UNIT 1: ABOUT SEMANTICS -

SENTENCE & SPEAKER MEANING

Semantics:
- involves (1) the literal meaning of words and
(2) the literal meaning of sentences considered
outside their contexts. The literal meaning
includes unstated meanings that are very
closely tied to stated meanings. I gave Mary a
rose.

I gave Mary a rose.

I gave Mary a flower.

Semantics is concerned with meaning as a product of the

linguistic system and, is part of our grammatical competence.
It focuses on decontextualised meaning, as opposed to
pragmatics, which focuses on contextualised meaning.

E.g.: I love you.

Semantics: we can give this a certain meaning based simply on
what we know of the grammar of the language. We know that I
Specifies the speaker, and you the person being addressed,
and that love is a verb indicating a range of feeling which is
stronger than like, but weaker than adore.
Pragmatics: we should have to consider who is talking to
whom, and the situation in which the utterance takes place.
These will affect how the sentence is uttered and understood.
Pragmatics:
- deals with nonliteral meanings that arise in context

Types of meanings and contexts

Meaning

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 Semantics Pragmatics
(literal, outside context) ( nonliteral, within context)

words sentences linguistic situational

context context
1) linguistic context: the actual words and sentences that
precede and follow an utterance
2) situational context: (extralinguistic context): the
situation that accompanies the utterance.

Speaker meaning: what a speaker means

Sentence meaning: what a sentence means
Word meaning: what a word means

Meaning

Linguistic meaning Speaker meaning

Language Idiolect Literal

Nonliteral
meaning meaning

Dialect meaning Irony Sarcasm Metaphor

Regional Social

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Sentence meaning is concerned with literal meaning
determined by the grammatical and lexical elements,
unaffected by the context or what the speaker meant to say.

Utterance meaning includes:

1) Presupposition
The statement The king of France is bald presupposes that
there is a king of France.
2) Implicature
The statement it’s hot in here may imply the need to open a
window.
3) Prosodic features
The use of stress and tone, as when He SAW Mary this morning
means that he did not avoid her or telephone her, in contrast
with he saw MARY this morning, rather than or in addition to
anyone else.
4) Speech acts
When a ship is launched with the words I name this ship..., the
usage is not a statement of fact but an action. Similarly, I
declare this meeting closed is an act of closing that meeting.

1) David: Do you think he’ll give us a pop quiz today?

Tommy: Well, we haven’t reached the end of the
chapter yet.
2) Linguistics is fascinating said ironically may be
intended by the speaker to communicate “Linguistics is
deadly boring.”
3) In a television programme on holidays the presenter
gave the following advice for those travelling in the
Greek islands.
- Obviously, in the outer islands nobody speaks English. So
brush up your English.

No viewer would have taken the presenter to be

recommending that they improve their English for a holiday

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to Greece: the presenter could only have meant that they
should brush up their Greek.

4) I now pronounce you husband and wife.

- by a minister presiding at a ceremony in which a young

couple are getting married in the presence of their
assembled families; or
- by an actor dressed as a minister to two actors before a
congregation of Hollywood extras assembled in the same
church by a director giving instructions for the filming of
a television soap opera.
In the first instance, I now pronounce you husband and wife
will effect a marriage between the couple intending to get
married.
In the second instance, the same utterance will have no effect
on the marital status of any party on the movie location. Thus
the circumstances of utterance create different meanings. We
say that the sentence uttered in the wedding context and the
sentence uttered in the film context have the same sentence
meaning but are different utterances, each with its own
utterance meaning.

5) …Many experts gloomily predict that the tropical rain

forests will finally vanish around the end of our
century. Well done, 20th century! (Save the jungle –
save the world)

Questions:
1) Can we make a list of word meaning?
2) Can we make a list of what a speaker says?

UNIT 2

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 SENTENCES, UTTERANCES & PROPOSITIONS
SENTENCES
- A sentence is neither a physical event nor a physical object. It
is, conceived abstractly, a string of words put together by the
grammatical rules of a language.
- A sentence is an abstract theoretical entity defined within a
theory of grammar.
- A sentence is an abstract entity that has no existence in time,
but is part of the linguistic system of a language.
- A sentence is a grammatically complete string of words
expressing a complete thought.
- The largest unit of language structure treated in traditional
grammar; usually having a subject and a predicate, and
(where written) beginning with a capital letter and ending with a
full stop.

