Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
1
vote
0answers
32 views
Why semantics can't be the input to syntax
so I have a Syntax II final Friday and am really confused about one of the study guide questions: "Why can't semantics be the input to Syntax? Illustrate with examples". Could anyone please shed some ...
4
votes
2answers
130 views
Conjunctive NPs in Montague Grammars
I'm considering the sentence
Some man and some woman visited a garden
Obviously it's not 100% unambiguous how many gardens there are, but I think most people would agree there is just one common ...
0
votes
0answers
49 views
Rates and Units: The difference?
My friend/coworker and I got into a pretty heated discussion about a label for a graph I had made and the units I was using. We work in internet advertising where there is a type of unit (I consider ...
1
vote
0answers
53 views
On price tags/labels why some nouns are used singular/plural regardless of countability?
Is there any explanation regarding why some nouns are used in singular form while the others are used in plural form such as price tags in stores or menus in restaurants. I know that in languages ...
3
votes
0answers
71 views
Is there count/mass distinction in European Portuguese as it is in English?
It is said that European Portuguese has count/mass distinction as many Indo-European languages. However I noticed out that all products/items at stores in Portugal are labeled in singular form. In ...
1
vote
6answers
140 views
Textbook suggestions for syntax, semantics/pragmatics and phonetics/phonology
I am coming to linguistics from a completely non-linguistic background; I was a mathematician. Next year I will start taking some serious (Master's level) linguistics courses and I would like to have ...
5
votes
1answer
87 views
How do languages with imperfect aspect typically convey distinctions between habitual, iterative, and progressive aspects?
How does languages with imperfect aspects typically convey distinctions between habitual, iterative, and progressive aspects?
In English, which does not mark its verbs for imperfect aspect, we have ...
1
vote
2answers
72 views
What is the semantic difference between 'thing', 'object', 'piece' and 'item'? [closed]
I'm editing an article which talks about early terms for artefacts in the Russian language, but the article is in English. Both Russian and English have a diverse field of synonyms for 'thing' - I was ...
0
votes
0answers
28 views
What is the truth value of propostions that have failed in Presupposition?
According to formal sementics propositions (semantic term for "sentences", "clauses") have truth value. The truth value shows whether sentence is true or false and it is denoted as 1 or 0.
What about ...
6
votes
3answers
155 views
Mathematical preparation for postgraduate studies in Linguistics
I posted this question in http://math.stackexchange.com/ and it was suggested to me that it would be a good idea to submit the question here, too, as there might be more specialists on the matter.
I ...
2
votes
1answer
94 views
Can the root ש ל ם be used to mean “Submission”?
In Arabic, the root S-L-M (س ل م) has a general meaning of "Peace", but can also be used for "Submission" (such as in the words Islam/Muslim). Given the close relation between Hebrew and Arabic, I'm ...
3
votes
2answers
137 views
Defining an idea
I am currently writing my master thesis about extracting "ideas" for innovation from text stored digitally. Thus the project is a combination of "Marketing", "Datamining/statistics" and "Linguistics". ...
1
vote
2answers
132 views
Linguistic relativity
There is some evidence that word choice dictates not only how we think but also how we act.
For example, subjects in Bargh's controversial experiment were reported to walk more slowly after reading ...
2
votes
1answer
78 views
Useful Features of Semantic Graphs
If this question is too general, please let me know, and I will revise it.
I am developing a program that measures all sorts of "features" of a sentence, everything from sentence length, to average ...
0
votes
0answers
52 views
Which layers of the language is dealing with co-reference resolution and how to solve it computationaly?
Which layers of the language is dealing with co-reference resolution and what are the steps to solve this problem in NLP?
3
votes
0answers
70 views
Tool for manually POS tagging texts
I'm interested if there is a text or set of texts where each word is correctly POS tagged.
I know there are algorithms that can associate POS tags to the words, but there are always many of ...
2
votes
1answer
306 views
Semantics of ordinary language mathematical claims?
