it's abou semantics

1. SEMANTICS
WRITTEN BY:
INDAH SAFITRI
113-11-141
ENGLISH DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION FACULTY
STATE INSTITUTE OF ISLAMIC STUDIES (STAIN)
SALATIGA
2014

2. UNIT1
ABOUT SEMANTICS
SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.
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.
Example :Dialog 1
A: ‘We’re going to England next month’.
B:
When A in the above exchange says ‘Are you?’
she is talking the truth to B. and it is called
Sentence Meaning.
Dialog 2
A: ‘When I go away next week, I’m taking
your phone’
B: ‘ I need that phone to
communicate with my office partner’.
When A in the above exchange says ‘Are
you?’ she is thereby in some sense taking
up a position opposed to B. It is an example
of Speaker Meaning.

3. A THEORY is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work 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:
Fire is hot.
(All of us know about it and it’s true so, it is called theory. Because theory
connects with truth).

4. 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:
A: ‘We’re going to England next month’.
B:
( It’s an example of Utterance. As usual, utterance is written between single
quotation marks)

5. 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:
The President now arriving at Senayan is the 11.15 from Soekarno-Hatta
departure.
(it is an example of a sentence. Usually, sentence represents by italicized
and its grammar is complete)

6. A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative
sentence which describes some state of affairs.
Example:
Nana loves Ken.
Ken loves Nana.
(it’s an example of proposition. One sentence could be true and the other
false.)

7. UNIT 3 REFERENCEAND SENSE
By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including
persons) are being talked about.
Example:
‘My mom is in the market now’
My Mom identifies person .
The Market identifies thing.
the SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with
other expressions in the language.
Example:
I almost fired.
I nearly fired.
(nearly and almost have one sense)

8. UNIT 4 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.
Example:
Anas Urbaningrum is a corruptor’
(The name Anas Urbaningrum in an utterance such as ‘Anas Urbaningrum is
a corruptor’, where the speaker has a particular person in mind when he
says ‘Anas Urbaningrum’, is a referring expression).

9. 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 sentences with DIFFERENT
meanings when uttered in a given situation.
Example:
A: ‘Laura Kiehl thinks that the CEO of MNC Group is a genius’
B: ‘Laura Kiehl thinks that the Leader of the Hanura is a genius’
If for example, Laura Bush believes erroneously that the CEO of MNC Group is not
the Leader of the Hanura , 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 expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring
expressions have the same referent.
Example:
Amazon river is the biggest river in the world.
The biggest river in the world is Amazon river.
(both of them have same meaning)

10. 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
remainder, makes the most specific contribution to the meaning of the sentence.
Example:
I am happy.
(the predicator is Happy. Before you can get predicator, find out the referring
expression first).
Note: predicator can be all of part of speech, except Conjunction, to be, and article.
A PREDICATE is any word (or sequence of words) which (in a given single sense) can
function as the predicator of a sentence.
Example:
A tall, beautiful woman entered the class.
Tall, beautiful, woman, and class are predicate.
(predicate can be a predicator in other sentence).
In other sentence:
She is tall. (tall is a predicator in this sentence)

11. The DEGREE of a predicate is a number indicating the number of arguments it
is normally understood to have in simple sentences. (Argument is referring
expressing).
Example:
I am happy.
I is a predicate of degree one (often called a one-place predicate)

12. UNIT 6 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 male prefer to marry lastly.

13. the 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:
Mother to child: ‘Santa Claus might not bring you a toy because you’re very
naughty ’.
Note that no universe of discourse is a totally fictitious world. Santa Claus is a
fiction, but the toy he might bring do actually exist.

14. UNIT 7 DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS
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:
Cinta Laura says ‘I’ve lost the contract’
The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. When Cinta Laura says ‘I’ve lost
the contract’, the word I here refers to Cinta Laura.
The CONTEXT of an utterance 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 utterance occurs, and also facts about the situation
in which the conversation itself takes place.
Example:
If I carry on a conversation with a friend about the time, five years earlier, when
we first met in England (and we are now holding the conversation in front of
my house):
‘Do you remember when we met at the university?’

15. 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:
May I took that pen?
That pen is definite. It can only appropriately be
used when the speaker assumes the hearer
can tell which pen is being referred to.

16. UNIT 8 WORDS ANDTHINGS:
EXTENSIONS AND PROTOTYPES
The EXTENSION of a one-place predicate is the set of all individuals to which that
predicate can truthfully be applied.
Example:
The extension of cat is the set of all cats in the universe. It can be Anggora, Persia,
etc.
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. In other words, the prototype of a predicate can be thought of as
the most typical member of the extension of a predicate.
Example:
A boy of standard height and average build, between 15 and 20 years old, with
brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects, could
be a prototype of the predicate boy in certain areas of the world.

17. UNIT 9 SENSE PROPERTIES AND STEREOTYPES
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
(unspoken) agreement by speakers of the language about the senses of
the words in it.
Example:
All cats are animals
The truth of the sentence follows from the senses of cat and animal.
A SYNTHETIC sentence is one which is NOT analytic, but may be either true or
false, depending on the way the world is.
Example:
Kai is from China
There is nothing in the senses of Kai is from China or from which makes this
necessarily true or false.

18. 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:
He was born by his father.
This must be false because human was born by their mother not their father.

19. 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.
Example:
Take the predicate triangle, as usually understood in geometry. ‘Three-sided’ is a
necessary condition for this predicate, since for anything to be a square, it must
be tree-sided.
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:
‘Three-sided, equal-sided, and containing right angles’ is a sufficient set of
conditions for the predicate triangle, since if anything meets all of these
conditions, it is guaranteed to be a triangle.
The STEREOTYPE of a predicate is a list of the TYPICAL characteristics or features of
things to which the predicate may be applied.
Example:
The stereotypes of elephant:
Big, fat, grey, has a trunk and tusk, etc.

20. UNIT 10 SENSE RELATIONS (1)
IDENTITYAND SIMILARITYOF SENSE
SYNONYMY is the relationship between two predicates that have the same
sense.
Example:
In most dialects of English, occur and happen are synonyms.
A sentence which expresses the same proposition as another sentence is a
PARAPHRASE of that sentence (assuming the same referents for any
referring expressions involved).
Example:
Aria sells this book to Sari.
This book was sell by Aria to Sari.

21. 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:
Nice, good, great, etc
Synonymy can be seen as a special case of hyponymy, i.e. SYMMETRICAL
HYPONYMY.
Example:
For example, given two synonyms, such as red and scarlet, we say for
convenience that these also illustrate the hyponymy relationship, and that
mercury and quicksilver are hyponyms of each other.
A proposition X ENTAILS a proposition Y if the truth of Y follows necessarily
from the truth of X.
Example:
Raina fried an egg entails Rania cooked an egg.

22. Two sentences may be said to be PARAPHRASES 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:
I almost fell over
I nearly fell over
Therefore,
I almost fell over is a paraphrase of I nearly fell over