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    Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It has two main aspects: reference, which is how language represents real-world things, and sense, which is the mental concept or idea that a word or phrase refers to. There are two main areas of semantics: lexical semantics, which concerns the meaning of individual words, and compositional semantics, which concerns how the meanings of words combine based on syntax to form the meanings of phrases and sentences. Compositional semantics examines ideas like truth conditions, truth values, and how the principle of compositionality dictates that a sentence's meaning is derived from the meanings of its constituent words and how they are combined.

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    Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It has two main aspects: reference, which is how language represents real-world things, and sense, which is the mental concept or idea that a word or phrase refers to. There are two main areas of semantics: lexical semantics, which concerns the meaning of individual words, and compositional semantics, which concerns how the meanings of words combine based on syntax to form the meanings of phrases and sentences. Compositional semantics examines ideas like truth conditions, truth values, and how the principle of compositionality dictates that a sentence's meaning is derived from the meanings of its constituent words and how they are combined.

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    13 views13 pages

    What Is Semantics

    Uploaded by

    gabymo
    Semantics is the study of meaning in language. It has two main aspects: reference, which is how language represents real-world things, and sense, which is the mental concept or idea that a word or phrase refers to. There are two main areas of semantics: lexical semantics, which concerns the meaning of individual words, and compositional semantics, which concerns how the meanings of words combine based on syntax to form the meanings of phrases and sentences. Compositional semantics examines ideas like truth conditions, truth values, and how the principle of compositionality dictates that a sentence's meaning is derived from the meanings of its constituent words and how they are combined.

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    WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

    THE FOCUS OF STUDY IS ON MEANING

    Meanings of individual words

    Meanings of phrases and sentences

    TWO ASPECTS OF LINGUISTIC MEANING


    REFERENCE: The SENSE: The mental relationship between representation that we the symbols that we use have of what a word or to refer to things and phrase means the actual things or states of affair that we use these symbols to describe

    LEXICAL AND COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS


    LEXICAL The meaning of words COMPOSITIONAL The way in which word meanings and syntactic structure combine to determine the meanings of phrases and sentences

    LEXICAL SEMANTICS
    Word Relations : Hyponymy Synonymy Antonymy: a- Complementary b-Gradable c- Reverses d- Converses

    HYPONYMY
    DOGS
    Fido Butch POODLES Frodo Princess hyponym

    hypernym

    COMPOSITIONAL SEMANTICS
    TRUTH CONDITIONS Bill Clinton is asleep A unicorn named Charlie bought one dozen of roses Possible Scenarios: we use them in order to describe the semantics of counterfactual sentences If I had an apple I would eat it right now TRUTH VALUES They are always true or false

    PUTTING WORDS TOGETHER AND MEANING RELATIONSHIPS


    The Principle of Compositionality: The meaning of a sentence is determined by the meaning of its words in conjunction with the way they are put together syntactically

    What does it mean to combine two meanings in a single new meaning?


    SENTENTIAL MEANING Combining subjects and predicates in simple sentences Sandy runs Adjective Meanings Applying adjective meanings to modify nouns: -pure intersection green sweater Set of all sweaters green things

    Adjective meanings
    Pure intersection: intersective adjectives Relative intersection: subsective adjectives

    MICE
    BIG MICE

    WHALES
    BIG WHALES

    Adjective meanings
    Non-intersection adjectives: Ex.: possible solutions alleged thief Anti-intersection adjectives: Ex.: a fake Picasso An adjective that does not require reference to objects denoted by the noun

    Meaning Relationships between Sentences


    There is a platypus in the bathtub. There is an animal in the bathtub. The bathtub is not empty.

    Entailment: if the set of truth conditions for one sentence (X) includes all of the truth conditions for a second sentence (Y), then sentence X entails Y
    Y: The bathtub is not empty X: There is a platypus in the bathtub

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