Chapter 5 Semantics
1. What are the major views concerning the study of meaning?
答：(1) The naming theory proposed by the ancient Greek scholar Plato. According to this theory, the linguistic forms or symbols, in other words, the words used in a language are simply labels of the objects they stand for. So words are just names or labels for things.
(2) The conceptualist view has been held by some philosophers and linguists from ancient times. This view holds that there is no direct link between a linguistic form and what it refers to (i. e., between language and the real world); rather, in the interpretation of meaning they are linked through the mediation of concepts in the mind.
(3) The contextualist view held that meaning should be studied in terms of situation, use, context –– elements closely linked with language behaviour. The representative of this approach was J.R. Firth, famous British linguist.
(4) Behaviorists 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.” This theory, somewhat close to contextualism, is linked with psychological interest.
2. What are the major types of synonyms in English?
答： The major types of synonyms are dialectal synonyms, stylistic synonyms, emotive or evaluative synonyms, collocational synonyms, and
semantically different synonyms. Examples（略）
3. Explain with examples “homonymy”, “polysemy”, and “hyponymy”. 答：(1) Homonymy refers to the phenomenon that words having different meanings have the same form, i.e., different words are identical in sound or spelling, or in both.
When two words are identical in sound, they are homophones. When two words are identical in spelling, they are homographs. When two words are identical in both sound and spelling, they are complete homonyms
(2) While different words may have the same or similar meaning, the same one word may have more than one meaning. This is what we call polysemy, and such a word is called a polysemic word. There are many polysemic words in English, The fact is the more commonly used a word is, the more likely it has acquired more than one meaning.
(3) Hyponymy refers to the sense relation between a more general, more inclusive word and a more specific word. The word which is more general in meaning is called the superordinate, and the more specific words are called its hyponyms. Hyponyms of the same superordinate are co-hyponyms to each other. Hyponymy is a relation of inclusion; in terms of meaning, the superordinate includes all its hyponyms. Examples（略）
4. How can words opposite in meaning be classified? To which category does each of the following pairs of antonyms belong?
north/south vacant/occupied literate/illiterate above/below doctor/patient wide/narrow poor/rich father/daughter
答：They can be gradable antonyms, complementary antonyms and relational opposite
Gradable antonyms: wide /narrow poor/rich
Complementary antonyms: vacant/occupied literate/illiterate Relational opposite: north/south, doctor/patient, father/daughter, above/below
5. Identify the relations between the following pairs of sentences: Tom's wife is pregnant. My sister will soon be divorced' Tom has a wife. My sister is a married woman.
He likes seafood, They are going to have another baby. He likes crabs. They have a child.
答： “Tom's wife is pregnant” presupposes “Tom has a wife.” “My sister will soon be divorced” presupposes “My sister is a married woman.”
“He likes seafood” is entailed by “He likes crabs.”
“They are going to have another baby” presupposes “They have a child.” 6. In what way is componential analysis similar to the analysis of
语言学 第5章练习
