Linguistics

-subfield of linguistics that studies meaning (of words, phrases, and sentences) in language

-study of linguistic meaning

• -aspect of meaning
• -what language tells us about the real world
• -relationship between the symbols that we use to refer to things and the actual things or states of affairs that we use these symbols to describe

-information conveyed by or contained in a linguistic unit such as a phrase, sentence, or utterance

-the relationship that holds between language and "things"/"states of affairs"

-the mental representation that we have of what a word or phrase means

-the aspect of a word's meaning that is independent of what it may refer to in the real world: speakers' mental conception of the word's meaning

-meanings of words

-study of meaning of individual words

-the way in which word meanings and syntactic structure combine to determine the meanings of phrases and sentences

-study of meanings of entire phrases or sentences as determined by the words that compose them and their syntactic structure

-the actual thing a word refers to

-particular entity to which a word or linguistic expression relates

• -can be used to refer to various objects
• -(ex: woman)

-reference of a term that does not always pick out or refer to the same object

-image in our minds that provides meaning to a word

mental image definition: conception of a word's meaning based on the picture that a language user has in his head upon thinking of that word

• -default mental image
• -typical or ideal example of the kind of thing the word represents

-for any given set, a member that exhibits the typical qualities of the members of some set

-ex: night/knight share pronunciation

-ex: lift/lifted share same stem

-ex: write/paint both transitive verbs

• -ex: pot/pan more closely related than pot/floor (meaning similarities/relation)
• -hyponymy, synonymy, anytonymy

• -simply a collection of items of any sort
• -characterization of word meaning

• -collection of items of some sort
• -the items in a set are not ordered, nor do they need to be related to each other in any particular way; however, normally sets are used to discuss all of the items that do have some particular property in common, such as the property of being denoted by a particular word

• -loss of specificity
• - X is hyponym of Y if X's set always contained in (subset of) Y's
• (Y is hypernym)

-property of two words such that the set of things denoted by one word is a subset of the set of things denoted by the other word

-more specific term: word whose denotation is always included in the set of things denoted by some hypernym

-more general term: a word whose denotation always includes the set of things denoted by some hyponym

-any words that occur at the same level of any given hierarchy (in hyponymous relationships)

-words that are at the same level of any given hierarchy of sets of semantic features

-words that share meaning

-property of words that have the same denotation

-reference to members of same set

-the set of objects, ideas, and so on, that a word may be used to refer to

• -being "opposite" in some sense
• -words must have meanings that are related, yet contrasting in a significant way

-words that are in some sense opposite in meaning

• -one or the other, but not both
• -ex: married/ unmarried
• alive/dead

-pair of antonyms such that everything must be described by the first word, the second word, or neither; and such that saying of something that it is not a member of the set denoted by the first word implicates that it is in the set denoted by the second word

• -saying "not X" does not automatically imply " an therefore Y"
• -there are words to describe states in between two extremes (possible to ask about extent: How...?)
• -ex: wet/dry
• easy/hard

-words that are antonyms and denote opposite ends of a scale

• -pairs of words that suggest some kind of movement, where one word in the pair suggests movement that "undoes" the movement suggested by the other
• -ex: right/left
• inside/outside

-antonyms in which one word in the pair suggests the movement that undoes the movement suggested by the other

• -two opposing points of view: for one member of pair to have reference, the other must as well
• -ex: lend/borrow
• send/receive

-antonyms in which the first word of the pair suggests a point of view opposite to that of the second word

• -also called componential analysis
• -decompose word meanings into more basic parts in order to analyze lexical meaning
• -idea that most words have meanings that are "built up" out of simpler meanings

-way of analyzing lexical meaning by breaking a word's meanings into more basic parts

-conditions that must be met in order for a word to be appropriate to use

-conditions under which a sentence would be true

-the way that the world has to be in order for a statement to be interpreted as true

• -ways the world could have been like but isn't
• -way to think of meaning/ evaluate truth conditions

-one of many possible ways in which the world could be, had things turned out slightly differently than they in fact did

• -possible scenarios are implied to be incompatible with what is actually true
• -ex: If I had an apple, I would eat it right now.

-whether or not a sentence is actually true (or false)

-truth of a sentence: always either true or false

• -relationship between meaning and syntactic structure
• -meaning of sentence determined by meaning of its words in conjunction with the way they are put together syntactically

• -simplest form of adjectival combination
• -ex: green sweater

-the relationship between the denotations of an adjective and a noun such that each picks out a particular group of things, and the denotation of the phrase that results from modifying the noun with the adjective is all of the things that are in both the set denoted by the adjective and the set denoted by the noun

-adjectives that produce pure intersections

-adjective whose denotation picks out a set of referents independently from the set of referents denoted by the noun being modified

• -members of set denoted by adjective are determined relative to the type of thing denoted by the noun
• -ex: big whale

-type of relationship between adjective denotation and noun denotation such that the adjective picks out a set of things relative to the set of things denoted by the noun that it is modifying and relative to the context in which it is being used

• -adjectives that denote a subset of a set (linked to relative intersection)
• -ex: whales, big whales (subsective adj. = big)

-adjective that derives its meaning by picking out a subset of the things from the set of things denoted by the noun being modified

• -does not entail reference to objects denoted by nouns
• -ex: alleged thief

-adjective that picks out a subset of things denoted by the noun it modifies, but that does not, in and of itself, pick out any particular set of things

• -entails that adjective does not refer to the noun
• -ex: fake Picasso

-adjective that picks out a set of items that are not members of the set denoted by the noun being modified