Semantics Key Terms & Phrases

Question 1

Semantics

Answer 1

subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language

Question 2

Lexical semantics

Answer 2

deals with the meanings of words and other lexical expressions

Question 3

Compositional semantics

Answer 3

interested in how lexical meanings combine to give rise to phrasal meanings, while lexical focus on meanings of words

Question 4

Sense

Answer 4

expression as some kind of mental representation of its meanings

Question 5

Reference

Answer 5

component of linguistic meaning that related the sense of some expression to entities in the outside word

Question 6

Referents

Answer 6

actual entity or an individual in the words to which some expressions refers

Question 7

Truth Value

Answer 7

ability to be true or false is the ability to have a truth value

Question 8

Mental Image Definitions

Answer 8

Conception of word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning

Question 9

Usage Based Definitions

Answer 9

characterization of word’s sense based on he way that the word is used by speakers of language

Question 10

Sister terms

Answer 10

words that, in terms of their reference

Question 11

Synonymy

Answer 11

meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same

Question 12

Antonym

Answer 12

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

Question 13

Gradable

Answer 13

words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale

Question 14

Proposition

Answer 14

sense expressed by a sentence Characteristically, propositions can be true or false

Question 15

Truth Conditions

Answer 15

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

Question 16

Entailment

Answer 16

all dogs bark entails that proposition expressed by Sally’s dog barks. we call this relationship entailment

Question 17

Incompatible

Answer 17

impossible for both of them to be true

Question 18

Mutual Entailment

Answer 18

two propositions entail one another

Question 19

Principle of Compositionality

Answer 19

sentence is a function of the meaning of the words it contains

Question 20

Compositional

Answer 20

predictable from the meanings of words stand their syntactic combination

Question 21

Pure Intersection

Answer 21

relationship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such that each picks out a particular group of things

Question 22

Subjective Adjective

Answer 22

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

Question 23

Non- Intersection

Answer 23

adjective whose reference is a subset of the set that the noun is modifies refers to, but that does not, inn and of itself

Question 24

Anti-Intersection Adjectives

Answer 24

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

Question 25

Competence

Answer 25

what we know when we know a language the unconscious knowledge that a speaker has about her or his native language

Question 26

Compositional Meaning

Answer 26

meaning of a phrasal expression that is predictable from the meanings of smaller expression it contains and how they are syntactically

Question 27

Converses

Answer 27

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

Question 28

Incompatibility

Answer 28

relationship between two proposition where it is impossible for both of them to be true simultaneously

Question 29

Lexical Expression

Answer 29

linguistic expression that has to be listed in the mental lexicon