Semantics & Pragmatics

Question 1

connotation

Answer 1

Additional meaning which arises due to the associations a word has.

Question 2

denotation

Answer 2

The relationship between a word and the non-linguistic, ‘outside’ world. For instance one could say that the denotation of cup is a small vessel-like object for holding beverages.

Question 3

gradable

Answer 3

A reference to certain adjectives which can show a degree of a quality rather than presence or absence, for instance small is gradable as one can say ‘quite small’, ‘fairly small’. This term contrasts explicitly with non-gradable.

Question 4

homograph

Answer 4

Any two (or more) words which are written the same, though the pronunciation may be different, e.g. lead, a verb, and lead, a noun.

Question 5

homonym

Answer 5

Any set of words which share their form but have different meanings, e.g. bar ‘legal profession’ and bar ‘public house’. The formal similarity is an accident of phonological development and the forms do not share a common historical root, contrast this situation with that of polysemy.

Question 6

idiom

Answer 6

A set of words which always co-occur and where the meaning is not necessarily derived by concatenating the individual parts of the idiom, e.g to take coals to Newcastle ‘to do something entirely superfluous’.

Question 7

indirect speech act

Answer 7

Any utterance where there is a discrepancy between literal and intended meaning, e.g. It’s cold in here said in a room with the window open in winter where the intention of the speech act would be to have the window closed.

Question 8

lexical meaning

Answer 8

The meaning of a word which is specifiable independently of other words — ultimately with reference to the non-linguistic world — and which is independent of the grammar of the language.

Question 9

meaning, grammatical

Answer 9

A type of meaning which is determined by the grammatical context in which a form occurs. Typical elements with grammatical meaning are prepositions, articles or conjunctions.

Question 10

meaning, lexical

Answer 10

A type of meaning which is specifiable independently of other words or of grammatical context. The lexical meaning of table is ‘a piece of furniture with a horizontal surface designed to be sat at’.

Question 11

meaning, sentence

Answer 11

A further type of meaning in which the sentence structure together with lexical and grammatical meaning determines what is meant. For instance the sentence role of a noun as subject or object is significant in determining the meaning of an entire sentence.

Question 12

meaning, utterance

Answer 12

A kind of meaning which refers to the context in which a sentence is spoken and where the latter determines what is actually meant, for instance the sentence It’s draughty in here can be taken to have utterance meaning as a request to close a window or door; see indirect speech act.

Question 13

Pragmatics

Answer 13

The study of language in use in interpersonal communication. Apart from the purely linguistic approach there is a philosophical type of pragmatics, as developed in the late 19th century by American philosophers such as William James and Charles Peirce.

Question 14

presupposition

Answer 14

Any information which is taken for granted in a discourse situation, for instance the sentence Did you enjoy your breakfast? assumes that the interlocutor already had breakfast.

Question 15

proposition

Answer 15

A statement which can be assessed as being true or false, e.g. The sun is shining contains the proposition that ‘the celestial body at the centre of the solar system is casting its light directly on the surface of the earth’ and in any given situation this statement is either true or false.

Question 16

quantifier

Answer 16

Any term which serves to indicate an amount such as all, some, a few, or the set of numerals in a language.

Question 17

semantic field

Answer 17

A collective term for sets of meanings which are taken to belong together, e.g. colour, furniture, food, clothes. Most of the vocabulary of any language is organised into such fields, i.e. there are few if any words which are semantically isolated.

Question 18

semantics

Answer 18

The study of meaning in language. This is an independent level and has several subtypes, such as word, grammatical, sentence and utterance meaning.

Question 19

sense relations

Answer 19

The semantic relationships which obtain between words as opposed to those which hold between words and the outside world.

Question 20

signifiant

Answer 20

A linguistic item which signifies something; contrasts with signifié which is what is signified. The term derives from Ferdinand de Saussure.

Question 21

speech act

Answer 21

The act of speaking with another individual. This has become a discipline in its own right since the pioneering work of Austin in the early 1960’s. It was put on a firm linguistic footing by Searle at the end of the decade and has since become part of the standard repertoire of all linguists.

Question 22

synonym

Answer 22

A word which is taken to have the same meaning as one or more other words. The collocations in which words occur may — indeed usually do — differ as seen with cranium and skull which are distinguished according to register: the former is a medical term, the latter an everyday one.

Question 23

theme

Answer 23

That part of a sentence which is the focus of interest and usually introduced at the beginning.

Question 24

rheme

Answer 24

A term applied to the new information conveyed in a sentence.

Question 25

unmarked

Answer 25

A reference to any linguistic form which is the most general and least specific of its kind. For instance the present tense is unmarked vis à vis the subjunctive, the nominative vis à vis the genitive, the singular vis à vis the plural, a positive form (clean) vis à vis a negative one (unclean), unround front vowels vis à vis rounded front vowels, etc. Forms which are unmarked in this conceptual sense tend indeed to be formally less marked, i.e. the plural usually involves the addition of an ending, the genitive has more phonetic substance than the nominative, etc.

Question 26

utterance

Answer 26

Any stretch of spoken speech, a sentence or phrase with emphasis on the characteristics of the spoken medium in contrast either with the written form or with more abstract forms of a linguistic analysis.

Question 27

Semantics

Answer 27

is the study of meaning in language.