Week 9: Semantics I&II Flashcards
Define: SEMANTICS
How meaning is expressed and understood within a language
Define: SEMIOTICS
The study of signs
Define: INDICES
Signs that are connected to their meaning by way of ‘pointing’ e.g. smoke ‘points’ to fire
Define: ICONS
Signs that represent or are a picture of their meaning e.g. the male and female icons on toilet doors
Define: SYMBOLS
Signs that are connected to their meaning by convention e.g. musical notes
Define: PRINCIPLE OF COMPOSITIONALITY
Combining signs to make more complex meanings
Define: PRINCIPLE OF CONTRASTS
Relates to the limits of variation within a sign that ensure the maintenance of meaning e.g. can have different shades of green in traffic lights but not blue
Define: REFERENCE
The ‘thing’ that is picked out from all the objects in the world when using a word/expression
Define: DENOTATION
All the objects in the world that could potentially be referred to using a word/expression
Define: SENSE
An expression is linked by convention to an idea/sense
Define: PROBLEM OF CIRCULARITY
Explaining one word by using another word, and then explaining the other word by using the first word
Name: THE THREE ASPECTS OF MEANING
- Reference
- Denotation
- Sense
Define: REFERENT
The ‘thing’ in the world being referred to
Define: DENOTATUM
The ‘thing’ in the world being denoted to
Define: SEMANTIC RELATIONS
How meanings of different words relate to each other
Define: POLYSEMY
A word that has multiple, but related meanings
Define: HOMOGRAPHY
A word that shares the same orthographic form as another, but has a different meaning e.g. ‘to present’ and ‘a present’
Define: HOMOPHONY
A word that is pronounced the same (to varying extent) as another word, but differs in meaning
Define: SYNONYMY
When two or more linguistic forms are used to substitute one another in any context in which their common meaning is not affected
Define: ANTONYMY
The sense relation in words which are opposite in meaning
Define: MERONYMY
The semantic relation that holds between a part and a whole
Define: HYPONOYMY
Words of more specific meanings that have subordinate words under them e.g. ‘fruit’ is a hypernym of ‘apple’
Define: HYPERONYMY
Words of more general subordinate meanings that lie under superordinate terms e.g. ‘apple’ is a hyponym of ‘fruit’
The THREE types of antonymy
- Gradable
- Complementary
- Incompatible
Define: HOMONYMY
When two words are spelled and pronounced the same but have different meanings
How do you tell between polysemy and homonymy?
- If there are two lexemes, it’s homonymy
- If the meanings are not related, it’s homonymy
& vice versa
Define: GRADABLE ANTONYMY
A pair of words with opposite meanings where the two meanings lie on a continuous spectrum e.g. big & small
Define: COMPLEMENTARY ANTONYMY
A pair of words with opposite meanings where if it is one, it cannot be the other one e.g. dead & alive
Define: INCOMPATIBLE ANTONYMY
A pair of words with opposite meanings where as soon as it’s one, it cannot be the other, but it is not necessarily the other e.g. if it’s not yellow, it could be green, but it doesn’t mean it is definitely green
