Questions tagged [semantics]
Semantics is the study of meaning, used to understand expressions through language.
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How does the Tree-Structure look like for this sentence? [closed]
I'm practicing drawing tree structures and I can't figure out how the tree for the following sentence looks like:
Peter thinks that John has disclosed their plan to the police.
I don't really ...
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Is there a standard accepted definition of in-situ quantification, and if so what is it?
I'm reading a paper that references Montague being focused on in-situ quantification. I'm not a linguist, so apologies for the naivety, but how does this differ from what is being called bounded ...
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Is the propositional attitude verb an eventive verb?
In terms of aspect, verbs can only be categorized into stative verb and eventive verb, right? Then how about propositional attitude verb like "think" "say"? Are they also eventive ...
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Books recommendation on syntax, semantics and pragmatics interaction
Can anyone here suggest any texts that deals especially with the interaction between Semantics, Pragmatics and Syntax?
I would like to understand how these various levels, especially syntax-semantics,...
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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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VerbNet semantic roles and preposition groups - how to determine matches
Using verbnet to test whether a sentence matches a frame, how does one determine whether the semantic role specified in the verbnet frame is appearing in the sentence or not?
e.g. on this verbnet ...
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What's the difference between event time and reference time?
Here is an example, "Molly had left at 10 pm". The temporal references will be event time < reference time < speech time, right? But why?
Also, for "The sun has set", why ...
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Is have+ negation equal to imperfective?
I know aspect can be categorized into perfective and imperfective, but I'm just curious whether the example "John hasn't gone to Paris" is still perfective or converted into imperfectve?
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some basic questions about morphological aspect
According to the definition, morphological aspect presents the reported event or state of affairs as if viewed either from inside the event (āin progressā) or outside the event (āas a wholeā).
For ...
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Can we build semantic mappings for CFG same as we do in CCG?
In CFG we "simply" have production rules. Whereas in Combinatory Categorial Grammar (CCG) on the other hand, we have both composition rules over categories, and a mapping from syntax to semantics (...
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Inverse scope reading
It is well known that any sentence with two or more quantifiers will result in in multiple possible readings depending on the ordering of the quantifiers. To take a known example (1), there will be ...
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Are these two propositions semantically entailed?
Now with spare time on my hands am rekindling my interest in linguistics. Doing some self study and am struggling with an exercise. I have 2 propositions and I am trying to work out the relationship ...
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What are the composition rules of these sentences?
What are the composition rules of these sentences?
let the cat out of the bag
take off clothes
burn the candle at both ends
For example:
the C-Rule of "bring home the bacon" is:
VC("...
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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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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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To what extent does this image accurately express the modularity of linguistic units?
This is a popular image floating around the internet, but like many things floating there, it seems like a gross simplification and just plain inaccurate.
However, Iām more of an armchair linguist ...
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Introduction to compositional semantics with types
I'm looking for an introduction (book or lecture notes) to compositional semantics based on e-t type theory that would be suitable for first-year level linguistics presupposing knowledge of elementary ...
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1answer
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Some questions about the basic concepts in semantics
According to the Semantics (Kate Kreans, 2011), there are two kinds of denotation for predicates. For example, the word 'dog', has extension (the set of all dogs in the actual world), and intension (...
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Smirnitsky's classification of homonyms
I'm a newbie on this site. I just learned the Smirnitsky's classification of homonyms and to be honest, I haven't quite grasped it yet. Here's the summary of the classification:
Full lexical homonyms ...
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How to explain “Propositions are sets of worlds”?
According to Kratzer, propositions are sets of worlds, but I find it really abstract. Are there any examples to explain it?
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Angelika Kratzer's modal bases
In Kratzerās theory, for each world w, modal base is the set of propositions p such that the speaker knows in w that p is true, e.g. f(w) = {p1, p2, p3}.
Following the standard assumption in possible ...
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How does lexical replacement occur?
For example, in Mycenaean Greek, the word for king was Wanax or Anax, whereas the Modern Greek word for king is Basileus, nothing at all like Wanax. How did this happen & how do these kinds of ...
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A question about possible worlds and truth value
The sentence "He must be Mr. White." can be interpreted as "In all the possible worlds, the proposition that he is Mr.White is true", right? But I'm just wondering all the possible ...
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What is the relation between modal base and ordering source?
I edited the question again. Here is an explanation for epistemic modal,
John must have the flu.
a. Epistemic Modal Base (MBepis) = { John has a fever, John has a cough, John did not get a flu shot, .....
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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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Are these generalized quantifiers correct?
According to Kearns (2011), I know that "the ten apples are bruised" can be interpreted as "āThe ten apples are bruisedā is true if and only if |A ā© B| = 10."
But how about this ...
