Scribd
Upload
17 views5 pages

Genling Ex06 PDF

The document is an exercise sheet for a course on General Linguistics focusing on semantics and pragmatics, distributed on December 14, 2023, and due on December 22, 2023. It includes tasks related to levels of meaning, lexical semantics, types vs. tokens, sentence-level relations, structural ambiguity, and interactive semantics exploration. Each task requires students to analyze and apply concepts related to meaning in language.

Uploaded by

phoebemi860
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
17 views5 pages

Genling Ex06 PDF

The document is an exercise sheet for a course on General Linguistics focusing on semantics and pragmatics, distributed on December 14, 2023, and due on December 22, 2023. It includes tasks related to levels of meaning, lexical semantics, types vs. tokens, sentence-level relations, structural ambiguity, and interactive semantics exploration. Each task requires students to analyze and apply concepts related to meaning in language.

Uploaded by

phoebemi860
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
You are on page 1/ 5

Introduction to General

Linguistics, Winter 2024/25


J. Dellert & G. Jäger

Exercise Sheet 06:


Semantics & Pragmatics
handed out: 14 Dec, 18:00 p.m.
to be submitted by: 22 Dec, 15:00 p.m.

Task 1: Levels of Meaning


Think about the three levels of meaning: Name these levels and explain how they are related to the study
of semantics or the study of pragmatics. For the sentence below, elaborate the three levels.

“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
- uttered by Neil Armstrong on July 21, 1969 -

Task 2: Lexical Semantics

1. Consider the following pair of words:


• live - survive
• bowler - hat
• luck - fortune
• adult - child
• worried - anxious
• Mexico City - Ciudad de México
• language - Manx
• asleep - awake
• sidewalk - pavement
• green - colour
• hear - listen
• wonderful - awful
• positive - negative
• forest - tree
• small - little
• near - far
• student - pupil

(a) Which meaning relation is illustrated in each of the pairs of words above (synonymy, antonymy,
hyponymy/hypernymy)?
(b) If a synonymy relationship exists between the pair of words, indicate whether it is complete or
partial.
(c) If an antonymy relationship exists between the words, indicate whether they are incompatible,
complementary, or in opposition.

– 1/4 –
(d) If a hyponymy/hypernymy relationship exists between the words, indicate which word is a hy-
ponym and which is a hypernym.

2. Consider the following two words: small and little.


(a) Can you think of any situations where an English speaker would say small but not little? Or
one where a native speaker would say little but not small?
(b) Do the following sentences have the same meaning? How would we call this type of semantic
relation?
• There was a little girl playing on the ground.
• There was a small girl playing on the ground.
(c) List at least one other pair of words that have similar meaning differences (in English or any
other language of your choice) and explain the differences briefly.
3. A single form can have two or more meanings. Depending on whether these meanings are related
to each other, this phenomenon involves polysemy or homophony. For each sentence pair, determine
which of these two relations the words in bold are examples of:
(a) We did drugs and thereby got stoned.
The man was stoned to death as capital punishment.
(b) She picked up the phone to make a call.
They know that one phone is enough to change the meaning of a word.
(c) You can use a ruler to draw a straight line.
King Arthur was the ruler of Camelot.
(d) In fall, the next wave of Corona Virus infections swept through Germany.
The giant wave crashed against the boat.
(e) She was tried and convicted in a court of law.
She tried to achieve her goal.
(f) The politician promises to put a cap on gas prices.
They put the cap on their head.

Task 3: Types vs. Tokens

This is the a part of the description of semantics and pragmatics you get on the page about Linguistics on
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistics):
“Semantics and pragmatics are branches of linguistics concerned with meaning. These subfields have tra-
ditionally been divided according to aspects of meaning: “semantics” refers to grammatical and lexical
meanings, while “pragmatics” is concerned with meaning in context. Within linguistics, the subfield of
formal semantics studies the denotations of sentences and how they are composed from the meanings of
their constituent expressions. Formal semantics draws heavily on philosophy of language and uses formal
tools from logic and computer science. On the other hand, cognitive semantics explains linguistic meaning
via aspects of general cognition, drawing on ideas from cognitive science such as prototype theory.”

1. In your own words, what is a type and what is a token?


2. What is the number of tokens in the above paragraph?
3. What is the number of types?
If you want, you can write a simple python program to solve this task.

– 2/4 –
Task 4: Sentence Level

1. Three semantic relationships are covered in the pairs of sentences below: paraphrase, entailment and
contradiction. For each of the following pairs of examples, determmine which of these relations is
exemplified:

(a) My cat keeps chasing that rat.


I have a pet.
(b) I met this snake in the zoo.
It was in the zoo that this snake and I met.
(c) I’m using my brother’s netflix account.
I’m an only child.
(d) I was born in mid-winter.
My birthday is at the end of July.
(e) Lizards, as many other animals, like the sun.
Many animals like the sun, including lizards.
(f) Unlike other planets, Mars is inhabited by robots.
Mars is a planet.
2. Provide an example of your own using pairs of sentences that include a/an:
• paraphrase

A:

B:

• entailment (in which A entails B)

A:

B:

• contradiction

A:

B:
3. Take the sentence The mechanic refused to fix my sister’s Jeep.. This sentence has many entailments,
provide 3.

(i)

(ii)

(iii)

– 3/4 –
Task 5: Structural Ambiguity

1. This sentence is structurally ambiguous: Look at that dog with one eye.
With the help of tree structures or paraphrasing, explain how the two different readings emerge from
the different syntactic relations between parts of the sentence.1
2. Name five different interpretations of the following sentence:

Peter painted the racoon in a tuxedo in the living room.

(a)

(b)

(c)

(d)

(e)

Task 6: Interactive Semantics Exploration


Through this task, you are encouraged to actively engage with chatGPT2 to explore semantics. The fol-
lowing concepts should be considered: incompatibility, antonymy, synonymy, paraphrase, and most certain
principle.
1. Ask chatGPT to explain each concept. How accurately are they explained?
2. Ask chatGPT for examples of those concepts (either out of the blue or by giving a word and asking
for antonyms etc directly).
3. To gain a deeper understanding, ask follow-up questions, such as how words are used, the context of
words, or the relationship between words. Are the answers accurate?
4. Keep a record of any insights or patterns that you find interesting. Did you discover any common
patterns or intriguing insights during your interactions?
Your findings should be summarized in a brief report after your exploration has been completed (no more
than 200 words). Document your findings, including the words or phrases you discovered and the explana-
tions you received from chatGPT.

Enjoy working on these exercises!

1 Source: https://mgmasoncreative.com/2014/08/15/syntactic-ambiguity-english-language-at-its-funniest/
2 link: https://chat.openai.com

– 4/4 –

You might also like