Bài giảng Tiếng Anh Lớp 9 - Exercises on semantics 3

Nội dung text: Bài giảng Tiếng Anh Lớp 9 - Exercises on semantics 3

1. EXERCISES ON SEMANTICS Mr. Anh
2. Exercise 23: Answer the following: (UNIT 3) (1) State which of the following represents an utterance (U) and which a sentence S): John sang wonderfully last night S / U “John sang wonderfully last night” S / U (2) Can a sentence be true or false? Yes / No (3) Is an utterance tied to a particular time and place? Yes / No (4) Is a sentence tied to a particular time and place? Yes / No (5) Can a proposition be said to be in any particular language? Yes / No (6) Can an utterance be true or false? Yes / No
3. Answer: (1) S, U (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) No (5) No (6) Yes If you have scored less than 5 correct out of 6, you should review Unit 2. If you have scored at least 5 correct out of 6, continue to the introduction.
4. Exercise 24: Before answering these questions you should carry out the following simple instruction: touch your left ear. (1) Write down the last three words in the above instruction. (2) Is the thing you touched a part of the world or a part of the language? (3) Is your answer to (1) a part of the language? Yes / No (4) If you say to your mother ‘There’s a wasp on your left ear’, does ‘your left ear’ here refer to the thing you touched in response to a previous question? Yes / No
5. Answer: (1) your left ear (2) A part of the world, languages do not have ears. (3) Yes (4) No, it refers to your mother’s left ear.
6. Exercise 25: (1) What would be the referent of the phrase the present President of the United States used: (a) in 2018? (b) in 1996? (2) Therefore we can say that the phrase the present President of the United States has
7. (3) What would be the referent of the phrase the President of the United States used in a conversation about: (a) United States politics in 2007? (b) United States politics in 1996? (4) In the light of the preceding questions, does the reference of an expression vary according to (a) the circumstances (time, place, etc.) in which the expression is used, or (b) the topic of the conversation in which the expression is used, or (c) both (a) and (b)? Circle your choice.
8. Answer: (1) (a) George W. Bush (b) Bill Clinton (2) variable reference (3)(a) George W. Bush (b) Bill Clinton (4) (c)
9. Exercise 26: Imagine two different everyday situations in which separate couples are having separate conversations about what they refer to with the phrase the moon. (1) Would they be talking about the same object (i.e. does the moon normally have constant reference)? Yes / No (2) Does The People’s Republic of China normally have constant reference? Yes / No (3) Does Angola normally have constant reference? Yes / No (4) Does Halley’s Comet normally have constant reference? Yes / No
10. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) Yes
11. Exercise 27: (1) In a conversation about the United States of America in 2007 can the President and the Leader of the Republican Party have the same referent? Yes / No (2) If we are talking about a situation in which John is standing alone in the corner, can John have the same referent as the person in the corner? Yes / No
12. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes
13. Exercise 28: Intuitively, do the following pairs mean the same or nearly the same thing? (1) Rupert took off his jacket Rupert took his jacket off Yes / No (2) Harriet wrote the answer down Harriet wrote down the answer Yes / No (3) Bachelors prefer redheads Girls with red hair are preferred by unmarried men Yes / No
14. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (You may not have agreed, but it’s not too important, as we are dealing with a quite rough-and-ready concept at this stage. Try to see the ways our answers fit the questions.)
15. Exercise 29: Does the word bank have the same meaning in the following sentence pairs? (1) I have an account at the Bank of Scotland We steered the raft to the other bank of the river Yes / No (2) The DC-10 banked sharply to avoid a crash I banked the furnace up with coke last night Yes / No
16. Answer: (1) No (2) No, we say that bank has a number of different senses (at least 4).
17. Exercise 30: (1) Write down two sentences bringing out clearly the two different meanings of The chicken is ready to eat. (2) Write down two sentences bringing out clearly the two different senses of He greeted the girl with a smile. (3) Do likewise for He turned over the field.
