Science of Language - Semantics

What is the study of meaning in language?

Semantics

What is the phrase for describing how meanings of words change in context?

Elasticity of meaning

What is the term for the system in which words are organized in a person’s head?

Semantic networks.

True or False: Words can be broken into semantic features

True

True or False: You can assign natural classes to words

True

• dog and puppy are [+canine]; puppy and kitten are [-adult]

What are two pieces of evidence for semantic features being real?

• Lexical errors being semantically related

• Semantic priming

What is semantic priming?

It’s easier to name a word when primed with a photo of a thing with similar semantic features.

What does synonymy describe?

Different words that share all semantic features (synonyms)

What does antonyms describe?

Related words that differ along one dimension (antonyms)

What is homophony?

Words with different meaning/spelling but the same pronounciation.

• E.g. bear & bare

• Bank (money) vs bank (of a river)

What is polysemy?

One word with multiple related meanings

• Crane

• Rent (to vs from)

• Married (marry someone vs. marry two people)

Some adjectives have meaning that doesn’t change based on the noun (e.g. red). Others do (big mouse is still smaller than a big elephant). This is an example of…

Compositionality (word meanings are often compositional)

How can semantic ambiguity be figured out?

Frequency & context.