Questions tagged [semantics]
Questions relating to semantics, the study of meaning.
618 questions
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Tense: temporal meaning and non-temporal meanings [closed]
Quoting from the "tense" entry in "A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics" by David Crystal:
In Linguistics, the relationship between tense and time has been the
subject of ...
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Temporal deictic expressions and the latest reference point
I was reading the lectures of Charles Fillmore on temporal deixis, and he started talking about expressions like “in a [non-calendar time unit]”
What he didn’t talk about (in this type of expressions) ...
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What are the lexical relations for the word “time”? And is hyponymy one of them? [closed]
Does the word time have any antonyms ? And what are the types of them ? And does seconds hours and minutes count as hyponyms for it or are they just synonyms?
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Is "swabbed in dirty robes" a valid expression?
I have been recently playing a horror video game "Lost in Vivo" by Akuma Kira. In locations of this game there are a handful of notes and memos the player can read, and in one of them I met ...
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Determining a subject or object: what is the subject or object in this sentence "Has the door been fixed yet?"
I am a native English speaker, and have not formally learnt or done deep analysis of English grammar rules. I am now learning German, and a resource I am using uses English sentences and the idea of &...
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On the use of overtly
I need help settling a debate over the way in which I used the word 'overtly' today. A friend and I have been going back and forth over it so I figure let's get a third (or fourth) opinion on it.
...
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Meaning of the verb "hate"
Further to a preceding post about the classification of catenative verbs, CamGEL states that the verb "hate" has two different meanings depending on whether its clausal complement can have a ...
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Need an accessible explanation on nitty-gritty details of how semantical distinction between count vs uncount nouns works in English
Sorry if this question has been answered before, I have been unable to find anything remotely adequate on this website.
What I want: to learn patterns that allow to be better at guessing (and/or ...
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Deck as verb and the accompanying preposition
As per Cambridge dictionary and others, the word 'deck' in its verb form means to decorate or add something to something to make an effect: https://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/deck
...
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He doesn’t go fishing with friends(,) as he once promised [ [not] to]
I am trying to translate a sentence.
Which is the correct interpretation?
He doesn’t go fishing with friends(,) as he once promised. = He doesn’t go fishing with friends, as he once promised to.
He ...
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What does the word "leggit" mean?
I've just finished Call of Duty Black Ops II, and there was one word whose meaning I couldn't find even on the Internet.
This is leggit, and it's a verb.
I have a link to a YouTube video with this ...
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Do auxiliary verbs have a meaning / an intrinsic meaning?
Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_auxiliary_verbs):
English auxiliary verbs are a small set of English verbs, which
include the English modal auxiliary verbs and a few others. Although
...
user474469
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It can't possibly be true, but somehow maybe
How is this sentence to be construed:
'It can't possibly be true, but somehow maybe.' ?
Can you rephrase it?
Source: https://youtu.be/X19aZ-MgibA?t=663
Would I Lie to You S17 E8. Non-UK viewers. 16 ...
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If a baddie is using, are they abusing?
The following sentence got me thinking 1:
While hawala is used for the legitimate transfer of funds, its
anonymity and minimal documentation have also made it vulnerable to
abuse by individuals and ...
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Syntax and semantics of implications with different arrangement of propositions
I have two statements
If swimming is allowed in the shore, then sharks have not been spotted.
If sharks have not been spotted, then swimming is allowed.
I am a maths student, so based on that these ...
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What about this sentence does not make sense?
From the16types.info forum, signature of user exsomnis:
Either serve me now with comfortable deeds or disappear.
What exactly is incorrect with the adjective "comfortable" modifying the ...
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Does "overwhelming" equate to "majority"? [closed]
I had a disagreement with somebody, and I am struggling to see how I could be wrong. Essentially, I referred to a representation of a certain group of people on a website as overwhelming; my exact ...
user495185
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Compare & Contrast to get deeper understanding of similarities and differences between Punchy vs Pithy
Reference : https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/pithy
Pithy adjective 1 : consisting of or abounding in pith 2 : having
substance and point : tersely cogent
Reference : https://www.merriam-...
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I was thinking of her(,) swimming in the lake
Do we place a comma before 'swimming' in 'I was thinking of her swimming in the lake.'?
How can it be rephrased?
I was thinking of her while I was swimming in the lake.
She swimming in the lake was ...
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John goes to the cinema with Kate and (with) Ann
What's the difference between general public's interpretations of these:
John goes to the cinema with Kate and Ann.
John goes to the cinema with Kate and with Ann.
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Is there a term for antonyms that are a small edit distance from each other?
I'm looking for examples of dramatic typos - where a minor edit can dramatically change the meaning of a phrase, and would like to know if there's a name for this phenomenon.
Paronyms are a similar ...
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"Keep it unchanged" vs. "Keep it constant" vs. "Keep it unchanging"
Using Google search, I found that the phrase "keep it unchanged" is very common while "keep it unchanging" is very uncommon and "keep it constant" is not so common. ...
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Does a suffix need to be an affix?
I understand that according to Collins Dictionary, a suffix is an affix that follows the stem to which it is attached, as for example -s and -ness in dogs and softness. It has, however, a second ...
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Is it Reunion after 50 years or 50 year Reunion?
We have recently conducted a reunion party after 50 years. The party was conducted by the old students of a Highschool. We thought of some titles for it:
50 year Reunion
50th Reunion
Reunion after 50 ...
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'Some rats lived at/in the school. To get rid of them, the headmaster called in a rat control service.' [duplicate]
Can one use "at the school" instead of "in the school" in,
Some rats lived at the school. To get rid of them, the headmaster called in a rat control service.
