Docsity
Docsity
Prepare for your exams
Prepare for your exams

Study with the several resources on Docsity

Earn points to download
Earn points to download

Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan

Guidelines and tips
Guidelines and tips
Sell on Docsity
Sell on Docsity
Docsity AI
Docsity AI
Log inSign up

Prepare for your exams

Study with the several resources on Docsity

Find documents

Prepare for your exams with the study notes shared by other students like you on Docsity

Search for your university

Find the specific documents for your university's exams

Docsity AINEW

Summarize your documents, ask them questions, convert them into quizzes and concept maps

Explore questions

Clear up your doubts by reading the answers to questions asked by your fellow students

Earn points to download

Earn points by helping other students or get them with a premium plan

Share documents
download point icon20 Points

For each uploaded document

Answer questions
download point icon5 Points

For each given answer (max 1 per day)

All the ways to get free points
Get points immediately

Choose a premium plan with all the points you need

Study Opportunities

Choose your next study program

Get in touch with the best universities in the world. Search through thousands of universities and official partners

Community

Ask the community

Ask the community for help and clear up your study doubts

Free resources

Our save-the-student-ebooks!

Download our free guides on studying techniques, anxiety management strategies, and thesis advice from Docsity tutors

semantics and pragmatics unit 3, Summaries of Formal Semantics

King Abdul Aziz University (KAU)Formal Semantics

semantics and pragmatics summary

Typology: Summaries

2021/2022

Uploaded on 01/14/2022

wedyan-alsadi
wedyan-alsadi 🇸🇦

6 documents

1 / 8

Toggle sidebar

This page cannot be seen from the preview

Don't miss anything!

bg1
3 Noun vocabulary
By: Wedyan Alssadi
*Overview:
• NOUN: a word used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things ( common noun ), or to name a
particular one of these ( proper noun) .
• In English, nouns are words which can occur with articles and can function as the head of a noun phrase.
• Nouns form a majority of the words in the vocabulary of English.
• To describe the complexity of nouns we can use the has-relation.
pf3
pf4
pf5
pf8

Partial preview of the text

Download semantics and pragmatics unit 3 and more Summaries Formal Semantics in PDF only on Docsity!

3 Noun vocabulary

By: Wedyan Alssadi

*Overview:

  • NOUN : a word used to identify any of a class of people, places, or things ( common noun ), or to name a particular one of these ( proper noun).
  • In English, nouns are words which can occur with articles and can function as the head of a noun phrase.
  • Nouns form a majority of the words in the vocabulary of English.
  • To describe the complexity of nouns we can use the has-relation.

1. The has-relation:

  • The has-relation refers to parts that prototypical members of categories have. What is a prototype?
  • Prototypes are central members of the denotation of a word, that give the necessary information to define the category.
  • A prototype is characteristic instance. o Example: A prototype triangle has 3 sides. A prototype face has two eyes, a nose and a mouth.
  • Prototypes are clear, central members of the denotation of a word. Restricted to prototypes, the has - relation makes available entailments :
  • That figure is a triangle => ‘If that figure has three sides, then that figure is a triangle’.
  • The child drew a face => ‘If the face was prototypical, then the child drew a mouth’. 1.1. Pragmatic inferences from the has-relation:
  • The has-relation can be explained using indefinite to definite articles.
    1. I saw a thief.
    2. the thief ran away.
  • A noun phrase that first brings something into a conversation is usually indefinite (for example, marked by means of an indefinite article, a or an), but on second and subsequent mention of the same thing in the
  • A person who is standing ‘’on top’’ (deictic) of a bus is not on the top (part) of the bus. Examples of two kinds of spatial parts:
    1. Having inherent parts → people; houses; trees (top, base, sides); hills (top, base, sides); animals; pianos.
    2. Having spatial parts only deictically → balls; planets, trees (front, back); hills (front, back). 1 .3.Ends and beginnings:
  • Long thin things have ends, and sometimes two different kinds of end are distinguished: o beginnings and ends.
  • A list of some of the things that prototypically have ends is given: o ropes /roads /trains /planks
  • Nouns denoting periods of time have beginnings and ends. They also have middles.
  • Some examples are listed: o day, week, month, era, term, semester, century o conversation, demonstration, ceremony, meal, reception, process o The words in here do not denote concrete entities that you could touch or stub your toe on, but they can have beginnings, middles and ends.

