What is Semantics? Flashcards
Semantics
The study of linguistic meaning
Lexical semantics
A subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expressions
Compositional semantics
A subfield of semantics that studies the meanings of phrasal expressions and how those meanings arise given the meanings of the lexical expressions they contain and how they are syntactically combined
Sense
The mental representation of an expression’s meaning
Reference
A component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of the expression to entitles in the outside world. The collection of all the referents of an expression.
Referent
An actual entity or an individual in the world to which some expression refers
Mental image definition
A conception of a word’s sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning
Usage-based definition
A characterization of a word’s sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language
Hyponymy or Hyponym
A meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word X is included in the reference of some other word Y. X is then said to be a hyponym of Y, and conversely, Y is said to be a hypernym of X
Sister terms
Words that, in terms of their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy, i.e. have exactly the same hypernyms
Synonymy or Synonym
A meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same
Antonymy or Antonym
A meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite
Complementary Antonym
Pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first words, the second word, or neither
Gradable Antonyms
Words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale
Reverses
Antonyms in which one word in the pair suggests movement that “undoes” the movement suggested by the other
Converses
Antonyms in which the first word of the pair suggests a point of view opposite to that of the second word
Proposition
The sense expressed by a sentence. Characteristically, propositions can be true or false, i.e. have truth values
Truth value
Either true or false. The reference of a sentence.
Truth conditions
The set of conditions that would have to hold in the world in order for the proposition expressed by some sentence to be true
Entailment
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
Mutual entailment
The relationship between two propositions where they entail one another
Incompatibility
The relationship between two propositions where it is impossible for both of them to be true simultaneously
Principle of compositionality
The notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
Compositional Meaning
The meaning of phrasal expression that is predictable from the meanings of smaller expressions it contains and how they are syntactically cobined
Idiom
A multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional
Pure intersection
The relationship between the reference of an adjective and a noun it modifies such that 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 set of the noun
Relative intersection
Type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference
Subsective adjectives
Adjective whose reference is included in the set of things that noun they modify refers to
Non-intersection Adjective
An adjective whose reference is a subset of the set that the noun it modifies refers to, but that does not, in and of itself, refer to any particular set of things
Anti-intersection adjectives
An adjectives whose referents are not in the set referred ti by the noun that it modifies
