Bài giảng môn Ngữ nghĩa học (Semantics) - Unit 2: Sentences, utterances, and propositions - Trương Văn Ánh

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1. Semantics Sai Gon University truongvananh@cvseas.edu.vn
2. 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.
3. Utterances 1) She shouted: Ouch! 2) She answered : Many apples. 3) She said: I like apples. 4) She said: I like apples because they are delicious. 5) She said: Elllllxkm! What a man pronounces, and it has meaning, is called an utterance.
4. 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. We have defined a sentence as a string of words. A given sentence always consists of the same words, and in the same order. Any change in the words, or in their order, makes a different sentence, for our purposes.
5. A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought. In English there are nine basic sentence patterns. In other languages the numbers of basic sentence patterns are different.
6. A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs. The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express various propositions. Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in which one sentence is true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they express various propositions.
7. Utterance Sentence Sentence Sentence Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition
8. Sentences I like music. He likes music. They learned French when they lived in Paris. Je t’aime = I love you. Ich liebe dich = I love you. Я люблю тебя = тебя люблю Я = люблю тебя Я 我爱你。 = I love you. Ti amo = I love you. Te quiero = I love you.  A string of words arranged in a grammatical order accepted in a language is called a sentence.
9. Different sentences in different languages have the same proposition: I love you. Je t’aime. Ich liebe dich. Я люблю тебя. 我爱你。 Ti amo. Te quiero. The meaning in any sentence in any language is called a proposition.
10. The same proposition: Thomas helped them. They were helped by Thomas. + Do the two following sentences have the same proposition? (1) A gangster killed the man. (2) A gangster caused the man to die.
11. Speaker meaning Sentence meaning Utterance Sentence Proposition
12. GOOD LUCK!