Can anyone point me towards some good work on the semantics of ordinary language mathematical claims? Any tips would be greatly appreciated.
For example, when a geometer says of Euclidean geometry ...
3
votes
1answer
123 views
Truth value of a proverb
One of the key tools of analysis in classical semantics is the concept of truth value. The content of a proposition, when contextualized in a particular world and a particular time, should have a ...
7
votes
1answer
209 views
Using the word “dream” as hope for the future across languages
Many languages seem to use the same word for "dream" (psychological phenomenon) and "dream" (hope for the future). Quick scanning on Wiktionary gives the list:
Germanic languages: Danish (drøm), ...
5
votes
2answers
164 views
Is redundancy in language really impossible? (Case of the Spanish imperfect subjunctive)
I have heard time and again that languages will reject words and structures that are redundant. That is, for example, if though two words may seem like they are perfect synonyms (e.g., rotund and ...
0
votes
0answers
48 views
Is “I'm paraphrasing myself when I say this…” autological?
A friend of mine posted the following on his Facebook wall:
I'm paraphrasing myself when I say this...
I know this isn't a paradox, is it autological? Is it recursive? Is it even a true statement? ...
12
votes
5answers
246 views
What divides semantics from pragmatics?
To my understanding... Semantics is the raw meaning and connotations a word carries on it's own and pragmatics is the context-dependent meaning a word holds.
Is this accurate? Can anyone explain it ...
2
votes
1answer
87 views
How do I get 'hosted' from 'He had a party at his house'?
I'm new to NLP so bear with me if this isn't possible yet. I am interested in taking a sentence like 'He had a party at his house' to 'He hosted a party at his house' or simply the verb 'hosted'. Is ...
5
votes
1answer
204 views
What does the term “ontology” mean vis a vis the study of natural language?
Many of us know that the term "ontology" applies to the a priori philosophical study of the nature of existence. Ontology is a branch of metaphysics (the attempt to coherently characterize reality a ...
5
votes
0answers
152 views
Do “only if…” and “if… only then…” have the same LF representation?
I'm currently writing a term paper where I am comparing if... then..., only if..., and if... only then... statements.
I've noticed that only if p q and if p, only then q have the same truth ...
4
votes
1answer
159 views
What is pragmatic strengthening?
The term "pragmatic strengthening" has been tossed around in a lot of papers I've been looking at for a project I'm doing on idioms, and I can't seem to find a simple definition anywhere. Is anyone ...
18
votes
2answers
331 views
False-belief verbs
Some languages, including Mandarin and Cantonese, have a dedicated belief verb that one uses for describing false beliefs. For instance, in Mandarin, yiwei is used to describe beliefs that the ...
1
vote
1answer
84 views
What is a “witness world”? Is this notion related to “witness sets”?
In reading a paper by Anand & Hacquard, I've come across the term "witness world," where a witness world can verify a proposition, p. I haven't been able to google an easily understandable ...
2
votes
3answers
111 views
Movement and Speech
This may be a little weird, but...
How can we describe words or phrases that have a specific accompanying movement? What sort of topics do they cover? To what degree has research been done on this? ...
3
votes
1answer
62 views
References on Definiteness
Does anybody happen to know of any good and fairly readily-available surveys of the language-specific semantics of definiteness cross-linguistically? Specifically, I'm interested in all the various ...
6
votes
0answers
50 views
What is the role of syntax in understanding event descriptive sentences?
I've been closely following the work stemming from St. John and McClelland's Sentence Gestalt Model, which uses a connectist model to extract semantic information about events from sentences without ...
11
votes
3answers
245 views
Does any language use bound morphology to express the concept “less”?
In English, many adjectives support the -er ending to express a notion of exceeding:
John is taller than Mary (is).
Mary is smarter than John (is).
Of course, you can also have the more analytic ...
4
votes
2answers
171 views
The meaning of “what”?
"What" is defined grammatically as an interrogative pronoun
... used interrogatively in asking for the specification of an identity, quantity, quality, etc. (Wiktionary)
In dictionaries, ...
