File. 6 Semantics key terms and phrases Flashcards
(31 cards)
semantics
the study of linguistic meaning.
lexical semantics
a subfield of semantics that studies meaning of lexical expressions
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.
sense
a mental representation of an expression’s meaning.
reference
a component of linguistic meaning that relates the sense of some expression to entitles in the outside world. the collection of all the referents of an expression.
referent
an actual entity of an individual in the world to which some expression refers.
dictionary-style definitions
defines words in terms of other words, but also reflects the way that speakers of a language really use that word.
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 definitions
a characterization of a word’s sense based on the way that the word is used by speakers of a language.
prototype
for any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of that set.
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 is said to be hypernym.
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
a meaning relationship between words where their reference is exactly the same. For example, couch and sofa are synonyms.
antonymy
a meaning relationship between words where their meanings are in the some sense opposite
gradable antonyms
words that 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 of 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 theme 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.