UTTERANCES
- An utterance is the issuance of a sentence, a sentence-
analogue, or sentence-fragment, in an actual context.
- An utterance is anything spoken on a specific occasion. Often
opposed to sentence: e.g. the words “Come here!”, spoken by
a specific speaker at a specific time, form an utterance which
is one instance of a sentence Come here!
- 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 an event in time - it is produced by some one
and at some particular time.

PROPOSITIONS
- A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a
declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.
- The meaning of a declarative sentence – the kind that can be
used to make a statement and can be true or false – is a
proposition.

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- Whatever is seen as expressed by a sentence which makes a
statement. Hence, for example, the same proposition might
be said to be expressed by both I understand French and, in
Italian, Capisco il francese. It is a property of propositions
that they have truth values. Thus this proposition would have
the value ‘true’ if the speaker did understand the French and
the value ‘false’ if the speaker did not.
- A proposition is a claim which is specific enough to be
evaluated as true or false.
- The propositional content of a sentence is that part of its
meaning which is seen, in some accounts, as reducible to a
proposition. E.g. The porters had shut the gates, the gates
had been shut by the porters, had the porters shut the gates?
If only the porters had shut the gates! Would be said to have
the same propositional content, though in other respects their
meanings differ.

sentences utterances propositions

- neither a - a physical - part of the
physical event event meaning of
nor a physical - ephemeral the
object events utterance of
- conceived - exist in time a
abstractly - a stretch of declarative
- a string of talk by a sentence
words put particular which
together by the speaker on a describes
grammatical particular some state
rules of a occasion of affairs
language - true/false (things and
- do not exist in - grammatical people)
time - in a particular - the same
- false/true regional accent proposition
(traditional - in a particular may be
definition) language expressed

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 - grammatical by an
- in a particular indefinitely
language large
number of
sentences
- true/false
- not belong
to any
particular
language

Discussion questions
1)Of which of the above can be the following be said?
X was inaudible.
X was uninformative.
X was false.
X was in a foreign accent.
X was ungrammatical.
X was insincere.
2) For each of the following pairs of sentences, say whether the
propositional content of the members is the same or different:
(a) Take your hands off me!
(b) Take your filthy paws off me!

(a) I always get my bread from Gregg’s, because it’s

cheaper.
(b) I always buy my bread from Gregg’s, because it’s
cheaper.

(a) Don’t you find him rather skinny?

(b) Don’t you find him rather thin?

(a) Have you read the stuff he wrote about telepathy?

(b) Have you read the garbage he wrote about telepathy?

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 UNIT 3
REFERENCE & SENSE
Reference:
- Reference is the relationship between language and the world
(between parts of a language and things outside the language
(in the world)).
- By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in
the world are being talked about.
- Reference is the relation between a part of an utterance and
an individual or set of individuals that it identifies. Thus one
might say, on some specific occasion, “That man is my
brother”: the noun phrase that man is thereby used as a
referring expression whose referent is a specific man whose
identity the addressee must either know or be able to
determine.
- Reference is concerned with designating entities in the world
by linguistic means.
Sense:
- The word sense is used in a wide variety of ways,
just as meaning and reference are. In semantic
theory it is used to describe verbal (lexical)
meaning, derived partly from the meaning of other
words (sense relations), in contrast to the relation
of a word to the outside world, which is reference.
- Sense is the relationships inside a language
(between linguistic units)
- Sense is the meaning a word has within a language – limited
by some linguists to a word’s conceptual or propositional
meaning.
- Sense is the system of linguistic relationships (sense
relations) which a lexical item contrasts with other lexical
items –the paradigmatic relationships of synonymy,

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 antonymy, etc., and the syntagmatic relationships of
collocation.

-Expressions may differ in sense, but have the same reference;

and ‘synonymous’ means “having the same sense”, not
“having the same reference”.

Reference Sense
- Referent: the entity - Lexical ambiguity: a
identified by the use of a word is lexically
referring expression ambiguous if it has
- Extension: the set of all more than one sense or
potential referents for a meaning.
referring expression - Synonymy: two words
- Prototype: a typical are synonymous if they
member of the extension have the same sense;
of a referring expression that is, if they have the
- Coreference: two same values for all of
linguistic expressions their semantic features.
that have the same - Hyponymy: a word
extralinguistic referent whose meaning
- Anaphora: a linguistic contains the entire
expression that refers to meaning of another
another linguistic word, known as the
expression superordinate.
- Deixis: an expression - Antonymy: two words
that has one meaning are antonyms if their
but refers to different meanings differ only in
entities as the the value for a single
extralinguistic context semantic feature.
changes

reference

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 constant variable
the same expression never the same expression can
refers to different things refer to different things

E.g.: proper names E.g.: common nouns

Vietnam my wife
HCMC, Hanoi the monitor of this class
The Morning Star personal pronouns
He, she, you ….