2. Hyponymy

  • The meaning of a more specific word is included in that of another more general word.
  • HYPONYMY = inclusion of meaning (cat is a hyponym of animal).
  • Hyponymy is a sense relation between words (or phrases) such that the meaning (sense) of one word is included in the meaning of the other, i.e. entailment at word level.
  • The pattern of entailment that defines hyponymy is: If it’s true that there is a house, then it must be true that there is a building; it can’t be otherwise.
  • HYPONYM (from Greek hypo meaning under + onoma meaning name): The more specific term in the semantic relationship between a specific and a more general term. ❖ If B is a hyponym of A, then the meaning of B is a special case of A.
  • HYPERONYM (from Greek hyper meaning over + onoma meaning name): The general term in the semantic relationship between a general and a more specific term. o Ex: The word building, colour is a superordinate term or hyperonym of house, red, which is its hyponym.
  • If A is a hyperonym of B, then the meaning of A is more general instance of B
  • More formally, X is a hyponym of Y if X can be said to be a kind of Y; X and Y are cohyponyms if both X and Y are a kind of Z. o Ex. Rose is a kind of flower. Flower is a hyperonym , while rose is a hyponym. Obviously, tulip and lily, are all hyponyms of flower, but also of plant. We can have more than one hyponym and more hyperonyms as well, but they are in a direct or indirect relationship then, that is, there’s a hierarchy: PLANTS. FLOWERS. ROSES…
    • Other examples: Virtue: honesty, loyalty Emotion: fear, love, anger, sorrow Institutions: school, court, hospital 2 .1. Hierarchies of hyponym:
  • House is a hyponym of the superordinate building, but building is, in turn, a hyponym of the superordinate structure; and, structure is a hyponym of the superordinate thing.
  • A superordinate can itself be a hyponym at a higher level, as shown in:
  • At the bottom of the hierarchy a prototypical house has a kitchen and at least one bedroom. It also has walls and a roof (inherited from buildings), connections between the parts (inherited from structure) and a top, base, front, back and sides (inherited from thing).
  • Prototypes in the building category also have doors and floors, and prototype houses have those too, by inheritance.

3. Incompatibility

  • A semantic relation called incompatibility holds between the hyponyms of a given superordinate.
  • Hyponymy is about classification: breakfast, lunch and dinner are hyponyms of meal, their superordinate.
  • Incompatibility is about contrast: breakfast, lunch and dinner are different from each other within the category of meals because they are eaten at different times of day.
  • Incompatibility (or co-hyponymy) is the most general type of semantic relation between lexical items, the meaning of which entails exclusion.
  • A small hyponym hierarchy is shown in here.
  • There are alternative labels and different kinds of meals that could have been included (for example, supper, high tea and brunch ).
  • Incompatibility is about contrast: breakfast, lunch and dinner are different from each other within the category of meals; they are eaten at different times of day.

4. Count nouns and mass nouns

  • In the grammar of English, there is a clear distinction between count nouns, exemplified by loaf and coin and mass nouns, exemplified by bread and money.
  • Count nouns are words that indicate discrete, countable objects , whereas mass nouns are words that indicate some relatively undifferentiated substance.
  • Mass nouns resist being quantified with numbers and plural suffixes or the word many or the singular indefinite article a,
  • while count nouns can be quantified in this way.
  • Count nouns denote distinguishable whole entities, like beans or people or shirts.
  • They can be counted.
  • Mass nouns are quantified with the word much.
  • They denote undifferentiated substance, like dough or water or lava.
  • a special use allowable with some mass nouns, as when bread is taken to denote ‘distinct variety of bread’. o For example, one might say of a bakery that it produces six breads” to mean that it produces ‘six types of bread’