Paraphrase

We can now give a formal definition of paraphrase:

Two sentences are paraphrases if they have the same truth
conditions.
This means whenever one is true, the other is true; and when one is
false, the other is false, without exception. The following sets of
sentences are paraphrases. Despite subtle differences in emphasis,
they have the same truth conditions:
The horse threw the rider.
The rider was thrown by the horse.
I bet you five dollars the Yankees win.
I challenge you to a match.
I dare you to step over this line.
Ifine you $lOO for possession of oregano.
I move that we adjourn.
I nominate Batman for mayor of Gotham City.
I promise to improve.
I resign! . ;
I pronounce you husband and wife.
In all these sentences, the speaker is the subject (that is, the sentences are in first person)
who by uttering the sentence is accomplishing some additional action, such as daring,
nominating, or resigning. In addition, all these sentences are affirmative, declarative, and
in the present tense. They are typical performative sentences.
Deixis
When language is spoken, it occurs in a specific location, at a specific
time, is produced by a specific person and is (usually) addressed to
some specific other person or persons. Only written language can ever
be free of this kind of anchoring in the extralinguistic situation. A
sentence on a slip of paper can move through space and time,
'speaker'-Iess, and addresseeless. All natural, spoken languages have
devices that link the utterance with its spatia-temporal and personal
context. This linkage is called 'deixis.'
In all languages, the reference of many words and expressions relies
entirely on the situational context of the utterance, and can only be
understood in light of these circumstances. This aspect of pragmatics is
called deixis (pronounced "dike-sis"). First- and second-person
pronouns such as
My mine you your yours we ours us
In these cases, it does not function as a true pronoun by referring to some entity. Rather, it is a
grammatical morpheme, a placeholder as it were, required to satisfy the English rules of syntax.
Expressions such as
this person that man
these women those children

are deictic, for they require situational information in order for the listener to make a referential
connection and understand what is meant. These examples illustrate person deixis. They also show
that the use of demonstrative articles like this and that is deictic.
There is also time deixis and place deixis. The following examples are all deictic
expressions of time:
Now this time
two weeks from now then
that time last week
Tomorrow seven days ago
next April
Knowing a language means to know how to produce and understand
sentences with particular meanings. The study of linguistic meaning is
called semantics. Lexical semantics is concerned with the meanings of
morphemes and words; phrasal semantics with phrases and sentences.