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DEFINITION Semantics Greek, semantikos, “significant”, the study of the meaning of linguistic signs—that is, words, expressions, and sentencesA. Semantics is, more narrowly defined, the

UNIT 1

WHAT IS SEMANTICS?

A DEFINITION

Semantics (Greek, semantikos, “significant”), the study of the meaning of linguistic

signs—that is, words, expressions, and sentences Scholars of semantics try to answer such questions as “What is the meaning of (the word) X?” They do this by studying what signs are,

as well as how signs possess significance—that is, how they are intended by speakers, how they designate (make reference to things and ideas), and how they are interpreted by hearers The goal of semantics is to match the meanings of signs—what they stand for—with the process of assigning those meanings

Semantics is studied from philosophical (pure) and linguistic (descriptive and

theoretical) approaches, plus an approach known as general semantics Philosophers look at the behaviour that goes with the process of meaning Linguists study the elements or features of meaning as they are related in a linguistic system General semanticists concentrate on meaning

as influencing what people think and do

Here are two senses for semantics:

1 Semantics is, generally defined, the study of meaning of linguistic expressions

2 Semantics is, more narrowly defined, the study of the meaning of linguistic expressions apart from consideration of the effect that pragmatic factors, such as the following, have

on the meaning of language in use:

• Features of the context

• Conventions of language use

• The goals of the speaker

In the scope of this course we only mention semantics in its narrow sense, namely sentence (word) meaning which is independent of pragmatic context We do not discuss such aspects of meaning as with the speaker’s meaning which should be interpreted based on the consideration of the extra-linguistic factors namely speaker’s intention, governing factors of pragmatic context and situation such as time, place …

As mentioned, semantics is the study of meaning of linguistic expressions Here we have to answer the questions: “What is meaning?” and “What is considered linguistic expressions?” Meaning can be interpreted and understood in a variety of ways and perspectives Just look at some instances of meaning in the following sentences

I The meaning of meaning

In an important rarely book on the subject, C.K Ogden & I.A Richards’s The Meaning

of Meaning (1923) (cited in Crystal (1987), 16 different meanings of the words ‘mean/ meaning’ were distinguished Here are some of them:

John means to write ‘intends’

A green light means go ‘indicates’

Health means everything ‘has importance’

His look was full of meaning ‘special import’

What is the meaning of life? ‘point, purpose’

What does ‘capitalist’ mean to you? ‘convey’

What does ‘cornea’ mean? ‘refer to in the world’

It is the last kind of use that comes closest to the focus of linguistic semantic; but even this is a special kind of enquiry The questions asks for a definition, which is a somewhat unusual form of reply, found more in dictionaries than in everyday speech, that involves the

‘translation’ of the difficult word into ‘easier’ words The study of the properties of definitions

is an important part of semantics, but it is only a part Of greater importance is the study of the way in which words and sentences convey meaning in the everyday situations of speech and writing

II Three conceptions of meaning

1 Words and things

A popular view is that words ‘name’ or ‘refer to’ things – a view that can be found in the pages of Plato’s Cratylus Proper names like London, Bill Brown, and Daddy illustrate this conception, as do several other words and phrases – the labels attached to objects for sales in a shop, or those found on a pain colour chart But there are large numbers of words whether it is

not possible to see what ‘thing’ the word refers to: verbs such as ask or find; adjectives such as difficult or popular; nouns such as consistency or tradition In fact, the majority of words seem

unable to relate to things, in any clear way

2 Words, concepts and things

This view denies a direct link between words and things, arguing that the relationship can be made only through the use of our minds For every word, there is an associated concept One of the best known formulations of this position is the ‘semiotic triangle’ of Ogden Richards (1923, p.99):

Thought

Figure 1.1 The ‘semiotic triangle’ of Ogden Richards (1923, p.99, cited in Crystal (1987))

The main criticism of this approach is the insuperable difficulty of identifying ‘concept’ The ‘concept’ underlying a word such as tradition is no easier to define than the ‘thing; referred

to by tradition Some words do have meanings that relatively easy to conceptualize, but we

certainly do not have neat visual images corresponding to every word we say Nor is there any guarantee that a concept which might come to mind when I use the word table is going to be the same as the one you, the reader, might bring to mind.

B SOURCES THAT CONTRIBUTE TO STUDY OF MEANING

The study of the linguistic meaning of morphemes, word, phrases, and sentences is called semantics Subfields of semantics are lexical semantics, which is concerned with meanings of words and the meaning relationships among words; and phrasal or sentential semantics, which is concerned with the meaning of syntactic units larger than the word The

study of how context affects meaning – for example, how the sentence It’s cold in here comes

to be interpreted as “close the windows” in certain situations – is called pragmatics

Contributions to semantics have come essentially from two sources – linguistics and philosophy as mentioned above Linguists have contributed primarily to the study of the core meaning or sense of individual words Philosophers, on the other hand, have contributed primarily to the study of meaning of sentences However, rather than trying to characterize the core meaning or sense of sentences directly = which, as we have just seen, is a difficult

undertaking – they have approached the semantics of sentences from two other directions: the study of reference and the study of truth conditions Reference is the study of what objects

linguistic expressions (i.e words, phrases, sentences, and so on) refer to For example, in the

sentence Mulroney is the Prime Minister of Canada, the expression Mulroney and the expression the Prime Minister of Canada refer to the same entity, namely Brain Mulroney

Truth conditional semantics, on the other hand is the study of the condition under which a statement can be judged true or false In actuality, much of what falls under the name of truth conditions involves truth relations that hold between sentences For example if the sentence

Fred is 80 years old is true, then the sentence Fred is over 50 years old is necessarily true.

UNIT 2

SENTENCES, UTTERANCES & PROPOSITIONS

To understand the notions of sense, reference, denotation, connotation, extension and intension

we should master the basic notions such as sentence, utterance and proposition.

A UTTERANCE

I Definition:

An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is silence

on the part of that person

An utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of language, such as sequence of sentences, or a single phrase or even a single word (Hurford,

1983, p.15)

An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by the speaker's silence

(Source: Crystal 1985, Pei and Gaynor 1954)

An utterance is a string of speech found between breaths or pauses

An utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units of expression such as words and sentences

(Source: Searle 1969)

II Characteristics:

- Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e they are just uttered or actually used in a particular occasion When we refer to an utterance we mean a unit of talk or something characterized as in spoken language Thus, an utterance is realized by accent, phonetic factors and if an utterance is recorded in written form, it is represented with double quotation marks in books or novels as the voice of the characters or speakers or writers or generally the addresser

of the message In communication we can usually hear utterances of non sentences: short phrases or a single word … For example,

- Not too bad (as a response to the question “How are you?”)

