1 Supplementary Exercises to Chapter 5 Semantics
I. Decide whether each of the following statements is True or False:
1. Dialectal synonyms can often be found in different regional dialects
such as British English and American English but cannot be found
within the variety itself, for example, within British English or
American English.
2. Sense is concerned with the relationship between the linguistic element
and the non-linguistic world of experience, while the reference deals
with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.
3. Linguistic forms having the same sense may have different references
in different situations.
4. In semantics, meaning of language is considered as the intrinsic and
inherent relation to the physical world of experience.
5. Contextualism is based on the presumption that one can derive meaning
from or reduce meaning to observable contexts.
6. Behaviourists attempted to define the meaning of a language form as
the situation in which the speaker utters it and the response it calls
forth in the hearer.
7. The meaning of a sentence is the sum total of the meanings of all
its components.
8. Most languages have sets of lexical items similar in meaning but
ranked differently according to their degree of formality.
9. “it is hot.” is a no-place predication because it contains no
argument.
10. In grammatical analysis, the sentence is taken to be the basic unit,
but in semantic analysis of a sentence, the basic unit is predication,
which is the abstraction of the meaning of a sentence.
II. Fill in each of the following blanks with one word which begins with
the letter given:
11. S________ can be defined as the study of meaning.
12. The conceptualist view holds that there is no d______ link between
a linguistic form and what it refers to.
13. R______ means what a linguistic form refers to in the real, physical
world; it deals with the relationship between the linguistic element
and the non-linguistic world of experience.
14. Words that are close in meaning are called s________.
15. When two words are identical in sound, but different in spelling and
meaning, they are called h__________.
16.R_________ opposites are pairs of words that exhibit the reversal of
a relationship between the two items.
17. C ____ analysis is based upon the belief that the meaning of a word
can be divided into meaning components.
18. Whether a sentence is semantically meaningful is governed by rules
called s________ restrictions, which are constraints on what lexical
items can go with what others.
19. An a________ is a logical participant in a predication, largely
identical with the nominal element(s) in a sentence.
20. According to the n ____ theory of meaning, the words in a language
are taken to be labels of the objects they stand for. 2 III. There are four choices following each statement. Mark the choice that
can best complete the statement:
21. The naming theory is advanced by ________.
A. Plato B. Bloomfield
C. Geoffrey Leech D. Firth
22. “We shall know a word by the company it keeps.” This statement
represents _______.
A. the conceptualist view B. contexutalism
C. the naming theory D.behaviourism
23. Which of the following is not true?
A. Sense is concerned with the inherent meaning of the linguistic form.
B. Sense is the collection of all the features of the linguistic form.
C. Sense is abstract and de-contextualized.
D. Sense is the aspect of meaning dictionary compilers are not interested
in.
24. “Can I borrow your bike?” _______ “ You have a bike.”
A. is synonymous with B. is inconsistent with
C. entails D. presupposes
25. ___________ is a way in which the meaning of a word can be dissected
into meaning components, called semantic features.
A. Predication analysis B. Componential analysis
C. Phonemic analysis D. Grammatical analysis
26. “alive” and “dead” are ______________.
A. gradable antonyms B. relational opposites
C. complementary antonyms D. None of the above
27. _________ deals with the relationship between the linguistic element
and the non-linguistic world of experience.
A. Reference B. Concept
C. Semantics D. Sense
28. ___________ refers to the phenomenon that words having different
meanings have the same form.
A. Polysemy B. Synonymy
C. Homonymy D. Hyponymy
29. Words that are close in meaning are called ______________.
A. homonyms B. polysemy
C. hyponyms D. synonyms
30. The grammaticality of a sentence is governed by _______.
A. grammatical rules
B. selectional restrictions
C. semantic rules
D. semantic features
IV. Define the following terms:
31. semantics 32. sense
33 . reference 34. synonymy
35. polysemy 36. homonymy
37. homophones 38. Homographs
39. complete homonyms 40. hyponymy
41.antonymy 42 componential analysis
43.grammatical meaning 44. predication