1. Word Meaning Reference vs. Sense Meaning relationships –Synonymy –Antonymy –Hyponymy

2. Sentence Meaning What do you know when you know what a sentence means? => The conditions under which that sentence would be true

3. Truth Conditions “World War II ended in 1945.” …is true if WWII did in fact end in 1945.

4. Truth Values “World War II ended in 1945.” = T “World War II ended in 1919.” = F

5. What about: “Puli is a city in Taiwan.” We can understand this sentence because we know its truth conditions.

6. ‘I want to be the president of the U.S.’ vs. ‘I want to be George W. Bush.’ => Different truth conditions

7. Principle of Compositionality Meaning of a sentence Meanings of its component parts (the words) Plus Structures they occur in (the relationships between the words based on the syntax).

8. Sentential Meaning S – NP VP – | | –Sandy runs

9. Truth Conditions The individual ‘Sandy’ The set of runners => Is Sandy a member of the set of runners?

10. Not just meanings of words S – NP VP – | –Dogs V NP – chase cats

11. Same words, different meanings S – NP VP – | – Cats V NP – chase dogs

12. Thematic Roles S => NP 1 (Aux) VP VP => V NP 2 Agent:initiator of the action, capable of volition David broke the window. The fox jumped up.

13. Patient:undergo the effect of some action, often undergo a change of state Fred shattered the rock. The sun melted the ice. Theme:moved by an action, or entity whose location is described Fred threw the rock. The book is in the library.

14. Dogs chase cats. => dogs = Agent; cats = Theme Cats chase dogs. => cats = Agent; dogs = Theme

15. Dogs chase cats.(Active) Cats are chased by dogs. (Passive) Active sentence: Subject = Agent Passive sentence: Subject = Theme

16. Intersective Adjectives red book »bookred

17. Subsective Adjectives snowflake big snowflake => Relative intersection

18. Semantic Relations between Sentences Entailment If S1 is true, then S2 is also true. S1:Julius Ceasar was a famous man. S2:Julius Ceasar was a man.

19. S1:Bob has a beagle. S2:Bob has a dog. => ‘beagle’ is a hyponym of ‘dog’.

20. Negative sentences Seattle is a hypernym of Ballard X: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Seattle.’ entails Y: ‘Bill Gates doesn't live in Ballard.’

21. Factive Verbs I know that Bob is in Spain. => Bob is in Spain. I regret the incident. => There was an incident.