CHAPTER 2

SENTENCES, UTTERANCES & PROPOSITIONS

To understand the notions of sense, reference, denotation, connotation, extension and

intension we should master the basic notions such as sentence, utterance and proposition.

A. UTTERANCE

I. Definition:
An utterance is any stretch of talk, by one person, before and after which there is
silence on the part of that person. (The speaker’s silence here can be understood as a full stop
(.) at the beginning and at the end of a sentence)
An utterance is the USE by a particular speaker, on a particular occasion, of a piece of
language, such as sequence of sentences, or a single phrase or even a single word. (Hurford,
1983, p.15)

An utterance is a complete unit of talk, bounded by the speaker's silence.

(Source: Crystal 1985, Pei and Gaynor 1954)

An utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of units of
expression such as words and sentences.

(Source: Searle 1969)

E.g. Peter’s and Mary’s utterances in the conversation below can be recognized with the
following properties as shown in the table:

Peter: “Would you like to come to the cinema tonight?”

Mary: “I’d love to.”
Peter: “Where can we meet?”
Mary: “How about my house?”
Peter: “What time?”
Mary: “At 6:30”.
Peter: “Great!”
Stretch of Particular Particular A piece Units of expression Speech act
talk as utterance speaker occasion of
language sentence phrase word
“Would…tonight?” Peter discussing English + inviting
about
cinema
“I’d love to”. Mary + + + Accepting

“Where … meet?” Peter + + + Asking

“How…house?” Mary + + + Suggesting

“What time?” Peter + + + Asking

“At 6:30”. Mary + + + Replying

“Great!” Peter + + + Comment

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II. Characteristics:

- Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e. they are just uttered or actually used in a
particular occasion. When we refer to an utterance, we mean a unit of talk or something
characterized as in spoken language. Thus, an utterance is realized by accent, phonetic factors
and if an utterance is recorded in written form, it is represented with double quotation marks
in books or novels as the voice of the characters or speakers or writers or generally the
addresser of the message. In communication we can usually hear utterances of non sentences:
short phrases or a single word …. For example,

- Not too bad. (as a response to the question “How are you?”)

- Fire! (as the warning of a fire)

- Utterances must be comprehensible and interpretable to the addressees or hearers, i.e. they
usually convey a communicative message and thus should be meaningful to the hearers in a
particular situation, like (1) and (2) above.

Practice 2.1

Now decide whether the following could represent utterances. Please give your answer as Yes
(+) or No (-) and consider whether each of them meets the description of an utterance
mentioned in the definition mentioned above. The first one has been done for you.

1) “Hello”.

2) “Not much”.

3) “Utterances are physical events/ objects, i.e. they are just uttered or actually used in a
particular occasion. When we refer to an utterance, we mean a unit of talk in spoken language”

4) “Pxgotmgt”

5) “Schplotzenpflaaaaaargh!”

(Hurford, 1983, p. 15)

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Stretch of talk Utterance quotation particular Convey a
marks language message

Yes No Yes No Yes No

“Hello”. + + English +

“Not much”.

“Utterances…language”

“Pxgotmgt”

“Schplotzenpflaaaargh!”

At this stage, for us to imagine the relationship between an utterance and a sentence
we can assume that an utterance act is a speech act that consists of the verbal employment of
units of expression such as words and sentences.

B. SENTENCE

I. Definition:

A sentence is a string of words put together by the grammatical rules of a language.

(Hurford, 1983, p. 16)

E.g. (1) There is rocking chair in the garden.

(2) Sách này bán chạy.

(1) conforms to the grammar rules of English whereas (2) conforms to the grammar
rules of Vietnamese.

II. Characteristics:

A sentence is a linguistic entity conceived abstractly. We cannot hear it for the fact that
the formation of a sentence occurs in our mind. A sentence is never uttered and thus it is not
tied to a particular time or place

It is grammatical in that it must be conformed to the syntactic rules of a certain

language. For example, this sentence is comprehensible because it is structured with the
grammatical rules of English: It took Tom 2 hours to finish his enormous dinner.

A sentence can be thought of as the IDEAL string of words behind various realizations
in utterances and inscriptions. We can just realize a sentence by hearing its communicative
realization as the utterance or looking at its inscription in the book. A sentence is said to be
abstract because it is not associated to any phonetic characteristics. Therefore, it would make
sense to say that an utterance was in a particular accent (i.e. a particular way of pronouncing
words). However, it would not make strict sense to say that a sentence was in a particular
accent.

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 A sentence expresses a complete thought, i.e. it typically is composed of a subject and a
predicate each of which correspond to the thing/person being talked about and the
characteristics about the subject.

E.g. Fred is handsome. (sentence)

Subject Predicate (linguistic function)

A person characteristic (meaning)

Sentence types: This is the basic classification of sentences into types:

(1) Declarative, e.g., Ellen went to the library.

(2) Interrogative, e.g., Did Ellen go to the library?

(3) Imperative, e.g., (Ellen) Go to the library!

Normally, there is a default correspondence between sentence types and speech acts.

E.g.

