Questions tagged [semantics]
Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
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What's the difference between 'concept' and 'meaning'?
Like in the title, are concepts expressed only by some parts of the speech:
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs ? In sentence: The cat ate food - all words are concepts or only the noun ? All those ...
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Name for a syndrome where someone falls in love with their rescuer? [closed]
Think of a scenario similar to your classic fairytale, where a damsel in distress is rescued by the prince, and she falls in love with him. Is there a name for this as a syndrome or similar? ...
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How similar are Talmy and Wierzbicka's theories of semantic primes?
I am an Italian PhD student in linguistics and I am interested in the analysis of the expression of Manner.
I went throught the works of Lakoff, Talmy and Wierzbicka recently and their event semantics ...
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What does it mean for the concept analysis of meaning to be as testable as theories in cognitive psychology?
Linguistics: An Introduction to Language and Communication (2017 7 ed). p. 220 Bottom.
Meaning as Concepts One way around this problem of the excessive specificity of images is to view ideas as ...
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36 views
Different ways to interpret stressed words in a sentence
I'm reading an introductory book on syntax and one of the exercises says to discuss the interpretations which the italicized expression can have in the given sentences and to give an appropriate ...
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1answer
62 views
Relationship of senses across parts of speech
We can have two words which describe a similar concept but have different parts of speech, for example live V, life N.
I live well.
Semantically similar or arguably equivalent construction:
My ...
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2answers
77 views
How can we use the same word in multiple different ways and distinguish the senses so easily?
Say for example some plant names. We have an orange which we easily know is a fruit, but is also a color. We have green which is a color, and greens which is plants, or money, or I could imagine it ...
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Complete NL formalisms w/out syntax
What are the natural language formalisms that, roughly speaking, do away w/ syntax as a separate level of description? Cf. Steedman's "The Syntactic Process" (2000):
"...syntactic structure is ...
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Are words in form of verbs and adjectives abstract concepts
There are concrete (like tree, dog) and abstract concepts (like war, love etc.).
I see that concept is expressed as a noun, but what about other parts of speech (verbs, adjectives, etc.)? Are they ...
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Definition of “concept” and "conceptual field in cognitive linguistics
I am writing a Master's thesis dedicated to the conception field "business" in Modern English Language. The definition of "concept" and "conceptional field" is greatly discussed by Russian linguists, ...
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The literal/figurative distinction and its test
I am wondering if there is technical definition of the literal/figurative distinction in semantic theories (I have only found definitions by examples or definitions that simply repeat the dictionary ...
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Why does matching any root of a question to any root of potential answers gives better text understanding results?
I'm trying to find a way to prevent Intelligent Agents with Reading Comprehension and Question Answering abilities to answer question from documents from a given dataset.
After dependency parsing we ...
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1answer
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What is the definition of a causally coherent text?
I am trying to measure the causal coherence of text documents using NLP techniques to test a hypothesis (as far as I understand, there are different types of coherence in text but I am focusing on ...
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Connections between categories of type logical grammar and categories of combinatory categorial grammar?
There is nice book https://www.amazon.co.uk/Type-Logical-Grammar-Categorial-Logic/dp/0792332261/ that considers both Montague grammar (type logical grammar (TLG)) in chapters 1 and 2 and combinatory ...
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2answers
71 views
Syntactic and semantic ambiguity
Does syntactic (structural) ambiguity always come with semantic ambiguity, or is semantic ambiguity always due to syntactic ambiguity? Or are both statements correct?
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Can we use the reverse of mental priming to get out of the 'Mary's Room' problem? [closed]
So there is this semantics/psycholinguistics concept called mental-priming, which says for a concept called 'red' nearby concepts like apple, color, danger etc. 'light up' . Can we teach Mary, what ...
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Is there any detailed documentation of VerbNet's semantic representation?
