SEMANTICS

By : Intan Armala

113 11 012 / TBI AEnglish Department of Education FacultyState Institute of Islamic Studies (STAIN)

Salatiga

Unit 1

SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

Example: Victory, majesty, beauty, etc.

Glory vs A nice knockdown argument

Humpty Dumpty : … that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents.

Alice : certainly.Humpty Dumpty : and only one for birthday presents, you know.

There’s glory for you!Alice : I don’t know what you mean by gloryHumpty Dumpty smiled contemptuouslyHumpty Dumpty : Of course you don’t till I tell you. I meant there’s a

nice knockdown argument for you.Alice : but glory doesn’t mean a nice knockdown arguent. mHumpty Dumpty : when I use a word, it means just what I choose it to

mean neither more nor less.Alice : the question is ….. whether you can make words mean so

many different things.Humpty Dumpty : the question is ….. which is to be master that’s all.

WRITER’S CONCLUSION

Although a word has one or more particular meaning, such as the meaning of glory is victory, majesty, beauty, etc. It would be different if the speakers use their own meaning, like glory is a knockdown argument according to Humpty Dumpty in that conversation. All of it is up to the speakers to mean the meaning of a word.

SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he uses a piece of language.

SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word) means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.

A THEORY is precisely specified, coherent and economical framework of interdependent statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it.

Example:Expensive means opposite of

cheap.Camile is and is not a meaningful

English sentence.

Unit 2

SENTENCES, UTTERANCES AND PROPOSITIONS

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 a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or even a single word.

Example: “Hi”

“Enough”“Great”

“Xpigtlmeq” It is not part of any

language“Ngezkoquhrsloay”

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 can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various realization in utterances and inscriptions.

NOTE :

A book contains no utterances (since books don’t talk) or sentences (since sentences are abstract ideals). Double quotation marks represents an utterances.Anything italicized represents a sentence or (similarly abstract) part of sentence, such as a phrase or a word.

Example: “Stop” represents an utterance. Claudia hit the ball by her stick

represents a sentence. “Claudia hit the ball by her stick”

represents an utterance. Kevin represents a word conceived as

part of sentence.

A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.

NOTE :

The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expression in the sentence.The notion of the truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express different propositions.

Example: Jasmine spent her weekend with Russell

Jasmine did not spend her weekend with Russell

Claudia hurt PeterClaudia caused Peter broken heart

Unit 3

REFERENCE AND SENSE

In talking of sense, we deal with relationships inside the language; in talking of reference we deal with the relationships between language and the world.

REFERENCE indicates which things in the world (including person) are being talked about.

Example:“My mother is in the kitchen”

Identifies Identifies person person

In everyday, conversation almost all of the fixing of reference comes from the context in which expression are use. There are two different expression can have the same referent.

The classic example is the Morning Star and the Evening Star, both of which normally refer to the planet Venus.

THE SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language. The first of these semantic relationships that we will mention is sameness of meaning, an intuitive concept which we will illustrate by example. We will deal first with the senses of words in context.

Example: come back

I home go back

the followingTomorrow is day

the next

Unit 4

REFERRING EXPRESSION

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.

Example: The name Intan in an utterance such as “Intan joins group 5 with me”, where the speaker has a particular person in mind when he says “Intan”, is a referring expression.

Intan in “There’s no Intan at this address” is not a referring expression, because in this case a speaker would not have a particular person in mind in uttering the word.

AN OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of referring expression, but where the addition of different referring expressions, even though they refer to the same thing or person, in a given situation, will yield sentences with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given situation.

Example:The incomplete sentence David argued that … is a genius constitutes an opaque context, because, even in a conversation about Indonesia politics, the following two utterances would make different claim:

A: “David argued that the Third President is a genius”B: “David argued that the father of technology is a genius”

If, for example, David believes erroneously that the Third President is not the father of technology, then A and B will mean different things.

AN EQUATIVE SENTENCE is one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two referring expression, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent.

Example: Soekarno is the First President in

Indonesia The girl over there is my girlfriend

Note: Equative sentence is always

positiveEquative sentence is normally

used as definition

Unit 5

PREDICATES

THE PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (sometimes a group of words) which does not belong to any of the referring expressions and which of the reminder, makes the most specific contribution to the meaning of the sentence.

Example: Sleep is the predicator in Rifky is

sleeping in the classroom Drive is the predicator in my brother

drives his new car Look for is the predicator in I am

looking for my bike lock

NOTE :

The predicators in sentences can be of various part of speech: adjective (red, asleep, hungry), verbs (write, drive, cook), proposition (in, between, behind) and nouns (crook, genius).Words of other parts of speech, such as conjunction (and, but, or), articles (the, a) can not serve as predicators in sentences.Verb be in it various forms (is, am, are, was, were) is not the predicators.

 

A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can function as the predicator of a sentence.

Example: Hungry, sleep, eat, hurt, spoon, try, are

all predicates And or, but, not, are not predicates.

THE DEGREE of a predicate is a number indicating the number of arguments it is normally understood to have in simple sentences.

The degree of predicate:1. One-place predicate2. Two-place predicate3. Three-place predicate

ONE-PLACE PREDICATE

These are predicates that have one obligatory argument.

