Test

lt)
- It attempts as far as possible to treat components in terms of “binary opposites” e.g. between male and female, animate and inanimate, adult and non-adult.
- Binární opozice (armchair – není chair) – každý si představí pod pojmem židle/křeslo něco jiného
- Husband = + male partner; wife = -male partner
Atomic; Discrete; Forming finite set








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Lexical semantics: fields and collocation
lexical semantics:
- we can state the meaning of words in terms of their association with other words
- many of the basic ideas derive from de Saussure´s notion of value.
Paradigmatic relations:
- The paradigmatic relations are those into which a linguistic unit enters through being contrasted or substitutable, in a particular environment, with other similar units.
- e.g. sheep in English has a different value from mouton in French because English has also the word mutton.
- Syntagmatic relations:
The syntagmatic relations are those that a unit contracts by virtue of it co-occurrence with similar units. Thus in a red door and a green door, red and green are in paradigmatic relation to each other, while each is in a syntagmatic relation with door.
incompatible words = we cannot say this is a red hat and of the same object this is a green hat. Nor shall we allow a creature to be described both as a lion and as an elephant.
- e.g. the days of the week and the months of the year form sets of incompatible items, for we cannot say This month is November and it is also March.
collocation
- We shall know a word by the company it keeps. (Firth)
- Collocation = the keeping company
- By looking at the linguistic context of words we can often distinguish between different meanings.
- Collocation is not simply a matter of association of ideas.
Sour milk, flock of sheep, school of whales, pride of lions…
idioms
- involve collocation of a special kind
- kick the bucket, fly off the handle, spill the beans, red herring…
- the meaning of the resultant combination is opaque – it is not related to the meaning of the individual words, but is sometimes nearer to the meaning of the single word (kick the bucket = to die)
- Although the idiom is semantically like a single word, it does not function like one (we will not have a past tense *kick the bucketed!). Instead, it functions to some degree as a normal sequence of grammatical words – past tense = kicked the bucket.
- Although the verb may be placed in the past tense, the number of the noun can never be changed (*kick the buckets)
- Some idioms have passive (the law was laid down), but others do not (*the bucket was kicked)
- Phrasal verbs = a very common type of idioms in English.
make up, give up, give in…
the meaning of these combinations cannot be predicted from the individual verb and adverb
Partial idioms: one of the words has its usual meaning, the other has a meaning that is peculiar to the particular sequence. (make a bed)








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skupina A
1. REFLECTED meaning is what is communicated through association with another sense of the same expression.
2. Combinatory axes are called syntagmatic axes and selectional axes are called paradigmatic.
3. What is the term for probability expressed in the sentence: John may by in his office.Extrinsic (epistemic)
4. Words with the "same" meaning are called synonymy
5. This is a tulip entails This is a flower.
6. SELECTIONAL restrictions are responsible for the choice of the words which can co-occur within one sentence.
7. Meaning inclusion is also called hyponymy
8. Explain two criteria for distinguishing between homonymy and polysemy.
9. Identify arguments in John put the book on the table
10. Words which tend to occur together are called COLLOCATION
11. GENERATIVE semantics sees semantics as a source of grammar.12. Lexical words are also called full words/ autosemantic words:
13. Devise a sentence with two-place predicate. John IS MARRIED TO Mary
14. Give an example of a deictic expression I, there, yesterday
15. langue (language) – parole (speaking)
16. Transparent words are those whose meaning can be determined from the meaning of their parts, opaque words are those for which this is not possible.
17. What kind of oppositeness is between words buy and sell Conversness antonymy/ relational opposition
18. sth with phonetics and phonology
19. Devise a sentence with a intransitive verb he is alive
20. Intonation, stress, rhythm, laudness are called prosodic features of language

