Questions tagged [semantics]
Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
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existential force and universal force
I was reading the paper below, and because of my lack of knowledge on the linguistic terms, I have been stuck half way through. If you would be kind enough to enlighten me, I would be very much ...
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26 views
Is there a term for the unit comprising a lexical item and its semantic role?
In a sentence such as "The man ate the cheese," man is a noun, with a definition in the lexicon, and is also the agent in the sentence. Is there a term for a unit that includes all of these components,...
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20 views
Necessity and Possibility, Domain Widen, Indeterminate Phrase
I wanna ask a question about semantics. It's on page 20 in the paper "Indeterminate Pronouns: The View from Japanese" (Kratzer & Shimoyama, 2002).
What I don't understand is the part Computing ...
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1answer
113 views
Is there a tendency to name money after other things?
Back in Spanish.StackExchange there was a question about the use of the word plata (literally "silver") in American dialects of Spanish instead of the proper word, dinero. European Spanish also avoids ...
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0answers
30 views
Compositional semantics without possible
Is there a way to do compositional semantics without possible worlds?
Especially in the case of semantics of fictional objects.
I was trying to think of fictional objects as 'grammatical object' so ...
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1answer
69 views
Standardized and ambiguity-free language
Is there exist a language (the natural or the constructed one) with a completely standardized and ambiguity-free rules, and which is suitable for the modern use?
I am wondering for a language which ...
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2answers
120 views
Words that signal future content
Some content words signal that future content will likely follow. The words seem to act as a typing system for instances of the content. For example:
"I have an idea." --> one expects the idea to ...
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2answers
76 views
What is it called to derive all the implied meanings from a sentence?
What would this process of gathering the meaning of a sentence be called? What would the segments derived from the sentence be called?
"John and Derrek both love cake"
-> John loves cake
-&...
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2answers
57 views
In case the fregean distinction between “sense” and “ denotation” is used in linguistics, what purpose does it serve in this discipline?
I'm referring here to the distinction Frege made in his paper called " Sense and denotation".
A classical example is " the morning star" and " the evening star" : different senses but same ...
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2answers
55 views
Can one avoid using the notion of meaning when defining syntax and pragmatics?
In an elementary course on philosophy of language ( at the highschool level) , I try to explain to students the distinction betweeen semantics, syntax and pragmatics.
Referring myself to Carnap/...
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1answer
38 views
How to find which verbs are semantically-related to a given verb or noun?
I am looking for a way to know, a tool that tells me, that, for example, the verb to show is the ditransitive semantic extension of the verb to see, simply because to show X Y = to let X see Y.
Let ...
2
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1answer
175 views
What is the intuition behind the term Transitive for verbs?
Why is a verb that takes an object called transitive? Why does that term make sense?
The way I see it is that it extends its action to an object rather than limits it within the subject. I take this ...
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1answer
105 views
Are there languages that can speak of continous things without discretizing them?
All languages I know of discretize qualities when trying to describe them. For example, languages generally sample a few words for describing a range of continous things like feelings ('terrible', '...
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3answers
145 views
Is there a specific linguistic term for the following practice of constructing new words/characters?
I have in mind examples such as the Scheingallizismus (lit. appearance of Gallicism) in German which are words/phrases constructed from French origins but are themselves unknown in French speaking ...
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0answers
27 views
Grammar induction from grammaticality rules
Let's have formalisation of grammaticality judgments in some deduction system. Is it possible to learn/induce grammar from rules that govern grammaticality judgments? Is there theory, that connects ...
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5answers
372 views
Word meaning as function of the composition of its phonemes
tl;dr
Linguists like to claim that the mapping from sounds to word meanings is mostly arbitrary. Can you point out research that supports this claim? Specificllay I am looking for hard evidience in ...
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3answers
103 views
Parsing with CCGs - lambda part
I am following this video tutorial, starting 6th minute
I would like to parse the following sentence
square blue or round yellow pillow.
For now I am interested in only how square and blue are ...
1
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1answer
91 views
Does this sentence have two meanings?
The sentence is
Some employee must leave.
I was told that it is actually ambiguous and has two meanings. But I can only see one. What are the two meanings?
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0answers
16 views
NLTK interface to Boxer
I came across the following code: NLTK interface to Boxer
Does anybody know where I can find how to use this interface (examples) or any additional documentation?
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0answers
22 views
Has there been any development or long lasting influence of Leonard Talmy's work?
I've read some of Talmy's work particularly that of his semantic analysis of the spatial organization inherent in the meaning of prepositions like "across","around" or "over" among others. I've found ...
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2answers
91 views
Are there languages without idioms?
Speakers of about any language but English agree that the idea that it may be raining cats and dogs is preposterous. But the same people do understand what an idiom is, and their own language may have ...
2
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0answers
43 views
Sememe and semanteme
I'm not sure I understand what is the relationship between sememes and semantemes.
I have the following definitions :
A sememe is a semantic content of a lexeme.
A semanteme is a unit ...
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1answer
59 views
Converting types into lambda notation and set notation
I am looking into different phrases and their semantic derivation.
For example, the verb sneeze:
Type (e,t)
λx[SNEEZE]x
In a sentence like: Michael and Jamie sneeze, I would like to know how to get ...
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3answers
114 views
Status of the determiner “any”
In "Mathematical Methods in Linguistics" by Partee, Meulen and Wall (1990), it is stated on page 385 that the determiner any has been a notorious problem for
semantic analysis, since it is sometimes ...
3
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1answer
65 views
Solving type mismatch
I am doing a semantic derivation of the following sentence:
Cathy and Fred drank three coffees.
I know the types of each individual component but when trying to work towards t, I find a type ...
3
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1answer
120 views
The semantic type of and?
