SEMANTICS

English Education Department

5th Semester

3rd Group:

 Fitra Ashari (17084014020)

 Mirnawati Jurnawil (17084014025)

Sentence, Utterance, and Proposition

A. Sentence

A sentence is a group of words that are put together to mean something. A sentence is
the basic unit of language which expresses a complete thought. It does this by following
the grammatical rules of syntax.

A complete sentence has at least a subject and a main verb to state (declare) a
complete thought. Short example: Walker walks, even though it has just the subject and
verb it conveys a meaning. However, sentences are not always simple in structure.
There are a number of categories in sentences such as simple sentences, compound
sentences, complex sentences.

Here are some kinds of sentences:

1. SIMPLE SENTENCE

A simple sentence, also called an independent clause, contains a subject and a

verb, and it expresses a complete thought.
For Example:
o Some students like to study in the mornings.
o Arturo plays football every afternoon.
o Alicia goes to the library.

2. COMPOUND SENTENCE
A compound sentence contains two independent clauses joined by a coordinator.
The coordinators are as follows: for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so. (Helpful hint: The
first letter of each of the coordinators spells FANBOYS.) Except for very short
sentences, coordinators are always preceded by a comma
 For Example:
o I tried to speak Spanish and my friend tried to speak English.
o Zoe can be rude at times but she is a nice girl.
o I am going to the party so I have to buy a new dress.

3. COMPLEX SENTENCE
A complex sentence has an independent clause joined by one or more
dependent clauses. A complex sentence always has a subordinator such
as because, since, after, although, If, Unless or when or a relative pronoun such
as that, who, or which.
For Example:
o When I arrived, Daniel was sleeping.
o The teacher returned the homework after she noticed the error.
o The students are studying because they have a test tomorrow.

B. Utterance

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 particular speaker on a
particular occasion of a piece of language, such a sequence of sentences, or a single
phrase, or even a single word. Let us check some examples out below:

(a) “The plane now arriving is Garuda Airlines”.

(b) “Horses”.
(c) “Hummmpfh”’
(d) “Pxdgytguaargh”.

It is clear that we call the first sentence as utterance because it is a kind of sentence
uses by a person on a particular occasion. It is an utterance spoken by an airport
officer. Admittedly utterance sometimes consists of single word, such as in example (2).
It is simply enough to imagine a situation in which someone say “Horses”. But even in
such cases it is reasonable to treat this utterance as a sentence, but as incomplete
sentence (some grammarians refer to them as minor sentence). Give them a context,
so they can be completed. Thus horses may be a replay to “What are those animals?”
and thus seen as an incomplete version of “They are Horses.”

In example (3) we also call it as utterance because from it we can understand that it
describes somebody‘s feeling of tiredness. But we cannot say that example no. (4) as
an utterance because this string of sounds is not from any language. Utterances are
physical events. Events are ephemeral, which means lasting for a very short time. So
that, utterances die on the wind.

The characteristics of utterance are:

 It is spoken
 Physical event
 May be grammatical or not (REMEMBER, utterances do not focus on the
grammatical aspect)
 Meaningful or meaningless
 By specific person (in particular accent)
 By specific time or on particular occasion
 A piece of language (a single phrase or even a single word)

Example of One Word Utterances:

o Hello
o Maybe
o Okay

Examples of Two-Word Utterances:

o Look here
o Paper cup
o My bottle
o Cook carrot
o Not much

To differentiate utterance and sentence, we usually use quotation mark (“….“) in written
form of utterance. For example, a piece of utterance that is spoken by certain person
“I’m a student”.

Unlike in written language, in spoken language, there are more pauses and silence.
Imagine a speaker who is giving a speech in front of an audience. He sometimes stops
and waits a bit before speaking again. In linguistics, the spoken words between two
pauses, is referred to as an utterance.

For example:

A person comes in front of an audience and begins a speech. He says, “Good morning,
I wish to speak about the high suicide rate in the region……. Let me begin with some
statistics.……As you can see”

There are instances where the speaker pauses. The words spoken between two pauses
are an utterance. (“Let me begin with some statistics”)
C. Proposition

A proposition is a sentence expressing something true or false. Proposition is that part

of meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which describe some state of
affairs. The state of affairs typically involves or things referred to by expressions in the
sentence.

Examples:

o Alec ate the banana.

o The banana was eaten by Alec.
o Did Alec eat the banana?
o Alec, eat the banana.

In all these examples, the underlying proposition is the same. They all describe the
same state of affairs.

Another example:

Sentence Proposition

Jack‘s girl friend, Jane, who is a nurse, likes oranges. (1) Jack has a girl friend.

(2) Her name is Jane.

(3) Jane is a nurse.

(4) Jane likes oranges.

From the example above, a sentence can has many meanings. There are some facts
which we can get from a sentence. In short, any sentences can be expressed in
different utterances, produced by different people at different times and in different
places.

Beside declarative sentence, proposition also clearly in the meaning of interrogatives

and imperatives sentences. In uttering declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts
a proposition, for example, “Could you mind to close the door, please?”, “Close the door
now!”
 CONCLUTION

We shall use the term ‘proposition’, ‘sentence’, and ‘utterance’ in such a way that
anything that can be said of propositions can also be said of utterances, but not
necessarily vice versa, and anything that can be said of sentences can also be said
utterances, but not only necessarily vice versa. We have already seen an example of
this when we said it was sensible to talk of a sentence being in a particular language,
and also sensible to talk of an utterance being in a particular language, although one
cannot talk of a proposition being in a particular language.
 REFERENCES

http://wahyudiputra26.blogspot.com/2012/10/senteceutterance-and-proposition_9.html?m=1

https://www.theschoolrun.com/what-are-simple-compound-and-complex-sentences-0

https://www.differencebetween.com/difference-between-sentence-and-vs-utterance/

https://akhyatalhilmi.wordpress.com/2012/04/06/meaning-and-sentence-utterance-and-proposition-3/