Which expressions have the same sense, which can have the
same referent, which have constant reference, and which have
variable reference?
1) a) the Morning Star
b) the Evening Star
c) the planet Venus
2) a) Heineken
b) the beer in the slim bottle
3) a) Margaret Thatcher
b) the Iron Lady
c) the prime minister of Great Britain in 1982
4) a) Emmanuel Macron
b) the present president of the French republic
c) the 25th president of the French Republic
5) a) the drink that tastes like dishwater
b) the beverage with the nasty flat taste
6) a) the victor at Jena
b) the loser at Waterloo

UNIT 4

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 REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

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.

A linguistic expression which refers to (points at) something in the

non-linguistic world is a referring expression.
One might say, on some specific occasion, “That man is my
brother”: the noun phrase that man is thereby used as a referring
expression whose referent is a specific man whose identity the
addressee must either know or be able to determine.

Some expressions can only be used as referring expressions, some

never can, and some expressions can be used to refer or not,
depending on the kind of sentences they occur in.

The five types of definite noun phrases in English are (1) proper
names, e.g. John, Queen Victoria, (2) personal pronouns, e.g. he,
she, it, and (3) phrases introduced by a definite determiner, such as
the, that, this (the table, this book, those men), (4) certain locative
adverbs: here, there, yonder, (5) Certain temporal adverbs: now,
then, yesterday

An equative sentence is one which is used to assert the identity of

the referents of two referring expressions, i.e. to assert that two
referring expressions have the same referent.

A sentence in which the subject and complement refer to the same

person or thing is called an equative sentence.
E.g.: Susan is the girl I was talking about.

Exercises
I. Are the following underlined expressions referring
expressions?

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 1. I got upset over a trivial matter this morning.
2. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.
3. She drank a glass of water.
4. The first person here should turn on the lights.
5. I saw the dog that bit you.
6. An apple fell out of your sleeve, Madam.
7. If anyone ever marries Nancy, he’s in for a bad time.
II. Are the following equative sentences?
1. Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde.
2. Ho Chi Minh city is a large city.
3. My father is a teacher.
4. Mahmoud is an Egyptian.
5. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam.
6. Ho Chi Minh city is the largest city in Vietnam.
7. She is beautiful.
8. John’s car is red.
9. This place stinks.
10. Edinburgh is between Aberdeen and York.
III. When do the phrases in parentheses in the following have
the same referent?
1. (he) studied (himself) in the mirror.
2. (Clive) watched (him) take the fish out of the can.
3. the instructor is (the smartest guy in the room) and (the
oldest person) as well.
4. (I) am (Professor Glaston).
IV. What are the referents of the expressions in parentheses, if
you were to say these sentences right now?
1. (My mother) is healthy now.
2. When will (you) come back?
3. (The circle around g.) is not easy to see.
4. (Everybody) is crazy except me.

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 UNIT 5: PREDICATES, PREDICATORS

Predicator: the word/a group of words which does not belong to

any of the referring expressions and which, of the remainder,
makes the most specific contribution to the meaning of the
sentence.

Predicate: any word/sequence of words which can function as the

predicator of a sentence.

Predicate Predicator
- identifies elements in the - identifies the
language system semantic role
- independent of particular - dependent on particular
example sentences word/group of words in a
- can make a list particular sentence
- can’t make a list

A tall, handsome stranger entered the saloon.

Predicate: 4 Predicator:1(enter)

- John is tall. Tall: predicator

- He is handsome. Handsome: predicator
- He is a stranger. Stranger: predicator
- That ramshackle building is a saloon. Saloon: predicator

The predicators in a sentence can be of various parts of speech:

adjectives, verbs, prepositions, nouns.
Words of other parts of speech such as conjunctions, articles,
adverbs cannot serve as predicators in sentences.

Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam.

Identity Predicate: is

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My father is a teacher.
Is: linking verb
teacher: predicator

The degree of a predicate is the number of arguments (referring

expressions) that a predicate has in a sentence.

Most nouns: one-place predicates

Father, son, brother, ....: two-place predicates

Verbs: one-, two-, three- place predicates

Most adjectives: one-place predicates

afraid of, different, identical....: two-place predicates

Most prepositions: two-place predicates

between: three-place predicate

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