- Fire! (as the warning of a fire)

Practice 2.1

Now decide whether the following could represent utterances Please give your answer

as Yes or No and consider whether each of them meet the description of an utterance mentioned

in the definition

1) “Hello”

2) “Not much”

3) “Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e they are just uttered or actually used in a

particular occasion When we refer to an utterance we mean a unit of talk in spoken language Thus, an utterance is realized by accent, phonetic factors and if an utterance is recorded in written form, it is represented with double quotation marks in books or novels as the voice of the characters or speakers or writers or generally the addresser of the message”

4) “Pxgotmgt”

5) “Schplotzenpflaaaaaaaaargh!”

(Hurford, 1983, p 15)

At this stage, for us to imagine the relationship between an utterance and a sentence we

can assume that an utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units

of expression such as words and sentences.

It is grammatical in that it must be conformed to the syntactic rules of a certain language For example, this sentence is comprehensible because it is structured with the

grammatical rules of English: It took Tom 2 hours to finish his enormous dinner.

A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various realizations

in utterances and inscriptions We can just realize a sentence by hearing its communicative realization as the utterance or looking at its inscription in the book A sentence is said to be abstract because it is not associated to any phonetic characteristics Therefore it would make sense to say that an utterance was in a particular accent (i.e a particular way of pronouncing words) However, it would not make strict sense to say that a sentence was in a particular accent

A sentence expresses a complete thought, i.e it typically is composed of a subject and a predicate each of which correspond to the thing/person being talked about and the characteristics about the subject

E.g Fred is handsome (sentence)

Subject Predicate (linguistic function)

A person characteristic (meaning)

Sentence types: This is the basic classification of sentences into types:

• Declarative, e.g., Ellen went to the library

• Interrogative, e.g., Did Ellen go to the library?

• Imperative, e.g., (Ellen) Go to the library!

• Optative, e.g., I wish Ellen went to the library

Normally, there is a default correspondence between sentence types and speech acts (see further reading below)

Practice 2.2

Which of the following sentences are tokens of whole (complete) sentences? and which is not?

2) “Who is there?” 5) “Where shall I …?”

(a) something which is named or talked about (known as argument, or entity);

(b) an assertion or predication which is made about the argument

A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs (Hurford, 1983, p.19)

(In speech act semantics) A proposition is that part of the meaning of a clause or sentence

that is constant, despite changes in such things as the voice or illocutionary force of the clause Here a distinction is made between the propositional meaning of a sentence, and its illocutionary force (i.e the use made of the sentence in communication, e.g as a request, a warning, a promise) (Richard (1985), p.297)

e) Anh đi đi

These utterances have the same proposition P [anh đi] However, each of them has a distinctive voice or illocutionary force F as follows

a) Anh đi (Informing)

b) Anh đi (questioning)

c) Anh đi ư? (questioning with surprise)

d) Anh đi nhé (Informing with attention)

e) Anh đi đi (request/order)

We can have the semantic structure of an utterance as follows:

E.g We can say the sentences i) and ii) have the same proposition if both of them are true or false (Assuming in each case the same name Harry refers to the same person), but the sentences iii) and iv) express different propositions

i) Harry took out the agarbage

ii) Harry took the garbage out

iii) Harry loves Mary

iv) Mary loves John

Thus, when a speaker utters a simple declarative sentence, he commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition We can know a proposition is true if we know that the state-of-affairs mentioned in the proposition is true to our knowledge about the world In this

case, a true proposition is a fact.

For example, in the present-day world we know that it is a fact that there are lions in

Africa or it is a fact that Mr Nguyen Tan Dung is the present Prime Minister of Vietnam.

Practice 2.3

Now let us think about the truth of the following propositions Is each of these propositions is true or false regarding your knowledge about the present-day world?

1) Portugal defeated Germany in the quarter final of Euro 08 tournament

2) Nicole Kidman is American

3) The champions of Euro 08 are German

4) Semantics is the study of speech sounds

D THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROPOSITIONS-SENTENCES-UTTERANCES

I Proposition vs Thought:

Proposition is an object or product of thought A proposition can be thought of as something to entertain in an individual’s mind On the other hand, the same proposition can be grasped by many different people In this sense, it can be private or public For example, a Vietnamese person and an English person may look into the sky and at the same time each of them may have the same proposition about the state-of-affairs in their own mind

A sentence expresses a complete thought (a proposition) which consists of a noun (to refer to a particular thing) and a predicate (a verb, adjective to specify the thing denoted by a noun)

II Sentences vs utterances:

1 A sentence is a linguistic unit/entity whereas an utterance is an action of communicating A sentence is a linguistic unit in that this entity is composed of units of language such as words, phrases and put together by grammatical rules of a certain language (Vietnamese or English) An utterance is a speech act in that it in making an utterance we have to make an act of uttering a sentence or a phrase to communicate a message In this sense, whatever we say, the significance is that we actually

communicate a message For example, whatever we say like “How do you do, Good morning, Hi… we are actually making an act of greeting, i.e a speech act

2 A sentence is realized by an utterance or many different utterances We can only realize the words, phrases and sentence structure of what we say as a sentence through the realization of an actual utterance Briefly, a sentence may have different utterances as tokens

]

III Propositions-Sentences-Utterances

We can say that the same proposition can be encoded by a sentence or more than one sentence with different structures and words For example, when we look into the sky and see this , we can express our thought about this phenomenon with one of the following sentences:

It’s raining.

It rains.

It has started raining.

Here comes the rain.

utterance For example, the same sentence It’s raining can be uttered by different speakers in

different contexts, and accordingly can be interpreted as different utterances with different implications or purposes

Man to girlfriend: “It’s raining” (Please stay here)

Girl to mother: “It’s raining” (I can’t go to buy the salt for you)

Wife to husband: “It’s raining” (Please collect the clothes on the hanging rope in the garden)

To sum up, to make a verbal communicate act, a speaker typically starts with the process of producing a proposition in his/her mind Then he/she may have the need to speak it out To do this, he/she has to put words together into a sentence Now, if he decides to speak it out, he/she just says it loud in the form of speech sounds with a certain intonation pattern This

is an action of communication with an utterance as a unit of talk If the same speaker or another speaker utters this sentence in a different particular occasion with a different intention or purpose, they are said to make different utterances This process can be represented in the diagrams below

The representation of the three-phase process of making an utterance

Further reading http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor

Propositional meaning:

Each sentence has two components in its meaning, namely the conventional meaning of the sentence, sometimes called the proposition associated with this sentence, and the intended speech act Thus, if we represent the skeleton of the meaning (the proposition) in a semi- formalized way and add the grammatical information carried by each sentence type in the example in A, we get the following possibilities with the same proposition (B):

A

a Emma went to the supermarket.

b Did Emma go to the supermarket?

c Emma, go to the supermarket!

d If only Emma would go to the supermarket.

