12 Questions
What does the field of semantics focus on in terms of language?
The patterns and rules for building sentence meanings
What is the term for the literal meaning of a word or phrase?
Denotation
According to Paul Grice, what is required for successful communication?
The active collaboration of the sender and the addressee
What is the term for a spoken or written message produced by a particular sender in a specific situation?
Utterance
What is the primary focus of the field of pragmatics?
The interaction between language and the world
What is the relationship between the same utterance and its meaning when spoken by different speakers?
The meaning changes significantly
What is the term for the abstract linguistic object on which an utterance is based?
Sentence
What is the stage of interpretation that involves understanding the literal meaning of a sentence?
Literal meaning
What is the term for the process of learning words by pointing?
Ostension
What is the relationship between sense and denotation?
Sense gives an expression its denotation
What is the term for the aspects of meaning that explain the relations between words?
Sense relations
What is the term for the ambiguity of an expression that has multiple meanings?
Ambiguity
Study Notes
- A sentence is an abstract linguistic object that an utterance is based on.
- An utterance is a sentence produced by a particular sender in a specific situation, and its meaning can change depending on the speaker, time, and listener.
- There are three stages of interpretation: literal meaning, explicature, and implicature.
- Literal meaning is the semantic knowledge of a sentence, explicature is the basic interpretation using contextual information, and implicature is what is hinted at by an utterance in its particular context.
- Semantics deals with the knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of a language, patterns for building more elaborate meanings, and sentence meanings.
- Pragmatics deals with the interaction of semantic knowledge with knowledge of the world, and context.
- Denotation is whatever an expression denotes, and sense is the aspects of the meaning of an expression that gives it its denotation.
- Sense relations are the use of language to explain meanings.
- Ostension is the process of learning words by pointing, and formal semantics involves systems of formal logic.
- Ambiguity occurs when an expression has multiple meanings, such as "He is a conductor" which could refer to a ticket seller or someone who regulates a musical performance.
- Paul Grice, a British philosopher, stated that communication requires the active collaboration of the addressee and the sender, and that the sender conveys an intention that the addressee must recognize for the message to be communicated.
Test your understanding of semantics and pragmatics in English language. Learn about the knowledge encoded in vocabulary and how it interacts with real-world context. Explore sentence meanings and expressions.
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