Summarize Chapter 1 LTG 202

Semantics is all about figuring out the intended meaning of words and sentences, the meaning everyone generally agrees on. It's not about what someone might be trying to twist a word to mean in a specific situation 1 Meaning  This distinction is generally presented in terms of referential meaning as opposed to associative or emotive meaning Referential meaning covers those basic, essential components of meaning that are conveyed by the literal use of a word. It is the type of meaning that dictionaries are designed to describe E.g:  needle => “thin, sharp, steel instrument.” But different people might have different associations or connotations attached to a word like needle. needle=>  “pain,” or “illness,” or “blood,” or “drugs,” or “thread,” or “knitting,” or “hard to find” This sentence is syntactically good, but semantically odd 2 Semantic Features Def Basic elements such as “human,” included as plus (+human) or minus (−human), used in an analysis of the compon...

Chapter 8 Syntax 1 Syntactic rules To analyze a language's syntax, we try to adhere to the “all and only” criterion. This means all the analysis must  account for all the grammatically correct phrases and sentences and only those grammatically correct phrases and sentences A Generative Grammar Def: a set of rules defining the possible sentences in a language An effective rule such as “a prepositional phrase in English consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase,” we can imagine a huge number of English phrases that could be produced using this rule 2 Deep and Surface Structure Def:  Surface structure : the structure of individual sentences in contrast to deep structure  Deep structure : the underlying structure ( NP+V+NP) of sentences as represented by phrase structure rules Structural Ambiguity Def: a situation in which a single phrase or sentence has two (or more) different underlying structures and interpretations E.g: “Annie bumped into a man with an umbrella”...

  Def:  Grammar: the analysis of the structure of phrases and sentences 1 English Grammar  English, like other languages, has a set of guidelines for how words fit together to create meaning. These guidelines, called grammar, describe how to build correct phrases and sentences (grammatical sequences) and avoid nonsensical combinations (ungrammatical sequences). By understanding grammar, we ensure everyone using English can communicate clearly. 2 Traditional Grammar English grammar uses words like "article," "adjective," and "noun" to sort words. These words actually come from how people figured out old languages like Latin. They just used the same labels for English The Parts of Speech Def:  Nouns: a word such as boy, bicycle, or freedom used to describe a person, thing, or idea. We begin proper nouns with a capital letter (Cathy, Latin, Rome)  Article : a word such as a, an or the used with a noun Adjective : a word such as happy or strange used with a n...