B.

a EMMA GO TO THE SUPERMARKET + declarative = statement

b EMMA GO TO THE SUPERMARKET + interrogative = question

c EMMA GO TO THE SUPERMARKET + imperative = order

d EMMA GO TO THE SUPERMARKET + optative = wish

Sentence vs proposition:

http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Students/Resits/LI1032/LI1032SampleExam.pdf

A sentence (S) has no inherent truth value, but has truth conditions: certain conditions must

be met for a sentence meaning to be true (or false)

Determining whether S is true or false is its propositional content

For us to walk in the park

i is a sentence; all three express the same proposition

the differences among them are grammatical not semantic/propositional

Practice 2.4

Fill in the chart below with (+) to represent the presence of this characteristic with utterances, sentences or propositions, or (-) to represent the absence of this characteristic with each of these semantic entities.

Utterances Sentences PropositionsCan be loud or quiet

Can be grammatical or not

Can be true of false

In a particular regional action

There are various approaches defining meaning as having two components To start with the distinction of the two components of meaning we will deal with the two basic concepts:

reference and sense Then we will present the other related issues of reference and sense such

as the contrast between denotation and connotation, between the extension and intension

A REFERENCE AND SENSE: THE TWO COMPONENTS OF MEANING

Meaning is a notion in semantics classically defined as having two components:

Reference and sense

I Reference:

1 Definition:

Reference is the relationship between words and the things, actions, events, and

qualities they stand for

Reference in its wider sense would be the relationship between a word or phrase and entity in the external world (see DENOTATION) For example, the word tree refers to the object

“tree” (the referent)

Reference, in its narrow sense is the relationship between a word or phrase and a

specific object, e.g a particular tree or a particular animal For example, Peter’s horse would

refer to a horse which is owned, ridden by, or in some way associated with Peter

Further reading Lyons 1981

(Richard (1985) p.310)

 Speaker Act of pointing/referring Referent (thing being referred to)

Based on the relationship between the linguistic expression my dog and the referent the

living creature being talked about in that situation, we can say that reference is the relationship between a particular linguistic expression and the referent being pointed at in a particular

occasion or context This relationship can be illustrated in the diagram below

“Look at my dog”

“My dog”

(Referential meaning)

Here we can see that by an act of pointing or referring to a particular thing in the world,

a particular speaker is making an act of connecting a linguistic expression (my dog) to a

particular thing in the world (the actual thing/creature that we can see or imagine in that

particular context of utterance)

2 Characteristics:

Typically, the thing we are pointing at or talking about can be seen or heard or even touched (e.g when a particular speaker says to us “Touch your left ear” we actually touch our left ear and we can feel something with its thickness between our fingers …) But we should remember that we can only do this if the linguistic expression “your left ear” is comprehensible, i.e we can understand this piece of language to fulfill the order “Touch your left ear”

Table 3.1 Reference and the function of connecting language to the world

Reference:

the relationship between

the expression

The referent:

part of the world:

touchable, visible and audible

(part of the language)

and the referent

(part of the world)

The expression part of the language:

readable and intelligible

II Sense:

1 Definition:

The place which a word or phrase (a LEXEME) holds in the system of relationships with

other words in the vocabulary of a language For example, the English words bachelor and married have the sense relationship of bachelor = never married.

The sense of a word is its cognitive meaning as determined by its place within the

semantic system of the language The word mother has the sense ‘parent and female’, in

contrast to father ‘parent and male’, both of the words contrasting with child, son, and daughter

in a set of related kinship terms Football is definable as a ball game with certain characteristics,

in contrast with other words for ball games, such as basketball and netball Come is a verb of movement in contrast with go; sad is an adjective of emotion, a synonym of unhappy and an antonym of happy; down and up are contrasting pairs of prepositions of direction; and and or are contrasting co-ordinating conjunctions, the first indicating merely a link between two items and the second a disjunction Words may have more than one sense In one sense, brother is a

kinship term, in another sense it is a religious terms

Further reading



In discussions about semantic analysis, a sense is the meaning of a lexical unit.

E.g "define each sense of the lexeme"

"compare lexically related senses"

Sense:

http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor

Sense is determined by how the expression at hand relates to other expressions in the same language Frege's (1892) classical example illustrates this: the planet Venus has two names, namely the morning star and the evening star They share the same referent but differ in their sense Other types of intra-linguistic (i.e inside language) relations on which sense depends are relations of semantic opposition, typically called antonymy , relations of equivalence, called synonymy , and the like.

2 Characteristics:

1 The same word can have more than one sense

E.g the word bank has two senses: (1) the financial institution & (2) the river side

2 The same word can have more than one interpretation and therefore, can cause ambiguity due to polysemy and homonymy

E.g The sentence I don’t like this fork is ambiguous because it may have two interpretations: (1) fork = the division of a road & (2)

3 Lexical decomposition (Componential Analysis)

One method that the linguists have used to characterize the sense of words is called lexical decomposition This method represents the sense of a word in terms of the semantics features

that comprise it For example, consider the words man, woman, boy and girl The sense of each

of each of these words can be partly characterized by specifying a value (+ or -) for the features [+ adult] and [+ female] as follows

-The lexical decomposition or componental analysis makes use of the semantic features

or semantic properties in its process of assigning the value [+] or [-] to a linguistic expression, namely the morphemes and words To understand more about this semantic analysis we should pay our attention to the basic notions related to sense as presented in the following subsections

a) Semantic properties (also, semantic components, semantic features):

These are the basic units of a word The semantics of a word may be described as a combination of semantic features, e.g the semantic feature [+ male] is part of the meaning of

father, and so is the feature [+ adult] but other features are needed to give the whole concept or sense of father

These are also piece of information we have about a word which may be stored in our

mental lexicon dictionary For example the word assassinate may arouse in the speaker’s and

hearer’s mind these pieces of information:

[agent: human, murderer; person killed: important person]

- The same semantic property may be part of the meaning of many different words, e.g female

is a semantic property that helps to define tigress, hen, doe, ewe, mare, actress, widow, woman, maiden

- The same semantic property may occur in words of different categories, e.g female in

breast-feed (V), pregnant (A), and cause in kill, darken, beautify

b) Semantic features are also understood as semantic categories/ properties that indicate the

relations or classes that a word may have or share with other words

This can be illustrated in the overlap in meaning between 2 or more words where they share some but not all the semantic features.

