BÀI GIẢNG DẠNG VĂN BẢN (SCRIPT) Môn học: SEMANTICS AND PRAGMATICS Week Unit and Unit 2: Definitions of Semantics and Pragmatics - Sentences, Utterances, and Propositions Slide NỘI DUNG Hello again Welcome to Semantics and Pramatics course It’s so good to meet with you here In week 1, we are going to finish Units 1, 2, 3, We will talk about definitions of semantics, Sentences, Utterances, and Propositions, Semantic features, and Semantic/lexical field First we are going to give difinitions of Semantics There are different defintions of semantics Semantics is generally defined as the study of meaning (Lyons, 1977; Hurford, Heasley, 1983) Saeed (2003): “Semantics is the study of the meaning of words and sentences” Griffith (2006) defined that: “Semantics is the study of the “toolkit” for meaning: knowledge encoded in the vocabulary of the language and in its patterns for building more elaborate meanings, up to the level of sentence meaning.” From the above definitions, the common words when talking about semantics are meanings, words, sentences, and relationhips It can be summarised that Semantics is the study of the relationships between linguistic forms and entities in the world; that is, how words literally connect to things In short we can say that Semantics is the study of meanings of words and sentences In this part we talk about sentences, utterances and propositions We can identify the differences between the two terms “sentence” and “utterance” A sentence is a unit of language (an abstract thing, a part of language itself); a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language A sentence conveys a meaning We can see the two sentences here Ex: The man is on the tree The students are studying in the lab So here we have different words All the words are linked together grammatically We have the subject “the man”, and the verb agrees with the subject, and “on the tree” Now we continue with sentence meaning Meanings of a sentence come from only within the language, independent of context Ex: I love you I hate you You can understand the meanings of the two sentences based on the meanings of I, you, love, hate We not talk about the context here Utterance (phát ngôn): An utterance is also a group of words or a part of speech in between pauses An utterance is usually confined to the spoken language An utterance is what speakers say or write; you can give the time, date, place of an utterance An utterance includes: intonation, stress, patterns, gestures For example A boy and a girl in the photo were sitting on the railways in the afternoon He said, “Do you remember the days when we first met?” The girl replied “I will never forget that day.” We have intonation, the time and the place=> they are utterances “Do you remember the days when we first met?” and “I will never forget that day.” are utterances spoken by the boy and the girl These utterances include stress, intonation, gestures of a boy and a girl Here are some characteristics of utterances • It is spoken or written as well • Physical event • May be grammatical or not • Can be a phrase “Such a beautiful girl!” “My goodness!”or even a single word “Wow!” Ohhh!” • Can be identified by a specific time, at a specific place • Spoken by a specific person (with particular accent) giọng miền Bắc, giọng miền Trung, giọng miền Nam 10 Proposition (mệnh đề nghĩa) The basic idea/thought of the sentence; events or states; say something about events/states Core sentence meaning, the abstract idea that remains the same in cases Examples: Sharks hunt seals Seals are hunted by sharks Seals are preys to sharks => THE SAME MEANING (3 sentences, same proposition) 11 Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language Sentences indifferent languages can correspond to the same proposition, if the two sentences are perfect translations of each other Example English I love you French je t'aime Japanese わたしは、あなたを愛しています Watashi wa, anata o aishiteimasu and Chinese 我爱你 Wǒ ài nǐ => same proposition, same meaning 12 You can look at these two persons Do you think that they really hate each other Utterance has propositional and contextual (or interpersonal) meaning 13 14 The meaning of an utterance comes from the language, the context & from features of language (e.g intonation, stress, gestures) In order to understand the meaning of an utterance we have to understand the literal meanings of the words and to consider the context Examples of utterance: Can you open the window? mother to child (order) This is an order 15 Who are they? They are students When they say “Is your homework ready?”, what is the meaning? And here is a teacher When the teacher says ““Is your homework ready?”, what is the meaning? • Is your homework ready? Student to student: Can I copy it? Teacher to student: Turn it in 16 Utterance meaning has to be determined from the context (intentions of speaker/hearer, their relationship; the time, place, roles) Sentence meaning (propositions) is independent of context 17 A sentence can have more than one proposition I give you a ring I give you a phone call or I give you a piece of jewllery in the form of a circle that you wear on a finger Proposition: only linguistic element, without interpersonal meaning corresponds roughly to a complete independent thought 18 We can look at other examples Harry took out the garbage Harry took the garbage out =>There are sentences, but only one proposition (the same meaning) John gave Mary a book Mary was given a book by John =>There are sentences, but only one proposition 19 20 Now we have more details about propositional meaning (sentence) and interpersonal meaning (utterance) Proposition vs utterance analysis: “The book is open.” What is the meaning of this utterance? “The book is open.” Sentence meaning: The book is in a state of opening The meaning is from the meaning of the words in the sentence Utterance meaning: You are copying from the book when teacher saw the book open in the exam room This is an accusation When a student says “Tom opened the book.” This is a defense against accusation; the student tries to put blame on someone else 22 We can look at the diagram One proposition can be written with different sentences A sentence in different contexts can produce different utterances You can see the relationship between proposition and sentence, between sentence and utterance For an utterance we have time, place, intonation and accent Please complete these Put pluses or minuses accordingly 23 The answers are presented 24 Can a sentence be true or false? Is an utterance tied to a particular time and place? Is a sentence tied to a parlicular time and place? Can a proposition be said to be in any particular language? Can an utterance be true or false? 25 This is the end of the first part of week Thank you for you attention See you again very soon! 21 ...“utterance” A sentence is a unit of language (an abstract thing, a part of language itself); a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language A sentence conveys a meaning We... MEANING (3 sentences, same proposition) 11 Propositions, unlike sentences, cannot be said to belong to any particular language Sentences indifferent languages can correspond to the same proposition,... (or interpersonal) meaning 13 14 The meaning of an utterance comes from the language, the context & from features of language (e.g intonation, stress, gestures) In order to understand the meaning