A Dictionary of Linguistics and Phonetics David Crystal

432 semology
that of a vowel; though, occurring as it does at the margins of a syllable, its
duration is much less than that typical of vowels. The common examples in
English are [w] and [j], as in wet and yet respectively. Some phoneticians refer to
these sounds as a type of approximant.
semology (n.) A major component recognized in stratificational grammar,
comprising the stratal systems of sememics and hypersememics (or
semantics). The component deals with the statement of meanings, both in
terms of semantic features, and in terms of referential/cognitive meaning.
semotactics (n.)
see sememe, taxis
sense (n.) In semantics, this term is usually contrasted with reference, as part
of an explication of the notion of meaning. Reference, or denotation, is seen
as extralinguistic – the entities, states of affairs, etc. in the external world
which a linguistic expression stands for. Sense, on the other hand, refers to the
system of linguistic relationships (sense relations or semantic relations) which a
lexical item contracts with other lexical items – the paradigmatic relationships
of synonymy, antonymy, etc., and the syntagmatic relationships of
collocation. In semantic theories deriving from the work of German logician
Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), the sense of an expression is a ‘mode of presentation’
of the expression’s referent, and also serves indirectly as the expression’s
referent in opaque contexts. In possible-worlds semantics, the sense of an
expression is a function mapping each possible world (or world–time pair)
onto the expression’s extension relative to that world (or pair); also called
intension.
sense association
see association
sensitivity (n.)
see quantity sensitivity
sentence (n.) The largest structural unit in terms of which the grammar
of a language is organized. Innumerable definitions of sentence exist, ranging
from the vague characterizations of traditional grammar (such as ‘the expression
of a complete thought’) to the detailed structural descriptions of contemporary
linguistic analysis. Most linguistic definitions of the sentence show
the influence of Leonard Bloomfield (see Bloomfieldian), who pointed to
the structural autonomy, or independence, of the notion of sentence: it is ‘not
included by virtue of any grammatical construction in any larger linguistic form’.
Research has also attempted to discover larger grammatical units (of discourse,
or text), but so far little has been uncovered comparable to the sentence, whose
constituent structure is stateable in formal, distributional terms.
Linguistic discussion of the sentence has focused on problems of identification,
classification and generation. Identifying sentences is relatively straightforward
in the written language, but is often problematic in speech, where intonation
and pause may give uncertain clues as to whether a sentence boundary exists.
Classification of sentence structure proceeds along many different lines, e.g. the
binary constituent procedures of immediate-constituent analysis, or the
hierarchical analyses of Hallidayan and other grammars (sentences being