Introducing Language in Use: a Coursebook
Activities
Semantics
- Stool. ‘Backless seat, with or without padding, for one person’.
Underline the parts of this definition that represent semantic knowledge. Do not underline any part that represents encyclopaedic knowledge. Give reasons for your answer.
- What can you say about the meaning relationship between the following two sentences?
- The box contains the money.
- The money is in the box.
Therefore, what can you conclude about the meaning relationship between contain and be in?
- Study the following pattern of entailment (assume that it is the same ship all the time):
- ‘The location of that ship is unknown’ entails ‘The location of that ship is not known’.
- ‘The location of that ship is known’ entails ‘The location of that ship is not unknown’.
- ‘The location of that ship is not known’ entails ‘The location of that ship is unknown’.
- ‘The location of that ship is not unknown’ entails ‘The location of that ship is known’.
Given that pattern, what meaning relationship holds between known and unknown?
- Which of the following claims about entailment (one per line) are true and which are false?
- ‘The door is open’ entails ‘The door is not closed’.
- ‘The door is not open’ entails ‘The door is closed’.
- ‘The door is closed’ entails ‘The door is not open’.
- ‘The door is not closed’ entails ‘The door is open’.
- ‘The door is half-open’ entails ‘The door is closed’.
- ‘The door is half-open’ entails ‘The door is open’.
- ‘The door is not half-open’ entails ‘The door is closed’.
- ‘The door is not half-open’ entails ‘The door is open’.
- ‘The door is half-closed’ entails ‘The door is closed’.
- ‘The door is half-closed’ entails ‘The door is open’.
Reasoning from your answers, say whether open and closed are a pair of incompatibles, antonyms or complementaries. (Hint: a door that is half-open is open, and one that is half-closed is also open. Well, that's what the authors think, though some people claim that when the latch has not firmly clicked shut on a door that is otherwise closed they could talk of it as only half-closed.)