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Why is the meaning of good in most dictionaries described as both acceptable/satisfactory in one sense and excellent/high quality in another sense?
When we type good in most online dictionaries including Oxford, Collins, Webster etc, various meanings come out. However, when it comes to standard, quality or performance both senses are given:
...
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"them" vs. "those"
In some places, I have found them to be used in a place where it seems to mean as much as those. One example is the song Into the Great Wide Open by Tom Petty. The chorus has the lines
Into the great ...
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Meaning of the zero article for a plural noun phrase in English?
Please consider this example of sentence :
“ Schools allocate places to the pupils who score highest. “
Here are two first questions :
Could you confirm that “schools” here means “all schools” ?
...
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Is the usage of the word 'entitled' appropriate in the following extract from a city council meeting?
Is the usage of the word 'entitled' appropriate in the following extract from a city council meeting?
An ordinance of the City Commission ... , relating to updating … Chapter 18 ... by: Amending ...
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Is “The door can't open” always an incorrect expression?
I am not a native speaker of English. I would like to know whether "The door can't open." is always an incorrect expression.
More specifically, the Wikipedia article on Force dynamics has ...
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What is it called when "I don't like X" is used to mean "I positively *dislike* X", or "We do not recommend Xing" is used for "We *discourage* Xing"?
I’m wondering if there’s a term that linguists or rhetoricians use for this (semantic?) phenomenon.
In both cases, it seems as though ‘not’ no longer expresses the mere absence or negation of what it ...
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"Discretion is the better part of valour" doesn't seem to make sense as a sentence
By discretion, the idiom is referring to choosing to be careful. By valour, the idiom is referring to being courageous. So how is discretion a "part" of valour? Valour and discretion are two ...
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"implies the narrator"?
A sentence on this website reads:
It might well be, implies the narrator, that he made up the whole story, but he's content to leave it up to the reader to decide which "passages" of his ...
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A binge is on its own
I am quite sure that the sentence
There was a binge yesterday
is grammatically correct. But what about semantics? I mean, there was an event like a drinking party yesterday. Do I use the binge word ...
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Are English negative polarity questions biased?
A friend and I had a question about a sentence that we encountered:
Didn't you want to pay for something that was too much?
My friend argues that sentence is fairly neutral clarifying in a neutral ...
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What does "mole-faced" mean? This compound adjective often appears in crime noir stories and books
The internet is no help. It just shows me images of people with facial moles - and I'm pretty sure that's not what Sam Spade/Dashiell Hammett had in mind. Though here's a more recent example from ...
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Complementation according to Quirk et al.: syntactic concept vs. semantic concept
According to the definition of "complementation" in "The Oxford Dictionary of English Grammar", for most linguists complementation is a syntactic concept. However, the definition ...
user474469
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"Guys" losing its gendered meaning in American English
Disclaimer - I have very little knowledge of semantics, and I am mostly just a phonetics enthusiast. Thus, my question and the way I explain it may be unprofessional or may lack linguistic rigor.
I'm ...
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How confident is confident? [closed]
I'd always thought that "sure" and "certain" were close to synonymous, both meaning absence of doubt (with "certain" in a slightly higher register, and maybe a bit ...
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When an entity 'fails' to do an action, does it imply that they 'ought' to do that action?
For example:
High-functioning psychopaths often fail to recognize the thoughts and feelings of the people they hurt.
In this example, there is no intention to do the action (verb) by the person ...
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Is "being away from home a good deal" strictly habitual?
On his internment during WWII, P. G. Wodehouse commented:
The chief drawback is that it means your being away from home a good deal.
Striking. Because, I think, he's slightly stretching the use of ...
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Is the question "Can I borrow (person) for a while?" correct usage of English?
Supposing the person is in a classroom, and a teacher is present. If someone from outside the classroom asks the teacher "Can I borrow this person?", would it be correct usage of English? ...
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Can "must have + past participle" ever express obligation (deontic modality)?
Can a sentence using a must have + past participle construction ever express deontic modality?
These are all epistemic:
He must have showered.
Someone must have eaten the apple.
The laundry must have ...
user163011
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What is the name of the ambiguity in "he loves a woman"?
What Are Scope Ambiguities? has the example
Every man loves a woman.
And says that it is scopally ambiguous because these two possible readings exist:
"for every man, there is a woman, and it'...
user163011
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How might we understand the phrase "on goal"?
The sentence is,
He [the goalie] is pretty much incapable of thwarting even the most
fainthearted attempts on goal.
Source - Own Goal
The meaning seems clear: the goalie is failing to prevent goals....
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Can "somewhere" sometimes be a substitute for "sometime"? [closed]
Here is an example of an author appearing to do just that. "It seems, no matter my intentions, my other 4 babies were 'off the boob' (yes, I'm sometimes known for my less-than PC vernacular) ...
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Is "can be able to" idiomatic among native speakers at all? If not, what's its origin?
I've heard the expression can be able to consistently from a couple of folks from India, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Here are a couple of paraphrased examples:
By signing up to our service,...
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What is the difference between phrases "is used when" and "is used for when"?
I was recently reading some articles about type conditionals, and one of them had a following line:
The zero conditional is used for when the time being referred to is now or always and the situation ...
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intention vs objective
I'm trying to write a logical/philosophical essay about the topics of interests and actions, and more precisely, of logical fallacies that arise from equating interests and actions.[1]
After 30 years, ...
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If left / right is laterality what is front / rear?
I want to write something like this:
Something can be differentiated by laterality [i.e. left - right dimension], by ___ [front - rear dimension], and also by the interaction between laterality and ...
