Linguistics Mid-term Test Review: Semantics and Conversation Organization

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering linguistic referencing, semantics, lexical relations, information structure, and conversation organization based on lecture sessions 2 through 7.

Referencing (Linguistics)

Mentions the author's name, the year, and the page number (e.g., Kortmann $2009: 2$).

General Referencing Rule for Books

Author's name, initial(s) of first name(s). Year. Title of the book: Subtitle. Place: Publisher.

Ferdinand de Saussure ($1857-1913$)

Linguist who argued that each linguistic sign has two parts: the form (signifier) and the meaning (signified).

Signifier

The form part of a linguistic sign.

Signified

The meaning part of a linguistic sign.

Sense

The 'real-life-thing' in our mind or the conceptual idea of an object (e.g., Uni = building, lecture halls, teachers).

Reference

When the medium of language is used to refer to real-life things based on a common consensus in society.

Referential Meaning

When an expression refers to an actual person, object, or notion in the real world (e.g., the moon = referent).

Distributional Semantics

The study based on the idea that 'You shall know a word by the company it keeps' and that words with similar meanings appear in similar contexts.

Social Meaning

Meaning derived from society's assessment of language status, ethnicity, regional origin, or context (e.g., 'the police' vs. 'the pigs').

Affective Meaning

Meaning that conveys feelings and attitudes through stress, intonation, or word choice.

Denotation

The linguistic meaning or core meanings of a word (e.g., Tree = $[+plant]$, $[+long-lived]$, $[+large]$).

Connotation

Secondary meanings or social/affective meanings associated with a word (e.g., Trees are green).

Content Words

Words that refer to concrete objects or abstract concepts and can convey information about feelings and attitudes.

Function Words

Words that carry meaning by relating content words to each other (e.g., prepositions like 'under' or conjunctions like 'and').

Semantic Fields

Sets of words with an identifiable semantic connection that can be classified into sets.

Hyponym

An item whose meaning is included in that of a superordinate term (e.g., 'car' is a hyponym of 'vehicle').

Hypernym

A superordinated item that includes the meaning of its subordinate terms (e.g., 'vehicle' is the hypernym for 'car').

Meronymy

A part-whole relationship where the referent of a term is a part of the referent of a superordinate term (e.g., window pane/frame).

Metonymy

When one characteristic item is mentioned for the whole concept, such as 'The White House' expressing 'The President of the US'.

Anthropomorphic Metaphor

A transfer from the human domain (especially body parts) to non-human domains (e.g., 'face of a clock' or 'leg of a table').

Animal Metaphor

Attributing animal characteristics to humans (e.g., 'Harry is a pig').

Synesthetic Metaphor

An extension from one field of perception to another (e.g., 'warm voice').

Conceptual Metaphor

Metaphors that exist in language and thought, such as 'Life is a journey'.

Synonymy

When terms refer to the same referents in the real world.

Gradable Antonyms

Adjective pairs describing opposite ideas on a scale, such as 'hot/cold', which can have comparative and superlative forms.

Non-gradable Antonyms

Complementary adjectives that do not exist on a scale, such as 'dead/alive'.

Converseness

A reciprocal semantic relationship between a pair of words (e.g., parent/child or teacher/pupil).

Polysemy

When a word has two or more related meanings (e.g., 'plain' meaning 'easy/clear' or 'undecorated').

Homography

Words that have the same spelling but different meanings (e.g., 'bank' as a financial institution or 'bank' of a river).

Homophony

Words that have the same pronunciation but different spellings and different senses (e.g., 'new' or 'knew').

Epistemic Modality

The expression of the perceived likelihood of an event.

Deontic Modality

An expression uttered as an order, permission, or suggestion (e.g., 'You must do your homework').

Deixis

The use of words and expressions to point to a place, time, or context, marking the position of a referent.

Personal Deixis

Personal pronouns that orient toward other people from the speaker's point of view ($1^{st}$, $2^{nd}$, $3^{rd}$ person).

