Questions tagged [semantics]
Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
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Metastasizing attributes of a member of a class to a class, in cognitive grammar
I would like to know if there is a theoretical analysis regarding how people cognitively process information about, and form judgments about, a class of things, based on knowledge of specific members ...
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Is "non-existent" a privative adjective?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privative_adjective
Is "non-existent" a privative adjective like "imaginary", "fictional", "hypothetical", etc.?
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To say of something, must it exist at least as a concept?
To refer to x, must x exist at least as a concept? Is there any sense in which a nonsense term can refer to anything?
For example,
If "Round square" doesn't refer to anything, is "I ...
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Recommend books on Synecdoche, and its causes and origins
Just like these monographs on Metonymy, I seek monographs on the causes, motivations, reasons of Synecdoche that may be neurolinguistical or psycholinguistical.
Your recommendations shall
categorize ...
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Philosophy of Language differences between Written and Oral Discourse
How do I best illustrate the differences between written and oral discourse; how can I illustrate the importance of spontaneity and direct contact, that the words spoken will not be the same if one is ...
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Having a hard time distinguishing between the simple and perfective aspects
It seems to me that the truth conditions for "David baked cookies" are identical to "David has baked cookies," in that both are true if at some moment of time in the past "...
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Semantics and Coordination
Is coordination only governed by syntax?
What about sentences like "I am afraid of and independent of him"?
Is there nothing odd about it?
The coordinated element is a PP, so it conforms to ...
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What is the relationship between complement, adjunct, argument and modifier?
For the terminology used in linguistic papers, it is quite confusing. It seems that [complement] and [adjunct] are a pair of concepts that are often distinguished from each other. However, sometimes, ...
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On an argument concerning whether weather *it* is truly an expletive
Morgan (1968) claims that many instances of unstressed it are meaningless. He offers the following argument: the pronoun he in (1a) can refer to either John or Bill but the gap in (1b) can only refer ...
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By what mechanism do `want` and `know` fail to form commands?
Verbs like want and know seem to resist being used in imperative constructions. In particular, it does not seem possible to use them to command people to change their mind about what they want or to ...
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What is the difference between attributive adjective and predicative adjective?
When I began to read articles related to English adjectives, I often encountered these two names: "predicative adjectives" and "attributive adjectives". It seems that the author ...
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Is there a "Range" Phrase?
Is anyone aware of any discussion in linguistics of the possibility of a "range" phrase? As I tentatively conceive of the range phrase, a true range phrase refers to a readily identifiable ...
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The Power of Word Choice in Changing Perceptions
I am looking for any studies, research, or theories about how choosing particular words or descriptions can lead to perceptual changes and judgements. This would be like loaded or emotive language.
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Question on the semantics of perfective form
I learn that in English, accomplishment predicates in the simple past (perfective) form usually entail that the event has reached its culmination point and the theme has entered into the result state. ...
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Are there two senses of "grammar" with respect to semantics?
Are there two senses of "grammar"?
Is it correct that
in linguistics, semantics (and maybe also pragmatics) belongs to and is specified in grammar? (My impression from limited reading of a ...
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What are the semantics of questions and requests/commands?
In linguistics, is it correct that statement i.e. declarative clause (sentence) has a truth value (true or false or maybe other value?) i.e. logic as its semantics?
What does a question (yes-no, or ...
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Does the function of a clause belong to semantics or syntax?
In linguistics, is it correct that a clause is classified according to its function into declarative/statement, interrogative/question (yes-no, or content one), and imperative/request/command?
Does ...
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Is situational context of discourse analysis widely accepted?
I really need to know how widely {situational context of discourse analysis} is accepted as legitimate across linguists. Is it widely acknowledged that ignoring {situational context} can result in the ...
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Is there any way to describe how languages are typically spoken, like there is a way to describe grammar?
In English, when ordering food, you'd say "I would like x," not "Please let me purchase x," even though both are grammatically correct. You can say that "I would be liking x&...
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Is there a descriptive term for the demonstrative pronoun "that" which conveys the underlying notion of pointing to something *out there*?
I have read (somewhere) that the demonstrative pronoun describes something outside or away from the observer and that this has a descriptive term, philosophically not as a grammar term. That out there....
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What does Salikoko Mufwene mean with regards to #3 on the progressive aspect?
From Wikipedia:
Salikoko Mufwene contrasts the effect of the progressive form on the
meanings of action verbs versus those of lexically stative verbs:
It converts events expected to be punctual into ...
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In absolute numerical terms, what is the computational size of human language, particularly semantic processing?
What is a numerical estimate for the “RAM” of the human brain required to actually compute resolutions of the semantic content of sentences?
For example, consider there is an algorithm that expends 1 ...
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Do the subjects of verbs such as "watch," "listen for," and "read" stand for agents, experiencers, both, or something else?
one: It’s well-known that the subjects of different verbs in different contexts can take subjects that have different semantic roles.
For example, in the sentence “Jill ate a hamburger,” “Jill” ...
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What is a leading framework for describing world-states?
In light of this article:
Mondal, Prakash. "Towards a unified representation of linguistic meaning" Open Linguistics, vol. 9, no. 1, 2023, pp. 20220225. https://doi.org/10.1515/opli-2022-022
...
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Does Swedish "varje" have both distributive and collective readings?
"Varje" is often translated as "each" or "every" in English. However, "each" and "every" have different uses in regard to collectivity/distributivity....
