Meaning: 40 flashcards
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1. What is the basic definition of **meaning** in philosophy?
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Meaning is the relationship between a sign (word, symbol, or action) and what it stands for or signifies.
2. What is **semantics**?
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The branch of linguistics and philosophy that studies meaning in language, including the relationship between words and their referents.
3. What is **pragmatics**?
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The study of how context influences meaning, including speaker intentions and implied meanings.
4. What is a **referent**?
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The actual object, entity, or concept in the world that a word or expression refers to.
5. What is **sense** in semantics?
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The internal conceptual content of an expression, independent of its referent; how it relates to other expressions.
6. What is the **sense–reference distinction**?
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The distinction between an expression's sense (its conceptual meaning) and its reference (the actual object it denotes).
7. What is an **intension**?
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The set of properties or attributes that determine the extension of a term; the criterion for membership.
8. What is an **extension**?
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The set of all objects or entities to which a term applies.
9. What is **denotation**?
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The literal, direct meaning of a word; its primary reference.
10. What is **connotation**?
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The emotional, cultural, or associative meanings a word carries beyond its literal meaning.
11. What is **ambiguity**?
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The property of having more than one possible meaning, leading to uncertainty in interpretation.
12. What is **vagueness**?
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The property of having imprecise or borderline cases of application, lacking clear boundaries.
13. What is a **definition**?
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A statement that explains the meaning of a term by specifying its necessary and sufficient conditions or by other means.
14. What is an **ostensive definition**?
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A definition that explains meaning by pointing to examples or instances of the term.
15. What is a **stipulative definition**?
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A definition that assigns a new or specific meaning to a term for a particular purpose, not based on existing usage.
16. What is a **lexical definition**?
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A definition that reports the conventional or dictionary meaning of a term as used in a language.
17. What is a **persuasive definition**?
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A definition that aims to influence attitudes or beliefs by redefining a term in a way that carries emotional or evaluative force.
18. What is **truth-conditional semantics**?
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An approach that explains meaning in terms of truth conditions: the conditions under which a sentence is true.
19. What is a **truth condition**?
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The condition that must hold in the world for a sentence to be true.
20. What is **compositionality**?
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The principle that the meaning of a complex expression is determined by the meanings of its parts and their syntactic structure.
21. What is a **proposition**?
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The abstract content or meaning expressed by a declarative sentence; what is asserted or believed.
22. What is **reference**?
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The relation between a linguistic expression and the object or entity it denotes in the world.
23. What is **use** in the context of meaning?
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The way a word or expression is employed in actual communication, which can affect its meaning.
24. What is the **use–mention distinction**?
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The difference between using a word to talk about something and mentioning the word itself (e.g., using 'apple' vs. mentioning 'apple').
25. What is a **speech act**?
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An action performed through speaking, such as making a promise, giving an order, or asking a question.
26. What is **illocutionary force**?
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The intended function or action of an utterance, such as asserting, requesting, or warning.
27. What is **perlocutionary effect**?
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The actual effect or response produced by an utterance on the listener, such as persuading or alarming.
28. What is **indexicality**?
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The property of expressions whose meaning depends on context, such as 'I', 'here', 'now'.
29. What is a **deictic expression**?
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A word or phrase that points to something in the context, such as 'this', 'that', 'you', 'there'.
30. What is **metaphor**?
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A figure of speech that describes something by comparing it to something else, suggesting a similarity.
31. What is **irony**?
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A figure of speech where the intended meaning is opposite to the literal meaning, often for humorous or emphatic effect.
32. What is **analogy**?
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A comparison between two things that highlights similarities, often used to explain or clarify meaning.
33. What is **synonymy**?
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The relation between words that have the same or very similar meanings.
34. What is **antonymy**?
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The relation between words that have opposite meanings.
35. What is **hyponymy**?
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The relation between a more specific term and a more general term, where the specific term is included in the general one.
36. What is **polysemy**?
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The phenomenon where a single word has multiple related meanings.
37. What is **homonymy**?
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The relation between words that are spelled or pronounced the same but have different, unrelated meanings.
38. What is **semantic entailment**?
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A logical relation where the truth of one sentence guarantees the truth of another.
39. What is **presupposition**?
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An implicit assumption that must be true for a statement to make sense or be appropriate.
40. What is **implicature**?
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What is suggested or implied in an utterance without being explicitly stated.
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