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Tuto5 Tutorial Semantics - Tagged

The document outlines tutorial questions for a linguistics course focusing on semantics, including the meaning of the Chinese word '叫', the concept of entailment, types of antonymy, and the relationships of hyponymy and hypernymy. It provides examples and exercises for students to analyze sentence relationships and categorize word pairs. The document serves as a guide for students to apply linguistic concepts in practical scenarios.

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18 views2 pages

Tuto5 Tutorial Semantics - Tagged

The document outlines tutorial questions for a linguistics course focusing on semantics, including the meaning of the Chinese word '叫', the concept of entailment, types of antonymy, and the relationships of hyponymy and hypernymy. It provides examples and exercises for students to analyze sentence relationships and categorize word pairs. The document serves as a guide for students to apply linguistic concepts in practical scenarios.

Uploaded by

N C
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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LING 1000/UGED1924 (2024-25, Term 2)

Tutorial questions: Semantics

1. The meaning of “叫” in Chinese:


Use the concepts you have learnt in lecture to explain why this movie clip is so funny.
[Link]

(A man came to a house and pressed the doorbell. The mother opened the door and said to
her daughter, ‘Call father’. The daughter thought the man standing at the door was her real
father and her mum was telling her the truth now. Shocked, the girl said goodbye to her
grandparents, thanking them for taking care of and loving her for the past years, and then
hugged the man at the door. It turned out that the man was a worker coming to fix their
bathroom.)

2. Entailment 蘊涵
 In linguistics, entailment is the relationship between two sentences where the truth of
one (A) requires the truth of the other (B).
 Definition of entailment:
(a) In every conceivable situation in which (A) is true, (B) is also true.
在所有可想像的情況下，當(A)是對/真的，(B)也是對/真的。
(b) If in a situation (B) is false, (A) is necessarily false.
當(B)是錯的，(A)也一定是錯的。
(Note: Nothing is specified for what (A) should be if (B) is true.)
 For example, the sentence (A) The president was assassinated. entails (B) The president
is dead. Notice also that if (B) is false, then (A) must necessarily be false. In such a case,
we can say sentence (A) entails sentence (B).
 Look at the following sentences. Tell whether the X sentence entails the Y sentence.
(2a) X: Fifi is a poodle. Y: Fifi is a dog.
(2b) X: My last name is Jones. Y: My father last name was Jones.
(2c) X: I live in Ohio. Y: I live in the U.S.A.
(2d) X: I speak Russian Y: I am from Russia.
(2e) X: At least 30 people will come to the Y: At least 20 people will come to
party. the party.
(2f) X: John believes that Peter likes Paul. Y: Peter likes Paul.
(2g) X: Jane knows that Bill likes sushi. Y: Bill likes sushi.
(2h) X: John doesn’t know that Peter likes Y: Peter likes Paul.
Paul

1
3. Antonymy 反義
There are several kinds of antonymy. State whether the pairs in columns A and B are
complementary, gradable or relational opposites.
good bad
expensive cheap
parent offspring
pass fail
beautiful ugly
false true
legal illegal
husband wife

4. Hyponymy 上下義關係
- A word is a hyponym 下義詞 of another if its semantic meaning is more specific than
the other’s. Dog is a hyponym of animal.
- A word is a hypernym 上義詞 of another if its semantic meaning is more general
than the other’s. Animal is a hypernym of dog.

(4a) Propose a hypernym for each of the following words:


Boeing 747, hammer, T-shirt, pink

(4b) Propose a hyponym for each of the following words:


Car, musical instrument, furniture, beverage

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