LING-UA 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Connotation, Lexical Item, Deixis
25 Aug 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Semantics: the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions. Externalists say that meaning is defined in properties in the real world, not people"s mental states; internalists say that meaning is defined in terms of people"s mental states. Synonymy = words that have the same meaning in one or more main components of their meaning: the youth entered the room, the adolescent entered the room. Antonymy = words that are opposites in one main component of meaning: the girl ran to the store, the woman ran to the store. Polysemy = words that have two or more related meanings: bright can mean shining" or intelligent", to glare can mean to shine intensely" or to stare angrily". Homonymy = words that have two or more entirely distinct meanings: light can mean not heavy" or illumination", bank can mean a financial institution" or a small cliff at the edge of a river".
