File 6 Semantics

Question 1

lexical semantics

Answer 1

subfield of semantics that studies meanings of lexical expressions

Question 2

compositional semantics

Answer 2

a subfield of semantics that studies the meanings of phrasal expressions, and how those meanings arise given the meanings of the lexical expressions they contains and how they are syntactically combined

Question 3

sense

Answer 3

mental representation of an expressions meaning

Question 4

reference

Answer 4

a component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entities in the outside world. thee collection of all the referents of an expression.

Question 5

mental image

Answer 5

a conception of a words sense as a picture in the mind of the language user that represents its meaning

Question 6

usage-based definition

Answer 6

a characterization of a words sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language

Question 7

prototype

Answer 7

for any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set

Question 8

hyponymy

Answer 8

a meaning relationship between words, where the reference of some word 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.

Question 9

sister terms

Answer 9

words that, in terms of their reference, are at the same level in the hierarchy

Question 10

synonymy

Answer 10

a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same

Question 11

antonomy

Answer 11

a meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in some sense opposite

Question 12

complementary antonyms

Answer 12

pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither. such that saying of something that is is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second word.

Question 13

gradable antonyms

Answer 13

words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale

Question 14

converses

Answer 14

antonyms in which he first word of the pair suggests a point of view opposite to that of the second word

Question 15

proposition

Answer 15

the sense expressed by a sentence. characteristically, propositions can be true or false

Question 16

truth value

Answer 16

either true or false. the reference of a sentence

Question 17

truth conditions

Answer 17

the set of conditions that would have to hold in the world in order for the proposition expressed by some sentence to be true

Question 18

entailment

Answer 18

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.

Question 19

mutual entailment

Answer 19

the relationship between two propositions where they entail one another

Question 20

principle of compositionality

Answer 20

the notion that the meaning of a phrasal expression is predictable from the meaning of the expressions it contains and how they were syntactically combined

Question 21

idiom

Answer 21

a multi-word lexical expression whose meaning is not compositional

Question 22

pure intersection

Answer 22

the relationship betewen the referece 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

Question 23

intersective adjective

Answer 23

an adjective whose reference is determined independently from the reference of the noun that it modifies

Question 24

subsective adjective

Answer 24

adjectives whose reference is included in the set of things that the noun they modify refers to

Question 25

non-intersection adjective

Answer 25

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

Question 26

anti intersection adjective

Answer 26

an adjective whose referents are not in the set referred to by the noun that it modifies

Question 27

pure intersection

Answer 27

two sets can be identified independently. we can decide what is green and what isn't before we even know we're going to look for sweaters

Question 28

mental images

Answer 28

help us conceptualize reality

Question 29

language contains

Answer 29

language contains an infinite number of sentences

Question 30

knowing sense

Answer 30

by virtue of knowing the sense of some expression, you also know its relationship to the world, or its reference