Studying meaning

Which branches of linguistic study meaning?

• Sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics
• Phonetics and phonology
• Semantics and pragmatics
• Syntax and morphology

An expression is...

• any meaningful language unit.

• an abstract linguistic object.

• a sentence based on the context of production.

What is the key difference between semantics and pragmatics?

• Semantics is about meaning; pragmatics is about context.
• Semantics is about language structure; pragmatics is about word origins.
• Semantics is concerned with syntax; pragmatics deals with grammar.
• Semantics focuses on context; pragmatics focuses on meaning.

Which are the three stages of interpretation?

• sense, reference and denotation

• literal meaning, denotation and connotation

• literal interpretation,

  explicature and implicature

What does implicature mean?

• Implicature is a type of grammatical error in writing.
• Implicature is the implied meaning in communication that goes beyond the literal interpretation of words.
• Implicature refers to the literal meaning of words.
• Implicature is the act of directly stating one's thoughts without any nuance.

What does explicature mean?

• Explicature is the explicit content derived from an utterance.
• Explicature is the emotional tone conveyed in a conversation.
• Explicature is a synonym for ambiguity in language.
• Explicature refers to the implied meaning behind an utterance.

Implicatures and explicatures can be cancelled as they are merely informed guesses.

• True

• False

An entailment can be cancelled as they include a proposition.

• True

• False

...is an exception to the compositional theory of meaning.

• A sentence

• An utterance

• An idiom

• An entailment

Differences in ____ make for differences in ______ .

• deixis / connotation

• sender's meaning / literal meaning

• denotation/refernce

• sense/denotation