File 6-Semantics Flashcards
(30 cards)
Semantics
the subfield of linguistics that studies meaning in language
Mental Image Definition
a conception of a word’s sent as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its language
Sense
a mental representation of an expression’s meaning
Reference
a component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entities in the outside world. The collection of all of the referents of an expression
Hyponymy
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.
Synonymy
a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same. For example, couch & sofa.
Antonymy
a meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite
Gradable Antonyms
words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale (gradable pairs)
Preposition
the name of a lexical category and a syntactic category that consists of expressions such as of, in, for, with, etc. Syntactically, this category that consists of those expressions that when combined with an expression of category noun phrase to their right result in an expressions of category noun phrase
Truth Value
either true or false. the reference of a sentence
Entailment
a relationship between propositions where a preposition p is said to entail another preposition q is true, q has to be true as well
Mutual Entailment
the relationship between two prepositions 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 phrasal expression is predictable from the meaning of the expression is predictable from the meanings of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined
Compositional Meaning
the meaning of a phrasal expression that is predictable from the meanings of smaller expressions it contains and how they are syntactically combined
Pure Intersection
the relationships 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
Subsective Adjectives
adjectives whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun they modify refers to
Non-intersection Adjectives
an adjective whose reference is a subject 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 adjective whose referents are not in the set referred to by the noun that it modifies
Intersective Adjective
an adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modifies
Complementary Anotnyms
pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither; and such that saying of something that is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second word
Relative Intersection
type of relationship between adjective and noun reference where the reference of the adjective is determined relative to the noun reference
Idioms
a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional
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