• Shuffle
    Toggle On
    Toggle Off
  • Alphabetize
    Toggle On
    Toggle Off
  • Front First
    Toggle On
    Toggle Off
  • Both Sides
    Toggle On
    Toggle Off
  • Read
    Toggle On
    Toggle Off
Reading...
Front

Card Range To Study

through

image

Play button

image

Play button

image

Progress

1/56

Click to flip

Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;

Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;

H to show hint;

A reads text to speech;

56 Cards in this Set

  • Front
  • Back
reference
- deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements, words, sentences, etc., and the non-linguistic world of experience.
a) Two expressions that entail each other have the same reference
b) If we have an expression A containing an expression B and we replace B in A with an expression C that has the same reference as B, the reference of A does not change.

Ex: a. the sister of John
b. the daughter of John's parents
- A referential NP A entails another NP B whenever the sentence "x is A" entails "x is B"
ex: "x is John's sister" and "x is the daughter of John's parents" entail each other.
sense
the meaning of a word other than its reference.

The president:
reference: George W. Bush
sense: highest executive office

the current president of France has sense but no reference.
tautology
SEMANTICS: a sentence which is always true, not due to its word meanings but to its °logical form. A tautology is also called a °logical truth or a °necessary truth.
semantics
the study of linguistic meaning
lexical semantics
sub-field of semantics that is concerned with the meanings of morphemes and words
compositional semantics
the sub-field of semantics that is concerned with meanings of phrases and sentences
pragmatics
the study of how context affects meaning
truth conditions
The circumstances that must be known to determine whether a sentence is true, and therefore part of the meaning, or sense, of declarative sentences.
entails
One sentence entails another if the truth of the first necessarily implies the truth of the second, e.g., The sun melted the ice, entails, The ice melted, because if the first is true, the second must be true.
paraphrases
Sentences with the same truth conditions; sentences with the same meaning, except possibly for minor differences in emphasis, e.g., He ran up a big bill and He ran a big bill up. See synonymy
synonymy
A meaning relation in which sentences have the same truth values in all situations, e.g., the boss put off the meeting; the boss put the meeting off; the boss postponed the meeting. See paraphrase.
contradictory
Mutual negative entailment: the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the falseness of another sentence, and vice versa, e.g., The door is open and The door is closed are contradictory sentences. See entailment
entailment
The relationship between two sentences, where the truth of one infers the truth of the other, e.g., Corday assassinated Marat and Marat is dead; if the first is true, the second must be true.
contradiction
Describes a sentence that is false by virtue of its meaning alone, irrespective of context, e.g., Kings are female. See analytic, tautology
analytic
Describes a sentence that is true by virtue of its meaning alone, irrespective of context, e.g., Kings are male. See contradiction.
paradox
A sentence to which it is impossible to ascribe a truth value, e.g., the barber shaves himself, in the context of a village in which it is true that the barber shaves everyone who does not shave himself, and shaves no person who does shave himself.
semantic rules
Used to build compositional semantics. Principles for determining the meaning of larger units like sentences from the meaning of smaller units like noun phrases and verb phrases.
anomaly
A violation of semantic rules resulting in expressions that seem nonsensical, e.g., The verb crumpled the milk.
metaphor
Appears to be anomolous but to which meaning can be attached. Nonliteral, suggestive meaning in which an expression that designates one thing is used implicitly to mean something else, e.g., The night has a thousand eyes, to mean "one may be unknowingly observed at night."
idioms
Fixed expressions whose meaning is not compositional bt rather must be learned as a whole unit, such as kick the bucket, meaning "to die."
synonyms
Words with the same or nearly the same meaning, e.g., pail and bucket.
antonyms
Words that are opposite with respect to one of their semantic properties, e.g., tall/short are both alike in that they describe height, but opposite in regard to the extent of the height. See gradable pair, complementary pair, relational opposites.
complementary pair
Two antonyms related in such a way that the negation of one is the meaning of the other, e.g., alive means not dead. See gradable pair, relational opposites.
gradable pair
Two antonyms related in such a way that more of one is less of the other, e.g., warm and cool; more warm is less cool, and vice versa. See complementary pair, relational opposites.
relational opposites
A pair of antonyms in which one describes a relationship between two objects and the other describes the same relationship when the two objects are reversed, e.g., parent/child, teacher/pupil; John is the parent of Susie describes the same relationship as Susie is the child of John. See gradable pair, complementary pair.
homonyms/homophones
Words pronounced, and possibly spelled, the same, e.g., to, too, two; or bat the animal, bat the stick, and bat meaning "to flutter" as in "bat the eyelashes."
semantic features
Conceptual elements by which a person understands the meanings of words and sentences, e.g., "female" is a semantic feature of the nouns girl and filly; "cause" is a semantic feature of the verbs darken and kill.
negative polarity item (NPI)
An expression that is grammatical in the presence of negation, but ungrammatical in simple affirmative sentence, e.g., James hasn't got a red cent but *James has a red cent; give a hoot, pot to piss in, any.
events/eventives
A type of sentence that describes activities such as John kissed Mary, as opposed to describing states such as John knows Mary. See state/stative
states/statives
A type of sentence that describes states of being such as Mary like oysters, as opposed to describing events such as Mary ate oysters. See events/eventives.
argument structure
The various noun phrases (NPs) that occur with particular verbs, called its arguments, e.g., intransitive verbs take a subject NP only; transitive verbs take both a subject and direct object NP.
intransitive verb
A verb that must not have a direct object complement, e.g., sleep.
transitive verb
A verb that C-selects an obligatory noun phrase complement, e.g., find.
C-selection
The classifying of verbs and other lexical items in terms of the syntactic category of the complements that they accepts (C stands for categorial), sometimes called subcategorization, e.g., fnid C-selects, or is subcategorized for, a noun phrase complement.
distransitive verb
A verb that appears to take two noun-phrase objects, e.g., "give" in he gave Sally his cat. Distransitive verb phrases often have an alternative form with a prepositional phrase in place of the first noun phrase, as in he gave his cat to Sally.
thematic role
The semantic relationship between the verb and the noun phrases of a sentence, such as agent, theme, location, instrument, goal, source.
agent
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent does the action described by the verb, e.g., George in George hugged Martha.
theme
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent undergoes the action of the verb, e.g., Martha in George hugged Martha.
location
The thematic role of the non phrase whose referent is the place where the action of the verb occurs, e.g., Oslo in It snows in Oslo.
instrument
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent is the means by which an action is performed, e.g., a paper clip in Houdini picked the lock with a paper clip.
goal
The thematic role of the noun phrase toward whose referent the action of the verb is directed, e.g., the theater in The kids went to the theater.
source
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent is the place from which an action originates, e.g., Mars in Mr. Wells just arrived from Mars.
experiencer
The thematic role of the noun phrase whose referent perceives something, e.g., Helen in Helen heard Robert playing the piano.
situational context
Knowledge of who is speaking, who is listening, what objects are being discussed, and general facts about the world we live in, used to aid in the interpretation of meaning.
discourse
A linguistic unit that comprises more than one sentence.
deictic/deixis
Refers to words or expressions whose reference relies on context and the orientation of the speaker in space and time, e.g., I, yesterday, there, this cat.

