Tổng hợp kiến thức SEMANTICS

Parts Meaning Examples

Semantics The study of the meaning of words, phrases and sentences.

The relationship of
these thing

‘ I would like a cup of

coffee’ is a sentence
Sentence Is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought ‘ a cup of coffee,
please’ is not a
sentence
Any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on
the part of that person. “hello”
Utterance
the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of “not much”
( lời nói )
language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single
word.
In saying, ‘John can
Proposition A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative go’ a speaker asserts
(clause) sentence which describes some state of affairs the proposition that
John can go.
Systems used to identify, classify, & organize elements of our many and varied
Concepts
experiences
Types of concepts Fuzzy, graded membership, metaphor, lexicalization, and grammaticization
Conceptual The basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use
meaning of a word.
Conceptual
Reveal how meaning is expressed through language
systems
Expensive, smart,
Fuzzy Differ from per to per, no clear cut boundaries
funny
Graded Have internal structure, graded according to how typical they are within the
membership concept; most typical is the prototype and others are compared to this
Metaphor Understanding one concept in terms of another Emotions
Roll, slide, & limp all
Lexicalization Process whre concepts are encoded into words of a language fall into the category of
motion & manner
Concepts expressed as affixes or nonlexical categories includeing tense,
Grammaticization
number, and negation (common in E)
Associative The type of meaning that ppl might connect with the use of words that is not
Needle = painful
meaning part of referential meaning
The part played by a noun phrase
Semantic role/ Assigned to NP; determined by V(agent role to its subject NP, theme role to
Agent
Themantic roles complement NP) and P(theme role to its complement phrase); stored in mental
lexicon; assigned according to deep structure
The seman role of noun phrase identifying the one that performs the action of
Agent The boy kicked the ball
the verb in an event
Sentence that has more than one meaning; lexical ambiguity or structureal
Ambiguity
ambiguity
Theme The enity that is involved or affected by the action
Instrument The entity that the agent uses to perform an action
A noun phrase used to designate an entity as the person who has a feeling,
Expereincer
perception or state
Source Where the entity moves from
Goal Where the entity moves to
Location Where the entity is
 Characterizing the meaning of words, not in terms of their component features,
Lexical relations
but in terms of their relationships to other word
Semantic relations A basic tool for analyzing and evaluating meaning
Relations between
Synonyms, antonyms, polysems, homophones
word
Synonymy When two or more words are closely related Big/ large
Antonymy When two words have opposite meanings Big/ small
Bug can mean “insect”
Homophones Two words w/ the same pronun but diff meaning
or “microphone”
Bright can mean
Polysems Single word woth two or more related meanings “shining” or
“intelligent”
Relations between
Paraphrase, entailment, contradiction
sentence
Truth of one implies
Entailment
truth of another
Truth of one makes the
Contradiction
second false
Conotation Set of associations a word evokes. This can differ from person to person
Denotation Entity to which a word refers
Comparative constructions:
Gradable I’m bigger than you
antonyms I’m not bigger than you
Doesn’t mean I’m smaller than you
Non-gradable They are not normally used in comparative constructions. We don't say
antonyms someone is ''deader'' than someone else.
When one word means to do the reverse of the other, as opposed to the opposite To dress and then to
Reversives
of the other. undress
Superordinate
The higher level of a hyponym Animal
terms
Hyponymy When the meaning of one word is included in the meaning of another Animal/ Dog
Co-hyponym When two or more words share the same superordinate term Dog and horse: both
 sharing the
superordinate term
animal
“Bird” being used to
categorize both
canaries and penguins
Prototypes The idea of chateristic instance of a category is known as the prototype enven though we don’t
recognize them as
being the same type of
bird
Human
Semantic features Basic elements used in an analysis of the components of word meaning Plus (+human) or
minus (-human)
Referential The basic components of meaning conveyed by the literal use of words, also
meaning described as “objective” or “conceptual” meaning
Extension Specific set of referents that define a word
Intension Association that it evokes
Componential Breakdown of a word into smaller semantic units that includes information
Analysis known abt the word syntactically
A beagle is a breed of
Referring A referring expression is any word or phrase whose purpose is to identify a
dog contains 3 nouns:
expression particular person, place or thing. It is generally a noun, noun phrase or pronoun.
beagle, breed, dog.
Tony Blair is the Prime
An EQUATIVE SENTENCE is one which is used to assert the identity of the Minister
Equative sentence referents of two referring expressions, i.e to assert that two referring That woman over there
expressions have the same referent. is my daughter’s
teacher
Predicates The part of a sentence or clause containing a verb and stating something about ‘went home’ in “ John
the subject. ( verb can be predicates but prep is not a predicates) went home”
The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (sometimes a
group of words) that does not belong to any of the referring expressions and
which, of the remainder, makes the most specific contribution to the meaning
 of the sentence. Intuitively speaking, the predicator describes the state or
process in which the referring expressions are involved.
Any verb and preposition is predicates.
‘I sleep’, sleep is one-
One-place
A predicates has one ‘argument’ place predicate.
predicates
John sneezed
‘Martha thumped the
parrot’. Thump is two-
place pred bcs it has an
Two-place A verb that is understood most naturally with just two arguments, one as its
argument. Martha is its
predicates subject & one as its object
subject and argument.
Parrot is its dirrect
object.
‘Give’
Three-place pred The relations denoted by predicates can involve more than two arguments.
She gives me a gift
Idnetity relation IR is a relation in which every elements of the set related to itself.
‘the whale is a
mammal’ is generic
Generic sentence is a sentence; in which some statement is made; about whole sen
Generic sentence
unrestricted class of individuals; as opposed to any particular individual. ‘ that whale over there
is a mammal’ is not a
generic sen
Mother to child: ‘Don’t
touch those berries.
They might be
Universe of The UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance is the particular world,
poisonous’ ®
discourse real or imaginary that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the time
Mother to child: ‘Santa
Claus might bring you
a toy telephone’ (Ima)
‘I’ is deitic in ‘ when
DW is one which takes some element of its meaning form the context or
A deitic word Penny Carter says ‘I’ll
situation of the utterance in which it is use
send you another”
 Referring express: you, here, today
Modifiers which can be used with referring express: the demonstrative this
Deitic terms A few pre which have a deitic ingredient
Such deitic terms help the hearer to identyfy the referent fa referring express
throough its spatial or temoral relationship with the situation of utterance.
A generalization can be made about the behavior of all deitic terms in RS
In RS, deitic terms occuring in the original utterance( the utterance can be
Reported speech
reported) may be translated into other, possibly non-deitic, terms in order to
preserve the original reference
The context of an utterance is a samll subpart of the universe of discourse
shared by speaker and hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the
Context
conversation in which utterance occurs, and also facts abt the situ in which the
convers itself take place
D is a feature of NPs that selected by a speaker to convey his assumption that
Definiteness That book, the earth
the hearer will be able to identify the referent of NPs