Read ch2 & ch3 (LOGIC AND MEANING, CONCEPTS AND MEANING)  then        

1. Suggest a set of  prototype features for one of the following conceptual categories: p. 68               (2 points) 

draw up a list of possible members, including some marginal cases and ask another person to assign GOE ratings. Consider to what extent the ratings can be accounted for in terms of your suggested features.

A. Assign the following categories to superordinate, basic, or subordinate level and provide an explanation for your answers. (3 points)

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Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

CONCEPTS AND MEANING
Chapter 3

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
A concept is “a mental construct that stands in a relation of correspondence to a coherent category of things in some world, prototypically the real world, but potentially also imaginary, fictional, or virtual worlds.”
Conceptual Category:
encompasses the mental construct and the category of entities

What is a concept?

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
a range of objectively different experiences treated as instances of one and the same type of experience.
CAT: enables us to see these as all belonging to a single type.
important for intellectual and social activity.
Codification of Experience

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
Concepts provide a locus for accumulating relevant information for a class of individuals or events.
This gives efficient way of learning from past experience
New knowledge acquired on the basis of interaction with one or more individuals can be easily generalized to other members of a category.
Recognition of a particular category make a much wider range of information about that individual available. If an individual belongs to a particular category, then this can make wide range of information about that individual.

Learning

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
Communication
Linguistic message is coded in terms of conceptual categories.
CLASSICAL Approach:
goes back at least to Aristotle
defines a category’s membership in terms of a set of necessary and sufficient criteria
Classical Approach

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Lack of plausible analysis
Fuzzy boundaries
Internal structure of categories
Problems of Classical Approach

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Has logical properties but is not error-free
It may identify correctly or incorrectly on any particular occasion.
Responsible for the truth values of utterances
Designed to improve with experience
Governs important logical relations between a concept and other concepts
Kind Detector

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Prototype: best example of something
Natural conceptual categories are structured around the prototypes of the categories
Other items are assimilated to a category according to whether they sufficiently resemble the prototype
Prototype Theory

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Subjects are asked to provide a numerical value as an estimate of how good an example of something is
GOE ratings may be strongly culture-dependent.
Goodness-of-Exemplar Ratings

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Order of mention
Overall frequency
Order of acquisition
Vocabulary learning
Speed of verification
Priming
Prototypes Effects

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Most inclusive level where best categories are created or exist
Most inclusive level for visual representation
Part and whole information is relevant
Level of the most rapid categorization
Simplicity of naming
Basic Level Categories

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Score highly on distinctness
Have relatively low internal homogeneity
Names often differ from basic-level categories
Fewer defining attributes

Superordinate-level Categories

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The “Guppy Effect”
The basis of GoE ratings and their interpretation.
Interaction among features
Context sensibility
Category boundaries
Degree of membership
Fuzzy boundaries
Problems of Prototype Model

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Meaning in Language: An Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics (2011)

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

LOGIC AND MEANING
Chapter 2

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics
Features some property to an entity or a relation between two or more entities.
It is either true or false
Truth or falsehood shows at least one proposition made
The same proposition may be expressed by an indefinite and large number of sentences.
PROPOSITIONS

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Sentences: type-level entity where definite referring expressions have to be assigned referents
Statements: must be energized illocutionary force
Utterances: token-level entity where multiple utterances can be produced from one sentence

How Propositions Relate

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Negative Operator:
Switches truth value
Implication:
“P and/or Q”: PvQ is true as long as at least one of the two propositions P and Q is true. The order of the propositions is significant for this relation.
Logical Operators

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Conjunction:
P&Q is true only if both P and Q are true.
The order of the propositions is irrelevant.
Disjunction
“P and/or Q”: PvQ is true as long as at least one of the two propositions P and Q is true. T
The order of the propositions is irrelevant.
Equivalence
P”Q is true only if both P and Q have the same truth value.
The order of the propositions is irrelevant.
Logical Operators

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Entailment:
Relation which holds between the propositions listed under P and the corresponding propositions under Q
Equivalence:
mutual entailment
Contrariety:
may not be simultaneously true
may be simultaneously false.
Contradiction:
must have opposite truth values in every circumstance
Natural Language Application

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truth values vary independently of one another
May be both true, both false, or one true and the other false
relations described have an important role in the analysis of meaning relations between words
COMPATIBILITY

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ENG350: Introduction to Semantics and Pragmatics

Known as second-order logic
Predicate Calculus:
system of representing the structure of propositions
INNER STRUCTURE OF PROPOSITIONS

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closely linked pair of concepts
absolutely fundamental to both logic and semantics are argument and predicate.
Argument: designates some entity or group of entities
Predicate: attributes some property to the entity denoted by the argument
ARGUMENTS AND PREDICATES

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The number of arguments a predicate takes is known as its valency
Logical Valency: determined by the number of arguments for it to be logically complete
Valency

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Paradoxical:
Automatically express false propositions
Synthetic propositions:
Truth values made up by their correspondence or otherwise with the facts
Analytic:
they automatically express true propositions
Paradoxical, analytic and Synthetic Propositions

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Quantification: requires a quantifier, a restriction, and a scope.
Existential Quantifier
Universal Quantifier
Quantifiers and Quantification

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Downward Entailing: the valid entailment goes from less specific to more specific
Upward Entailing: the valid entailment goes from more specific to less specific
Directional Entailingness

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Directional entailment properties correlate with negative polarity items (negpols).
Only normal in certain types of environment
typically contains a negative element of some kind.
Negative Polarity

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Useful set of concepts drawn from logic of classes:
Identity
Inclusion
Disjunction
Intersection
Union
Class Relations
Mapping
Logic of Classes

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Truth is assumed to be common knowledge shared by speaker and addressee.
Speaker presupposes knowledge about listener
Presuppositions

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Russell:
believed that the presupposition of a sentence should be explicitly represented in a representation of the sentence’s meaning.
Strawson:
presupposition is a relation between propositions
Accounting for Presuppositions

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Reference: things in the world referred to by a particular expression
Denotation: word denotes a specific point of reference
Sense: word is associated with some kind of mental representation
Useful Distinctions to Remember

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