ex: you, there, now, the other side
cooperative principle
A broad principle within whose scope fall the various maxims of conversation. It states that in order to communicate effectively, speakers should agree to be informative and relevant.
maxims of conversation
Conversational conventions such as the maxim of quantity that people appear to obey to give coherence to discourse.
maxim of manner
A conversational convention that a speaker's discourse should be brief and orderly, and should avoid ambiguity and obscurity.
maxim of quality
A conversational convention that a speaker should not lie or make unsupported claims.
maxim of quantity
A conversational convention that a speaker's contribution to the discourse should be as informative as is required, neither more nor less.
maxim of relevance
A conversational convention that a speaker's contribution to a discourse should always have a bearing on, and a connection with, the matter under discourse.
implicatures
Like entailments in that their truth follows from sentences of the discourse, but unlike entailments, which are necessarily true, implicatures may be canceled by information added later.
speech act
The action or intent that a speaker accomplishes when using language in context, the meaning of which is inferred by hearers, e.g., There is a bear behind you may be intended as a warning in certain contexts, or may in other contexts merely be a statement of fact. See illocutionary force.
illocutionary force
The intended effect of a speech act, such as a warning, a promise, a threat, and a bet, e.g., the illocutionary force of I resign! is the act of resignation.
performative verbs
"do things" A verb, certain usages of which comprise a speech act, e.g., resign when the sentence I resign! is interpreted as an act of resignation.