Terms and Semantics Flashcards
What is “sense” in semantics?
“sense” is the literal meaning of words as they are put together into a sentence.
EX: the sense of “the Czech professor of LING 1AA3” is the individual who teaches LING 1AA3 and is Czech and is a professor in the relevant context
What is “denotation” in semantics?
“denotation” is what the sense points to in the real world.
EX: “the King of England” is the king Charles.
What is a structurally ambiguous sentence or phrase?
If a sentence or a phrase is structurally ambiguous it has a word order that allows for multiple meanings.
What is compositional meaning?
Compositional meanings is when the meaning of a sentence or word is determined by the meanings of the words/morphemes and how they are put together.
What is an idiom?
A meaningful sequence of words with non-compositional meaning (essentially, slang and expressions)
EX: “over the moon” and “hotdog”.
- you are not literally over the moon
- this does not mean a dog that is hot
What is referential meaning?
When the semantic meaning refers to an existing, external thing.
EX: Vera greeted a scientist. (“scientist” is referential)
What is predicative meaning?
When the semantic meaning expresses a property about the subject.
EX: Vera became a scientist. (“scientist” is predicative)
What is an entailment?
Entailments are defined as: X entails Y if and only if X being true makes Y necessarily true.
EX: (1) the customer sighed
(2) the customer emitted a breath
(1) ENTAILS the sentence in (2), which means that (2) is an ENTAILMENT of (1)
Explain the entailment test
If you can negate the piece of meaning than it is not an entailment.
- Negate the piece of meaning you are analyzing with “it is not the case that”
- Conjoin this and the original sentence with “but”
EX: (1) It is not the case that the customer emitted a breath.
(2) The customer sighed, but it is not the case that the customer emitted a breath.
Because (2) is ungrammatical, we know that “the customer emitted a breath” is an entailment of “the customer sighed”
Listeme
A term that refers to anything that has a lexical entry in the lexicon.
What are the characteristics of count nouns?
Count nouns:
- can be pluralized
- can be modified by numbers (EX: 3 chairs)
- can take on the determiner “many”
What are the characteristics of mass nouns?
Everything that is NOT a count noun lol
What are the characteristics of gradable adjectives?
Gradable adjectives exist on a scale or continuum.
- can be modified by words like “very” and “slightly”
- can be used in comparative and superlative forms
What are non-gradable adjectives?
Their meanings are absolute or fixed, and they cannot be modified or used in comparative or superlative forms.
EX: dead
You cannot be “mostly dead” contrary to the Princess Bride’s claims ;)
Explain an individual-level predicate?
Adjectives that are true to an individual and will continue to be true unless otherwise specified.
EX: Nyah is {short / Canadian / smart}
What are stage-level predicates?
Adjectives that are only true of something during a certain period, or certain stages.
What are implicatures?
Meanings that are not necessarily true, but are possible conclusions form a sentence based on the context.
EX: (1) The customer sighed
(2) The customer is angry
(2) is the implicature, because (1) is still true is (2) is negated, but (2) IS a possible conclusion of (1)
What are presuppositions?
A presupposition is an entailment that a sentence assumes to be already true.
EX: (1) Ernie’s wife is pregnant
(2) Ernie is married
(2) is a presupposition of (1)
