SEMANTICS * Questions for Review

English Semantics
QUESTIONS FOR REVIEW 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. How can one identify / describe the meaning of a word? Identify the meaning of the word assassin. What is meant by SEMANTIC PROPERTIES? Describe the semantic properties of each of the following words: man, boy. Provide the semantic features associated with each of these words: dog, puppy,

cat, kitten.
Indicate the semantic features of the words stallion and girl. State the semantic properties of the following words and then classify them into groups of words which share the same semantic properties: child, actress, doe, oak, make, plod, imagine, elm, build, charity, ewe, tiptoe, stalk What are the semantic properties of the following words: die, kill, thicken,

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

bachelor? Give some examples to illustrate the same semantic property which can be shared by words of different categories. What is the semantic property shared by each of the following word groups? a. mother, breast-feed, pregnant b. darken, kill, beautify Make a distinction between word and morpheme. Apply the MEANING POSTULATE for the sentence If X gives Y to Z, then Z receives Y from X, and vice versa.
Justify that the following sentences contain phrases that have REFERENCE: a. The present king of France is bald. b. By the year 3000, our descendants will have left earth.
SENSE

but no

12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

What are two types of meaning? Make a distinction between DENOTATION and CONNOTATION. Explain the meanings of the adjectives in Russells example Im thrifty; you are tight; he is stingy, and describe their differences in connotation. What is the meaning of the term CONNOTATION in semantics? What are the connotations which the noun police may have? Important factors for interpreting connotative meanings of words. Give examples to illustrate. What are the CONNOTATIVE meanings which can be associated with the use of the words child and winter? What syntactic constraints are there with English PROPER NAMES? Give examples. Draw a chart to show the relationship between grass and betel nut. What is the semantic relationship between the words in each pair of the following? a. violin fiddle b. elbow arm c. big small

20. 21.

but one cannot be substituted for the other in some cases. Say why and give an example to illustrate. Why arent height and depth SYNONYMS? / Height and depth have a great deal of meaning in common, e.g. measurement and vertical, but they are not called synonyms. Why? 1 Nguyn Minh Tm

Side and edge are

SYNONYMS,

SEMANTICS * Questions for Review 22. The following pairs of words share at least one sense in common, but do not share all their senses: deep / profound; ripe / mature. Think of a linguistic context in which only one member of each pair can be used but the other cannot. Give some examples to illustrate the difference in meaning between HOMONYMY and POLYSEMY. What are the related meanings of the word mouth? What is this type of interrelatedness called? The following words are POLYSEMOUS: chimney, guard. Give at least two possible closely related meanings of each word and tell what common concept is contained in the meanings. Which words in the following two sentences show the relation between them? Explain this relation. a. I gave Mary a rose. b. I gave Mary a flower. 27. 28. Explain MARKEDNESS and give different forms to prove they are marked and unmarked. Explain the possible meanings of each of the following AMBIGUOUS utterances. / How can you disambiguate the following sentences? This suit is lighter. She cant bear children. Dr. Jekyll is a butcher. I know a man with a dog who has fleas. The chicken is ready to eat. 29. Explain the AMBIGUITY in the following and provide two sentences that paraphrase the two possible meanings: a. b. c. d. 30. 31. They are moving chairs. Jill left directions for Jack to follow. Ill meet you at the bank. It takes a good ruler to make a straight line.

23. 24. 25.

26.

What type of ambiguity does the phrase French history teacher belong to? Give the meanings which can make it ambiguous. Which RELATION is illustrated in each of the pairs of words below? a. b. c. d. flourish thrive casual informal drunk sober intelligent smart
PARAPHRASE

32.

Provide two sentences that following:

the two meanings of each of the

a. Old men and women will be served first. b. John saw her duck. 33. Show the
LOGICAL RELATIONS

in the following paraphrases:

a. The dog bit the man. b. The man was bitten by the dog. 34. Which of these relations (IMPLICATURE, exemplified in each of the following pairs? 2
ENTAILMENT

and

CONTRADICTION)

is

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SEMANTICS * Questions for Review a. Vera is an only child. Olga is Veras sister. b. The park wardens killed the bear. The bear is dead. c. Jules is Marys husband. Mary is married. 35. What notion does the word mean designate in the following sentences? a. I didnt mean to offend you. b. These clouds mean rain. c. The word CACTUS means a plant with spines. 36. 37. 38. Define idiom. Whats the difference in interpreting the meaning of a phrase and the meaning of an idiom? Give examples to illustrate. What is meant by the following idiomatic expression: Everyone in this town has

a big nose?
Explain the meaning of the idiom to let your hair down in the sentence Its

wonderful to let your hair down at the weekend after youve been working hard all week. 39. Whats the meaning of the idiom Ill eat my hat in the sentence If it wasnt your brother who stole it, Ill eat my hat.
40. 41. 42. What is meant by FIGURE OF SPEECH? Name at least 6 figures of speech and give examples for each. Give two sentences in which METAPHORS are used. What are the METAPHORICAL MEANINGS of these sentences? a. b. c. d. 43. Walls have ears. Dr. Jekyll is a butcher. My new car is a lemon. John is a snake in the grass.
LANGUAGE

