Semantics

Dạng 1: Ôn định nghĩa

1. SEMANTICS is the study of meaning in LANGUAGE

2. SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of
language.

3. SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it
counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned

4. A THEORY is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work of interdependent

statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular basic
facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it

5. An UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence on
the part of that person.
6. An utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language,
such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word.

7. A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a string
of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language.
8. A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various realizations in
utterances and inscriptions.
9. A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought.

10. A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs.

The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in the sentence
and the situation or action they are involved in.
In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition.

11. interrogatives, which are used to ask questions

12. imperatives, which are used to convey orders

13. By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are
being talked about.
Reference is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the language (in the
world).

14. Variable reference: The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things
15. Co – reference: Two different expressions can have the same referent
16. Constant reference: expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to different
things, i.e. in most everyday situations that one can envisage

17. The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language.
The SENSE of an expression is its indispensable hard core of meaning

18. A REFERRING EXPRESSION is any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or

someone (or a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with a particular
referent in mind.

19. An OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by
the addition of a referring expression, but where the addition of different referring expressions,
even though they refer to the same thing or person, in a given situation, will yield sentences
with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given situation.

20. An EQUATIVE SENTENCE is one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two
referring expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent

21. The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (sometimes a group of words)
which 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.

22. A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as
the predicator of a sentence.

23. The DEGREE of a predicate is a number indicating the number of arguments it is normally
understood to have in simple sentences

24. The role(s) of argument(s), played by the referring expression(s).

25. Identity relation: found in Equative sentences; identity of the referents of two different
referring expressions is expressed by a form of the verb be.

26. A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in which some statement is made about a whole
unrestricted class of individuals, as opposed to any particular individual.

27. We define the UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as the particular world, real or
imaginary (or part real, part imaginary), that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the
time.
28. An ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a result of the senses of the words in
it. An analytic sentence, therefore, reflects a tacit (unspoken) agreement by speakers of the
language about the senses of the words in it.
29. A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either true or false, depending
on the way the world is.

30. A CONTRADICTION is a sentence that is necessarily FALSE, as a result of the senses of the words
in it. Thus a contradiction is in a way the opposite of an analytic sentence.

31. A NECESSARY CONDITION on the sense of a predicate is a condition (or criterion) which a thing
MUST meet in order to qualify as being correctly described by that predicate.

32. A SUFFICIENT SET OF CONDITIONS on the sense of a predicate is a set of conditions (or criteria)
which, if they are met by a thing, are enough in themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate
correctly describes that thing.

33. The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of things to
which the predicate may be applied.

A prototype of elephant is some actual elephant, whereas the stereotype of elephant is a list of
characteristics which describes the prototype

34. SYNONYMY is the relationship between two predicates that have the same sense.

35. A sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence is a PARAPHRASE of that
sentence (assuming the same referents for any referring expressions involved). Paraphrase is to
SENTENCES (on individual interpretations) as SYNONYMY is to PREDICATES (though some
semanticists talk loosely of synonymy in the case of sentences as well)

36. HYPONYMY is a sense relation between predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) such that the
meaning of one predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.

The meaning of red is included in the meaning of scarlet.

Red is the superordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of red (scarlet is a kind of red).

37. We define HYPONYMY in such a way that SYNONYMY counts as a special case of hyponymy.
For example, given two synonyms, such as mercury and quicksilver, we say for convenience that
these also illustrate the hyponymy relationship, and that mercury and quicksilver are hyponyms
of each other. Thus synonymy can be seen as a special case of hyponymy, i.e. SYMMETRICAL
HYPONYMY

38. A proposition X ENTAILS a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X.
We extend this basic definition in terms of propositions to cover SENTENCES in the following
way. A sentence expressing proposition X entails a sentence expressing proposition Y if the truth
of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X.
 39. Two sentences may be said to be PARAPHRASES of each other if and only if they have exactly
the same set of ENTAILMENTS; or, which comes to the same thing, if and only if they mutually
entail each other so that whenever one is true the other must also be true

40. BINARY ANTONYMS are predicates which come in pairs and between them exhaust all the
relevant possibilities. If the one predicate is applicable, then the other cannot be, and vice versa. Another
way to view this is to say that a predicate is a binary antonym of another predicate if it entails
the negative of the other predicate.

41. If a predicate describes a relationship between two things (or people) and some other predicate
describes the same relationship when the two things (or people) are mentioned in the opposite
order, then the two predicates are CONVERSES of each other

42. Two predicates are GRADABLE antonyms if they are at opposite ends of a continuous scale of
values (a scale which typically varies according to the context of use).

43. A word or sentence is AMBIGUOUS when it has more than one sense.

A sentence is ambiguous if it has two (or more) paraphrases which are not themselves
paraphrases of each other.

44. In the case of words and phrases, a word or phrase is AMBIGUOUS if it has two (or more)
SYNONYMS that are not themselves synonyms of each other.

45. A case of HOMONYMY is one of an ambiguous word whose different senses are far apart from each
other and not obviously related to each other in any way with respect to a native speaker’s intuition.
Cases of homonymy seem very definitely to be matters of mere accident or coincidence

46. A case of POLYSEMY is one where a word has several very closely related senses. In other
words, a native speaker of the language has clear intuitions that the different senses are related
to each other in some way

47. A phrase is REFERENTIALLY VERSATILE if it can be used to refer to a wide range of different
things or persons.
48. A sentence which is ambiguous because its words relate to each other in different ways, even
though none of the individual words are ambiguous, is STRUCTURALLY (or GRAMMATICALLY)
AMBIGUOUS.
49. Any ambiguity resulting from the ambiguity of a word is a. LEXICAL AMBIGUITY

Dạng 2: True/ False hiểu bài

Dạng 3: viết 2 câu paraphrase cho 1 ambiguous sentences

Dạng 4: Trả lời câu hỏi ngắn, Yes/No hiểu bài

Dạng 5: Yes/No về các loại sentences