...CURRICULUM MAJOR: ENGLISH COURSE DESCRIPTION 1. General Info: - Course: English Semantics - Code: LI005 - Credits: 2 - Option: Compulsory - Prerequisite: Listening, Speaking, Reading, Writing from 1 to 3 - Requirements: Students are required to attend the class fully, to participate in class activities such as exercises, mini-tests, discussion, etc. based on their self-study in accordance with their lecturers’ guidance and assignment. - Credit hours: + Lecture: 30 periods + Self-study: 45 hours - Department: Department of Foreign Languages – Linguistics Division 2. Objectives - Knowledge: to introduce students to all the main elements of Semantics in a simple step-by-step fashion. - Skills: to provide students with an opportunity to discover the value and fascination of studying Semantics, and move on to such topics as sense and reference, basic sense relations, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. - Attitude: to provide students with an opportunity to develop and promote their apt selfstudy and scholarship 3. Course summary This course has been carefully planned to introduce students to most of the main elements of Semantics. Students begin by discovering the value and fascination of studying Semantics, and move on to such topics as sense and reference, basic sense relations, simple logic, word meaning, and interpersonal meaning. Each unit of the course book used “Semantics A Course book” by James R. Hurford and Brendan Heasley includes short sections of...
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...because English speakers typically used horizontal-oriented spatial metaphors such as ‘forward’ or ‘back’ for temporal relations, they might grow to think about time horizontally. Conversely, because Mandarin speakers commonly used vertical terms such as 上 (shang) and 下 (xia), which means ‘up’ and ‘down’ in English; this mapping may also become habits of thoughts. From her experiments, Boroditsky noted that Mandarin speakers relied on a ‘Mandarin’ way of thinking even when responding to English sentences. The subjects’ RT mirrored their perceived habit of thinking about time with Mandarin speakers demonstrating vertical biases even when thinking in English. Her investigations also suggested that earlier exposure to English decreases this semantic biases. Finally, her findings with English speakers briefly trained in vertical spatiotemporal metaphors indicated that it was language and not cultural differences that directs one’s way of thinking as they produced results similar to the Mandarin speakers (Boroditsky, 2001). Thus, according to Boroditsky, her findings suggest that language does have a strong influence in shaping habitual thoughts (2001), thereby supporting the linguistic relativity claim. J Y Chen (2006) countered...
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...Becky Vella Muskat LIN 1180 Semantics Assessment type: Assignment Date: February 28th 2011 Table of Contents Distinguish between sense, reference and denotation 3 Outline the main features of Prototype Theory and show how it differs from the classical view of concepts as necessary and sufficient conditions. Give examples to support your answer 5 To what extent would you expect people who speak different languages to display fundamental differences in the way they think and perceive the world? Support your answer with examples from one particular domain, such as that of colour terms or number words 7 Bibliography 9 Distinguish between sense, reference and denotation I answer this question in an attempt to draw a distinction between sense, reference and denotation. While doing my research I discovered a clearly defined line between sense and reference, however the line between reference and denotation seems slightly hazier and thus somewhat more difficult to define. The only analogy I can think of, is trying to compare chopsticks to a fork and knife. How does one distinguish between two entities that are essentially the same functionally yet, intrinsically different? This essay is an attempt to make this distinction, by defining denotation before drawing a contrast to reference and sense respectively. A clear definition of denotation can be understood through Saussure’s (1959) explanation of the signification (concept) and signal (sound pattern)...
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...IELTS (International English Language Testing System) is now one of the most popular exams all over the world. According to the data released by the British Council, there are about 200,000 Chinese took the exam in 2012. However, average Chinese did not perform well in this exam. Personally, my performance improved a lot after I learned linguistic course. In my point of view, this exam is closed related to the Semantics study. Therefore, in this paper, I will present the exam in a semantics way. The IELTS exam has four parts---listening, reading, writing and speaking. I will look into them respectively from a semantics perspective. The listening part has much to do with context. Hall E. T. defines the “context” as the information that surrounds an event; it is inextricably bound up with the meaning of the event. Thus, we have high-context and low context. A high-context communication or message means most of the information is already in the person, not in words. A low context communication is the just the opposite, that is, the important information is stated. IELTS is made by the British Council, and Britain is a typical low-context country. Nevertheless, China is a typical high-context country and we Chinese are affected by that culture in the IELTS exam. In Chinese exams, we have questions that need us to infer the content or the relationship between the speaking people or guess the intended meaning behind a word. But in IELTS, they never have questions like these. The answers...