Underline, identify the type of FIGURATIVE each of the following sentences.

and interpret its meaning in

a. You came in thirty-seven minutes after the fifty-minute class started. You were a bit late. b. If you are not happy with the service, go talk to the City Hall. 44. Underline and identify the type of FIGURATIVE in each of the following sentences.
LANGUAGE

and interpret its meaning

a. Your wit is only exceeded by your charm and good looks. b. You can depend on Mary; shes a rock when trouble comes. 45. 46. What is the difference between PERSONIFICATION and APOSTROPHE? Give examples to illustrate. What is an ACRONYM? Write the full form of each of the following. UNESCO, TESOL, TESL, ESP, WHO, UNDP 47. 48. 49.

We finished that chapter yesterday. How do you know what day yesterday
refers to? What is the difference between temporal and spatial DEIXIS? Which ANAPHORIC EXPRESSIONS (or PRO-FORMS) can be used to rewrite the following sentences? 3 Nguyn Minh Tm

SEMANTICS * Questions for Review a. I love Sybil and Jack loves Sybil too. b. Emily hugged Helen and Steve hugged Helen too. c. I am sick and my being sick makes me sad. 50. What is meant by PROPOSITION? Write four propositions implied by each of the sentences below. a. Johns friend, Tony, who is a dentist, likes apples. b. The man gave the woman a big expensive emerald ring. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. What is wrong with this sentence? Colorless green ideas sleep furiously. Why is the following sentence
UNINTERPRETABLE:

An orkish sluck blecked

nokishly?
Explain DIRECT SPEECH ACT and give three examples. Define PERFORMATIVE VERB. Use each of the following verbs in a performative utterance: bet, challenge, dare, move. Which utterances are PERFORMATIVE (P) or CONSTATIVE (C)? a. b. c. d. 56. 57. 58. I name this ship Hibernia. I admit that I was hasty. I think I was wrong. I give you supper every night.

Could CONSTATIVES become PERFORMATIVES? How? What are COMMISSIVES? Give two examples. Interpret the meaning of each of the following: a. b. c. d. Im coming soon, the mother told the little child. The meeting is over. Watch your step! Its so cold tonight.

59. 60.

HAPPINESS / FELICITY CONDITIONS for a compliment to be performed. Explain the sentence The window is open in both situations: a. The window is open. b. SPEAKER 1: Im cold. SPEAKER 2: The window is open.

61.

What has been

PRESUPPOSED

by the following sentences?

a. Have you stopped hugging your sheepdog? b. Would you like another beer? 62. What are the PRESUPPOSITIONS for the following sentences? / What is the presupposition each of the following may carry? a. b. c. d. 63. Who bought the badminton set? My brother is rich. Bill regrets that the circus has left. Dinosaurs were carnivorous or herbivorous reptiles.
PRESUPPOSITION?

What verbs in both groups of sentences imply a interpretation of it. a. Have you stopped exercising regularly? Have you tried exercising regularly? 4

Give your

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SEMANTICS * Questions for Review b. Nick admitted that the team had lost. Nick said that the team had lost. 64. 65. Define SPEECH ACT. What are the three related acts involved in a speech act? Give examples. What ACT is supposed / expected to be performed when somebody says each of the following. Its getting noisy. Its cold in here. 66. Describe the process of SEMANTIC undergone: knight, nice, girl, starve.
SHIFT

each of the following words has

ENDNOTES MARKED VS. UNMARKED1 The concept of markedness is variously interpreted in linguistics. In GENERATIVE it refers to a distinction between sets of FEATURES, where one is considered to be neutral and the other non-neutral. So, for example, there is a formal feature marking the plural in most English nouns, i.e. the addition of s; the plural is therefore marked, and the singular unmarked. In describing the singular as unmarked we are identifying it as the neutral form of the word, free from any modification, and the plural as derived from it by a process of marking. A similar case can be made for the inflection ed, which formally marks the presence of the past tense. And in PHONOLOGY marking is important in distinguishing the DISTINCTIVE FEATURES of speech, e.g. VOICE. Here, the presence of voicing is seen as marked and its absence as unmarked.
GRAMMAR

Other interpretations of marking involve frequency of occurrence rather than presence v. absence. In DISCOURSE ANALYSIS, for example, it is sometimes said that a falling intonation pattern is unmarked, because more common than a rising one, which is correspondingly marked. Yet another interpretation can be found in the SEMANTIC analysis of words, where pairs of items are seen as marked or unmarked, respectively, on the grounds that one has a wider DISTRIBUTION, or application, than another, e.g. old/young (How old is John? is more normal than How young is John?). A related SENSE has to do with SPECIFICITY, where one term is more specific than another, e.g. dog/bitch (dog can be used to animals of either sex, but bitch is limited to the female). And finally, linguists interested in UNIVERSAL GRAMMAR use marking to distinguish properties which can be found in all languages as against those which are exceptional and which can only be found in a few. The concept of markedness, therefore, can be used in a variety of contexts to distinguish what we can consider as the base, normative, or most common forms of items or features from those which are derived, non-normative, or less frequent. ENTAILMENT VS. PRESUPPOSITION / PARAPHRASE 2 A logical relationship between two sentences such that the truth of the second sentence necessarily follows from the truth of the first. So, for example, sentence (1a), below, entails sentence (1b):
1 2