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Why words are the basic building blocks of language?
I'm asking this both in the sense that for me (as a human) words seem to be the fundamental building blocks of language, and from the perspective of NLP applications, where word-vectors and word-...
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Are there any natural languages that have one or more morphemes that each stand for both "other(s)" and "more"?
I've been working on the quantifiers for a conlang of mine and noticed that the concepts "other" and "more" are each related to the notion of additional quantities. So, we have ...
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How does an opaque context come about in adverbials?
I cannot get my head around examples (19) and (20) in Maienborn & Schäfer (2011) (in v. Heusinger, Maienborn & Portner (eds), HSK 33.2). How is it that necessarily (as an epistemic adverbial) ...
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How to interpret Givón's (1981) implicational scale for indefinite articles developed from numeral 'one'?
I'm having trouble understanding the implicational scale for indefinite articles developed from numeral 'one' given by T Givón (1981: 50-52).
T. Givón in his paper "On the development of the ...
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Are there any thesauruses or publications that deal with the differentiation of near-synonyms in native/aboriginal/endangered languages?
I'm looking for any publications or thesauruses that deal with the differentiation of near-synonyms in any of the endangered/native languages (especially something that deals with a large chunk of the ...
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Canonical treatment of tense and modality within formal semantics
I'm thinking about expressions like "Ronit must have won the game," where we have an intersection of tense and modality.
Conventional wisdom is to use Kratzer's notion of ordering source and ...
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To what extent can the prosody factors influence the literal meanings or not at all
My question is whether or not the prosody factors can change the literal meanings of the propositions. The pragmatics is not considered in this case.
I would very much appreciate it if someone gives ...
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How to show the difference between the opaque reading and the transparent reading via syntax?
Is there any way using any version of Generative Grammar (EST, REST, GB, MP) to show the difference between "the transparent reading" and "the opaque reading" of the same line ...
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Semantic drift between wood, fire-wood and fire
Following the discussion about question related, because comments aren't intended for extended discussion: Can you provide research to corroborate that It is known that in Australian languages the ...
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Besides Indo-Pacific and Australian languages does anywhere "firewood" semantically develop to "fire"?
It is known that in Australian languages the word for "tree" developed into "firewood" and then to "fire". I wonder if this development typical?
Particularly, could PIE *...
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Are argument clauses and verbal expressions individual constants or individual variables (or perhaps individual predicate-argument constants)?
I am studying first order predicate logic in the context of formal semantics for natural language. Propositions are understood in terms of predicates and their arguments. A given predicate takes 0 to ...
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Any examples of any language bifurcating the past into past before one's life and past during one's life?
It can be either from a conlang or a natlang but I wasn't able to find any examples.
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Research on Preposition semantics
Is there any literature on preposition semantics available online?
Much of it is centered around spatial prepositions but what I want to know is more general approaches to the subject matter.
Thank ...
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Relation Between Unreal & Past Tense Forms
Background
I am learning English grammar. Having been confused about modal usage, I decided to pick out a book on the subject, coming to "Modality and the English Modals" by F. R. Palmer. In ...
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Is there a linguistic term for a term in a language refering to a specific technology, outliving said technology?
In language, phrases and various semantic expressions referring to technologies often make their way into the language, even if that technology is mostly obsolete.
Examples of this could include "...
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Paralinguistic features
If pragmatics deal with how the extralinguistic environment affects the interpratation of an utterance, which branch of linguistics deals with how the paralinguistic environment affects the ...
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Does a sound denote a thing and a word denote that sound or a word denote a thing a sound denote that word?
Recently, I picked up a book on mathematics that highlighted the importance of distinguishing between a word and what it represents. Now, if only words and things that they denote were involved in ...
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Can an inference be be an implicature and also a presupposition?
A sentence like ‘the boy stopped working’ gives the inference that he was working before. Is this inference an implicature or a presupposition? Is it possible that it is both?
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Why are reflexives prohibited in partitive constructions?
In a partitive construction, reflexives do not usually occur:
Julie and Bob are talking about the two of them/*themselves.
The following example is from COCA:
The men, all of them, stared into ...
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Denotation of common nouns
Do common nouns have any singular 'denotation' or do all of them denote entirely contextually? For example in 'a car' is 'car' denoting a type of object and the entire phrase describing an object of ...
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What is the difference between if and if-then?
According to [33]. Davis, W. (1983). Weak and strong conditionals. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64(1), 57-71., there exist two versions of if conditional as shown below.
(1) a. If it is humid, ...
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Using 'is' after non-denoting phrases
Usually 'is' can be an identity statement 'John is my boss' or a predication like 'John is angry', how about using 'is' for something that refers to no particular idea or object?
For example 'a ...
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Semantics- predicate calculus and quantifiers
I have a sentence of "No A is B" (No child is sad)
I been given 2 formulas:
¬∃x[C(x) ⋀ S(x)]
∀x[C(x) →¬ S(x)]
I needed to show that they are the same by deriving the truth conditions.
I got ...
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Judgment about obligatory de se reading
(1) John himself said he hates himself.
(2) John said he hates himself.
In sentence (1), does he obligatorily refer to John? Or it can refer to other people as well like in sentence (2).
In more ...
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Relationship of spoken and written language and truth of sentences
I am not entirely sure if this is the appropriate site and whether these are the appropriate tags for this topic, so if that is not the case, please feel free to let me know.
I never thought twice ...
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