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...A semantic role is a relationship that a participant has with the main verb in the clause. While syntactic analysis focuses on sentences and all the function words in a sentence, the semantic analysis focuses primarily on meaning, i.e. on the proposition expressed in a sentence. A proposition is meaningful and it can be expressed either in different sentences or in parts of sentences. In order to do semantic analysis, we have to distinguish inflection from a proposition. (Kreidler,46) For example: 1a Linda bought a shirt to her mother. 2a Linda buys a shirt to her mother. These two sentences have the same proposition, i.e. Linda, buy, shirt, and mother. In the first sentence, we see that past tense is added to the proposition; while in the...
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...in the semantic structure of words: Different Valency Content Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………… Chapter 1. The Problem of Polysemantic Words 1. Semantic Structure of Words……………………………………………………………… 2. Ways of analyzing Polysemy……………………………………………………………… Chapter 2. Polysemantic Words 1. Polysemantic and Monosemantic Words…………………………………………………….. 2. Semantic Structure of Polysemantic Words………………………………………………….. 3. Examples of Polysemantic Words……………………………………………………………. Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………………………. References………………………………………………………………………………………….. Introduction The following paper is devoted to the theme “Divergences in the semantic structure of words”. The semantic structure of words presents a complicated problem .The only exceptions are some groups of monosemantic words. Divergences in the semantic structure of words of the Sourse and Target languages are one of the primary cases of lexical transformations. These divergences are connected with certain peculiar features of a word or a group of words. Even words which seem to have the same meaning in the two languages are not semantically identical. The primary meanings of correlated words often coincide while their derivative meanings do not. Thus there is only partial correspondence in the structures of polysemantic words as their lexical semantic variants do not cover one another. Semantic correlation is not to be interpreted as semantic identity...
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...author(s) of this article is/are permitted to use this PDF file to generate printed copies to be used by way of offprints, for their personal use only. Permission is granted by the publishers to post this file on a closed server which is accessible to members (students and staff) only of the author’s/s’ institute, it is not permitted to post this PDF on the open internet. For any other use of this material prior written permission should be obtained from the publishers or through the Copyright Clearance Center (for USA: www.copyright.com). Please contact rights@benjamins.nl or consult our website: www.benjamins.com Tables of Contents, abstracts and guidelines are available at www.benjamins.com Interviews Discussing frame semantics: The state of the art An interview with Charles J. Fillmore József Andor University of Pécs J.A.: Thank you, Chuck, very much for accepting my invitation for this interview. I would like to center it around the notion of frame, a conceptually valid notion of interdisciplinary relevance, as pointed out by all of the speakers, including ourselves, of an important international colloquium that took place at the oldest university of the Old World, in Bologna in 2005 (Rossini Favretti, 2008). As a sort of father of research elaborating on the conceptual as well as the linguistic relevance, the status of the notion of frames, you were invited to that interdisciplinary conference by its organizers with the aim to give the keynote...
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...A STUDY ON SEMANTIC FEATURES OF PURPOSIVE ADJUNCTS IN ENGLISH AND VIETNAMESE Le Thi Bich Hanh University of Foreign Languages, The University of Danang Email: lebichhanh_dn@yahoo.com ABSTRACT Having a good guide to translate appropriately English purposive adjuncts (PAs) into Vietnamese and vice versa has become monumentally necessary. So, in this study, we would like to compare and contrast English and Vietnamese PAs in terms of their semantic features in meaningful interactional situations in the strong belief that using appropriate PAs, writers and speakers can reduce the negative meanings of their sentences and increase the acceptability of the readers and hearers in communication. In terms of theory, the study focuses on identifying the similarities and differences in the uses of adjuncts to express purposes and hence finding the cultural factors affecting those choices. In practice, the study hopes to provide some implications in language teaching and learning as well as translating. The practical information in the research can raise language users’ awareness of the subtle differences between the uses of PAs in both languages so that they can fulfill their communicative purpose in real life. Key words: purposive adjuncts; purposive subordinators; semantic features; compare; implication * Introduction Most languages in the world have particular linguistic devices for expressing purposes implicitly and explicitly. Purposive adjuncts (PAs) are some of those...
