Ch. 9 Semantics - Linguistics 150 (ENG 150)

ENG 150 Palomar College, Linguisitcs

referential

dictionary-like, objective meaning (ex. needle: thin, sharp instrument)

Associative

personal or cultural associations (ex. needle; pain, blood)

Semantic feature

analyze word meaning via minimal components

Componential analysis

compares related terms systematically

(semantic role) Agent

performs action (the boy kicked the ball)

(semantic role) Theme

affected entity (the ball)

(semantic role) Experiencer

 feels/perceives (the woman felt sad)

(semantic role) Instrument

tool used (cut with knife)

(semantic role) Location

where (in the room)

(semantic role) Source

origin (from Chicago)

(semantic role) Goal

destination (to Detroit)

Synonymy

the lexical relation in which two or more words have very closely related meanings (ex. conceal & hide)

Antonymy

alive/dead (non-gradable), hot/cold (gradable), enter/exit (reversive)

Hyponymy

meaning of one form is included in the meaning of another (ex. rose; flower)

Prototype

characteristic instance, helps explain the meaning of certain words in terms of resemblance to closest example

Homophones

same sound, different meaning(bare/bear)

Homonyms

same form, unrelated meanings ex. Bat

Polysemy

same form, related meanings (ex. mouth)

Metonymy

One concept stands for another via association (container, part, place) (ex. head)

Collocation

words that frequently occur together (hammer, nail)

Corpus linguistics

large text databases used to study usage

Concordance

keyword in context (KWIC) lines show word use