Questions tagged [semantics]
Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
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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 ...
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What is the minimal set of words that make a language "complete"?
In programming languages, there is a concept of turing completeness - whenever a system reaches "turing completeness", it is capable of emulating any programming language and, thus, as expressive as ...
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Textbooks in Formal Semantics / Montague semantics
I'm looking for a cheap, thorough but reasonably accessible introduction to formal semantics. There appear to be lots of options on the market. I assume there are plenty of experts in formal semantics ...
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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 ...
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Which languages conflate (imperfective) past and irrealis, and why?
In English, the "simple past" form of a verb can sometimes be used to convey irrealis meanings, without any preterite sense:
If I was rich, I'd buy a Porsche.
If you only knew!
I wish I was there ...
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How many words can be considered "core words"?
First of all I apologize but my English skills are by far below the complexity of the question I need to ask. I am not a specialist and my question is not related to a single language. I would like to ...
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What explanatory advantages does so-called "type theory" have?
Some linguists use a theory called "type theory"; you can see it in a few questions on this site.
Apparently it is based on the "type theory" of maths, logic, and computer science. Wikipedia's ...
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Are different inflectional forms of a word different words or the same word?
At some point, I gained the notion that inflections of a word didn't constitute different words, but rather different forms of the same word. This Wikipedia article however, says the process of ...
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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), ...
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Do other languages distinguish the verbs "to drink" when talking about alcohol?
It's interesting that English uses the verb "to drink" intransitively exclusively when talking about alcohol, as in:
I drink a lot.
But transitively when talking about anything else, as in:
I ...
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What are the differences between theoretical perspectives of the uses of the term "register"?
I'd be interested in asking people about their understanding of the term register and what this signifies for them. This would be a discussion about a specialised term and I'm sure there are multiple ...
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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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What is the evidence for the arbitrariness of the sign?
The "arbitrariness of the sign" is a fundamental principle of modern linguistics: that is, that there's nothing intrinsic about the sound sequence [kʰæt̚] or the phoneme sequence /kæt/ that links it ...
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Can the entropy per word be caculated precisely?And relation among information theory, semantics, and pragmatics
What we have gotten about the expected per word entropy of random yet grammatical text is just some upper bound of the the expected per word entropy, because we have not found the exact way to compute ...
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What is the relationship between syntax and semantics?
There are a number of positions you can take on what the relationship between syntax and semantics.
You could think that syntax is prior and so think that an expression's syntactic function ...
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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 ...
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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 conditions ...
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Are different "aspects" of a Polish verb the same lexeme or different lexemes?
Polish verbs have two "aspects", imperfective and perfective, which means you use a different word depending on whether the activity you're describing is ongoing or habitual, or if it's definite or ...
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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 ...
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Most succinct written language
I am wondering what the most succinct written language is.
I would call one language more succinct than another if that language could communicate the same idea as another with fewer characters. I ...
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What is the scope of negation?
A recent question posed by another user observed that the following sentence is ambiguous:
(1) Arthur does not discipline his children because he loves them.
This sentence can mean either that ...
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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.’
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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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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 Roget'...
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Measuring semantic complexity of a text
I do not have a linguistic background, but I am working on a research project that involves measuring the complexity of news. One of the metrics that I was interested in is the semantic complexity of ...
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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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What is the difference between function and predicate?
I am currently watching videos on formal semantics in Youtube. I find that the terms function and predicate are used a lot and that what they mean is similar. Functions take one or more arguments, and ...
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the difference between upward and downward entailment
How does one show the difference of an upward entailment between that of a downward entailment? I have tried doing examples where the negative polarity item is moved from the verb phrase to the noun ...
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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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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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How would languages that use an absolute frame of reference say that the heart is on the left side of the body?
In languages that use a relative frame of reference we can say that the heart is on the left side of the body, and no matter what direction you are facing that is true. But in an absolute frame of ...
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What is the relationship between lambda calculus and logical form?
I was introduced to lambda calculus as a notation to express the semantics of a phrase, based on the semantics of its parts.
I am under the impression lambda calculus does more than that, but I don’t ...
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Mathematical foundations of formal semantics in linguistic
First, I asked this on math.stackexchange, someone recommended to go here.
I am looking for information on the mathematical foundations of formal semantics in linguistic. After some time, I found ...
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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 ...
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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 "...
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Compositional semantic: Type of conjunctions
My question is in regard to semantic type theory in connection with syntax. I understand the underlying structure of what type a certain type of phrase is ( i.e., proper names are <e>, verbs can ...
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Truth-conditions of predicate-logic formulas for donkey sentences
I'm current learning about compositional semantics, quantifier raising and scope ambiguity in my semantics class and I'm having trouble answering some questions. I've attempted to answer the questions ...
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What is the type and lambda denotation of the disjunction 'or' in the phrase 'five girls or boys run' using the generalised quantifier theory? [closed]
'Five girls and boys'
I wonder what the denotation and type is of the disjunction 'or' in this phrase. I have 'five' as type <e,t><e,t>t> and the denotation as λPλQ[|P ∩ Q|= 10], but I ...
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On donkey sentences: why is this formalization incorrect?
Part of the difficulty surrounding donkey sentences, to my understanding, is about how hard they are to translate to FOL in a matter that is consistent with other translations to FOL in english.
Take ...
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What books to read about lexical semantics?
I want to have a systematic understanding on semantic field, lexical semantics, and semantic change. Skimming at Kate Kearns' Semantics, it seems that its focus is more about formal semantics, with ...
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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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What is the relation among connotation, semantics, and pragmatics?
I know that connotation meaning belongs to semantic meaning, but what I'm confused about is the connotation meaning is affected by the context, isn't it? If so, why does it not belong to pragmatic ...
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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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What do you understand by the term 'register'? [duplicate]
I'd be interested in asking people about their understanding of the term register and what this signifies for them. This would be a discussion about a specialised term and I'm sure there are multiple ...
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Is 'unless' semantically equivalent to the (English conjunction) exclusive 'or'?
Preface: I question this here because the author is a full-time linguist.
Source: The semantics of "unless" by Brian Buccola BA (Classics, Mathematics) PhD (Linguistics)
Bonus question: If “unless” ...
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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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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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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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How are affirmation, causality, similarity, time, etc... connected?
6 months after asking my original question, I still cannot see any of the connections declared as 'easy to see' or 'not difficult to see' here.
The problem is with your assumption that the senses ...
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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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