E.g sister niece aunt mother nun mistress

[human] + + + + + +

[male] - - - - - -

[kin] + + + +

Figure 3.1 Illustration of overlap (adapted from Parker, 1994, p.42)

- A certain semantic category may imply others, e.g human implies animate

- redundancy rules:

• one feature automatically contains another,

• Some semantic redundancy rules reveal negative properties,

meaning

of sister meaning

of niece[+human]

[-male]

[+kin]

e.g [ +human] [- abstract]

B DENOTATIVE MEANING & CONNOTATIVE MEANING

I Denotative meaning (Denotation):

According to some linguists, namely Fromkin, Blair and Collins (1990), denotation is a type of meaning that can be described in terms of a set of semantic properties which serve to identify the concept associated with the word in question To some other linguists, denotation is that part of meaning of a word or phrase that relates it to phenomena in the real word or in a

fictional or possible world For example, the denotation of the English word bird is a legged, winged, egg-laying, warm-blooded creature with a beak In a meaning system,

two-denotative meaning may be regarded as the “central” meaning or “core” meaning of a lexical item It is often equated with referential meaning and with cognitive meaning and conceptual meaning although some other linguists and philosophers make a distinction between these concepts

II Connotative meaning (Connotation):

The connotations are the additional meanings that a word or phrase has beyond its central meaning These meanings show people’s demotion and attitudes towards what the word

or phrase refers to For example, child could be defined as a young human being but these are

many other characteristics which different people associate with child, e.g affectionate, amusing, lovable, sweet, mischievous, noisy, irritating, grubby.

Some connotations may be shared by a group of people of the same cultural or social background, sex, or age; others may be restricted one or several individuals and depends on their personal experience

In a meaning system, that part of the meaning which is covered by connotation is sometimes referred to as effective meaning, connotative meaning or emotive meaning

In short, connotations are affective or evaluative associations that a word may have besides denotative meaning

C EXTENSION AND INTENSION

I Extension:

The extension of word is all the set of all individuals to which that word can truthfully

be applied It is the set of things which can potentially be referred to by using a linguistic expression

E.g the extension of window is the set of all windows (in the past, present, future) in the

universe

II Intension:

The intension of a word corresponds to the semantic properties or features or notions that describe or define the entities denoted by that word

E.g the word wolf may evoke such notions that define a category of wolves as [+ wild animal],

[+ canine], [+ beastie]

As mentioned earlier, extension is the set of entities that constitutes a category denoted

by a word As compared, the intension of a word can be understood as the attributes that define

a category, e.g., what makes a cat a cat, and not, e.g., a zebra Whereas a word’s extension

corresponds to the set of entities that it picks out in the world, its intension corresponds to

inherent senses, the concepts that it evokes Thus the extension of woman would be a set of real

world entities (women) while its intension would involves notions like ‘female’ and ‘human’

Similarly, the phrase Prime Minister of Great Britain would have as its extension an individual

(‘Gordon Brown’), but its intension would involve the concept ‘leader of the majority party in Parliament’ The distinction between a word’s intension and its extension simply permits us to pose the question of meaning in a new way: what is the nature of a word’s inherent sense or intension?

Phrase Extension Intension

Prime Minister of Britain Gordon Brown leader of the majority party in Parliament Wimbledon Champion (2008) Rafael Nadal winner of the tennis championship

capital of California Sacramento city containing the state legislature

Table 3.2 Extension versus intension (Adapted from O’Grady (1993, p.215)

Further reading

http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/Students/Resits/LI1032/LI1032SampleExam.pdf

How does the extension and the intension of a word differ?

EXTENSION AND INTENSION

extension of a lexical item is the set of entities which it denotes Extension of DOG includes all

Dobermans, Chihuahuas, hounds, collies that have ever lived will ever exist or have ever been

accepted as a dog

Some expressions have a set of one entity they refer to Caspian Sea

intension of a lexical expression is the set of properties or features shared by all members of the

extension Extension relates to reference (Caspian Sea has unique reference) Extension may change, but intension remains constant

President of the United States or Prime Minister of Great Britain always has the same intension

(the properties which define someone as being the President or Prime Minister)

Extension changes every time someone else becomes it

Further reading

http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor

Componential analysis:

An approach to representing word meaning which employs a formal metalanguage Using this approach the meaning of words is decomposed into smaller components of meaning, called features The meaning of "man" for instance, can be decomposed into:

[HUMAN] [MALE] [ADULT] One of the conventions in componential analysis is to use capital letters for the feature labels to suggest that this is a metalinguistic use of language Another convention is to employ binary features (i.e the +/- sign) to signal the presence

or absence of a certain feature This way of encoding is more advantageous and more

economical than using the opposite of the feature, such as [MALE] versus [FEMALE], and so

(See extension, prototype & stereotype P 76-100)

The emotive function: An orientation towards the addresser characterizes the emotive function

of language and is employed whenever the speaker tries to express an attitude or an emotion by using language.

D REFERENCE VS SENSE, EXTENSION AND DENOTATION

1 In talking of sense we deal with relationships inside the language, bachelor = never married In this sense, sense is the intension of a lexical unit.

2 In talking of reference we deal with the relationship between language and the world In this sense, reference has something to do with the extension of a word or phrase, and in its broader sense, for some linguists, it can be understood as denotation Like extension, the denotation of a word is the relationship between the word and the set of entities, situations, and attributes that exist outside the language In its most common use of the

word cat denotes (or refers to) a class of small four-legged domesticated animals; the adjective round denotes a particular shape; talk denotes a type of activity The word unicorn denotes a particular shape; talk denotes a type of activity.

3 The referent of an expression in its narrow sense, is often a thing or a person (i.e something more concrete than abstract entity)

4 The sense of an expression is not a thing at all The senses of a word are also the concepts or notions that define a set of things Every expression that has meaning has

sense, but not every expression has reference Whereas every word has one or more

senses, not every word has a denotation For example the articles a and the and the conjunctions and and because have sense that can be defined for their use in the

language, but they do not denote anything outside the language

Are the senses of the following expressions propositions?

1) John has got a new typewriter.

2) A new master (not understood as an elliptical sentence)

3) John (not understood as an elliptical sentence)

3) This is the house that Jack built.

(Hurford, 1983, p 31)

Further reading

http://www.lingo.ntnu.no/engsem/Pages/terms.html#Anchor-Denotation-17029

Reference:

In contrast to denotation , reference is concrete, specific and context-dependent As such, it is

related to expressions rather than words In a type of referring expression called definite descriptions (e.g., phrases like "the man", "John's father", "that man over there") one can recognize two parts: a referential part and a descriptive part For instance, in "the President", the definite article "the" takes care of pointing to a specific entity in the real world ("pointing words" are technically called deictic words), and, as such performs a referential function, whereas the noun "President" describes what kind of entity the referent is This example justifies keeping denotation and reference separate and supports the idea that reference can be attributed only to complex expressions, since only phrases are likely to include deictic words, such as the article or demonstrative pronouns.

