Sense and Reference

SENSE & REFERENCE

• By means of reference, a speaker indicates

which things in the world (including persons)

are being talked about.• It deals with the relationship between the

language elements (word, phrase, and clause) and the non linguistic elements (the world of experience).

REFERENCE

1. CONSTANT REFERENCE

• Some expressions will have the same referent across a range of different utterances. E.g. Eiffel tower, Pacific Ocean

2. VARIABLE REFERENCE• Some other expressions have their reference

totally dependent on context,

TYPES OF REFERENCE

• Referent is the thing we pick out by uttering the expression in particular context.

• In fact, there is very little constancy of reference in language. Two different expressions can have the same referent.

REFERENT

• 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.

1. ‘Ika hit me’

2. ‘There’s no Ika at this address’

REFERRING EXPRESSION

• Sense is related with the complex system of relationship between one linguistic element with other linguistic elements such as (word-word, phrase –phrase, etc).

• The meaning that a lexeme has because of these relationships is the sense of that lexeme.

• E.g. Every house has got a main bedroom.

Every –house has different sense with individual word, every and house

SENSE

Sometimes same word have more than one sense:1. The bank of Tokyo The bank of Musi2. A mug of milk He is a famous mug3. Hak manusia Hak sepatu

• Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.

• When you look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, what do you find there, its referent, or an expression with the same sense?

REFERENCE & SENSE

• On the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an expression is often a thing or a person in the world; whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all.

REFERENCE & SENSE

I am glad for the questions

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• Take out your laptops or mobile phones• Find the following types of reference in

news articles and explain why they fit into the type of reference.

1. An expression with different references

2. An expression with constant reference

3. Different expressions with the same reference

4. An expression with no (physical) reference

EXERCISE