(1) Ellen went to the library [+ Declarative] = Assertive

(2) Did Ellen go to the library? [+ Interrogative] = Asking

(3) (Ellen) Go to the library! [+ Imperative] = Order

Practice 2.2

Which of the following expressions are tokens of whole (complete) sentences? and which is
not?

Complete sentence Why/Why not?

“John” No No verb

“Who is there?”

“Mine”

“It’s mine”.

“Where shall I …?”

(Hurford, 1983, p.16; P.18)

C. PROPOSITION

I. Definition:

A proposition is the basic meaning which a sentence expresses. A proposition consists

of

(a) something which is named or talked about (known as argument, or entity);

(b) an assertion or predication which is made about the argument.

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 A proposition is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence
which describes some state of affairs. (Hurford, 1983, p.19)

(In speech act semantics) A proposition is that part of the meaning of a clause or sentence
that is constant, despite changes in such things as the voice or illocutionary force of the clause.
Here a distinction is made between the propositional meaning of a sentence, and its
illocutionary force (i.e. the use made of the sentence in communication, e.g. as a request, a
warning, a promise). (Richard (1985), p.297)

E.g.

a) Anh đi.

b) Anh đi à?

c) Anh đi ư?

d) Anh đi nhé.

e) Anh đi đi.

These utterances have the same proposition P [anh đi]. However, each of them has a
distinctive voice or illocutionary force F as follows.

a) Anh đi. (Informing)

b) Anh đi à? (questioning)

c) Anh đi ư? (questioning with surprise)

d) Anh đi nhé. (Informing with attention)

e) Anh đi đi. (request/order)

We can have the semantic structure of an utterance as follows:

F (P)

F: Illocutionary force (signalling the purpose of the utterance/speech act: whether it is a

statement, a question or an order …)

P: Proposition (that basic part of meaning of a sentence/ an utterance: constant)

Practice 2.3
Fill in the chart with the information about the utterance, sentence and proposition of the
utterances below. The first one has been done for you.
Utterances Proposition sentence type Illocutionary force of
speech act
“It seems you don’t [you drink beer] declarative assertion/statement
like to drink beer”.
“Would you like to [you drink beer] Inviting, offering
drink beer?”
“Drink beer, please!” [you drink beer] request

“Do you like to drink [you drink beer] asking

bear?”

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“Don’t drink beer”. [you drink beer] order

II. Characteristics:

The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in the
sentence. In uttering a declarative sentence, a speaker typically asserts a proposition.

The meaning of a sentence or utterance can be judged by examing the truth condition
of the proposition. If a particular speaker utters two sentences and only one of these sentences
is true whereas the other is false, we can say that these two sentences express two different
propositions.

E.g. We can say the sentences i) and ii) have the same proposition if both of them are true or
false (Assuming in each case the same name Harry refers to the same person), but the
sentences iii) and iv) express different propositions.

i) Harry took out the agarbage.

ii) Harry took the garbage out.

iii) Harry loves Mary.

iv) Mary loves John.

Thus, when a speaker utters a simple declarative sentence, he commits himself to the
truth of the corresponding proposition. We can know a proposition is true if we know that the
state-of-affairs mentioned in the proposition is true to our knowledge about the world. In this
case, a true proposition is a fact.

For example, in the present-day world we know that it is a fact that there are lions in
Africa, or it is a fact that Mr. Nguyen Xuan Phuc is the present Prime Minister of Vietnam.

Practice 2.3

Now let us think about the truth of the following propositions. Is each of these
propositions is true or false regarding your knowledge about the present-day world?

1) Portugal defeated Germany in the quarter final of Euro 08 tournament.

2) Nicole Kidman is American.

3) The champions of Euro 08 are German.

4) Semantics is the study of speech sounds.

5) Barrack Obama is the current president of USA.

D. THE INTERRELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PROPOSITIONS-SENTENCES-UTTERANCES

I. Proposition vs. Thought:

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 Proposition is an object or product of thought. A proposition can be thought of as
something to entertain in an individual’s mind. On the other hand, the same proposition can
be grasped by many different people. In this sense, it can be private or public. For example, a
Vietnamese person and an English person may look into the sky and at the same time each of
them may have the same proposition about the state-of-affairs in their own mind.

P[mưa] P[rain]

A sentence expresses a complete thought (a proposition) which consists of a noun (to

refer to a particular thing) and a predicate (a verb, adjective to specify the thing denoted by a
noun)

II. Sentences vs utterances:

1. A sentence is a linguistic unit/entity whereas an utterance is an action of

communicating. A sentence is a linguistic unit in that this entity is composed of units
of language such as words, phrases and put together by grammatical rules of a certain
language (Vietnamese or English). An utterance is a speech act in that it in making an
utterance we have to make an act of uttering a sentence or a phrase to communicate a
message. In this sense, whatever we say, the significance is that we actually
communicate a message. For example, whatever we say like “How do you do, Good
morning, Hi… we are actually making an act of greeting, i.e. a speech act.

