LING 1P92 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Denotation, Dementia, Connotation
19 Mar 2018
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Denotation is the primary meaning of a word which everyone would agree on. Connotation is the secondary meaning- all the associations one has to a word. Implicit knowledge of meaning is better than explicit. Superordinate category (ex. animal), basic level (ex. dog) and subordinate category (ex poodle). We tend to think at the basic level. Collins and quillian did a sentence verification task to test the prediction that the further up the hierarchy you travel the longer it takes you to make a judgement about the verity of a sentence. Participants presented with sentences asked if true or false and they measured decision time. Meaning represented by smaller units of meaning. Semantic features can be combined to find meaning of words (example female, 2nd generation, maternal defines my grandmother lillian) Defining features are those essential to a word"s definition (example a bird lays eggs) Characteristic features are usually true but not always (ex. birds can fly)
