Semantics and Pragmatics Overview

This set of flashcards covers key concepts in semantics and pragmatics, including definitions of important terms and principles related to meaning and context in language.

Semantics

A subfield of linguistics that studies linguistic meaning and how expressions convey meanings.

Lexical Semantics

The area of semantics that deals with the meanings of words and the meaning relationships among them.

Compositional Semantics

The branch of semantics that focuses on how meanings of lexical items combine to form the meanings of phrases and sentences.

Sense

A mental representation of the meaning of an expression.

Reference

The relationship between an expression and the entities in the world that it refers to.

Referent

The specific entities in the world that an expression refers to.

Lexical Meanings

The meanings associated with individual words stored in the mental lexicon.

Phrasal Meanings

Meanings that arise from the combination of words into phrases or sentences.

Propositions

The senses expressed by sentences that can be true or false.

Truth Values

The determination of whether a proposition is true or false.

Principle of Compositionality

The notion that the meaning of a sentence is a function of the meanings of its parts and how they are combined.

Hyponymy

A semantic relationship where the reference of one word is included within the reference of another.

Synonymy

A semantic relation where two words have the same reference.

Antonymy

A relationship where two words have meanings that contrast with each other.

Cooperative Principle

The assumption that speakers in a conversation intend to be cooperative, contributing to the purposes of the conversation.

Grice’s Maxims

Four conversational guidelines (quality, relevance, quantity, manner) designed to support effective communication.

Felicity

The appropriateness of an utterance in context.

Implicature

Conclusions drawn from an utterance that go beyond its literal meaning, often based on contextual clues.

Deictic Words

Words whose meanings depend on context, such as 'he', 'here', and 'now'.

Inference

A conclusion drawn based on context and the assumptions about speaker intentions.