Semantics

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

the study of linguistic meaning

Question 2

sense

Answer 2

a mental representation of an expression’s meaning

Question 3

reference

Answer 3

a component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entities in the outside world.

Question 4

referents

Answer 4

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

Question 5

mental image

Answer 5

a conception of a words sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning

Question 6

hyponymy

Answer 6

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 7

hypernym

Answer 7

same as hyponymy

Question 8

sister terms

Answer 8

words that, in terms of their reference, are the same level in the hierarchy

Question 9

synonymy

Answer 9

a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same. for example: couch and sofa

Question 10

antonymy

Answer 10

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

Question 11

complementary antonyms

Answer 11

pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second 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 12

reverses

Answer 12

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

Question 13

converses

Answer 13

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

Question 14

proposition

Answer 14

the sense expressed by a sentence. characteristically, propositions can be true or false, i.e., have truth values

Question 15

truth value

Answer 15

either true or false. the reference of a sentence

Question 16

truth conditions

Answer 16

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 17

entailment

Answer 17

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 18

mutual entailment

Answer 18

The relationship between two propositions where they entail one another

Question 19

incompatible

Answer 19

impossible for both propositions to be true; that is, the truth conditions for one are incompatible with the truth conditions of the other

Question 20

principle of compositionality

Answer 20

the meaning of a sentence (or any other multi-word expression) is a function of the meanings of the words it contains and the way in which these words are syntactically combined

Question 21

compositional

Answer 21

predictable from the meanings of words and their syntactic combination

Question 22

idioms

Answer 22

a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional

Question 23

pure intersection

Answer 23

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 re in both the reference set of the adjective and the reference set of the noun

Question 24

intersective adjectives

Answer 24

two sets of adjectives that can be identified independently

Question 25

lexical expression

Answer 25

a linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon, e.g., single-word expressions and idioms

Question 26

subsective adjectives

Answer 26

an adjective whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun it modifies refers to

Question 27

non-intersection adjectives

Answer 27

entails reference to the objects denoted by the nouns, while the use of intersection adjectives do not

Question 28

anti-intersection adjectives

Answer 28

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

Question 29

lexical semantics

Answer 29

a subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expression

Question 30

compositional semantics

Answer 30

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