The referential approach to meaning:

Suggests that meaning should be sought in the extra-linguistic entity an expression (the

smallest expression being a word) picks out in the real world (the referent) The main

justification for this type of approach is that language is used to talk about the world and the objects "out there" which attract our attention Thus, from this perspective, the most natural thing to do in order to interpret messages encoded in language is to look at the referents,

whether objects, classes of objects or situations

Problems with the referential approach:

For some words there are simply no referents (e.g all functional words, like e.g a and the)

Some expressions point to non-existent or fictional referents: elves, gnomes, the President (in

a country which is a monarchy)

The idea, held by some, that things out in the world do not have an inherent structure and that any structure we perceive is just that, i.e perceived

knowledge speakers have about a particular language expression that makes its use in a

particular instance of reference successful, a generally agreed upon set of features generally shared among all, the `central aspect' of a word's meaning

connotation

is the emotive of affective responses associated with a particular linguistic expression; this may differ radically from speaker to speaker and culture to culture

DOG denotes a four-legged, furry mammal, belonging to the genus canis connotes VERY

DIFFERENT things to different people/cultures:

- pet, friendly,

- used for hunting, guarding, sled-pulling

- smelly, vicious

- makes a good meal

synonyms frequently have more or less identical denotations, but quite different connotations

Some synonymous expressions are more appropriate in certain contexts than others

E.g died, passed away, is taking a dirt nap, is pushing daisies etc.

It is unlikely to use these in the same contexts, although they all denote the same state

E.g thin, slender, svelte, skinny

UNIT 4

REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

TYPES OF REFERENCE & DEICTIC FUNCTIONS

The referential function:

When the message is informative and says something about entities present in the communicative context, language is used with a referential function The question here is how can this function be achieved?

In everyday conversations, very often we make use of body language such as pointing with our finger at the thing we are taking about And in most cases, linguistic expressions of various types may be utilized to fulfill this referential function This will be discussed in section below

A REFERRING EXPRESSION

I Definition:

A referring expression is any expression used in an utterance to refer to something or someone (or a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e used with a particular referent in mind (Hurford, 1983, p.35)

E.g the name Fred in the utterance Fred hit me (where the speaker has a particular person in mind when he says Fred) is a referring expression.

But when the speaker says “There is no Fred at this at this address” and he would not have a particular person in mind in uttering the word “Fred”, this is not a referring expression

2 The linguistic context often gives a vital clue as to whether the indefinite noun phrase is

a referring expression or not, but sometimes it does not give a clear indication

E.g A man was here looking for you yesterday.

The first sign of the monsoon was the dark cloud no bigger a man’s hand at the horizon.

3 The ambiguity caused by indefinite noun phrase can be solved by the use of the word

certain immediately following the indefinite article a

John is looking for a car.

John is looking for a certain car.

III Linguistic realizations of referring expressions

1 Proper names: E.g John

2 Personal pronouns: E.g he/she/you/I/we

3 Complex noun phrases: the girl sitting over there

4 Cases of general type with every/ what/ whoever/ all/ and modal expressions are not

clear For example, in Every man who owns a donkey beats it, the pronoun is not a referring expression, due to the presence of the universal quantifier every in the same sentence The pronoun it here may be used to talk about any member of the set

4) the girl sitting on the wall by the bus stop 8) under

IV Referring expressions in a broader view:

Any expression that can be used to refer to any entity in the real world or any imaginary world

will be called a referring expression, e.g God, Moses, that unicorn In this sense, we accept that

the referential realm is anything, real or imagined, that a person may talk about

Referent – physical object or not physical object?

Language is used to talk about the real world, and can be used to talk about an infinite

variety of abstractions, and even of entities in imaginary, unreal worlds, e.g my chair, British National Anthem

If we say the phrase the present Prime Minister of Britain in different definite points of time, we may mean or refer to different persons:

“the present Prime Minister of Britain” (uttered in 1945)

“the present Prime Minister of Britain” (uttered in 1980)

“the present Prime Minister of Britain” (uttered in 1980)

“the present Prime Minister of Britain” (uttered in 1995)

Or we just help the addressee to identify who is being talked about by the use of the post-modifier to make the reference more specific For example, “the Prime Minister of Britain

in 1995” or “the Prime Minister of Britain in 2008)

II Constant reference:

This is the situation where some expressions can never refer to different things regardless of the linguistic or situational context they are used or uttered The referent of the words or phrases is typically a unique thing or person in this world or universe and this knowledge is shared by many speakers in the same speech community For example, the linguistic expression “the moon”, “the earth” always refer to same thing that we know that it is unique in the universe

The same thing can be said to proper names such as name denoting a particular

individual or name denoting a particular country … like Winston Churchill, Margaret Thatcher, Vietnam, Angola, The People’s Republic of China.

According to the knowledge shared by the speaker and the hearer we also have definite reference and indefinite reference The former is the situation when the referent or the image of the referent is unique to the known/relevant world for the speaker and hearer For example, the use of the proper name “Tom Cruise” or the complex noun phrase with pre-modifier/post-modifier “my uncle”, the boy standing in the corner” to refer to a particular thing or person in a particular context

III Co-reference:

1 Definition:

Co-reference is the reference in one expression to the same referent in another

expression Two linguistic expressions that have the same extra-linguistic referent are said to be co-referential In other words this is a case of two or more words/morphemes referring to the same entity

E.g In the following sentence, both you's have the same referent:

You said you would come.

Or in the sentence The Earth is the third planet from the Sun, the expressions The Earth and the third planet from the Sun are co-referential because they both refer to the same extra-linguistic

object, namely the heavenly body that we are spinning around on right now

2 Kinds of co-reference:

1) Anaphora

Anaphora is co-reference of one expression with its antecedent The antecedent provides the information necessary for the expression's interpretation This is often understood as an expression “referring” back to the antecedent

E.g In the following sequence, the relationship of the pronoun he to the noun phrase a dressed man is an example of anaphora:

well-A well-dressed man was speaking; he had a foreign accent.

2) Zero anaphora

Zero anaphora is the use of a gap, in a phrase or clause, that has an anaphoric function similar to a pro-form It is often described as “referring back” to an expression that supplies the information necessary for interpreting the gap

E.g There are two roads to eternity , a straight and narrow, and a broad and crooked

In this sentence, the gaps in a straight and narrow [gap], and a broad and crooked [gap] have a

zero anaphoric relationship to two roads to eternity

(Source: Hartmann and Stork 1972 258–259, Crystal 1985 339)

3) Cataphora

Cataphora is the co-reference of one expression with another expression which follows

it The following expression provides the information necessary for interpretation of the preceding one This is often understood as an expression “referring” forward to another expression

E.g In the following sentence, the relationship of one to a towel is an example of cataphora:

If you need one, there's a towel in the top drawer

3 Linguistic realizations of co-reference:

NPs: I talked with Harry yesterday and the big lunkwants to see me today as well!

Pronouns: I saw Mary and fell in love with her

Reflexives: I hit myself

VPs: I kissed the president and so did Monica.

