are inferences
-I ate an apple entails I ate some fruit
It can be concluded or inferred that I ate some fruit
Not all inferences are entailments
Presupposition
People assume something to be truth
Existential Assumption
The assumption of the existence of the entities named by the speaker. For example, when a speaker says ‘Grimsby is a small town’ we can presuppose that there exists a place called Grimsby.
Factive Assumption
The assumption that something is true due to the presence of some verbs such as ‘know’ and ‘realise’ and of phrases involving ‘glad’, for example‘i didn’t realise someone was ill.’ ‘Im glad it’s over’. This presupposes that ‘someone was ill’. We can presuppose that ‘it’s over’, and that ‘it’ happened
Lexical assumption
Is the assumption that, in using one word, the speaker can act as if another meaning (word) will be understood. Andrew stopped running (He used to run) You are late again (You were late before) In this case, the use of the expressions ‘stops’ and ‘again’ are taken to presuppose another concept
Structural Assumption
Is the assumption associated with wh-questions interpreted with the presupposition that the information after the wh-form (e.g when and where) is already known to be the case. When did she travel to the USA (she travelled) Where did you buy the book (you bought the book) The listener perceives that the information presented is necessarily true.
Non-Factive Assumption
An assumption that something is not true. For example, verbs like ‘dream’, ‘imagine’, ‘pretend’ are used with the presupposition that what follows is not true. I dreamed that i was rich (I am not rich) We imagined that we were in London (We are not in London)
Counterfactual Assumption
The assumption that what is presupposed is not only untrue, but is the opposite of what is true, or contrary of facts. For instance, some conditional structures, generally called counterfactual conditionals, presupposed that the information, in the if-clauses, is not true at the time of utterance. If you were my daughter, I would not allow you to do this (you are not my daughter)
