A. the conceptualist view B. contexutalism C. the naming theory D.behaviourism 23. Which of the following is not true?
A. Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. B. Sense is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form. C. Sense is abstract and de-contextualized.
D. Sense is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are not interested in. 24. “Can I borrow your bike?” _______ “ You have a bike.” A. is synonymous with B. is inconsistent with C. entails D. presupposes
25. ___________ is a way in which the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features.
A. Predication analysis B. Componential analysis C. Phonemic analysis D. Grammatical analysis 26. “alive” and “dead” are ______________.
A. gradable antonyms B. relational opposites C. complementary antonyms D. None of the above
27. _________ deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.
A. Reference B. Concept C. Semantics D. Sense
28. ___________ refers to the pheno广告网址n that words having different meanings have the same form.
A. Polysemy B. Synonymy C. Homonymy D. Hyponymy
29. Words that are close in meaning are called ______________. A. homonyms B. polysemy C. hyponyms D. synonyms
30. The grammaticality of a sentence is governed by _______. A. grammatical rules B. selectional restrictions C. semantic rules D. semantic features
IV. Define the following terms:
31. semantics 32. sense
33 . reference 34. synonymy 35. polysemy 36. homonymy 37. homophones 38. Homographs 39. complete homonyms 40. hyponymy
41.antonymy 42 componential analysis 43.grammatical meaning 44. predication 45. Argument 46. predicate 47. Two-place predication
V. Answer the following questions:
48. Why do we say that a meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components?
49. What is componential analysis? Illustrate it with examples.
50. How do you distinguish between entailment and presupposition in terms of truth values?
51. How do you account for such sense relations between sentences as synonymous relation, inconsistent relation in terms of truth values?
52. According to the way synonyms differ, how many groups can we classify synonyms into? Illustrate them with examples.
53. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning? How they differ?
Chapter 5 Semantics
I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:
1. Dialectal synonyms can often be found in different regional dialects such as British English and American English but cannot be found within the variety itself, for example, within British English or American English.
2. Sense is concerned with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience, while the reference deals with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.
3. Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references in different situations.
4. In semantics, meaning of language is considered as the intrinsic and inherent relation to the physical world of experience.
5. Contextualism is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning from or reduce meaning to observable contexts.
6. Behaviourists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls forth in the hearer.
7. The meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meanings of all its components. 8. Most languages have sets of lexical items similar in meaning but ranked differently according to their degree of formality.
9. “it is hot.” is a no-place predication because it contains no argument.
10. In grammatical analysis, the sentence is taken to be the basic unit, but in semantic analysis of a sentence, the basic unit is predication, which is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence.
II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:
11. S________ can be defined as the study of meaning.
12. The conceptualist view holds that there is no d______ link between a linguistic form and what it refers to.
13. R______ means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.
14. Words that are close in meaning are called s________.
15. When two words are identical in sound, but different in spelling and meaning, they are called h__________.
16.R_________ opposites are pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of a relationship between the two items.
17. C ____ analysis is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word can be divided into meaning components.
18. Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by rules called s________ restrictions, which are constraints on what lexical items can go with what others.
19. An a________ is a logical participant in a predication, largely identical with the nominal element(s) in a sentence.
20. According to the n ____ theory of meaning, the words in a lan-guage are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for.
III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:
21. The naming theory is advanced by ________. A. Plato B. Bloomfield C. Geoffrey Leech D. Firth
22. “We shall know a word by the company it keeps.” This statement represents _______.
A. the conceptualist view B. contexutalism C. the naming theory D.behaviourism 23. Which of the following is not true?
A. Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. B. Sense is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form. C. Sense is abstract and de-contextualized.
D. Sense is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are not interested in. 24. “Can I borrow your bike?” _______ “ You have a bike.” A. is synonymous with B. is inconsistent with C. entails D. presupposes
25. ___________ is a way in which the meaning of a word can be dissected into meaning components, called semantic features.
A. Predication analysis B. Componential analysis C. Phonemic analysis D. Grammatical analysis 26. “alive” and “dead” are ______________.
A. gradable antonyms B. relational opposites C. complementary antonyms D. None of the above
27. _________ deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience.
A. Reference B. Concept C. Semantics D. Sense
28. ___________ refers to the pheno广告网址n that words having different meanings have the same form.
A. Polysemy B. Synonymy
C. Homonymy D. Hyponymy
29. Words that are close in meaning are called ______________. A. homonyms B. polysemy C. hyponyms D. synonyms
30. The grammaticality of a sentence is governed by _______. A. grammatical rules B. selectional restrictions C. semantic rules D. semantic features
IV. Define the following terms:
31. semantics 32. sense
33 . reference 34. synonymy 35. polysemy 36. homonymy 37. homophones 38. Homographs 39. complete homonyms 40. hyponymy
41.antonymy 42 componential analysis 43.grammatical meaning 44. predication 45. Argument 46. predicate 47. Two-place predication
V. Answer the following questions:
48. Why do we say that a meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components?
49. What is componential analysis? Illustrate it with examples.
50. How do you distinguish between entailment and presupposition in terms of truth values?
51. How do you account for such sense relations between sentences as synonymous relation, inconsistent relation in terms of truth values?
52. According to the way synonyms differ, how many groups can we classify synonyms into? Illustrate them with examples.
53. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning? How they differ?
I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False: l.F 2.F 3.T 4.F 5.T 6.T 7.F 8.T 9.T 10.T
II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with the letter given:
11. Semantics 12. direct 13.Reference 14. synonyms 15.homophones 16.Relational 17. Componential 18. selectional 19. argument 20. naming
III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that can best complete the statement:
2l.A 22.B 23.D 24.D 25.B 26.C 27.A 28.C 29.D 30.A IV. Define the following terms:
31. Semantics: Semantics can be simply defined as the study of meaning in language. 32. Sense: Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form. It is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form; it is abstract and de
-contextualised.
33. Reference: Reference means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element and the non-linguistic world of experience
34. Synonymy :Synonymy refers to the sameness or close similarity of meaning. 35. Polysemy :Polysemy refers to the fact that the same one word may have more than one meaning.
36. Homonymy :Homonymy refers to the pheno广告网址n that words having different mean-ings have the same form, i.e. , different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.
37. homophones :When two words are identical in sound, they are called homophones 38. homographs :When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs. 39. complete homonyms.:When two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are called complete homonyms.
40.Hyponymy :Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word.
41. Antonymy :Antonymy refers to the relation of oppositeness of meaning.
42. Componential analysis : Componential analysis is a way to analyze word meaning. It was pro-posed by structural semanticists. The approach is based on the belief that the meaning of a -word can be divided into meaning components, which are called semantic features.
43.The grammatical meaning : The grammatical meaning of a sentence refers to its grammaticality, i.e. , its grammatical well-formedness . The grammaticality of a sentence is governed by the grammatical rules of the language.
44. predica-tion :The predica-tion is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence. 45. ar-gument : An ar-gument is a logical participant in a predication. It is generally identical with the nominal element (s) in a sentence.
46. predicate : A predicate is something that is said about an argument or it states the logical relation linking the arguments in a sentence.
47. two-place predication : A two-place predication is one which con-tains two arguments.
V. Answer the following questions:
48. Why do we say that a meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components?
The meaning of a sentence is not the sum total of the meanings of all its components because it cannot be worked out by adding up all the meanings of its constituent words. For example; (A) The dog bit the man. (B) The man bit the dog.
If the meaning of a sentence were the sum total of the meanings of all its components, then the above two sentences would have the same meaning. In fact they are different in meanings.
As we know, there are two aspects to sentence meaning: grammatical mean-ing and