Meaning

Question What is the basic definition of **meaning** in philosophy? tap to flip ↻ Answer Meaning is the relationship between a sign (word, symbol, or action) and what it stands for or signifies. Question What is **semantics**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The branch of linguistics and philosophy that studies meaning in language, including the relationship between words and their referents. Question What is **pragmatics**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The study of how context influences meaning, including speaker intentions and implied meanings. Question What is a **referent**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The actual object, entity, or concept in the world that a word or expression refers to. Question What is **sense** in semantics? tap to flip ↻ Answer The internal conceptual content of an expression, independent of its referent; how it relates to other expressions. Question What is the **sense–reference distinction**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The distinction between an expression's sense (its conceptual meaning) and its reference (the actual object it denotes). Question What is an **intension**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The set of properties or attributes that determine the extension of a term; the criterion for membership. Question What is an **extension**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The set of all objects or entities to which a term applies. Question What is **denotation**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The literal, direct meaning of a word; its primary reference. Question What is **connotation**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The emotional, cultural, or associative meanings a word carries beyond its literal meaning. Question What is **ambiguity**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The property of having more than one possible meaning, leading to uncertainty in interpretation. Question What is **vagueness**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The property of having imprecise or borderline cases of application, lacking clear boundaries. Question What is a **definition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A statement that explains the meaning of a term by specifying its necessary and sufficient conditions or by other means. Question What is an **ostensive definition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A definition that explains meaning by pointing to examples or instances of the term. Question What is a **stipulative definition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A definition that assigns a new or specific meaning to a term for a particular purpose, not based on existing usage. Question What is a **lexical definition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A definition that reports the conventional or dictionary meaning of a term as used in a language. Question What is a **persuasive definition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A definition that aims to influence attitudes or beliefs by redefining a term in a way that carries emotional or evaluative force. Question What is **truth-conditional semantics**? tap to flip ↻ Answer An approach that explains meaning in terms of truth conditions: the conditions under which a sentence is true. Question What is a **truth condition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The condition that must hold in the world for a sentence to be true. Question What is **compositionality**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and their syntactic structure. Question What is a **proposition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The abstract content or meaning expressed by a declarative sentence; what is asserted or believed. Question What is **reference**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The relation between a linguistic expression and the object or entity it denotes in the world. Question What is **use** in the context of meaning? tap to flip ↻ Answer The way a word or expression is employed in actual communication, which can affect its meaning. Question What is the **use–mention distinction**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The difference between using a word to talk about something and mentioning the word itself (e.g., using 'apple' vs. mentioning 'apple'). Question What is a **speech act**? tap to flip ↻ Answer An action performed through speaking, such as making a promise, giving an order, or asking a question. Question What is **illocutionary force**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The intended function or action of an utterance, such as asserting, requesting, or warning. Question What is **perlocutionary effect**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The actual effect or response produced by an utterance on the listener, such as persuading or alarming. Question What is **indexicality**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The property of expressions whose meaning depends on context, such as 'I', 'here', 'now'. Question What is a **deictic expression**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A word or phrase that points to something in the context, such as 'this', 'that', 'you', 'there'. Question What is **metaphor**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A figure of speech that describes something by comparing it to something else, suggesting a similarity. Question What is **irony**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A figure of speech where the intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning, often for humorous or emphatic effect. Question What is **analogy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A comparison between two things that highlights similarities, often used to explain or clarify meaning. Question What is **synonymy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The relation between words that have the same or very similar meanings. Question What is **antonymy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The relation between words that have opposite meanings. Question What is **hyponymy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The relation between a more specific term and a more general term, where the specific term is included in the general one. Question What is **polysemy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The phenomenon where a single word has multiple related meanings. Question What is **homonymy**? tap to flip ↻ Answer The relation between words that are spelled or pronounced the same but have different, unrelated meanings. Question What is **semantic entailment**? tap to flip ↻ Answer A logical relation where the truth of one sentence guarantees the truth of another. Question What is **presupposition**? tap to flip ↻ Answer An implicit assumption that must be true for a statement to make sense or be appropriate. Question What is **implicature**? tap to flip ↻ Answer What is suggested or implied in an utterance without being explicitly stated.