Semantics File 6

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language.

Question 2

lexical

Answer 2

meanings of words and other expressions, including the meaning relationships among them

Question 3

compositional

Answer 3

concerned with phrasal meanings and how phrasal meaning are assembled

Question 4

sense

Answer 4

an expression as some kind of mental representation of its meaning, or some kind of concept

Question 5

reference

Answer 5

relationship to the word

Question 6

referents

Answer 6

the particular entities in the world to which some expression refers

Question 7

Dictionary-Style Definitions

Answer 7

defines words in terms of other words, but that also reflects the way that speakers of a language really use that word

Question 8

Mental Image Definition

Answer 8

things we do have in our heads and that we do use in some way to conceptualize reality

Question 9

prototype

Answer 9

a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set

Question 10

Usage-Based Definitions

Answer 10

what we indisputably know when we know a word, though, is when it is suitable to use that word in order to convey a particular meaning or grammatical relationship

Question 11

Hyponymy

Answer 11

the phenomenon by which two or more distinct morphemes or non phrasal linguistic expressions happen to have the same form

Question 12

Synonymy

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Antonymy

Answer 13

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

Question 14

complementary pairs

Answer 14

pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither

Question 15

gradable pairs

Answer 15

represent points on a continuum, so while something can be one or the other but not both

Question 16

reverses

Answer 16

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

Question 17

converses

Answer 17

two opposing points of view or a change in perspective

Question 18

proposition

Answer 18

claim expressed by a sentence

Question 19

truth value

Answer 19

the ability to be true or false

Question 20

truth conditions

Answer 20

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

Question 21

entailment

Answer 21

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 22

mutual entailment

Answer 22

when two propositions entail one another

Question 23

incompatible

Answer 23

would be impossible for both of the propositions to be true

Question 24

principle of compositionality

Answer 24

the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of the words it contains and the way in which these words are syntactically combined

Question 25

compositional

Answer 25

predictable from the meanings of words and their syntactic combination

Question 26

pure intersection

Answer 26

the relationship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such 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 se of the noun

Question 27

intersective adjectives

Answer 27

when they produce pure intersections

Question 28

relative intersection

Answer 28

relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference

Question 29

subsective adjectives

Answer 29

An adjective who’s reference is including the set of things that the noun it modifies refers to

Question 30

anti-intersection adjectives

Answer 30

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