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...Chapter I THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND Introduction Sentences cannot be form without using the phrases, and you cannot see phrases without involving different vocabulary word and for you to know older students must be skilled at reading to learn; but it is also true that they never finished learning to read. Do students really understand what they are reading? Do they retain the words in the given reading material? Learning and discovering come up with reading and understanding, and understanding goes with identifying and familiarizing the meaning of each word in a produced sensible context. Based on the statistics, the literacy rate in the Philippines as of 2005 has risen from 72% to 90% in the last 30 years. The 2005 Functional Literacy, Education, and Mass Media Survey conducted by the National Statistics Office (NSO) resulted 48.4 million or 84% of the estimated 57.6 million Filipinos who are 10 to 64 years old are said to be "functionally" literate (TODAY newspaper, 2005). It was defined by the NSO that functionally literate means a high level of literacy which includes reading, writing, numerical and comprehension skills. While on the other hand, the 2009 National Achievement Tests (NAT) results revealed a rise in Mean Percentage Score (MPS) of only 66.33% from 54.66% in 2006, which equates to an improvement of 11.67% (Philippine Daily Inquirer, 2010). In addition to that, the Department of Education reported that almost two-thirds of the country’s high schools...
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...επινόησε τον παγκόσμιο ιστό το 1989,είχε το όραμα ενός ιστού δεδομένων αυτόματα επεξεργάσιμων από τις εφαρμογές ,βάσει του νοήματος και όχι της μορφής της πληροφορίας Το κέντρο βάρους των περιεχομένων του διαδικτύου μετατοπίζεται συνεχώς από το ελεύθερο κείμενο που είναι πλήρως κατανοητό μόνο από τον άνθρωπο, προς την ημιδομημένη ή/και πλήρως δομημένη πληροφορία η οποία μπορεί να γίνει αυτόματα κατανοητή από διαδικτυακές εφαρμογές ,όπως είναι οι διαδικτυακές υπηρεσίες ή οι ευφυείς πράκτορες. Το Σημασιολογικό Διαδίκτυο αποτελεί πρωτοβουλία της Κοινοπραξίας του Παγκόσμιου Ιστού(W3C) και η σχετική δραστηριότητα (Semantic Web Activity) έχει δημιουργηθεί για να διαδραματίσει έναν ηγετικό ρόλο ,τόσο στο σχεδιασμό προδιαγραφών, όσο και ανοικτή ανάπτυξη της τεχνολογίας μέσω της συνεργασίας. Θα πρέπει να διευκρινιστεί ότι η ακριβής μετάφρασή του αγγλικού όρου Semantic Web είναι Σημασιολογικός Ιστός . όμως η τεχνολογία που αναπτύσσεται και...
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...available at the moment? * What is the difference between the concept of pragmatic and semantic? * Is the concept of pragmatic better than that of the semantic for information retrieval? PROJECT BACKGROUND: Earlier most of the search engines were only focusing on keywords and mainly uses some kind of ranking algorithm. But now a day’s semantic search engines are more popular. They deal with the literal meaning of the words or sentences. Some of the semantic search engines are Hakia, Kosmix, Exalead, SenseBot, Cognition search, Lexxe, Swoogle, Factbites, Powerset, Cluuz, etc. Google is using semantic technology but is not yet a fully fledged semantic search engine. It does not use NLP. There are barriers that Google needs to overcome: * Is it capable of becoming fully semantic without modifying its index? * Can Google continue to keep the results simple and navigate for its varied user base? * Does Google intend to become a fully semantic search engine and to do so within a timescale will it damage their position and reputation? Pragmatic deals with overall communicative and social context and its effect. But not much of a work is done in the area of how pragmatic can be used in information retrieval. AIM: To study the notion of pragmatics and see how it can be applied to any of the search engines for better information retrieval. OBJECTIVES: * To identify how the semantic search engines work. * To identify if it is possible to apply the knowledge of pragmatics...