Instances of co-reference can also be found in such kinds of sentences as equative sentences which are used to assert the identity of the referents of two referring expressions For example, the equative sentence Mrs Thatcher is the Prime minister asserts that two referring

expressions: Mrs Thatcher and The Prime Minister have the same referent

The verb “to be” used in equative sentence denotes or expresses a type of identity

relation

2) Let me put it this way (…) initially observations on that vessel […] were by police in South

Wales (…) Were the customs aware of these observations …

3) My cat, a ginger male, is lost If you have seen him, please phone me [notice attached on a

tree in north-west London]

4) When one feels an emotion, certain involuntary changes occur within us These include

changes in salivation, breathing, heart rate, perspiration and muscle tone

5) Steve checks over his uh shoulder to see if there are any dangers There are none whatsoever 6) There are two main components in coffee: soluble and insoluble substances The former are the caffeine, sugar and proteins, the latter the oils and colloids Italians know how to express it

so well’, by Chris Long, The Independent, 28 December 1992, p.11]

to the whole previous sentence

7) I had to find out where the controlled drugs were kept, and how they were ordered, delivered

and paid for This meant getting involved in administration […]

8) Chris brought us freedom from the curse of the law by becoming for our sake accursed thing (.) for Scripture says the curse is on everyone who is hanged on the gibbet (.) The reference

here is to the exhibition of the dead body not a lingering execution

9) ‘This is it This is my life; it’s like being a retired person,’ said Pete Sampras, the world ranked tennis player and the defending champion of the U.S Open [International Herald Tribune, 29 August 1994, p.17]

These/Here again are the main points of the news

These/Here are the results

Nerve injuries have been classified into various grades and these are discussed below.

You may find the above questions obvious, for which I apologise […]

C DEFINITENESS AND THE USE OF DEFINITE ARTICLE THE

If some entiti(es) (i.e person(s),object(s), place(s) are the ONLY entities of their kind in the context of an utterance, then the is appropriately used in referring to that entity For example

if I carry on a conversation with a friend about the time five years earlier, when we first met in Egypt (and now we are holding the conversation in the garden of my house in Britain), then the sentence/utterance “Do you remember when we first met at the university?” would be more appropriate than the sentence/utterance “Do you remember when we first met at a university?”, and the sentence/utterance “Shall we go into the house now?” would be appropriate than the sentence/utterance “Shall we go into a house now?”

When a speaker say to someone “A man from Dundee stole my wallet”, he would not be assuming that the hearer will bring into mind a particular man from Dundee and will be able to identify this man by associating him with facts already known about him If the assumes that the hearer already remembers and knows which man is being talked about, he would usually say

“the man from Dundee stole my wallet” In this case, the encoding and decoding of the referring expression “the man from Dundee” in the utterance “The man from Dundee stole my wallet” is based on the presupposition between the speaker and the hearer This presupposition is known

as the shared knowledge that is not spoken out but should be accepted as tacit agreement about

a certain piece of information that both the speaker and the hearer agree upon For example when I say “Open the door please” I would assume that the hearer would share the same presupposition with me that there is at least one door in the room and this door is being closed

If there is no presupposition like this or the hearer does not hold such presupposition, the utterance would be of no value To establish such presupposition we have base our interpretation on context: linguistic context and extra-linguistic context

1 Contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a conversation, e.g

things mentioned for the first time, then the indefinite a should be used to introduce the thing or

referent into the context For example, I may report the burglary yesterday like this: “Yesterday

there was a thief breaking into my house”

2 Once things are established in the context of the conversation, i.e it is already mentioned and the hearer or reader has already known which one is being talked about, then the

definite the should be used to help the hearer identify which referent is being mentioned in the

context For example

“Yesterday there was a thief breaking into my house The thief jumped into the window

and broke my glasses …”

3 Using definite referring expressions as narrative stylistic style to draw the reader into the narrative fast, by giving the impression that the writher and readers are sharing a number of contextual assumptions

“Yesterday the thief jumped into the window and broke my glasses …”

In other situation, the speaker and the hearer may not share the knowledge about the existence of the thing being talked about This type of indefinite reference, in turn, can be classified into two sub-types:

1) The linguistic expression is used by the speaker who assumes that the referent being mentioned is unknown to the hearer or addressee, and sometimes even unknown to the speaker.E.g "There’s a man I want you to know"

2) The linguistic expression is used by the speaker who assumes that the thing being talked about is not unique but is any member that represents all members of the same set/group

E.g "A good servant is hard to find"

In this case, this type of reference is also called generic reference which is mentioned

in generic sentences These are sentences in which some statement is made about a whole

unrestricted class of individuals, as opposed to any particular individual For example

The whale is a mammal/the largest mammal.

In this sentence the whale does not pick out any particular object in the world (as whale) and

thus a mammal/the largest mammal do not refer to some particular mammal

1 Generic sentence can be introduced by a or the (or neither) E.g.

A tiger lives in the jungle.

The tiger is the predator.

Tigers have sharp claws.

2 The subject in a generic sentence is not a referring expression because it does not

refer to any particular individual in the world

A tiger lives in the jungle (any tiger in the class of tigers The speaker does not mention

which one)

3 If the verb is used in the past tense or present continuous it is not likely a generic sentence E.g.

A wasp stung me on the neck.

4 If the subject is expressed by a proper name or with a modifier it is not a generic sentence E.g.

Jasper is a twit

Further reading

Reference and the article (Quirk, 1975)

Specific/generic reference

In discussing the use of the articles, it is essential to make a distinction between specific and generic reference If we say

A lion and two tigers are sleeping in the cage

The reference is specific, since we have in mind specific specimens of the class ‘tiger’ If, on the other hand, we say

Tigers are dangerous animals

The reference is specific, since we are thinking of the class ‘tiger’ without special reference to specific tigers The distinction is important for count nouns with specific reference disappear with generic reference This is so because generic reference is used to denote what is normal or typical for members of a class

Singular or plural, definite or indefinite can sometimes be used without change in the generic meaning, though plural definite occurs chiefly with nationality names:

With non-count nouns, only the zero article is possible:

Music can be soothing

Generic reference

Nationality words and adjectives as head

Two kinds of adjectives can acts as noun-phrase head with generic reference

PLURAL PERSONAL (E.g the French = the French nation; the rich = those who are rich) SINGULAR NON-PERSONAL ABSRACT (E.g the evil = that which is evil)

There is considerable interdependence between the dynamic/stative dichotomy in the verb phrase and the specific/generic dichotomy in the noun phrase, as appears in the following examples:

generic reference/simple aspect The tiger lives in the jungle

simple aspect The tiger at this circus performs twice a dayspecific reference progressive aspect The tiger is sleeping in the cage

generic reference/simple aspect The English drink beer in pubs

simple aspect The Englishmen (who live here) drink beer every daySpecific reference/progressive aspect The English are just now drinking beer is the garden

Specific reference

Indefinite and definite

Just as we have seen in the previous part a correspondence between aspect and reference in respect pf generic and specific, so we have known a correspondence between the simple and perfective in respect of what must be regarded as the basic article contrast:

An intruder has stolen a vase;

The intruder stole the vase from a locked cupboard;

the cupboard was smashed open.