Semantic types meaning for example a verb being of type (e,t), or an individual/entity being of type e.
I am confused in these two sentences, because I believe the semantic type of 'and' is different ...
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1answer
68 views
Do reborrowings and neologisms statistically help the communicative function of the languages or do the cause more confusion?
Rephrasing do reborrowings and neologisms help or bedim the communications?
I am making the distinction of instantaneous or contemporary communications(especialy for scientific use and social) and ...
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3answers
182 views
How do languages with negative concord express the actual negation of negative polarity items?
This is something I started wondering while working on formal logic, but I'm having trouble finding any papers that address it. Obviously, the standard way to express negation with a polarity item in ...
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2answers
56 views
Pre language concepts
I'm interested if there's a field of study, or some popular papers, that try to map the thought concepts/constructs that precedes (or succeeds) words, sentences and basically languages. Maybe as a sub-...
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4answers
4k views
Are there languages with no euphemisms?
I feel that euphemisms are a function of how society views certain aspects of life and feels that they should not be talked about directly. So are there languages with no euphemisms?
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1answer
79 views
How active formal semantics as a research field today?
I've heard from some people (working in computational linguistics) that today the area of formal semantics is on the decline. On the other hand, I can see many new papers from formal semanticists on ...
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0answers
35 views
Departments/research centers in formal semantics
I'm not sure whether this is considered off-topic, and if it is, then I'll delete my question.
The question is: what are some strong departments specialized in formal semantics? I know in the US, ...
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1answer
146 views
Does each verb have a corresponding noun with the same meaning
I believe that each main verb has (at least) one corresponding noun with the same meaning that is formed from gerund and derivation. For examples, discovery is from discover; reading is from read; ...
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4answers
100 views
Words which originate in superstition/myth [closed]
I'm interested in words, from any language, whose etymological origin 'exposes' superstitious or scientifically obsolete beliefs.
For example, the English disaster comes from Latin dis- + astro, ...
2
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1answer
78 views
Get Prolog (other functional programming language) rules/facts from LKB or similar system
My goal is to take simple sentence such as Grass is green and convert it to Prolog rule/fact. It does not have to be Prolog, but any other functional programming language with which I can perform ...
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0answers
29 views
What is the difference between directive function and informational function of a language?
In Geoffery Leech, Chapter 4, Semantics The Study of Meaning, It is written that
"The third function of language is the directive function whereby we aim to influence the behaviour and attitudes ...
2
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2answers
203 views
How long in a language several words for the same notion can coexist?
Sometimes a language can have several words for the same notion.
How long such a situation can last?
Is it good for a language to have it?
Should language bearers and linguists do something about it?
...
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2answers
131 views
Density of information/semantic of Chinese and Korean language versus european languages
Some years ago I had read an interesting article about how much information chinese people could put in one tweet of 140 characters. But I cannot find again this article.
I'm interested in having ...
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0answers
182 views
Problem Set Solutions to 'Semantics in Generative Grammar' (Heim & Kratzer)?
I'm working through Heim and Kratzer's 1998 textbook 'semantics in generative grammar' (Blackwell), which I understand is fairly standard for university level courses on semantics, but I can't find ...
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0answers
57 views
How relevant is WordNet nowadays?
How relevant is WordNet (both the original Princeton's and all other WordNets) as a tool for researchers now, decades later?
Do researchers consider it valuable?
And does the general research ...
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2answers
48 views
Can the need for ambiguity lead to merge of grammatical person, or other semantic merge?
My mother tongue doesn't distinguish 3.SG.F and 3.SG.M in speech. In some cases I feel the redundancy of it and the need for ambiguity of the grammatical person when I speak a language which ...
0
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2answers
64 views
Do grammatically close languages tend to begin to use literal translations of some words in other senses in that other language?
Let's have an English phrase "let's have" and the Czech equivalent "mějme". Perhaps, at some point in the past, someone was translating a math textbook and didn't know how to translate "let's have" in ...
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0answers
19 views
Partitioning concept space: deep-shallow dichotomy
Some words, like run, get, advance, etc... are "deep" in semantic structure. Other words (mostly names) like Japanese, French, tapir, strychnine, etc... are "shallow" in semantic structure. And some ...
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2answers
77 views
Computational/Formal Approaches to Paragraph-Level Semantics
There are several frameworks that have been built by both linguists and computer scientists to deal with the problem of semantic representation of sentences, most notably Abstract Meaning ...
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1answer
73 views
Hand gesture - Patting
I apologize if the following question is off-topic on this site.
Some time ago, I was sitting at a table in a cafeteria/canteen. A few tables away, I saw someone I knew. This person also saw me and ...
2
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1answer
109 views
Can we parse the hell out of this construction?
John only had the Ferrari for three months, but while he had it, he drove the hell out of it.
I'm pretty sure I aced the hell out of that test.
That last stuff you got us, we smoked the hell out of it....
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3answers
154 views
How to define colors in the Natural Semantic Metalanguage?
The Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) attempts to reduce the semantics of all lexicons down to a restricted set of semantic primitives. But in NSM, colors are not semantic primitives. How then to ...
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4answers
109 views
All that glitters is confusing!
"All that is gold does not glitter"
"Not all that is gold glitters"
The first phrase appears in Lord of the Rings, modified from Shakespeare, and contextually implies that "Aragorn is vastly more ...
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0answers
101 views
Is pragmatics a waste basket？
Is pragmatics a waste basket？ this sentence is abstracted from the study of language of Yule. I want to know why this statement comes into being( pragmatics is a waste basket.)
And is it really true? ...
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21 views
non-variable semantics of reflexives, need help
I'm reading various books on semantics (writing my first paper on semantics) however this book that was recommended to me by Heim & Kratzer has tricky questions with no answer guide, I looked ...
