自考“英语语言学”资料(8)

自考“英语语言学”资料（8）

1.71.What is polysemy？What is homonymy？“Polysemy”refers to the semantic phenomenon that a word may have than one meaning.For example，“negative”，means （1）a statement saying or meaning“no”，（2）a refusal or denial，（3）one of the following words and expressions：no，not，nothing，never，not at all，etc.，（4）a negative photograph or film.But we can sometimes hardly tell if a form has several meanings or it is a different word taking this form；hence the difference between polysemy and homonymy.

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2.What is entailment？

“Entailment”can be illustrated by the following two sentences，with Sentence A entailing Sentence B：

A：He married a blonde heiress.

B：He married a blonde.

In terms of truth value，the following relationships exist between these two sentences（1）When A is true，B is necessarily true；（2）When B is false，too；（3）when A is false，B may be true or false ；（4）When B is true，A may be true or false.Entailment is basically a semantic relation or logical implication，but we have to assume co-reference of“He”in sentence A and sentence B，before we have A entail B.

1.73.What is presupposition？

Similar to entailment，“presupposition”is a semantic relationship or logical connection.The above-mentioned“When phrase No.1”is also true with presupposition.For example：A：The girl he married was an heiress.

B：He married a girl.

But there is an important difference：Presupposition is not subject to negation，i.e.，when A is false，B is still true.Other statements about the truth value in presupposition are（1）When B is true，A can either be true or false；（2）When B is false，A has no truth value at all.Presupposition does not have to be found between two propositions.An example in point is ：“ When did you stop beating your wife？”This presupposes that he has been beating his wife.

1.74.What is componential analysis？

“Componential analysis”defines the meaning of a lexical element in terms of semantic components.For example，we may“clip”the following words“Man”，“Woman”，“Boy”and“Girl”so that we have only separate parts of them.

Man：+Human+Adult+Male

Woman：+Human+Adult-Male

Boy：+Human-Adult+Male

Girl：+Huamn-Adult-Male

1.75.What is predication analysis？What is a one-place predicate？What is a two-place predicate？What is a no-place predicate？What are down-graded predications？

“Predication analysis”is a new approach for sentential meaning analysis.“Predication”is usually considered an important common category shared by propositions，questions，commands，etc.Predication is to break down the sentence into their smaller constituents：argument（logical participant）and predicate （relation element）.The“predicate”is the major or pivotal element governing the argument.We may now distinguish a“two-place predicate”（which governs two arguments，e.g.subject and object），a“one-place predicate”（which governs one argument，i.e.，subject）and a“no-place predicate”that has simply no argument（no real subject or object）。

1.76.What is a logical operator？

（1）“Logical operator ”make only one kind of the“logical factors”or“logical means”，others being“definiteness”，“ coreference ”，“tense”and“time”，since predication is not the whole of a sentence or proposition.All these factors play a part in prepositional actualization of the predication ——the pining