SAT R&W 1: Words in Context

Semantics

The systematic study of meaning in language, including how expressions acquire meaning and how the meanings of their parts contribute to larger expressions.

What aspects of linguistic meaning does semantics investigate?

It examines meaning at levels including morphemes, words, clauses, sentences, and texts, as well as how meanings at these levels interact.

How does semantics differ from syntax and pragmatics?

Syntax studies rules for forming grammatically correct expressions. Semantics studies linguistic meaning, while pragmatics studies how meaning is interpreted and used in particular communicative contexts.

What is the internal versus external focus of semantics?

The internal focus concerns links between expressions and the mental concepts they evoke. The external focus concerns how expressions refer to things in the world and the conditions under which statements are true.

Public meaning

The generally shared meaning of an expression, such as the meaning recorded in a dictionary. Semantics primarily studies public meaning rather than an individual speaker's private associations.

Speaker meaning

The particular or subjective meaning a person intends or associates with an expression in a given situation. It can differ from the expression's conventional or literal meaning.

How do sentence meaning and utterance meaning differ?

Sentence meaning is the conventional meaning associated with a sentence. Utterance meaning is what the sentence means on a particular occasion, including effects of context, irony, and speaker intentions.

Context in semantics

The circumstances surrounding an expression, including time, location, speaker, audience, and nearby text. Context can affect how expressions such as “here” or “she” are interpreted.

How can context resolve an ambiguous expression?

Context supplies information about the situation, surrounding words, or speaker's purpose, helping readers select the interpretation that fits and reject competing meanings.

Deictic expression versus anaphoric expression

A deictic expression depends on features of the speech situation, as “here” depends on location. An anaphoric expression depends on another expression in the discourse, as “she” may refer back to a previously mentioned person.

What is the distinction between sense and reference?

Reference is the object or entity an expression points to. Sense is the way the expression presents or describes that referent.

Principle of compositionality

The meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and the way those parts are syntactically combined.

Why is compositionality important for explaining language?

It helps explain how speakers can understand and produce an effectively unlimited number of novel sentences using a finite vocabulary and finite cognitive resources.

What limits a strictly compositional account of meaning?

Context and nonliteral expressions can contribute meaning beyond the meanings of the individual parts. For example, the idiom “kick the bucket” cannot be interpreted literally from its component words.

Literal versus nonliteral meaning

Literal meaning follows the ordinary, direct meanings of the words. Nonliteral meaning results when an expression conveys an idiom, metaphor, irony, or other interpretation that goes beyond the words' direct meanings.

Denotation versus connotation

Denotation is an expression's direct or referential meaning. Connotation consists of the associations, attitudes, or emotional suggestions that the expression carries beyond its basic meaning.

How can word choice shape tone?

Words with similar denotations may have different connotations. Choosing a favorable, unfavorable, formal, informal, or emotionally charged term can make the passage sound approving, critical, serious, casual, or otherwise distinctive.

Technical meaning

A specialized meaning that a word has within a particular field or subject. Context, especially surrounding definitions or explanations, can signal that a familiar word is being used technically.

Lexical semantics

The branch of semantics concerned with word meaning, vocabulary, lexical relations, ambiguity, polysemy, semantic features, and semantic fields.

Synonym

A word or expression with the same or a very similar meaning as another, such as “automobile” and “car.”

Antonym

A word or expression with an opposite meaning, such as “alive” and “dead.”

Hyponymy and hypernymy

A term is a hyponym when its meaning is included within the meaning of a broader term. For example, “ant” is a hyponym of “insect,” and “insect” is its hypernym.

Ambiguity versus polysemy

An expression is ambiguous when it has more than one possible interpretation. Polysemy is a type of multiple meaning in which the related meanings are connected, as with “head” referring to a body part or a leader.

Semantic feature

A meaning component used to characterize a word. For example, “horse” can be described as having the feature animate but not the feature human.

Semantic or lexical field

A group of related words associated with a common subject or activity, such as “bake,” “boil,” “spice,” and “pan” in the field of cooking.

Prototype

A particularly characteristic example of a category. A robin may be a prototype of a bird, whereas a penguin is a less typical example.

Phrasal semantics

The study of the meaning of phrases and sentences, especially how the meanings of their parts combine to produce the meaning of a larger expression.