Unit 2: Chap.1 Riemer's Flashcards
Circular definition
A definition or series of definitions is circular if the words of the definition contain
the word they are meant to define (1.5).
Citation form
The particular morphological variant of a lexeme used to refer to the lexeme as a
whole, e.g. in dictionaries (1.4.1).
Communicative intention
The intention to communicate a meaning. Talking to oneself, for example,
does not involve any communicative intention (1.1).
Compositionality
An expression is compositional when its meaning is made up, or ‘composed’, of
the meanings of its constituent parts (1.4.3).
Conceptual theory of meaning
The theory that the meanings of linguistic expressions are concepts
Connotation
An expression’s connotation is those aspects of its meaning which do not affect its
sense or denotation, but which have to do with secondary factors such as its emotional force, its level
of formality, its character as a euphemism, etc. (1.4.2)
Denotation, denotatum
The entire class of objects to which a linguistic expression correctly refers
• Idiom
A non-compositional expression, e.g. ‘throw in the towel’ (1.4.3)
Lexeme
The abstract unit which unites all the morphological variants of a single word and which is
the unit whose meaning is principally described in lexical semantics (1.4.1).
Lexical semantics
The study of the meaning of individual words as opposed to that of phrases,
grammatical constructions and sentences (1.4.3).
Mental representation
Fixed mental content which is instantiated in our minds in some stable, finite
medium and manipulated in the process of thought (1.6.2).
• Object language:
The language whose meanings are described. Cf. metalanguage (1.5)
Onomatopoeia
The situation in which an expression bears a phonological resemblance to its
meaning/referent (1.3).
Ostension
A means of definition which consists simply of pointing to the referent of the word whose
meaning is to be defined (1.6.1)
Phrasal semantics
The study of the principles which govern the construction of phrase and sentence
meaning out of combinations of individual lexemes (1.4.3).
Pragmatics
The branch of linguistics which studies utterance meaning and the principles of
contextual language use
Productivity
The fact that the vocabulary of any given language can be used to construct a
theoretically infinite number of sentences, by varying the way in which the words are combined
(1.4.3).
Projected referents
Referents as they are subjectively present to the mind of the language user, as
distinct from how they actually are in the objective world (1.6.1).
Reference
The objects to which a expression refers. In this use it is a synonym of ‘referent’; (ii)
the act by which a speaker refers to a referent (1.4.2; 3.2)
Sense
For Frege, the way in which we grasp/understand the object denoted by a linguistic
expression. One way of thinking of an expression’s sense is as the mode of presentation of its
referent: the way in which the referent is presented to our understanding (3.2.1). More generally, a
lexeme’s sense is its general meaning which would be translated from one language to another; the
concept or essential idea underlying the word (1.4.2).
Sentence meaning
The compositional meaning of the sentence as constructed out of the meanings
of its individual component lexemes (1.4.3).
Utterance meaning
The meaning which an expression has on a particular occasion of use in the
particular context in which it occurs. Sometimes called speaker meaning. Contrasts with sentence
meaning (1.4.4).
