Semantics Vocab

Question 1

Semantics-

Answer 1

the study of meaning in language, level of linguistic analysis where meaning is analyzed

Question 2

semantic theories-

Answer 2

a theory which assigns semantic contents to expressions of a language

Question 3

Compositional semantics-

Answer 3

how lexical meanings combine to form more complex phrasal meanings.

Question 4

Lexical semantics-

Answer 4

Lexical semantics- deals with individual word meanings

Question 5

Semantic features-

Answer 5

the basic conceptual components of meaning for any lexical item. Enable linguistics to explain how words that share certain features may be members of the same semantic domain. Correspondingly, the contrast in meanings of words is explained by diverging semantic features.

Question 6

Semantic roles-

Answer 6

the underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause.

Question 7

Lexical relations-

Answer 7

a culturally recognized pattern of association that exists between lexical units in a language.

Question 8

Presupposition-

Answer 8

a proposition (expressed in a sentence) that must be assumed to be true in order to judge the truth or falsity of another sentence.

Question 9

Entailment-

Answer 9

a proposition (expressed in a sentence) that follows necessarily from another sentence

Question 10

Truth conditions-

Answer 10

two basic categories: the study of different types of truth embodied in individual sentences (analytic, contradictory, and synthetic) and the study of different types of truth relations that hold between sentences (entailment and presupposition).

Question 11

Analytic sentence-

Answer 11

a sentence that is necessarily true simply by virtue of the words in it.

Question 12

Contradictory sentences-

Answer 12

necessarily false sentences. The following: A bachelor is a married man, A blue gas is colorless, A square has five equal sides. In each case, we know the sentence is false because we know the meaning of the words in it.

Question 13

Synthetic sentences-

Answer 13

may be true or false depending upon how the world is. Not true or false because of the words that comprise them, but rather because they do or do not accurately describe some state of affairs in the world. EX: My next door neighbor, Bud Brown, is married, is a synthetic sentence. Note that you cannot judge its truth or falsity by inspecting the words in the sentence. Rather, you must verify the truth or falsity of this sentence empirically, for example by checking the marriage records at the courthouse.

Question 14

Meaning-

Answer 14

1. An intrinsic property of some thing 2. Other words related to that word in a dictionary 3. The connotations of a word (that is discussed below) 4. The thing to which the speaker of that word refers 5. The thing to which the speaker of that word should refer 6. The thing to which the speaker of that word believes himself to be referring 7. The thing to which the hearer of that word believes is being referred to.

Question 15

Sense-

Answer 15

word meaning lives permanently in the dictionary

Question 16

Referent-

Answer 16

word meaning varies from occasion to occasion.

Question 17

Synonymy-

Answer 17

two or more linguistic forms are used to substitute one another in any context in which their common meaning is not affected denotatively or connotatively.

Question 18

Antonymy-

Answer 18

the sense relation that exists between words which are opposite in meaning

Question 19

Hyponymy-

Answer 19

the state or phenomenon that shows the relationship between more general terms and the more specific instances of it. EX: red, yellow, blue, black, is [+color]

Question 20

Reference-

Answer 20

two areas: speaker-reference and linguistic-reference.

Question 21

Speaker-reference-

Answer 21

what the speaker is referring to by using some linguistic expression. Because it varies according to the speaker and context, it is outside the domain of semantics; instead, it is part of pragmatics.

Question 22

Linguistic-reference-

Answer 22

the systematic denotation of some linguistic expression as part of a language. Linguistic-reference, in contrast to speaker-reference, is within the domain of semantics, since it deals with reference that is a systematic function of the language itself, rather than of the speaker and context

Question 23

Referent-

Answer 23

the entity identified by the use of a referring expression such as a noun or noun phrase in that expression

Question 24

Extension-

Answer 24

the set of all potential referents for a referring expression.

Question 25

Prototype-

Answer 25

a typical member of the extension of a referring expression is a prototype of that expression.

Question 26

Stereotype-

Answer 26

a list of characteristics describing a prototype

Question 27

Coreference-

Answer 27

two linguistic expressions that refer to the same real-world entity are said to be coreferential.

Question 28

Anaphora-

Answer 28

a linguistic expression that refers to another linguistic expression

Question 29

Deixis-

Answer 29

a deictic expression has one meaning but can refer to different entities depending on the speaker and his or her spatial and temporal orientation

Question 30

Semantic meaning-

Answer 30

three main components: the context in which a sentence is used, the meanings of the words in the sentence, and its morphological and syntactic structure