As we see in this explicit example, the definite article presupposes an earlier mention of the item so determined But in actual usage the relation presupposition and the definite article may

be much less overt For example, a conversation may begin:

The house on the corner is for sale

and the postmodification passes for some such unspoken preamble as

There is, as you know, a house on the corner

Compare also What is the climate like? – that is, the climate of the area being discussed Even

more covert are the presuppositions which permit the definite article in examples like the following:

John asked his wife to put on the kettle while he looked in the paper to see what was on the

radio

No prior mention of a kettle, a paper, a radio is needed, since these things are part of the

cultural situation

On a broader plane, we talk of the sun, the moon, the stars, the sky as aspects of experience

common to mankind as a whole These seem to require to earlier indefinite reference because each term is so specific as to be in fact unique for practical human purposes This gives them something approaching the status of those proper names which are based on common count nouns: the Bible, the United States, for example

Chelsea is THE place for young people

Are you THE Mr Johnson (=the famous)?

Discourse reference (Quirk, 1975, 302-305)

There are a number of signals marking the identity between what is being said and what has been said before They have been brought together here because they have in common a deictic reference, that is to say, they point back (ANPHORIC) or forward (CATAPHORIC) in discourse

Sentence/clause reference

Common signals for sentence or clause reference:

anaphoric and cataphoric: here, it, this

anaphoric only: that, the foregoing (formal)

cataphoric only: as follows, the following, thus

Anaphoric examples:

Many years ago their wives quarreled over some trivial matter, now long forgotten But one

word led to another and the quarrel developed into a permanent rupture between them That’s

why the two men never visit each other’s houses

Many students never improve They get no advice and therefore they keep repeating the same

mistakes It’s a terrible shame.

Students want to be shown connections between facts instead of spending their time

memorizing dates and formulas Reflecting this, the university is moving away from large

survey courses and breaking down academic fences in order to show subjects relating to one another

Cataphoric examples

This should interest you, if you’re still keen on boxing The world heavyweight championship is

going to be held in Chicago next June, so you should be able to watch it live

Here is the news A diplomat was kidnapped last night in London … (radio announcement)

It never should have happened She went out and left the baby unattended.

My arguments are as follows …

Above and below are used in formal written discourse to indicate where units of varying length

and illustrations are to be found: the arguments given below (perhaps referring to several sentences), the diagrams below illustrate … There is no determinable limit to the distance between them and the place they refer to The above is used with anaphoric reference (but *the below has no corresponding use):

The above illustrates what mean by …

Noun-phrase reference

Certain determiners can be used to signal that a noun phrase is referentially equivalent to a

previous noun phrase: the, this, these, that, those The noun phrases may have identical heads,

but may be co-referential without the heads being identical:

He bought a battered, old black van in 1970 What a lot of money he earned with that vehicle Students are free to select optional courses from any field that touches on American studies These options are very popular.

These co-reference of two noun phrases may be emphasized by one of identical, same, selfsame (formal), very:

He spoke to a meeting of striking workers that evening Those same workers had previously

refused to listen to his speeches

These determiners and adjectives can be used to indicate identity of type rather than reference:

co-He bought a Jaguar XJ6 I ordered that same car the previous year.

Such is used specifically to indicates identity of type:

They regularly get The Daily Courier I wouldn’t read such a paper.

Like plus that or those is also used anaphorically for identity of type, and postmodifies the

The demonstratives can be used as pro-form for noun phrases:

I hear that you dislike his latest novel I read his first novel That was very boring, too.

Normally, demonstratives replace noun phrases with a human referent only in intensive clauses with a nominal complement:

Will you try and help me find Peter Williams? That’s the man I was telling you about.

Former and latter (both mainly formal written English) are used anaphorically to single out one

of two previous noun phrases:

Bob and John were at the meeting The former brought his wife with him (‘Bob’)

If the latter was used instead, the reference would be John These two terms can also be used as

reference signals when they premodify:

Bill Singer and Tom Patterson were charged with being drunk and disorderly The latter student

had two previous convictions on such charges

Similarly, when ther are more than two previous noun phrases that might be refereed to, the

ordinals first, second, etch, and last can be used anaphorically to single out one of several

phrases

The ordinals and former and latter can also refer back to clausal units was well as noun phrases:

He explained that he had lost a lot of money and that he had also quarreled with his wife The former seemed to have upset him more than the latter

So and (rather informally) that can have anaphoric reference when they are intensifiers premodifying an adjective:

There were two thousand people in the theatre I didn’t expect it to be so/(all) that full.

Such is used more commonly than so or that when the adjective is in a noun phrase.

… I didn’t expect such a large audience

D DEIXIS

All languages do contain a small set of words whose meanings vary systematically

according to who uses them, and where and when they are used These words are called deictic words; the general phenomenon of their occurrence is called deixis The word deixis is from a Greek word meaning pointing.

Deixis involves the use of expressions to refer directly to the situation within which an utterance is taking place, and their interpretation is therefore dependent on features of that

situation For example, the pronoun I is necessarily deictic, since it must refer to the speaker or writer: in a conversation, the reference of I shifts according to who is speaking Deictic

expressions typically refer to persons and objects in the situation and to temporal and locational

features When you say Don’t drop it, you may be using the pronoun it to refer to something present in the situation that you have not previously named, and when you say You can’t sit here the pronoun you refers to the person you are addressing and the adverb here may refer

directly to a place visible to the person you are addressing, a place that you may not have

mentioned before The use of the imperative in Don’t drop it introduces a reference to future

time, a time later than that of the utterance

The concept of deixis is sometimes extended from situational deixis (the use of

expression to point at some feature of the situation) to textual deixis (the use of expressions to point at other expressions in the text) Textual deixis contributes to cohesion because of its linkage to previous or subsequent words in the text References to what come earlier in the text are anaphoric as mentioned before in section whereas references to what come afterwards are cataphoric

I Deictic word:

1 Definition:

A deictic word is one which takes some element of its meaning from the situation (i.e the speaker, the addressee, the time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used.(Hurford,

1983, p.63)

E.g When Mohammad Ali said: “I’m the greatest!” (He uttered before the heavyweight championship match against Joe Fraysier) the pronoun I refers to the speaker, namely Mohammad Ali.

2 Characteristics:

The speaker can give some indication of his location/ time of event by using words expressing spatial deixis: Deictic words help the hearer to identify the referent of a referring expression through its spatial/ temporal relationship with the situation of utterance

Words that have deictic ingredient:

- Personal pronoun I, you,

- Time expressions yesterday, today, here, there,

- Verbs of movement go, come, get, take, bring, fetch, this, that

E.g If a television new reporter, speaking in Fresno, California, says, “This town was shaken

by a major tremor at 5 a.m today, the audience may understand that the referring expression this town refers to Fresno, California in the context of the TV announcement, i.e at the moment

of the TV announcer’s utterance

However, when Billy the Kid said to the Sheriff in the saloon of Dodge City: “This town

is too small for both of us” the readers who read “Billy the Kid” may understand that the

referring expression “This town” refers to Dodge City in the context of the utterance.

