the course of semantics

2. 1.
Basic Ideas in Semantics

3. UNIT 1
About Semantics

4. • Semantic is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.
• Speaker meaning is what a speaker meaning (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.
example :
Alan: Are you going to Paul’s party?
Barb: I have to work.
(If this was a typical exchange, Barb meant that she is
not going to Paul’s party. But the sentence she
uttered does not mean that she is not going to Paul’s
party.)

5. • A theory is a precisely specified coherent and economical
framwork of independent statements and definitions,
constructed so that as large a number as possible of particular
basic facs can either be seen to follow from it or be describle in
terms of it.
example :
(1) Barack Obama is the 44th president of the United States.
(2) John McCain is the 44th president of the United States.
< = > (1) is true, and (2) is false.
Obviously, this difference in truth-value is traceable to some
difference between the expressions ‘Barack Obama’ and ‘John
McCain.’ What about these expressions explains the difference
in truth-value between these sentences? It is very plausible that
it is the fact that ‘Barack Obama’ stands for the man who is in
fact the 44th president of the United States, whereas ‘John
McCain’ stands for a man who is not. This indicates that the
reference of a proper name—its contribution to the
determination of truth conditions of sentences in which it
occurs—is the object for which that name stands.

6. UNIT 2
Sentences, Utterances, and
Prepositions

7. Utterances
AN UTTERANCE is any stretch of talk, by one personm
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 phrasem or even a
single word.
example :
(1) John said [that she came].
(2) John says [he will not do the job].
Examples (1) – (2) provide instances of utterance
complements in English (utterance complements will
be enclosed in square brackets in the examples):

8. Sentences
A SENTENCE is neither physical event nor a
physical object.
It is conceived abstractly a string of words put
together by the grammaticaly rules of a
language.
A santance can be thought of as the IDEAL
string of words behind various realizations in
utterences and incriptions.

9. PREPOSITIONS
A PREPOSITION is that part of the meaning of
tha utterance of a declarative sentence which
describe some state of affairs.
Example:
The tall, stately building fell is said to express
propositions corresponding to the following:
“The building is tall.”
“The building is stately.”
“The building fell.”

10. UNIT 3
Reference And Sense

11. REFERENCE is the relationship between the English
expression this page (part of the language) and the
thing you could hold between your finger and thus
(part of the world).
The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of
semantic of relationships with other expression in the
language.
Example :
‘The husband of Barbara Bush is the President who
succeeded Ronald Reagan.’
• Reference is: A [former] President of the USA (George
Bush senior);
• and the two Senses are:
1. The husband of Barbara Bush; and
2. The man who became President after Ronald
Reagan.

12. 2.
From Reference . . .

13. UNIT 4
Referring Expressions

14. • 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.
Examples :
- a noun phrase of any structure, such as:
the taxi in The taxi’s waiting outside;
the apple on the table in Bring me the apple on the
table;
and those five boys in Those five boys were off school
last week.
- a noun-phrase surrogate, i.e. a pronoun, such as:
it in It’s waiting outside and Bring me it;
and they in They were off school last week.
- a proper name, like Sarah, London, The Eiffel Tower, or
The Beatles.

15. • An OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence
which could be made into complete sentence by
the addition of a referring expression but where
the addition of different referring expression,
even though they refer to the same thing or
person in a given situation, will yield sentence
with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a
given situation.
Example :
“Lois believes X is a hero” is an opaque context.
Because : “Louis believes Superman is a hero” is
true while “Lois believes Clark Kent is a hero” is
false, even though ‘Superman’ and ‘Clark Kent’
are co-referential expressions.

16. • 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.
Examples :
•Mrs. Laura is my lecturer.
•That man who walks fast is my brother.
•Dr. Jekyll is Mr. Hyde

17. UNIT 5
PREDICATES

18. A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of word) which (in a given
single sense) can function as the predicator of a sentence.
Example :
In the sentence ‘John saw his friend’, “saw his friend” is the
predicate.
A PREDICATOR is a simple declarative sentence is the word (some
times 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 :
- Joko is Indonesian
The predicator is Indonesian and the argument is Joko
- The police killed Paiman
The predicator is the police and the argument is Paiman
The DEGREE of a predicate is a number indicating the number of
arguments it is normally understood to have in simple sentences.
Example :
The majority of adjectives are one-place predicates (John is tall),
execp for adjectives which require prepositions (Cars are different
from bikes) and are two-place predicates.