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Semantical and functional morphemes
I have this idea in my head that when it comes to morphemes, there are two divisions at the top: "semantical morphemes" and "functional morphemes". Semantical morphemes are those ...
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A question about argument structure of see, watch, look
According to Kearns(2011), verbs like peer, gawk, spot, scan, sight, study, glare, eye, glance, observe, peep, stare, examine, glimpse, etc. can be categorized into "see" class, "watch&...
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Questions about identifying the thematic roles
I'm still not confident about whether I've totally understood thematic roles. Can you help me see whether these thematic roles are correct? Thank you in advance!
a.[Hilda] slung [the case] [overboard]....
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What's the tense ambiguity of this sentence?
I'm reading Kearns(2011) and in Ch9, the author says the sentence "All Torahās friends were rich then" is ambiguous in the possible scopes of tense and a quantifier NP. I know one meaning is ...
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Why are kinship terms typical examples of inalienablity but not meronomy?
According to Chappell & McGregor (1996: 4) there are four typical types of inalienably possessed nouns:
spatial relationships such as the ātopā or āfrontā of something
physical parts, especially ...
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Kayne on Conjunctions and Chomsky's Labelling Algorithm
I'm reading on coordination structures in relation to Chomsky's proposal of the Labelling Algorithm and stumbled upon Kayne (1994) The Antisymmetry of Syntax. In it, Kayne takes the view that ...
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Whatās the name of this figure of speech?
Saying āThe not tall boyā instead of āThe short boyā does it have a name?
jk - Reinstate Monica
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Is the word “Language” in “Natural Language Processing” plural or singular, count or mass? [closed]
I want to translate the word language in the term NLP to the Arabic language. so
I wonder, In Natural Language Processing, if the word language is countable or uncountable? whether it is plural or ...
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Two questions about referential opacity
I'm self-studying Kearns(2011), and here are two tricky questions I'm really curious about. I asked my classmates but they failed to answer it too. We really don't know how the first sentence can have ...
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Which (of the Germanic) languages support resultative constructions?
my question regards resultative constructions. Which of the Germanic languages supports resultative constructions?
It would be awesome if you could suggest any literature regarding any language. ...
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Is “double positive meaning negative” a common phenomenon?
The following joke is popular:
An MIT linguistics professor was lecturing his class the other day. āIn English,ā he said, āa double negative forms a positive. However, in some languages, such as ...
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Is the connection between 'right' in the sense of direction and concepts like 'correct' limited to Indo-European languages?
I'm now familiar with enough Indo-European languages to know in almost all of them there's an etymological connection or outright homonymy between the word(s) for 'right' in the sense of direction and ...
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Reflexivity of similarity-in-a-respect
In the discussion of similarity relations similarity is typically taken to be reflexive -- in fact, it's the one property that's nearly universally agreed upon. But not everyone thinks similarity is ...
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Why grammaticalized perfective aspect marker is reduced to be used only in narrative style?
I am looking at a set of ballistic verbs like nak, phenk 'throw' in a minor Indo Aryan language spoken in Dravidian vicinity, where one verb of the set is reduced to light verb with perfective meaning,...
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Why do some abstract concepts get described as a liquid in English?
For example, work is completely abstract but we talk about workflows, which is something pertaining to fluids. Why does this happen?
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Phonological parallel of a Lexical Decision Task
Lexical Decision Tasks have been used in psycholinguistics for long. It basically asks the participant if the word shown is meaningful (e.g. GIRL) or not (e.g. GISL) (ref: link).
But does a test like ...
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What's it called? Indicating no exceptions to the rule
In my study of an ancient language, Iām seeing certain phrasing that, in a prescription of proper behavior, means emphatically: āwithout exception!ā My question is: Do linguists have a label for this ...
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Automatic sentence negation
I am looking for an automatic sentence negation tool. Something that will be able to perform conversions like:
"this ball is large" ---> "this ball is small"
"you should ...
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1answer
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How do we explain to material implication?
According to Kearns (2011), for material implication, if p is false, q is true, then p->q is true. One example is given like this, p = Marie invited John, q = John will go. It can be translated ...
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What's the difference between logical modality and epistemic modality?
Logical modality includes logical necessity and logical possibility, while epistemic modality includes epistemic necessity and epistemic possibility. But when I read the explanation of these concepts ...
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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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What is the difference between theta-role, theta-grid and argument?
I know that theta-role has the distinctions like agent, theme, goal, etc., but all of them refer to entity, right? And argument can refer to both entity and sentence? Could you please explain them as ...
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Why is the intension of a sentence the set of all possible worlds in which it is true?
In Chapter 1 Section 1.3.3 in Kearns (2011), as for the extension and intension for sentence, Midge is grinning, the extension is "truth value (true or false) in the actual world", and the ...