7
votes
3answers
471 views
Is there a difference between plurality in semantics and in morphology?
With regard to morphology a common example of a lexeme is [dog, dogs] where dogs is the plural inflexion of the lemma dog modified by the -s suffix, marking plurality.
Although I can accept that dog ...
2
votes
1answer
65 views
Do we have any idea how widespread NPIs are?
Most languages have words that function as negative polarity items. Is this believed to be true of all human languages? Are there specific languages that have been plausibly claimed not to have any ...
2
votes
3answers
561 views
Identifying studies on how English language reflects sexism
Right now I'm looking for papers on how sexism is reflected in the English language. A lot of the literature is from the 1970's and is seen as a little out there and not empirical. Besides reading the ...
4
votes
1answer
188 views
Thematic roles in some languages
I have a question about semantic roles in Latin and Russian.
Latin
Quibusdam […] sudor erumpit.
someone. DAT.PL sweat. NOM.SG come out.PRES.3SG.
‘Some people start sweating.’
...
10
votes
0answers
183 views
Is there any language that doesn't express Tense but allows “aspectual coercion”?
Mandarin Chinese appears to be a language that may not express tense (at least in the way I will define below), and it does not seem to allow aspectual coercion.
By not expressing Tense I mean, such ...
10
votes
4answers
389 views
Are there languages that distinguish between inclusive and exclusive “or”?
I would be especially interested in Indo-European languages or other common language families, but failing that, I would be very interested if it exists at all, because it is an important distinction ...
21
votes
2answers
342 views
Are there any non-Indo-European languages with go-periphrasis?
Some Indo-European languages have a construction called go-periphrasis, by which some form of the verb go is used in conjunction with the main verb to mark tense. Most languages that have this feature ...
7
votes
1answer
132 views
Is there any language that expresses the category D but doesn't have inverse scope?
By "expresses the category D" I mean, preferably, that there is solid evidence/argumentation for a given morpheme to be analyzed as overtly heading a Determiner projection. I would limit such ...
5
votes
2answers
149 views
What's the “state of the art” for methodology in syntactic/semantic experiments
I'm looking for good recent books or articles on experimental methodology in syntax or semantics. Ideally they'd be geared towards working formal linguists who don't know much about psycholinguistics ...
2
votes
1answer
129 views
Where did the semantic categories of C. D. Buck's dictionary of synonyms come from?
The 22 categories of words used in Carl Darling Buck's "A Dictionary of Selected Synonyms in the Principal Indo-European Languages" (1949) are quite different from for instance the categories in ...
11
votes
6answers
820 views
The relationship between “orange” the colour and “orange” the fruit
This is something that bugged me before I studied linguists, and it still does - why is the word "orange" so often used for both the colour and the fruit cross-linguistically? Every language I've ...
2
votes
1answer
60 views
How to characterise set/assign-from/to
If I want to talk about moving information, I can use verbs "set" or "assign" in combination with nouns referring to source and target information containers, right?
My intuition/instinct is to ...
15
votes
2answers
324 views
Are there any languages that mark nouns as mass?
Nouns like water, mud, furniture in English are odd with plural morphology (adding -s, as in furnitures), with numerals (three furniture(s)), and seem to have their own quantifier (much water but not ...
8
votes
2answers
246 views
Distinguishing between epistemic and circumstantial readings (without recourse to temporality)?
How can you/should you empirically distinguish between epistemic and circumstantial readings of modals?
I (at least think I) understand how the two readings are supposed to be distinguished ...
4
votes
0answers
216 views
What is the origin of the “hierarchy of projections”, the language system or (some) conceptual system?
All languages display some form of the hierarchy of projections, to the extent we understand what this is: in a given clause, roughly, complementizers are higher than inflectional heads are higher ...
5
votes
2answers
112 views
Where could I find a corpus that is purely descriptive in nature and limited in scope?
I'm trying to build a cognitive model of how people learn a event representation from a sentence describing the event, based on St. John & McClelland's Sentence Gestalt Model.
However, while ...
