Chapter Six: Semantics: The analysis of Meaning

Principle A

The syntactic principle that constrains the interpretation of reflexive pronouns and is formulated as: a reflexive pronoun must have an antecedent (within the same clause) that c-commands it

Principle B

The syntactic principle that constraints the interpretation of pronomials and is formulated as: a pronominal must not have an antecedent (within the same clause) that c-commands it.

denotations

Titles that a word or expression refers to (also called it referents or extension)

conflations pattern

a class of meanings created created by combining semantic elements such as manner and motion or direction and motion

graded (membership)

a concept whose members display varying degrees of the characteristics that are considered typical of the concept

pronouns

a minor lexical category whose members can replace a noun phrase and look to another element for their interpretation (e.g., he, herself, it).

Maxim of Manner

a principle that is thought to underlie the efficient use of language and is formulated as: avoid ambiguity and obscurity; be brief and orderly

Maxim of Relevance

a principle that is thought to underlie the efficient use of language and is formulated as: be relevant

Maxim of Quantity

a principle that is thought to underlie the efficient use of language and is formulated as: do not make your contribution more or less informative than required

Maxim of Quality

a principle that is thought to underlie the efficient use of language and is formulated as: try to make your contribution one that is true. (do not say things that are false or for which you lack adequate evidence.)

Principle of Compositionally

a principle underlying sentence interpretation that is formulated as: the meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its content parts and the manner in which they are arranged in syntactic structure

reflexive pronouns

a pronoun that must have a c-commanding antecedent, usually in the same clause (e.g., himself, herself)

pronominals

a pronoun whose interpretation may, but does not have to, be determined by an antecedent in the same sentence (e.g., he, her)

structurally ambiguous

a property of phrases or sentences whose component words can be combined in more than one way (e.g., fast cars and motorcycles)

entailment

a relation between sentences in which the truth of one sentence necessarily implies the truth of another (e.g., Gary is Bernice's husband entails the sentence Bernice is married)

contradiction

a relationship between sentences wherein the truth of one sentence requires the falsity of another sentence (e.g., Raymond is married contradicts Raymond is a bachelor).

discourse

a set of utterances that constitute a speech event

lexical ambiguity

a situation in which a single form has two or more meanings (e.g., a trunk is a 'piece of luggage' or an 'elephant nose')

c-command

a syntactic notion that is involved in pronoun interpretation and is formulated as NPa c-commands NPb if the first category about NPa contains NPb.

evidentiality

a system of morphological contrasts indicating the type of evidence for the truth of a statement

goal

a thematic role that describes the end point for a movement (e.g., Mary in Terry gave the skis to Marry)

source

a thematic role that describes the starting point for a movement (e.g., Maine in The senator sent the lobster from Maine to Nebraska)

location

a thematic role that specifies the place where an action occurs (e.g., the SkyDone in the athletes participated in the SkyDome)

intension

an expression's inherent sense; the concepts that is evokes

prototypical

characteristic of the best exemplars of a concept (e.g., robins or sparrows are prototypes of the concept bird)

grammaticalized (concepts)

concepts that are expressed as affixes or non lexical categories (e.g., the concept of obligation as expressed by the auxiliary ver must)

fuzzy concept

concepts that do not have clear-cut boundaries that distinguish them from other concepts (e.g., the concept poor)

setting

contextual information having to do with the physical environment in which a sentence is uttered

homonyms

different words with the same pronunciation and the same spelling-that is, they are both homophones and homographs (e.g., light 'not heavy' and light 'illumination')

deictics

forms whose use and interpretation depend on the location of the speaker and/or addressee within a particular setting (e.g., this/that, here/there)

conversational implicature

information that is understood through inference but is not actually said

new information

knowledge that is introduced into the discourse for the first time

old (given) information

knowledge that the speaker assumes is available to the addressee at the time of the utterance, either because it is shared by both or because it has already been introduced into the discourse (also called old information)

metaphor

the understanding of one concept in terms of another, sometimes responsible for language change (e.g., 'argument' understood in terms of 'war': she annihilated him in the debate).

paraphrase

two sentences that have the same basic meaning (e.g., A Canadian wrote that book is a paraphrase of That book was written by a Canadian)

spatial metaphors

use of words that is primarily associated with spatial orientation to talk about physical and psychological states

topic

what a sentence or group of sentences is about

synonyms

words or expressions that have the same meanings in some or all contexts (e.g., buy and purchase)

antonyms

words or phrases that are opposites with respect to some component of their meaning (e.g., big and small)

semantics

the study of meaning in human language

agent

the thematic role of the doer of an action (e.g., Marilyn in Marilyn fed the dolphin)

theme

the thematic role of the entity directly affected by the action of the verb (e.g., the ball in Tom caught the ball)

homographs

Different words with the same spelling (e.g., bow [bow] for shooting arrows, and bow [baw] meaning 'bend at the waist')

homophony

the situation in which a single form has two or more entirely distinct meanings (e.g., club 'a social organization', club 'a bunt weapon')

polysemy

the situation in which a word has two or more related meanings (e.g., bright 'intelligent', bright 'shining')

conversational maxims

the specific principles that ensure that conversational interactions satisfy the cooperative principle

pragmatics

speaker's and addressees' background attitudes and beliefs, their understanding of the context of an utterance, and their knowledge of how language can be used for a variety of purposes

presuppositions

the assumption or belief implied by the sue of a particular word or structure

truth conditions

the circumstances under which a sentence is true

semantic features

the components of meaning that make up a word's intension (e.g., man has the feature [+human]; dog has the feature [-human]).

anteceden

the element that determines the interpretation of a pronoun (e.g., Jeremy in Jeremy looked at himself in the mirror)

Cooperative Principle

the general overarching guideline thought to underlie conversational interactions: make your contribution appropriate to the conversation

readings

the interpretation for a particular utterance

constructional meaning

the meaning associated with a structural pattern about and beyond the meaning of its component words

meaning

the message or content that a sign or utterance conveys

thematic grid

the part of a word's lexical entry that carries information about the thematic roles that is assigns.

thematic roles

the part played by particular entity in an event (e.g., agent, theme, source, goal, location).

addressee

the person to whom one is speaking

lexicaliztation

the process whereby concepts are encoded in the words of a language (e.g., the concepts of motion and manner are both encoded by the word roll)

componential analysis

the representation of a word's intension in terms of smaller semantic components called features

referents

the sent of entities in which a word or expression refers (also called denotation or extension)

connotations

the set of associations that a word's use can evoke (e.g., in Wisconsin, winter evokes ice, snow, bare trees, etc.)

extensions

the set of entities in which a word or expression refers (also called its denotation or referents)