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In linguistics, a polarity item is a lexical item that is associated with affirmation or negation.An affirmation is a positive polarity item, abbreviated PPI or AFF.A negation is a negative polarity item, abbreviated NPI or NEG.
The result is that the truth of either one of the connected statements requires the truth of the other (i.e. either both statements are true, or both are false), though it is controversial whether the connective thus defined is properly rendered by the English "if and only if"—with its pre-existing meaning.
Complementary antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite but whose meanings do not lie on a continuous spectrum (push, pull). Relational antonyms are word pairs where opposite makes sense only in the context of the relationship between the two meanings (teacher, pupil). These more restricted meanings may not apply in all scholarly ...
In linguistics, well-formedness is the quality of a clause, word, or other linguistic element that conforms to the grammar of the language of which it is a part. Well-formed words or phrases are grammatical, meaning they obey all relevant rules of grammar.
Formally, every sentence above looks like the first conditional, with the condition having future meaning, [5] which was not our intention. Generally, context and auxiliary words like "already", "at present", etc. sometimes are enough to inform us that the condition has present meaning, but sometimes are not, which leads to ambiguity, for example:
Tropes (from Greek trepein, 'to turn') change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning ("For Brutus is an honorable man; / So are they all, all honorable men"). During the Renaissance, scholars meticulously enumerated and classified figures of speech.
Auxiliary verbs may also be used to mark the opposite condition, a lack of volition or control. Japanese is one language that exhibits both auxiliaries indicating volition and auxiliaries indicating lack of volition. The verb aru has a basic meaning of 'be' or 'stay' and is used with inanimate subjects.
For instance, the term "counterfactual" is sometimes applied to conditionals that express a contrary-to-fact meaning, regardless of their grammatical structure. [14] [8] Along similar lines, the term "subjunctive" is sometimes used to refer to conditionals that bear fake past or irrealis marking, regardless of the meaning they convey. [14] [15]