Semantics

Reference

Reference

The act of using language to identify or point to something in the real world.

Speaker-Reference

What the speaker intends to refer to based on context and their understanding.

Linguistic-Reference

The systematic meaning of a word or phrase within a language.

Referent

The actual entity being referred to.

Extension

The set of all potential referents for a word or phrase.

Prototype

A typical example of a referent.

Stereotype

A list of characteristics describing a prototype

Coreference

Two expressions referring to the same entity

Anaphora

An expression referring to another expression within the same text.

Sense

An abstraction that can be entertained in the mind of a language user.

Denotation

The dictionary definition

Connotation

Often influenced by personal, cultural, or emotional factors.

Sense relation

About how different words relate to each other in terms of their meanings

Syntagmatic relations

Illustrates the relationship between words that co-occur in the same sentence.

Paradigmatic relation

The relationship between words that can be substituted for words with the same word class (eg. replacing a noun with another noun)

Deixis

Words which ‘point’ to ‘things’ in the physical-social context of the speaker and addressee(s) and whose referents can only be determined by knowing the context in which they are used.

Personal Deixis - The pronouns I, you and we, which ‘point’ to the participants in any speech act; he, she, it and they, when they are used to refer to others in the environment.

Spatial Deixis - Locative expressions here and there, which designate space close to the speaker or farther away; this/these and that/those, which respectively indicate entities close to or removed from the speaker

Temporal Deixis - it refers to an event of an utterance, which takes place any time relative to the speaking time

What are the Deictic Words and their definitions?

Literal Meanings

Used to mean exactly what is written

Compositionality

The meaning of a sentence comes from the meanings of individual words and how they are arranged.

Context Application

Helps clarify sentence meanings and determines what specific expressions refer to

Figurative Language

Where words mean something different from their literal meanings.

Implicature

The action of implying a meaning beyond the literal sense of what is explicitly stated

Figures of Speech: can be understood by using general thinking principles

Idioms: needs to be learned for the reason that meanings aren’t obvious.

Difference between Figures of Speech and Idioms

Irony

is where the intended meaning of words is different from (and often opposite to) their literal meaning.

Presuppositions

the background knowledge or assumptions that are necessary to understand a text

METONYMY

one word or phrase is used to stand in for another word or phrase that's closely related to it.

Semantics

the study of meaning in terms of words, phrases, and sentences.

Lexical Semantic

the study of word meaning

Lexical Relations

are meanings of words in relationship to one another.

Lexeme

A unit of language that represents a single, distinct meaning. The abstract form of a word that includes all its inflected forms and variations

Two types of Lexemes

Variable Lexemes and Invariable Lexemes

Variable lexemes

Word-sized lexical items that may have two or more forms. This type of lexemes may be inflected by adding an affix or some other transformation of the word.

Invariable Lexemes

Only have one word corresponding to a particular meaning.

Lexicon

A comprehensive collection of words or vocabulary specific to a language, field, social group, or individual, encompassing the total inventory of morphemes and their meanings within a linguistic system.

Semantic Field Theory

A linguistic system that examines how words are arranged and related within specific conceptual domains or "fields.

Organized Learning: Words are grouped into fields, aiding in efficient vocabulary acquisition. Offers a structured approach for learning and remembering words.

Improved Differentiation: Helps learners differentiate between similar sounding or similar looking words by placing them within their respective fields. Enhances comprehension by studying word relationships within a field.

The application of Semantic Field Theory in Language Learning

Hyponym

a relationship between words where the meaning of one word (hyponym) is included within the meaning of another (superordinate or hypernym)

Co-hyponyms

are words that share the same hypernym, or broader category, but are not directly related to each other.

Entailment

a logical relationship where the truth of one statement guarantees the truth of another.

Tautology

A sentence with two predications where one entails the other.

Contradiction

A sentence with two predications where one denies the other.

Synonym

refers to the relationship between two or more words that have the same or nearly the same meaning

Dialectal differences: Some synonyms are used differently in various regions (e.g., "Lift" vs. "Elevator")

Pragmatic Differences: Synonyms can differ in frequency and specificity of use (e.g., "Hard" vs. "Difficult").

Difference between Dialectal and Pragmatic DIfferences

Antonym

refers to the relationship between words that have opposite meanings

Binary Antonyms

No middle ground

Non-Binary Antonyms

are also called polar antonyms

HOMONYMY

Senses or meanings are completely UNRELATED.

POLYSEMY

It can be defined as one form (written or spoken) having multiple meanings which are all related by extension

AMBIGUITY

It occurs when a sentence can express more than one proposition

ANOMALY

Deals with the absurd utterance

Semantic role

he underlying relationship that a participant has with the main verb in a clause