Spatial Deixis

Expressions speakers use to orient toward the environment around them (e.g., 'here', 'there', 'over there').

Textual Deixis

Markers of textual coherence that point within a text, also known as discourse deixis (e.g., 'that answer was correct').

Temporal Deixis

Adverbials and expressions like Aspect that indicate location in time or time extension.

Agent

The semantic role of the entity that carries out an action.

Patient

The semantic role of the entity that undergoes an action by the agent.

Experiencer

The semantic role of an entity undergoing an experience they are not actively carrying out (e.g., 'The student is afraid').

Instrument

Non-human intermediaries or tools used by humans to do something (e.g., 'A silver key').

Cause

A natural force that brings about a change of state with no voluntary action or will (e.g., 'Michael was injured by the storm').

Recipient

The entity which receives a physical object (e.g., 'gave Megan a dog').

Benefactive

The entity that benefits from or receives an action, but not necessarily a physical object.

Locative

Semantic role expressing the location of an action or state.

Temporal (Semantic Role)

Semantic role expressing the time at which an action or state occurs.

Introspection

The linguistic method of assessing knowledge through the speaker's own internal understanding of the language.

Elicitation

An empirical method where data are produced via informants through interviews, questionnaires, or experiments.

Finite Corpora

Corpora with a stable word count, balanced across genres, containing speaker information (e.g., BNC).

Monitor Corpora

Corpora that are always up to date using data-mining tools (e.g., the internet or NOW corpus).

Discourse

A sequence of utterances (spoken or written) in a specific situation.

Given Information

Information known from previous context or shared knowledge (e.g., 'The moon' or 'The frame' after mentioning a bike).

New Information

Information not yet identified in discourse, often highlighted or expanded with additional information.

Topic

The center of attention in an utterance, typically standing at the beginning in English to maintain continuity.

Comment

The part of a sentence that gives information about the topic, often corresponding to the predicate.

Focus

The element that carries the most important and new information, typically expressed by prosody in English.

It-cleft

A cleft structure where a simple sentence is split into a main clause and relative clause starting with 'It is/was' (e.g., 'It's buses that Harry loves').

Left-dislocation

Moving a noun phrase to the front and leaving a coreferential pronoun behind (e.g., 'Mushrooms, I can't stand them').

Negative Politeness

Respecting the other's privacy and not intruding, often shown by hedging or apologizing before asking a question.

Positive Politeness

Showing interest in the other person through compliments or inquiring after their health.

TCU (Turn Constructional Unit)

Units of spoken language that make up a turn, such as tone units.

TRPs (Transition Relevance Places)

Places in a conversation where a transition to a next speaker is sanctioned, marked by syntactic or intonational closure.

Adjacency Pairs

Utterances that typically go together (e.g., questions/answers or invitations/acceptance) where the first part sets expectations for the second.

Representatives

A speech act type that describes the world (e.g., 'Dortmund is a city in Germany').

Directives

A speech act type used to give orders or direct people (e.g., 'Open that window!').

Declaratives

A speech act type that changes the world via the utterance (e.g., 'I pronounce you husband and wife').

Commissives

A speech act type that commits the speaker to do something (e.g., 'I promise I'll help you').

Expressives

A speech act type expressing feelings (e.g., 'I am really sorry').

Verdictives

A category added by Austin $1975$ where a speaker judges another person's actions (e.g., declaring a winner).

Cooperative Principle

The principle by Grice $1975$ regulating contributions to conversation based on the accepted purpose of the exchange.

Maxims of Grice

Rules for cooperation including Quality (truth), Quantity (informativeness), Relation (topic relevance), and Manner (brevity/order).

Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA)

An approach that reveals hidden values and sociopolitical perspectives in communication, based on the idea that language reflects and constructs the social world.

Rogers ($2021$)

Stated that 'Language is always social & discourses reflect & construct the social world'.