Semantics

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

subfield of language that studies linguistic meaning and how expressions convey meanings.

Question 2

Lexical semantics

Answer 2

deals with the meanings of words and other lexical expressions including the meaning relationships among them

Question 3

phrasal expressions

Answer 3

in addition to lexical expressions, they carry meaning

Question 4

compositional expression

Answer 4

concerned with phrasal meanings and how phrasal meanings are assembled

Question 5

1 aspect of linguistic meaning: SENSE

Answer 5

you can think of the sense of an expression as some kind of mental representation of its meaning or perhaps some kind of concept

Question 6

2nd aspect of linguistic meaning: REFERENCE

Answer 6

to know what things in the world the expression CAT refers to (ex: the pic of the cat, we know garfield, felix, and fluffy are cats)

Question 7

referents

Answer 7

particular entities in the world to which some expressions

ex: garfield, felix, and fluffy are among the referents of the expression cat

Question 8

dictionary

Answer 8

define word meanings in terms of other words and their meaning. they model usage, they change over time

Question 9

mental image

Answer 9

a words meanings is stored in our minds

Question 10

prototype

Answer 10

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

Question 11

hyponym

Answer 11

a meaning relationship b/w 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 12

hypernym

Answer 12

ex: the word poodle is a hyponym of the word dog. Conversely, dog is a hypernym of poodle

Question 13

sister terms

Answer 13

if their reference is on the same level in the hierarchy

Question 14

synonym

Answer 14

two words that have exactly the same reference

ex: quick/rapid

Question 15

antony my

Answer 15

is being “opposite” in some sense. The meaning are related, yet these meanings must contrast with each other in some significant way

Question 16

complementary pairs

Answer 16

two words X and Y are complementary antonyms if there is nothing in the world that is a part of both X’s and Y’s reference.
ex: married/unmarried
alive/dead
win/lose

Question 17

gradable pairs

Answer 17

saying not X does not imply and therefore Y. For ex: an individual can be either rich, poor, or neither but cannot be both
ex: wet/dry
easy/hard
old/young
love/hate

Question 18

reverses

Answer 18

pairs of words that suggest some kind of movement, where one word in the pair suggests movement that undoes the movement suggested by the other
ex:
right/left
inside/outside 
expand/contract
ascent/descent

Question 19

converses

Answer 19

two opposing points of view for one member of the pair to have reference the other must as wel

ex:
lend/borrow
send/receive
over/under
employer/employee

Question 20

proposition

Answer 20

the sense expressed by a sentence

Question 21

truth value

Answer 21

the ability to be true or false

Question 22

truth conditions

Answer 22

the conditions that would have to hold in the world in order for the proposition to be true

Question 23

entailment

Answer 23

the proposition expressed by all dogs bark entails the proposition expressed by sally’s dog barks

Question 24

mutual entailment

Answer 24

2 propositions entail one another

ex:

a: Ian has a female sibling
b: Ian had a sister

Question 25

incompatible

Answer 25

means that it would be impossible for both of them to be true, the truth conditions for one are incompatible with the truth conditions for the other ex: a: no dogs bark b: all dogs bark

Question 26

principle of compositionality

Answer 26

the meaning of a sentence (or any other multi-word expression) is a function of the meaning of the words it contains, and how these words are syntactically combined.

Question 27

pure intersection

Answer 27

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 the things that are in both the reference set of the adjective and the reference set of the noun

Question 28

intersective adjectives

Answer 28

an adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modifies

Question 29

subsective adjective

Answer 29

adjectives whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun they modify refers to

Question 30

anti-intersection adjective

Answer 30

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