Example: Peter is handsomeSalsa’s father is a teacherHe is cute enough

TWO-PLACE PREDICATES

These are predicates that have two obligatory argument.

Example:Kim repaired a broken bicycleThe chef cooks delicious foodsTimmy speaks English fluently

THREE-PLACE PREDICATES

These are predicates that have three obligatory arguments.

Example:Salatiga is between Semarang and

SoloMy father bought me a new dressKate brought him nick’s book

Unit 6

PREDICATES, REFERRING EXPRESSIONS AND UNIVERSE DISCOURSE

A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in which some statement is made about a whole unrestricted class of individuals, as opposed to particular individual.

Example: Ladies like flowersTigress bear its baby

UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance as the particular world real or imaginary (or part real, part imaginary) that the speaker assumes he is talking about at the time.

Example: The sun rises on the east (the universe discourse is

the real world) The fairy godmother transforms the Cinderella’s old

clothes into the beautiful dress (the universe discourse is not the real world but a fictitious world).

Unit 7

DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS

All languages do contain small sets of words whose meaning 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.

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.

Example:The person singular pronoun I is deictic.

When Mika says “I’ve lost my key”, the word I here refers to Mika. When Daniel says “I’ll sand you our schedule”, the I here refers to Daniel.

DEFINITENESS is a feature of a noun phrase selected by a speaker to convey his assumption that the hearer will be able to identify the referent of the noun phrase, usually because it is the only thing of its kind in the context of the utterance or because it is unique in the universe of discourse.

Example: That dress is definite. It can only appropriately

be used when the speaker assumes the hearer can tell which dress is being referred to.

The personal pronoun he is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes the hearer can tell which person is being referred to.

The planet is definite. It is only thing in a normal universe of discourse known by this name.

Unit 8

WORDS AND THINGS: EXTENSIONS AND PROTOTYPES

THE EXTENSION of a one-place predicate is the set of all individuals to which that predicate can truthfully be applied. It is the set of things which can POTENTIALLY be referred to by using an expression whose main element is that predicate.

Example: The extension of door is the set of all

doors in the universe. The extension of elephant is the set of

all elephants in the universe. The extension of blue is the set of all

blue things.

A PROTOTYPE of a predicate is an object which is held to be very TYPICAL of the kind of object which can be referred to by an expression containing the predicate.

Example: A girl of medium height between 15 and 20

years old, with black hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects could be a prototype of the predicate girl areas the world.

THE REFERRENT of a referring expression is the thing picked out by the use of that expression on a particular occasion of utterance.

THE EXTENSION of a predicate is the complete set of all things which could potentially (i.e. in any possible utterance) be the referent of a referring expression whose head constituent is that predicate.

A PROTOTYPE of a predicate is a typical member of its extension.

Unit 9

SENSE PROPERTIES AND STEREOTYPES

THE SENSE of an expression is its indispensable hard core of meaning.

The sense of expression can be thought of as the sum of its sense properties and sense relations with other expressions. Three important sense properties of sentences:

1. Analytic 2. Synthetic 3. Contradiction

ANALYTIC

AN ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a result of the senses of the words in it. An Analytic sentence, therefore, reflects a tacit agreement by speakers of the language about the senses of the words in it.

Example:The Earth revolves around the Sun.

SYNTHETIC

A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either true or false, depending on the way the world is.

Example:Erick steals Emma’s wallet

There is nothing in the senses of Erick or steal or Emma’s wallet which makes this necessarily true or false.

CONTRADICTION

A CONTRADICTION is a sentence that is necessarily FALSE, as a result of the senses of the words in it. Thus a contradiction is in a way the opposite of an analytic sentence.

Example:The Forth President of Indonesia is

Megawati Soekarno Putri.

A NECESSARY CONDITION on the sense of a predicate is a condition (or criterion) which a thing MUST meet in order to qualify as being correctly described by that predicate.

A SUFFICIENT SET OF CONDITIONS on the sense of a predicate is a set of conditions (or criteria) which, if they are met by a thing, are enough in themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate correctly describes that thing.

Example: Take predicate rectangle, as usually

understood in geometry. ‘Four angles’ is necessary condition for this predicate, since for anything to be rectangle, it must be four angles.

‘Field figure, four-sided, four angles and containing right angles’ is a sufficient set of conditions for the predicate rectangle, since if anything meets all of these conditions, it is guaranteed to be a rectangle.

THE STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics of things to which the predicate may be applied.

Example: The stereotype of dog: They have Four

claws on their hind feet and 5 on the front, a keen sense of smell, excellent hearing due to ear flaps called "leathers", etc.

Unit 10

SENSE RELATIONS (1)

SYNONYMY is the relationship between two predicates that have the same sense.

Example:Good and nice are synonymsDifficult and hard are synonyms

PARAPHRASE is to SENTENCES (on individual interpretations) as SYNONYMY is to PREDICATES (though some semanticists talk loosely of synonymy in the case of sentences as well).

Example:Single women prefer independent men

is a paraphrase of Independent men preferred by women.

HYPONYMY is a sense relation between predicates (or sometimes longer phrases) such that the meaning of one predicate (or phrase) is included in the meaning of the other.

Example: The meaning of blue is included in the

meaning of sapphire.Blue is the subordinate term; sapphire is a

hyponym of blue (sapphire is a kind of blue).

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