M2 session 3 slides

LINGUISTICS 2
M2 SESSION 3
INSTRUCTOR: LE NGUYEN NHU ANH

CONTENTS
▪Referring expressions
▪Referring expressions
▪Opaque sentence
▪Equative sentence
▪Generic sentence
▪Deixis and definiteness

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.
referent refering expressions
“your left ear”
reference

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The same expression can be a referring
expression or not, depending on the context.
This is true of indefinite noun phrases.
Example:
•A man was in here looking for you last night.
•The first sign of the monsoon is a cloud on
the horizon no bigger than a man’s hand.
•Forty buses have been withdrawn from
service by the Liverpool Corporation.
•This engine has the power of forty buses.

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Definite noun phrases of various kinds, proper names (e.g.
John), personal pronouns (e.g. he, it), and longer
descriptive expressions (as in question (4)) most frequently
are used as referring expressions.
However, consider the followings:
▪ If anyone ever marries Nancy, he’s in for a bad time.
▪ Every man who owns a donkey beats it.
▪ The person who did this must be insane.
▪Smith’s murderer must be insane.
(spoken by someone on discovering a brutally mutilated
corpse, where the speaker has no idea who committed the
crime)

An OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence
which could be made into a complete sentence by
the addition of a referring expression,
-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.
-These contexts seem to ‘block our view’ through
them to the referential interpretations of
referring expressions.
-Typical verbs: want, believe, think, wonder about

A: Laura Bush thinks that the President is a
genius.
B: Laura Bush thinks that the Leader of the
Republican Party is a genius.
Laura Bush thinks that __________ is a genius.
=> OPAQUE context. (If Laura Bush believes
erroneously that the President is not the
leader of the Republican Party, A & B mean
different things)

Situation: John is standing alone in the corner.
Dick does not know that John is the person in
the corner.
A: Dick believes that John killed Smith.
B: Dick believes that the person in the corner
killed Smith.
Dick believes that __________ killed Smith.
=> OPAQUE context.

Situation: the Morning Star is the Evening Star.
Nancy does not know this.
A: Nancy wants to get married when the
Morning Star is in the sky.
B: Nancy wants to get married when the
Evening Star is in the sky.
Nancy wants to get married when __________ is
in the sky.
=> OPAQUE context.

Situation: The last banana on the table is the
prize in a game of charades, but Gary, who
came late to the party, is not aware of this..
A: Gary took the last banana.
B: Gary took the prize.
Gary took __________.
=> NOT opaque context.

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:
▪Tony Blair is the Prime Minister.
▪That woman over there is my daughter’s
teacher.

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In an equative sentence, the order of the two
referring expressions can be reversed without
loss of acceptability.
Example:
The largest city in Africa is Cairo.
Cairo is the largest city in Africa.

Consider the following:
The whale is the largest mammal.
Is The whale here a referring expression?
In The whale is the largest mammal does the
largest mammal refer to some particular
mammal?
Are there any referring expressions in The
whale is the largest mammal?

A GENERIC SENTENCE is one in which some
statement is made about a whole unrestricted
class of individuals, as opposed to any
particular individual.
Compare:
The whale is the largest mammal.
And
That whale over there is a mammal.

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DEIXIS
A DEICTIC word is one which takes some
element of its meaning from the context or
situation (i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the
time and the place) of the utterance in which it
is used.
Example:
When Ben Heasley says ‘I’ve lost the contract’,
the word I here refers to Ben Heasley.
When Penny Carter says ‘I’ll send you another
one’, the I here refers to Penny Carter.
=> The pronoun I is deitic.

Dodge City
A referring expression modified by this refers to an entity (place,
person, thing etc.) at or near the actual place of the utterance in
which it is used.
Fresno
November 2nd 2005
May 3rd 2005
the day before the day of the utterance in which it is used.

DEIXIS
Deitic terms:
-Referring expressions (you, here, today,..)
-Modifiers that can be used with referring
expressions (this, that,…)
-Some verbs
Example:
The verb come has a deictic ingredient,
because it contains the notion ‘toward the
speaker’.

DEIXIS
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not at the hospital.
Not on Earth
In the bathroom
Not in the kitchen

DEIXIS
Tenses for indicating past, present, and future
time are also deictic.

DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS
Before the utterance
At the time of the utterance
After the time of the utterance
After the year 1993
In or before the year 1993

DEIXIS
In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in
the original utterance (the utterance being
reported) may be translated into other,
possibly non-deictic, terms in order to
preserve the original reference.
Example
John: ‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow.’
Margaret (reporting John’s utterance some
time later): ‘John said he would meet me there
the next day.

EXERCISES
Which of the following could be used as
referring expressions?
a. my table
b. a unicorn
c. no love
d. Travel
e. Or
f. Mary
g. A book
h. Abraham Lincoln

EXERCISES
For the following sentences decide whether
the italicized noun phrases are referring
expressions or not, and explain why (or why
not). If the sentence is ambiguous explain why
it is ambiguous.
1. His father married a dancer.
2. John wants to marry a dancer.
3. The whale is the largest mammal.
4. The man who shot Kennedy was Lee
Harvey Oswald.

EXERCISES
Explain the ambiguity in:
I am looking for a pencil

EXERCISES
Which of the following are equative sentences?
Explain why.
a Fred is the man with the gun
b William the Conqueror is the current King of
England
c Detroit is a nearby city
d Mary is a genius
e A box of cookies is what I would like
f Detroit is not the largest city in the USA

EXERCISES
Which of the following are equative sentences?
Explain why.
a Fred is the man with the gun.
b William the Conqueror is the current King of
England.
c Detroit is a nearby city.
d Mary is a genius.
e A box of cookies is what I would like.
f Detroit is not the largest city in the USA

EXERCISES
Which of the following are generic sentences?
Explain why.
a Americans like to eat apple pie.
b Fred likes to buy Uzis.
c A bird lays eggs.
d My pet finch just laid an egg .

EXERCISES
Identify all the deictic expressions in the
following sentences:
a You noticed me standing there
b This book was written by that author over
there
c Just set your briefcase to the right of mine
d Now we have to make plans for next week
e Her best friend was standing behind John
f All the guests arrived two hours ago

M2 session 3 slides

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M2 session 3 slides