skupina B
1(name the type of meaning CONNOTATIVE meaning is the
communicative value an expression has by virtue of what it refers to,
over and above, its purely conceptual content.
2 The analysis of conceptual meaning into individual meaning segments
is called CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
3. (name the appropriate type of grammar:)
FORMAL grammar disregards meaning.
4. The formula of G(x,y,z) type (expressing the structure of the
predicate "give" in eg. Harry gave Paul a book) is referred to
as free place predicate
5. Identify the presupposition of the sentence Have you stopped beating
your wife ? No matter what he answers we know that he was beating his wife. Although it is not directly expressed
6. Expressions like "I, here, now, there, you, yesterday, this, that"
(ie. expressions which have a relative value because they directly refer
to certain personal and spatio-temporal aspects of a given
communicative situation are called. Deictic expressions
7. Pairs of words which frequently occur together are
called COLLOCATIONS
8. Identify the entailment(s) of the expression
BACHELOR. – unmarried, young knight under another
9. Identify the type of oppositentess of meaning between MALE and
FEMALE - Contradictory antonymy
10 Give an example of a form word (ie. an example of a function word): form words / grammatical words: the, of, and, it…
11 According to de Saussure, the linguistic sign consists of a
signifier and signify
12. Another term for the "superordinate" is hyperony
13. Give an example of a three-place John gave Mary a book.
14. In the triangle of signification (the semiotic triangle), the link
between the symbol and the referent is established
via thought of reference, (the concepts of our minds)
15. give an example of an implicitly graded adjective:big, old (explicitely je bigger, older)
16. "love" and "loved" are different words. But we could also say that
they are forms of the same word - the verb "to love". A technical term
for the word in this second sense is LEXEME
17. Another term used for "relational opposition"
Is Conversness antonymy
18. comparative philology (historical linguistics).attempts to reconstruct the history of language, and via their history, to relate languages apparently coming from a common source.
19. Devise a sentence with a causative
verb I had the car fixed
20. Identify the type of sense relationship between the lexeme "bank"
(meaning "financial institution") and the lexeme "bank" (meaning
"embankment of the river") ANTIGUOUS RELATIONSHIP

Semantics and grammar
form words /grammatical words/synsemantic words:
conjunctions (under); articles; auxiliary verbs (do, have…); they help to establish connection between words
full words/lexical words/autosemantic words:
nouns (table, sun, desk); they have meaning on their own

Linguistic relativity:

Chomsky had argued that there is a syntactic deep structure (přehlíží sémantiku)
Flying planes can be dangerous – 2 struktury (seémanticky, jedna – syntakticky)
- Chomsky still maintains that syntax is antonomous
- According to him semantic is not source of syntax – not generative§
- Podle Chomského deep structure je složená ze stejných prvků jako surface structure
- John played the piano je podle Chomského stejné jako The piano was played by John, ale to není pravda. Syntakticky jsou to dvě různé věty. (rod činný a trpný)
State verbs: cannot be used with a progressive
- Some state verbs can be used with a progressive I´m loving it
Grammatical categories:
gender: no grammatical gender, only the pronouns he, she, it (essentially markers of sex)
number: this category reffered to countability, uncountability
- countables /count – indicate individual specimens
- uncountables / mass – refer to a quantity, they are nearer to plurals than to singular forms of count nouns
person; articles
selectional restrictions:
- the relevant subject and object must have components concrete and liquid
- cut would be shown to need a “concrete subject” and drink a “liquid object”
Grammatical relations:
- Subject, object (direct, indirect)
- John gave Bill a book (John = subject, Bill =indirect object, a book = direct object)
- Active, passive voice (agent = the subject moves to the position after by or becomes the agent)
Predicates and arguments:
Fillmore: he suggest six cases:
agentive (typically animate perceived instigator)
instrumental (inanimate force or object causally involved)
dative (animate being affected) later renamed experiencer
factitive (object or being resulting from the action or state) – being replaced by result with the addition of counter-agent (the force or resistance against which the action is carried out), source (the place from which something moves) and goal (the place to which something moves)
locative (location or spatial orientation)
objective (the semantically most neutral case)

John taught French to Mary, Mary learnt French from John
John = agent, Mary = experiencer, French = object
Sentence types and modality:
Declarative = oznamovací; Interrogative = tázací; Imperative = rozkazovací
Mood:
- According to some linguists = the distinction of declarative/interrogative/imperative
Epistemic:
- expresses the degree of commitment of the speaker to the truth of what is being said.
- He may/must/will be in his office.
Deontic:
- Has much in common with the imperative
- The speaker can give permission, lay an obligation or give an undertaking
- You may (or can)/must/shall come tomorrow









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Introduction to semantics - skupina A

1. (name the type o