Geoffrey Finch, Linguistic Terms and Concepts, St. Martins Press, Inc. ibid 5 Nguyn Minh Tm

SEMANTICS * Questions for Review (1a) John killed Bob. (1b) Bob died. The entailment here is a consequence of the semantic relationship between kill and die. We know that there are various ways to die and that being killed is one of them. In other words, an important part of the sense of killed is contained within die. This kind of entailment, in which the sense of one lexical item is included within another, is based on a hierarchical relationship between items, known as HYPONYMY. Another example of such an entailment is the following pair: (2a) I bought a car. (2b) I bought an animal. In this case sentence (2a) entails sentence (2b) since a cat is a kind of animal. Another way of putting this is to describe (2b) as the entailment of (2a). Notice, however, that the relationship is not reversible. Saying that I have bought an animal does not entail that I have bought a cat. It could be a dog, or a parrot, or any other animal. Similarly, to state that Bob died does not entail that John killed him. One of the principle difficulties which students regularly have is distinguishing ENTAILMENT from PRESUPPOSITION. This is another logical relationship involving statements which are dependent on one another. The big difference is in the nature of that independence. In the sentences above, negating (a) means that (b) can be either true or false. In other words, the entailment fails. So, for example, saying that I didnt buy a cat leaves completely open the question of whether or not I bought an animal. This would not be so if the relationship were one of PRESUPPOSITION. In the sentences below, (3a) presupposes (that is, assume) the truth of (3b): (3a) The King of England left for Peru yesterday. (3b) There is a King of England. but even if we negate (a) the presupposition holds: (4a) The King of England did not leave for Peru yesterday. (4b) There is a King of England. The importance of entailment to linguists is that it enables them to analyze what are called the TRUTH RELATIONS of sentences. These are independent of their empirical, or actual, truth. This means that (1b) and (2b) are automatically entailed respectively by (1a) and (2a). On the basis of these, semanticists interested in the logical dimension of the language can construct TRUTH TABLES. The following table shows the truth relations which exist between (1a) and (1b), and between (2a) and (2b). The symbols p and q represent the first and second sentences in each sequence and the arrows and show the direction of a relation when then. So the first line reads when p is true, q is true, and the last line reads when q is true, p can be either true or false. TRUTH TABLE FOR ENTAILMENT p T F F T or F T= F=
TRUE FALSE

q T T or F F T

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SEMANTICS * Questions for Review The entailments we have looked at so far are lexical in origin, that is they derive from the lexical relationship between individual words. But entailment can also be syntactic in origin. Active and passive versions of the same sentence will entail one another, so for example (5a) and (5b) below entail each other: (5a) John killed Bob. (5b) Bob was killed by John. These sentences have the same set of entailments. That is, they other. Or to put it in another way, they PARAPHRASE each other. PRESUPPOSITION A term used in both semantics and pragmatics to refer to assumptions implicitly made by speakers and listeners which are necessary for the correct interpretation of utterances. The statement Im sorry its raining, for example, presupposes that it is raining. The presupposition also holds if the statement is negated: Im not sorry its raining, also presupposes its raining. This is an important difference between PRESUPPOSITION and ENTAILMENT, a logical relationship with which presupposition is sometimes confused. Presuppositions deal with the necessary preconditions for statements to be true. So the sentence My cat was run over yesterday assumes as a necessity the truth of I have a cat. Presupposition allows us the freedom not to make everything explicit in our communications. If we had to spell out all the details every time we spoke, then communicating would be an extremely lengthy and tedious business. Being able to assume a certain amount of knowledge on the part of listeners makes it possible to take shortcuts. The degree of shortcutting, however, depends on the context in communication takes place. A certain amount of presupposition is implicit in the linguistic system and can be studied just like entailment, in terms of its TRUTH CONDITIONS. This is the concern of semanticists for whom presupposition is a matter of formal logical relationships. The examples already given illustrate this strict view. We could call this SENTENCE PRESUPPOSITION. Many sentence presuppositions are produced by the presence of certain words. Linguists term these LEXICAL TRIGGERS. For example, there is a class of verbs like regret and realize, which are called FACTIVE VERBS because they presuppose the truth of their complement clause. Compare sentences (1a) and (1b) below. Only the sentence with the factitive verb realize presupposes (1c). The non-factive verb think has no such presupposition. (1a) John realized that it was raining. (1b) John thought it was raining. (1c) It was raining. Similarly compare (2a)(2c): (2a) Sarah regretted going out. (2b) Sarah considered going out. (2c) Sarah went out.
MUTUALLY ENTAIL

each

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