18. Answer: (1) The chicken is ready to be eaten vs The chicken is ready to eat something (2) Smiling, he greeted the girl vs He greeted the smiling girl (3) He changed direction over the field vs He turned the field over (where he = a pilot or he = a ploughman or a farmer)
19. Exercise 31: Do the following words refer to things in the world? (1) Almost Yes / No (2) probable Yes / No (3) and Yes / No (4) if Yes / No (5) above Yes / No
20. Answer: None of the above words refers to a thing in the world. Nevertheless all these words, almost, probable, and, if, and above have some sense.
21. Exercise 32: (1) 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? (2) Is a dictionary full of words or full of things, like a box or a sack? (3) Could a foreigner learn the meanings of his very first words of English by having their typical referents pointed out to him? Yes / No (4) Could a foreigner learn the meanings of his very first words of English by looking them up in an English dictionary? Yes / No
22. Answer: (1) an expression with the same sense (2) full of words (3) Yes (4) No
23. Exercise 33: Are the senses of the following expressions propositions? (1) Johnny has got a new teacher Yes / No (2) A new teacher (not understood as an elliptical sentence-fragment) Yes / No (3) Johnny (not understood as an elliptical sentence-fragment) Yes / No (4) This is the house that Jack built Yes / No
24. Answer: (1) Yes (2) No (3) No (4) Yes
25. Exercise 34: (1) Do M. Berger s’est rasé ce matin and M. Berger shaved himself this morning express the same proposition? Yes / No (2) Do the two sentences in (1) have the same sense? Yes / No (3) Do the expressions ce matin and this morning have the same sense? Yes / No (4) Do the expressions s’est rasé and shaved himself have the same sense? Yes / No (5) Does ein unverheirateter Mann have the same sense as an unmarried man? Yes / No
26. Answer: (1) Yes, perhaps. One might well object, however, that s’est rasé in French is not a perfect translation of shaved, since it could also be rendered as has shaved. (2) Yes, with the same reservations as for question (1). (3) Yes (4) Perhaps (5) Yes, assuming that unverheiratet in German has essentially the same meaning as unmarried in English.
27. Exercise 35: (1) Do pavement in British English and sidewalk in American English have the same sense? Yes / No (2) Do pal and chum have the same sense? Yes / No (3) Can expressions with entirely different social connotations have the same sense? For example, can the following have the same sense? People walking in close spatio-temporal proximity People walking near each other Yes / No
28. Answer: (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes
29. Exercise 36: Imagine that a friend of yours says to you, ‘John is putting on weight these days’, and imagine that a friend of ours (i.e. the authors of this book) happens to utter the same sentence to us one day. (1) Would this be a case of one utterance or two? (2) Would the John referred to be the same John or two different Johns?
30. Answer: (1) two (2) almost certainly, two different Johns
31. Exercise 37: What is intended by the word mean, meaning, etc. in the following examples, reference (R) or sense (S)? (1) When Helen mentioned ‘the fruit cake’, she meant that rock-hard object in the middle of the table R / S (2) When Albert talks about ‘his former friend’ he means me R / S (3) Daddy, what does unique mean? R / S (4) Purchase has the same meaning as buy R / S (5) Look up the meaning of apoplexy in your dictionary R / S (6) If you look out of the window now, you’ll see who I mean R / S
32. Answer: (1) R (2) R (3) S (4) S (5) S (6) R
33. Exercise 38: Answer the following questions: (UNIT 3) (1) Give an example of an expression that might be used to refer to the President of the United States in 2007. (2) Give an example of an expression that could have variable reference. (3) Give an example of an expression that always (in normal everyday conversation) has constant reference. (4) Give an example of different expressions having one referent.
34. (5) Give an example of an expression that has no reference. (6) Which of the following is a correct description of ‘reference’? Circle your choice. (a) a relationship between expressions and other expressions which have the same meaning (b) the set of all objects which can potentially be referred to by an expression (c) a relationship between a particular object in the world and an expression used in an utterance to pick that object out
35. Answer: (1) George W. Bush, the former Governor of Texas, etc. (2) my car, this page, etc. (3) England, the sun, etc. (4) the Morning Star and the Evening Star, etc. (5) and, if, etc. (6)(c) If you got at least 5 out of 6 correct, continue to the introduction. Otherwise, review Unit 3 before proceeding.
36. Good luck!