19. UNIT 6
Predicates, Referring Expressions, and
Universe of Discourse

20. The distiction between referring expressions and
predicates is absolute : there is not a continuum
running from proper names at one end, through
‘borderline cases’ to verbs and prepositions at
the some entity in the world or it is not so used.
The presence of a predicate in a referring
expression helps the hearer to identify the
referent of a referring expression.
To sum up, predicates do not refer. But they can
used by a hearer when contained in the meaning
of a referrring expression, to identify the referent
of that expressions.

21. We define the UNIVERSE OF DICOURSE for any
utterances as the particular world real or
imaginary (or part real, part imaginary) that the
speaker assumes he is talking about at the time.
Example :
in using :
a. the universe of discourse can be all human
beings (and the sentence is most certainly not
true), or it may be a restricted set of human
beings (and the sentence may very well be true).
b. the universe of discourse has been explicitly
restricted by the adjunct in this room.

22. UNIT 7
Deixis And Definiteness

23. 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 :
- Person deixis: They tried to hurt me, but he came to the rescue.
- Gender deixis: A man is responsible for his own soul.
as opposed to:
- Each person is responsible for his or her own soul.
- Place deixis: Here is a good spot; it is too sunny over there.
- Time deixis: It is raining out now, but I hope when you read this it
will be sunny.
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 discource.
Example :
“a car” or “cars” do not refer to anything specific in the world and
thus both examples are indefinite. Conversely, “my car” or “my
cars” both refer to actual objects in the world and thus both
examples are definite.

24. UNIT 8
Words and Things :
Extentions and Prototypes

25. The EXTENTION of a one-place predicates 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 word "dog" is the set of all (past, present and future) dogs in
the world: the set includes Fido, Rover, Lassie, Rex, and so on.
The extension of the phrase "Wikipedia reader" includes each
person who has ever read Wikipedia.
A PROTOTYPE of 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 :
Person has purchased ‘furniture,’ you would infer, in the absence
of information to the contrary, that he or she had been buying
tables, chairs, and beds, not clocks, lamps, and footstools.

26. 3.
. . . To Sense

27. UNIT 9
Sense Properties and Stereotypes

28. The SENSE of an expression is its indispensable hard core of meaning.
Example :
John is a bachelor.
An ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a result of
the senses of the words in it.
Example :
All bachelors are unmarried.
A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either
true or false, depending on the way the world is.
Example :
All bachelors are happy.
A CONTRADICTION is a sentence that is necessarily FALSE, as a result
of the sense of the words in it. Thus a contradiction is in a way the
opposite of an analytic sentence
Example :
All bachelors are married.

29. NOTE :
A NACESSARY 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 athing, are enough in
themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate
correctly describes that thing.

30. UNIT 10
Sense Relations

31. SYNONYMY is the relationship between two predicates that habe the
same sense.
A sentence whis expresses the same proposition as another sentence
is a PARAPHRASE of that sentence (assuming the same referents for
any referring expressions involved).
Paraphrase is to SENTENCES (on individual interprestations) as
SYNONYMY is to PREDICATES (though some semanticts talk loosely
of synonymy in the case of sentences as well).
Example :
buy as synonym of purchase
ask as synonym of request
mad as synonym of insane
HYPOTYMY 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 :
triumph as hyponym of success
profound as hyponym of deep
fortune as hyponym of luck

32. We define HYPONYMY in such a way that
SYNONYMY counts as a special case of
hyponymy.
For example, given two synonymys such as
mercury and quicksilver, we say for
convinience that these also illustrate the
hyponymy relationship, and that mercury and
quicksilver are hyponymy of each other. Thus
synonymy can be seen as a special case of
hyponymy, i. e. SYMMERICAL HYPONYMY.