2. A sentence is realized by an utterance or many different utterances. We can only

realize the words, phrases and sentence structure of what we say as a sentence through
the realization of an actual utterance. Briefly, a sentence may have different utterances
as tokens.

III. Propositions-Sentences-Utterances

We can say that the same proposition can be encoded by a sentence or more than one
sentence with different structures and words. For example, when we look into the sky and
see this , we can express our thought about this phenomenon with one of the
following sentences:
It’s raining.
It rains.
It has started raining.
Here comes the rain.
It’s rainy.

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 At this stage, these potential sentences are conceived as abstract units of language that
stay in your mind. When we already determine on what sentence to speak it out, we just make
an act of uttering this sentence and we actually make an utterance. However, the same
sentence can be realized into many different utterances depending on the context of utterance,
such as the time and place of utterance, who utters it, who is intended to receive the message
of the utterance. For example, the same sentence It’s raining can be uttered by different
speakers in different contexts, and accordingly can be interpreted as different utterances with
different implications or purposes.

Man to girlfriend: “It’s raining”. (Please stay here)

Girl to mother: “It’s raining”. (I can’t go to buy the salt for you)

Wife to husband: “It’s raining”. (Please collect the clothes on the hanging rope in the garden)

To sum up, to make a verbal communicate act, a speaker typically starts with the
process of producing a proposition in his/her mind. Then he/she may have the need to speak it
out. To do this, he/she has to put words together into a sentence. Now, if he decides to speak it
out, he/she just says it loud in the form of speech sounds with a certain intonation pattern.
This is an action of communication with an utterance as a unit of talk. If the same speaker or
another speaker utters this sentence in a different particular occasion with a different
intention or purpose, they are said to make different utterances. This process can be
represented in the diagrams below.

The representation of the three-phase process of making an utterance

P: an abstract P P
semantic entity
it - rain

S: a linguistic S [It’s raining]

entity

U “It’s raining”
U: an action of
communication

7/12/2008 13

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 The representation of the inter-relationship between
Proposition, Sentence & Utterance

P (it – rain)
P

S1… S1 … S2 … Sn

U
U1… Un… U1… Un… U1… Un
7/12/2008 14

Practice 2.4
Fill in the chart below with (+) to represent the presence of this characteristic with
utterances, sentences or propositions, or (-) to represent the absence of this characteristic
with each of these semantic entities.

semantic entities Utterances Sentences Propositions

Characteristic
Can be loud or quiet
Can be grammatical or not
Can be true or false
In a particular regional accent
In a particular language

(Source: Hurford, 1996, p. 22)

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Words & Expressions:
CHAPTER 2

sentence (N): câu

utterance (N): phát ngôn, là câu hay chuỗi từ được người sử dụng thốt ra trong một tình
huống cụ thể để truyền đạt một thông điệp giao tiếp, là hình thức hiện thực của câu trong
giao tiếp.
stretch of talk: đoạn lời nói
a speech act: hành động lời nói, là hành động được thực hiện bằng lời, ví dụ, hành động chào
được hiện thực qua lời nói hay ngôn từ: Good morning! Xin chào!
verbal employment of units of expression: vận dụng ngôn từ
addresser (N): người gửi thông điệp/người nói
addressee (N): người nhận thông điệp/người nghe
communicative message: thông điệp giao tiếp
represent (V): biểu thị
comprehensible (Adj): có thể hiểu được
realization (N): hình thức hiện thực
communicative realization: hình thức hiện thực trong giao tiếp
Declarative sentence: câu trần thuật, dùng để kể về những sự tình trong thế giới
Interrogative sentence: câu nghi vấn, dùng để hỏi về những sự tình trong thế giới
Imperative sentence: câu mệnh lệnh, thường có hình thức của câu bắt đầu bằng động từ
nguyên thể, dùng để biểu thị một mệnh lệnh
proposition (N): nội dung mệnh đề, phần nghĩa thể hiện ngôn liệu/ý tưởng của người nói
được mã hoá, biểu thị bằng một câu và hiện thực hoá trong giao tiếp dưới hình thức một
phát ngôn
state-of-affairs (N): sự tình, phần ý được thể hiện trong nội dung mệnh đề, liên quan đến sự
vật được ám chỉ trong câu hay phát ngôn và phần thuyết minh về sự vật này trong phát
ngôn
constant (Adj): bất biến, ví dụ, phần lõi nghĩa cơ bản của nội dung mệnh đề: bất biến trong các
câu/phát ngôn khác nhau
illocutionary force: hiệu lực hành động của phát ngôn, ví dụ, qua phát ngôn “I’ll kill you” người
nói đang thực hiện một hành động đe doạ
clause (N): mệnh đề, thường gồm một chủ ngữ và một vị ngữ (động từ/ tính từ)
semantic entity: thực thể ngữ nghĩa
linguistic unit/entity: thực thể ngôn ngữ
act of communication: hành động giao tiếp
tokens (N): dấu hiệu/ biểu hiện
encode (V): mã hoá, biểu thi, biểu diễn bằng ngôn từ
interpret (V): thuyết giải
verbal communicate act: hành động giao tiếp bằng lời

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