In general, in the inclusion of the demonstrative word this, the identity of the referring expression is given with the clue that a referring expression modified by this refers to an entity (place, person, thing etc.) at or near the actual place of the utterance in which it is used

Some verbs like come, go, bring, take, get and fetch have a deictic ingredients, because

they contain the notion “towards the speaker” or “away from the speaker”

Practice 4.5

Look at the following utterances and decide whether the speaker gives any indication of his locations (Yes) and if so, where he is (or isn’t):

1) “Go to the hospital”

II Psychological shifting of the speaker’s viewpoint with come:

Psychological shifting of the speaker’s viewpoint can be used for purpose of interpreting one of the deictic terms: the speaker anticipating his future location, e.g If I say to you: “Come over there, please” while pointing to a far corner of the room, you could reasonably infer that I intend to move to that corner of the room as well, i.e I will be there in a point of future time

Or if I say to you, over the telephone, “I’ll come and see you sometime” I probably have

in mind a movement to the place where you are”

Grammatical devices to indicate past, present, and future time which are defined by reference to the time of utterance

In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance may be translated into other possibly non-deictic terms in order to preserve the original reference

UNIT 5

ARGUMENTS VS PREDICATOR: 2 BASIC SEMANTIC ELEMENTS OF A DECLARATIVE SENTENCE

We have already mentioned proposition - the abstract semantic entity, sentence – the linguistic entity/unit and utterance – the action of communication or the realizations of the sentence in different contexts of communication In this section, we present two basic semantic elements of

a declarative sentence: the argument and the predicator

A TWO MEANING BEARING ELEMENTS OF A DECLARATIVE SENTENCE

As mentioned in Unit 2, a proposition is the basic meaning which a sentence expresses

A proposition consists of

(a) something which is named or talked about (known as argument, or entity or referent);

(b) an assertion or predication which is made about the argument

How can these elements realized linguistically? If each of these elements is encoded by linguistic units in a declarative sentence, they are typically recognized with words or phrases with distinctive syntactic functions such as subject and predicate Linguistically, the argument

or something which is named or talked about can be realized with referring expressions For

example, in the sentence Fred is writing a letter, the argument (something/someone which is being talked about) is Fred and a letter (referring expressions) To identify the linguistic

expression that encodes the assertion about Fred’s action mentioned in the sentence, it is

necessary to cross out the referring expression(s) (Fred and a letter) so that we would have the remainder which is realized here as is writing

Fred is writing a letter.

Referring expression: Fred & a letter

Remainder: is writing

However, in everyday speech, very often we can hear utterances without such

grammatical units as tense markers (to be and – ing present progressive) Semantically, these

linguistic units are said to bear only grammatical functions or meanings and accordingly

contribute little to the meaning of the remainder and the whole sentence

To identify the core meaning or the most essential meaning of the remainder or the whole sentence we have to continue to cross out the linguistic units that bear only grammatical meaning Thus, the core and essential meaning of the remainder of the sentence in question

Examine the following sentences and (i) cross out the referring expressions; ii) circle the word that expresses the core meaning of the remainder.

1) My dog bit the postman

2) Mrs Wraith is writing the Mayor’s speech

3) Cairo is in Africa

4) Edinburgh is between Aberdeen and York

5) This place stinks

6) John’s car is red

7) Einstein was a genius

E.g asleep is the predicator in Mummy is asleep.

love is the predicator in The white man loved the Indian maiden.

wait for is the predicator in Jimmy is waiting for the downtown bus.

II Two major semantic roles of a simple declarative sentence:

The semantic analysis of simple declarative sentences reveal two major semantic roles played by different subparts of the sentence These are the role of predicator, illustrated above with different parts of speech, and the role(s) of argument(s), played by the referring expression(s)

Juan is Argentinean Argentinean Juan

Juan arrested Pablo arrest Juan, Pablo

Juan took Pablo to Rio take Juan, Pablo, Rio

Linguistic realization Referring expression Predicate Referring expression

Figure 5.1 The semantic functions of a simple declarative sentence and their linguistic realizations

Practice 5.2

In the following sentences, indicate the predicators and arguments as in the above examples:

1) Dennis is a menace

2) Harnish showed Morag his sporran

3) Donald is proud of his family

4) The hospital is outside the city

III Predicate:

As we have mentioned, the predicator of a simple declarative sentence can be linguistically realized by different parts of speech such as noun, verb, adjective, preposition Words or phrases of different parts of speech are known as predicate Thus a predicate is any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as the predicator of a sentence

E.g hungry, in, crook, asleep, hit, show, bottle: predicates

and, or, but, not, a, the: not predicates

IV Degree of predicate:

The degree of a predicate is a number indicating the number of arguments it is normally understood to have in simple sentences (Hurford, 1983, p.47)

E.g asleep as in Mummy is asleep is predicate of degree one (often called one-place predicate)

because one argument (Mummy) is required to make sense of the sentence

love as in John loves Mary is predicate of degree two (two-place predicate) because 2

arguments (John and Mary) are required to make sense of the sentence

V Further discussion:

There is a relation between types of verbs in grammar and their degree as predicate in semantics

One-place predicate: Intransitive verb which requires no object, e.g

The trees grow.

Two–place predicate: Mono transitive Verb which requires a subject and an object, e.g

John is eating an ice cream.

Three-place predicate: Ditransitive verb requires a subject and 2 objects, e.g

John sent Mary a letter.

We also have 2, 3-place predicates with adjectives, nouns, and prepositions, e.g

Mary is afraid of John (afraid is two-place predicate)

Edinburgh is between Aberdeen and York.

The majority of adjectives and nouns are one-place predicates

Such prepositions as from, of in different, afraid are not predicates.

Inherently relational nouns are 2-place predicates, e.g brother, father, neighbour

E.g the sentence He is a brother doesn’t make sense and seems odd.

Predicates of different parts of speech can have nearly the same sense, e.g fool(ish)

VI Predicates vs Referring expressions:

Predicates and Referring expressions have different functions The roles of these two kinds of meaning bearing elements cannot be exchanged

The referring expressions The predicate

correspond to actual things, person…in the

world

functioning as to describe the specific relationship between the things, person…referred to It describes how the things and /or people, participate in the particular situation described

Practice 5.3

State the degree of each of the predicates used as the predicators in the following sentences:1) Dennis is a menace

2) Harnish showed Morag his sporran

3) Donald is proud of his family

4) The hospital is outside the city

5) Juan arrested Pablo

6) Juan took Pablo to Rio

UNIT 6

SENSE RELATIONS AND SENSE PROPERTIES