CHAPTER I

INTRODUCTION

A. Background
How can we explain the speaker’s knowledge of meanings? Certainly we
cannot expect that speakers can clearly define all the words they know. If that
were our criterion, we should also expect speakers to be able to explain the
meaning of every utterance they will ever produce or comprehend, which is, for
all practical purposes, an infinite number. But the obvious thing is that speakers
can make their thoughts and feelings and intentions known to other speakers of
the language and can understand what others say. This ability requires possession
of a vocabulary and for speakers to know how to pronounce every item in this
vocabulary and how to recognize its pronunciation by other speakers. They know
how to use the production vocabulary in meaningful sentences and to understand
the sentences produced by others. And of course they know meanings how to
choose the items that express what they want to express and how to find the
meanings in what other people say.
B. Formulation of the Problem
1. What is the meaning of sentential meaning ?
2. What are the definitions of paraphrase, ambiguity, tautology and
anomaly ?
3. What are the examples of paraprase, ambiguity, atutulogy and anomaly ?
C. The Aims of the Discussion
1. To know the definition of sentential meaning.
2. To know the definitions of paraphrase, ambiguity, tautology and anomaly.
3. To know the examples of paraprase, ambiguity, atutulogy and anomaly.

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 CHAPTER II

DISCUSSION

A. The Definition of Sentential Meaning

Sentence is the basic unit of communication (not single word), so it is very
important that we arrive at a good definition of sentence meaning. 1 First, the
meaning of a sentence derives from the meanings of its constituent lexemes and
from the grammatical meanings it contains. So if you know all the lexical and
grammatical meanings expressed in a sentence, you know the meaning of the
sentence, and vice versa. Second, at least if the sentence is a statement, if you
know the meaning of the sentence, you know what conditions are necessary in the
world for that sentence to be true. 2 It is also aften called as a truth-conditional
semantics because it takes speaker knowledge of the truth condition as a basic.

B. Aspects of Sentential Meaning

1. Paraphrase
Sentences that make equivalent statements about the same entities, like 1a
and 1c, or 1b and 1d, are paraphrases (of each other). Speakers of a language
generally agree as to when two sentences have essentially the same meaning and
when they do not.
1a) Rebecca got home before Robert.
1b) Robert got home before Rebecca.
1c) Robert arrived at home after Rebecca.
1d) Rebecca got home later than Robert.
2. Ambiguity
A sentence that has two meanings is ambiguous an example of ambiguity.
Speakers know how language is used when people interact. If one person asks a

1
J.L Austin, How to do things with words (Harvard University Press : Cambridge, 1962) p. 28
2
Charles W.Kreidler, Introducing English Semantics (Routledge: New York, 1998) p. 8.

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question or makes a remark, there are various possible answers to the question or
replies one might make to the remark. Thus for the question in 8a some answers
are suggested, of which all but one might be appropriate. Similarly the statement
in 8b is followed by several possible rejoinders, all but one of which could be
appropriate.
2a) When did you last see my brother?
Ten minutes ago. Last Tuesday. Very nice.
Around noon. I think it was on the first of June.
2b) There’s a great new comedy at the Oldtown Playhouse.
So I’ve heard. What’s it called? When did it open?
So do I. Are you sure it’s a comedy?
When a question and an answer, or any two utterances, can go together in a
conversation and the second is obviously related to the first, they constitute an
adjacency pair. The ability to deal with adjacency pairs is part of any speaker’s
implicit knowledge.
3. Tautology
For most sentences it does not make sense to say that they are always true or
always false. Rather, they are true or false in a given situation. But a restricted
number of sentences are indeed always true regardless of the circumstances. They
are called tautologies.3 In other words, tautologies are sentences which are
always true due to some law of logic or due to some semantic relationship. 4
Examples of tautologies are sentences like :
Circles are around
A person who is single is not married
Their truth is guaranteed solely by the meaning of their parts and the way they
are put together. Similarly, some sentences are always false. These are called
contradictions. Examples of contradictions are sentences like :
Circles are square

3
Fictoria Fromkin, An Introduction to Language 9th Edition (Wadsworth Cengage Learning :
Canada, 2011) p. 141
4
Chierchia and McConell-Ginet, Meaning and Grammar (MIT Press : Cambridge, 1990) p. 43.

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 A bachelor is married5
4. Anomaly
Speakers know, in a general way, whether something is or is not meaningful
in their language. For example, speakers of English can tell which of the
following are meaningful in English.
4a) Henry drew a picture.
4b) Henry laughed.
4c) The picture laughed.
4d) Picture a Henry drew.
It is certainly not too much to assume that 4a and 4b are meaningful to
speakers of English, while 4c and 4d are anomalous (examples of anomaly).
Sentence 4c has the appearance of being meaningful and it might attain meaning
in some children’s story or the like, while 4d is merely a sequence of words.6

5
Ibid
6
Patrick Griffiths, An Introduction to English Semantics and Pragmatics (Edinburgh University
Press: Edinburgh, 2006) p. 13

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 CHAPTER III

CLOSING

A. Conclusion
Sentential meaning is First, the meaning of a sentence derives from the
meanings of its constituent lexemes and from the grammatical meanings it
contains. So if you know all the lexical and grammatical meanings expressed
in a sentence, you know the meaning of the sentence, and vice versa. Second,
at least if the sentence is a statement, if you know the meaning of the
sentence, you know what conditions are necessary in the world for that
sentence to be true.
The aspect of sentential meaning are :
 Paraphrases are sentences that make equivalent statements about the
same entities.
 Ambiguity is a sentence that has more than one meaning.
 Tautologies are sentences which are always true due to some law of logic
or due to some semantic relationship.
 Anomaly is when the speakers know, in a general way, whether something
is or is not meaningful in their language.