In VerbNet, each frame has a semantic representation like this:
cause(Agent, E) manner(during(E), directed motion, Agent)
!contact(during(E), Agent, Patient) manner(end(E),forceful, Agent)
...
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Is there a linguistic notion of a “static” vs “dynamic” noun?
I would have typed a clearer question in the title, but it would have been way too long.
By "static," I mean a word or phrase that refers to one object, and one object only. ex.
The Eiffel Tower
The ...
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1answer
80 views
Does Sanskrit निस् • (nis) “out, forth, away” come from PIE *ni- “in; down?” with meaning shift from “in” to “out”?
निस्·nis "out, forth, away" > nirvana "to blow out, extinguish; out of breath?"
नि·ni "down, back, in, into" < PIE *h₁én "in; down?"
My question is whether these words are from the same PIE root? ...
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How is a meaningful sentence or paragraph constructed?
I don't have a formal background of linguistics, but I'd like to know how a sentence or paragraph becomes meaningful to a reader, and how one can construct that. I think it falls to the areas of ...
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Formal semantics (Montague, type-theoretical) of noun clauses
Partee has nice summary about the formal semantics of relative clause http://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2005/MGU05Lec10.pdf (subordinate adjectival clause). E.g.
At least one boy who Mary loves is ...
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1answer
34 views
Formal semantics (Montague, type-theoretical) of adverbial clauses
Partee has nice summary about the formal semantics of relative clause http://people.umass.edu/partee/MGU_2005/MGU05Lec10.pdf (subordinate adjectival clause). E.g.
At least one boy who Mary loves is ...
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1answer
38 views
Is it possible that whole relative clause refers/describes one word/phrase in the main clause (without anaphora)?
My running example is the sentence (from the VAT law of one country):
The building land is the plot in relation to which the building permit has been issued.
There are possible at least two views on ...
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1answer
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(A)Telicity & Events
Dowty's (1979) classified predicates into:
1. States 'the woord is burning' ---Atelic
2. Activities 'Mary pushed the cart' ---Atelic
3. Accomplishments 'Mary melted the chocolate' ---Telic
4. ...
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1answer
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Help with distributional analysis of verb phrases
For my semantics homework we are asked to test different verb phrases in different environments. I am asked to categorize the different verb phrases (on the basis of their distributions. I am not ...
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Is gasoline, wine, coca-cola an artifact?
There are liquids naturally present in nature, like water, blood, oil, etc.
But gasoline, wine or milk shake are produced by humans.
Many thesauri, e.g. WordNet, don't classify later as artifacts, ...
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42 views
“As long as”, “So long as”, in logic (ambiguity?)
I'd love an expert opinion on how to interpret "as long as" and "so long as" when doing logic (specifically, whether it's considered a necessary or sufficient conditional indicator).
Also, I'd ...
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37 views
davidsonian semantics
I hope everyone is fine. I was wondering if you could help me with some suggestions about which book(s) should I start with to learn the Davidsonian semantics, so that I will be able to read and write ...
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1answer
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what’s the difference between ‘concept’ and ‘prototype’ as semantic terminologies?
Both terms, concept and prototype occur in semantic texts roughly in the sense a mental object denoted by a word. There should be some difference in definition between the two.
I read the following ...
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Discourse Structure: Taxonomy, Labels
Several taxonomies for discourse structures (markers, connectives, functions) exist including PDTB, RST, RST extensions, etc. That said, I've noticed that several of these efforts are 10-20 years old. ...
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Is TRAY a container?
I am working closely with semantic class of containers. It's not that obvious though how to define the class. Should it be enclosed? Obviously not, spoon is an example. Could flat surface serve as the ...
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Semantic vs Pragmatic [duplicate]
I am revising for my NLP quiz and am getting confused at the difference between semantic and pragmatic. I studied that semantic is the study of words and their meaning in sentences while pragmatic ...
