SEMANTICS

Written by :

LAILATIS SYARIFAH

11311137

STATE INSTITUTE FOR ISLAMIC STUDIES (STAIN) SALATIGA

BASIC IDEAS IN SEMANTICS

SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

Hopelessly I hope to convince you that by careful thought about language you speak and the way it is used, definite conclusions CAN be arrived at concerning meaning.

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 a 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.

SENTENCE, 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 word.

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 realizations in utterances and inscriptions.

A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought.

Example : I would like a glass of strawberry juice.

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

True proposition correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense of the word fact. False propositions do not correspond to facts.

REFERENCE AND SENSE

By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being talked about.

Example : “My husband is in the office”

A SENCE of an expression is its place in a system of semantics relationships with other expressions in the language.

Example : I {almost/ nearly} fell over

REFERRING EXPRESSIONS

A REFERRING EXPRESSIONS 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 Nidho in an utterance such as

“Nidho call me” where the speaker has a particular person in mind when he says “Nidho”, is a referring expression

An OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of a 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 sentence with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given situation.

Example :“Ello believes that Nidho killed Ant”“Ello believes that the person in the corner

killed Ant”Assume that Ello does not know that Nidho

is the person in the corner.

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.

Example : Ello is the Leader of the Organization

committee In her boarding schoolThat women over there is my wife

PREDICATES

The PREDICATOR of a simple declarative sentence is the word (sometimes a group of word) 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.

Example : Beautiful is the predicator in Ello is

Beautiful

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

Example : Take, in, go, eat, hit, show, house, except

conjunction and article (and, or, but, not).

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

Example : I’m Hungry (I: argument , hungry: predicator)Argument only one (I) so it called a one place

predicate. Ello take the Gift (Ello: argument, Take: predicator,

Gift: Argument)There are two argument, so it called two place

predicate.

PREDICATES, REFERRING EXPRESSIONS, AND UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE

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

Example :The Whale is Mammal (understood by

every people in the universe)

The UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE 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 : Every conversation event it REAL or

FICTIVIOUS world.

DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS

A DEICTIC word is one study 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 : This book is written by that author.

The CONTEXT of an utterances is a small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by speaker and hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the conversation in which the utterances occurs, and also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes place.

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 :The Earth is definite. It is the only thing in

a normal universe of discourse known by this name.

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 windows is the set of all

windows in the universeThe extension of cat is the set of all cats in the

universe

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 man of medium height and average build,

between 30 and 50 years old, with brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics of defects could be a prototype of the predicate MAN in certain areas of the world.

An ANALYTIC sentence is one that is necessarily TRUE, as a result of the sense of the words in it.

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

Example :Analytic : all whale are mammal. (the true of the

sentence follow from the senses of whale and mammalSynthetic : Nidhom is handsome. (there is nothing in the

sense of Nidhom or Handsome which makes this necessarily true or false.

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

Example :Lailatis is a man. (this mush be false,

because lailatis is a woman, not a man)

A NECESSARY CONDITION on the sense of a predicate is a condition 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 condition which, if they are met by a thing, are enough in themselves to GUARANTEE that the predicate correctly describes that thing

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 cat would be something like :Quadruped, domesticated, either black, or white,

or grey, or tortoise shell, or marmalade in colour, or some combination of these colours, adult speciments about 50 cm long from nose to tip of tail, furry, with sharp retractable claws, etc.

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

Example : The thief tried to CONCEAL/HIDE the

evidence

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

Example :The meaning of RED is included in the

meaning of Scarlet. Red is the super ordinate term; scarlet is a hyponym of red

A proposition X ENTAILS a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily from the truth of X.

Example :Nidho loved Ello (X) entails Ello Happy (Y)Nidho killed Bird (X) entails Bird Died (Y)

Two sentences may be said to be PARAPHRASE of each other if and only if they have exactly the same set of ENTAILMENTS; or, which comes to the same thing, if and only if they mutually entail each other so that whenever one is true the other must also be true.

Example : Nidho and Ello are Couples entails Ello and

Nidho are Couples.

Thank you