2. Semantics
– explain the difference between sense and reference
o sense – mental representation
▪ dog = four legs, tail, floppy ears
o reference – relating senses to things in the real world
▪ my dog = brown with long hair
▪ her dog = black with short hair
▪ a referent is a set of specific senses to a specific
thing in the world
– identify the reference of:
o proper nouns – refer to specific things
▪ West Virginia University refers to a specific state in the
U.S.
▪ Post Malone refers to a specific rapper
o common nouns – refer to general things, not specific
▪ Truck, singer, college refers to any university that
teaches course after high school completion.
o intransitive verbs – refers to things that are capable of doing
the verb
▪ Run = dogs, cheetahs, Usain Bolt, (all runners in the
world)
o Adjectives – refer to things that can be described as such
▪ Slow = all things in the world that are slow turtles,
snails, old computers, etc.
o propositions – sentences express propositions and refer to
truth values (functional sentence)
– identify the following lexical relationships
– polysemy – related meaning, same pronunciation, same spelling
most of the time its metaphorically related.
John has his mouth full.
Watch your mouth.
I have three mouths to feed.
I see the mouth of the river.
– synonymy – same meaning, different pronunciation, same spelling
▪ purchase, buy
▪ small, tiny
– hyponymy – hierarchy. Based on a category and sub-categories
hypernym – goes on top; it is the category
▪ tools
hyponym – goes on the bottom; it’s the sub-categories
▪ shovel, drill, hammer, screwdriver
– homonymy – different meaning, same pronunciation, same spelling
o bat, bat baseball bat, animal bat
– partial homonymy
o homophony – different meaning, same pronunciation,
different spelling
▪ Road, rode
o homography – different meaning, different pronunciation,
same spelling
▪ Lead, lead to lead a group, lead like in your pencil
– antonymy – opposite meanings
o complementary antonyms – there’s no in between, only two
options.
▪ True, false you can’t get partial credit if you put
false on a test and the answer was true. You only had
two choices.