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...List and explain the three Knowledge Sources of the Unified Medical Language System. There are three UMLS Knowledge Sources: the Metathesaurus®, the Semantic Network, and the SPECIALIST Lexicon. The National Library of Medicine (NLM) creates the Unified Medical Language System® (UMLS®) to facilitate the development of computer systems that act as if they "understand" the meaning of the language of biomedicine and health. This system is modernized twice a year in May and November. The Metathesaurus®, is a customizable, multi-purpose, and multi-lingual vocabulary database that is organized by concept, or meaning. It connects alternative names and views of the same concepts from different source vocabularies and identifies useful relationships between different concepts The Semantic Network consists of a set of broad subject categories, or semantic types, that provide a consistent categorization of all concepts represented in the UMLS. Also incorporated in this network is a set of practical and significant relationships, or semantic relations, that exist between semantic types, e.g., treats, diagnoses, and contains. The scope of the Semantic Network is broad, allowing for the semantic categorization of a wide range of expressions in multiple domains. The SPECIALIST Lexicon supplies the word usage information needed for the SPECIALIST Natural Language Processing (NLP) System. The Lexicon is a general English language dictionary that includes many biomedical terms...
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...interpretative semantic material to a corpus. For instance, one normal sort of annotation is the including of labels, or marks, showing the word class to which words in content have a place. Corpus annotation includes exploring a specific etymological highlight by taking or making a corpus an example or complete gathering of the writings to be concentrated on in electronic structure and leading a careful and thorough examination of the component as it happens in this corpus. III. Importance of corpus annotation As I said, annotation is embraced to give 'included worth' to the corpus. A look at a percentage of the benefits of a commented corpus will offer us to consider the principles of good practice...
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...Stylistic syntax 1. General considerations The object of stylistic analysis on syntactic level is sentence. Within the domain of syntax stylistics deals with the following crucial problems: 1) the stylistic potential of syntactic units of different structural design, semantic characteristics and communicative types; 2) the syntactic synonymy, i.e. the peculiarities of rendering of one and the same logical content by syntactic units with different structure, functional characteristics, expressive colouring and connotations; 3) description of syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices. Owing to its constructive nature, syntax is considered to have more perceptible stylistic power (when compared with morophological and lexical level) because it embraces the expressive potential of morphology and vocabulary. Syntax is the structural basis of any utterance and text: the process of nomination and metaphorization, logical and figurative, emotional, expressive and poetic colouring of the words, language imagery and symbolism, specific figures of speech, new coinages and at last the individual speaker’s creativity are actualized only on the level of syntax, and, having been melted into a completed unity, can fulfill its communicative purpose. Thus the importance of syntax for stylistic analysis is hard to overestimate. It is syntax that fixes the stylistic aspect of any text. Syntax, alongside with other stylistic elements (phonetic, morphological, lexical) that secure utterance...
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...For all things listed as a study make sure you know the IV, DV, results and any theory that might be associated. Verbal Knowledge Lecture 16/ chapter 9/ Meyer What is a concept, categorization, and why do we categorize? What is the definitional approach? The prototype approach? The exemplar Approach? What do we wactually use? Rosch’s study of family resemblance. What is the typicality effect? Rosch’s study of it with priming colors. What are the types of categories according to Rosch? What is the evidence that Basic level categories are special? How can experience change this? What is the hierarchical model of Collins and Quillian? What are the flaws? What is spreading activation? What is Collins and Loftus’ Semantic model? What are the flaws? What is the connectionist approach? How does it simulate actual learning? How are categories represented in the brain? Freedman’s cat-dog study. Lexical Decisions: Meyer: Know the hypothesis in addition to the usual. Understand how the word types can be broken into different IVs. Mental Imagery Lecture 17/ chapter 10/ Shepard and Meltzer What is mental Imagery? Visual Imagery Study of paired associate learning (dog flower) Paivio’s study of nouns that can evoke an image What are the spatial and propositional representation of visual imagery? Kossyln’s studies (2) of visual imagery, know the criticism that lead to the second study (the island study). What is mental scanning? ...
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