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1answer
63 views
formula for Brunét's index
I am having trouble figuring out the formula for Brunet's index which can be found in this paper http://csbapp.uncw.edu/data/mscsis/annalspaper.aspx?v=6&i=1&p=11.
I tried to apply it to ...
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1answer
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What do the semicolon and period mean in semantics?
What do the semicolon and period mean, please?
For context, this is from Truswell's 'Events, Phrases and Questions' and this section in particular is talking about the causal ordering of events
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2answers
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Generativist, Generative, Interpretive Semantics
is there anyone who can please clarify how these schools diverge from and converge with each other? A prof. told me interpretive semantics and generative semantics can be both categorized under ...
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Translation of 'verbes symétriques' from French to English
What do you think is the accurate equivalent les verbes symétriques in English?
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Am I understanding semantic entailment correctly?
I'm trying to make sure I understand entailment properly, but my prof basically said two sentences that only briefly explained what entailment is, and he's not teaching this course with a textbook.
...
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How do I tell/illustrate the difference between different meanings of 'adumbrate'?
Adumbrate can mean foreshadow or overshadow. In the following sentence, how does the reader know what the writer meant?
The strife in Bloody Kansas in the 1850s adumbrated the civil war that would ...
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1answer
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How to write 'x said they would do y but…' in predicate logic?
How do I write "X said to Y that they would do A today, but B happened yesterday" in predicate logic?
So for example;
Bart said to Lisa that he would braid her hair today, but he chopped his hand ...
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Are these phrases downward entailing?
Please consider the following phrases with respect to downward entailment:
Mary remembers that French students saw her.
Mary remembers that tall French students saw her.
(in my opinion, this is not ...
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2answers
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Downward entailing verbs: is the verb “remember” downward entailing?
I have some doubts if there is downward entailing environment with "remember":
a. Mary forgot that she saw anyone.
b. Mary forgot that anyone saw her.
c. #Mary remembered that she saw anyone.
d. #...
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1answer
59 views
What are some plausible patterns that could develop in alien languages? [closed]
I ask the question here and not in world formation because as an aspiring author I know that linguistics and other such specialists in the study of language
treat the notion of language in a very ...
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Is there a phrasal verb corpus somewhere online?
I'm working on a project where I have syntactic frames in the form of something like "N.agent V PP.stimulus", where each PP consists of a P and a N.
I have a set list of verbs, and a list of PPs for ...
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3answers
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'Non-standard' indexicals
Currently, I am doing some research on indexicals, by which I mean words like:
I
here
now
today, tomorrow, yesterday
local
present, current
For ease of reference, let’s call these the ‘standard’ ...
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0answers
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what does 'meaning' mean in the field of lingustics? [closed]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning
would necessarily and absolutely prefer a link (citation) to a primary source that is usable via the Web
if and in the case the 'versions' of 'meaning' has ...
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0answers
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Connections between combinatory categorial grammars and abstract categorial grammars?
Are there connections/translation or common tools usage/adaptation between combinatory (concrete) categorial grammars (incl. Lambek calculus) and abstract categorial grammars? Can tools for one of ...
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3answers
213 views
Principle of Compositionality: Free Word Order Languages?
Can anyone explain what additional claims can be made for the Principle of Compositionality in regards to a language like Basque?
I understand that Basque is a "free word order" language and the ...
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What is the source of knowledge/discovery for the semantics? Automation of semantic science?
Natural sciences observe facts and make models. Mathematics more or less arbitrarly generates axioms and investigates all the possible consquences of them. What is the source of semantic knowledge (e....
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2answers
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Looking for semantic hierarchy, tagset or connected active research
I am working on building a semantic markup for my native language and I have bumped into the fact that ready semantic hierarchy or tagset is a very scarce resource.
What I am looking for is something ...
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2answers
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Semantic parsing vs Propositional Representation
Propositional representation is explained on Wikipedia.
How is semantic parsing different from propositional representation? Or is propositional representation the next step after you do semantic ...
