Semantics

Sai Gon University

truongvananh@cvseas.edu.vn
 UNIT 2: SENTENCES, UTTERANCES, AND
PROPOSITIONS
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 a particular speaker,
on a particular occasion, of a piece of language,
such as a sequence of sentences, or a single
phrase, or even a single word.
 Utterances
1) She shouted: Ouch!
2) She answered : Many apples.
3) She said: I like apples.
4) She said: I like apples because they are
delicious.
5) She said: Elllllxkm!
What a man pronounces, and it has
meaning, is called an utterance.
A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a
physical object. It is, conceived abstractly, a
string of words put together by the grammatical
rules of a language. A sentence can be thought
of as the IDEAL string of words behind various
realizations in utterances and inscriptions.
We have defined a sentence as a string of words.
A given sentence always consists of the same
words, and in the same order. Any change in the
words, or in their order, makes a different
sentence, for our purposes.
A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string
of words expressing a complete thought.
In English there are nine basic sentence
patterns.
In other languages the numbers of basic
sentence patterns are different.
A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of
the utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs.
The notion of truth can be used to decide
whether two sentences express various
propositions. Thus if there is any conceivable set
of circumstances in which one sentence is true,
while the other is false, we can be sure that they
express various propositions.
 Utterance

Sentence Sentence Sentence

Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition Proposition

 Sentences
I like music.
He likes music.
They learned French when they lived in Paris.
Je t’aime = I love you.
Ich liebe dich = I love you.
Я люблю тебя = тебя люблю Я = люблю тебя Я
我爱你。 = I love you.
Ti amo = I love you.
Te quiero = I love you.
 A string of words arranged in a grammatical order
accepted in a language is called a sentence.
Different sentences in different languages have
the same proposition:
I love you.
Je t’aime.
Ich liebe dich.
Я люблю тебя.
我爱你。
Ti amo.
Te quiero.
The meaning in any sentence in any language
is called a proposition.
The same proposition:
Thomas helped them.
They were helped by Thomas.
+ Do the two following sentences have the same
proposition?
(1) A gangster killed the man.
(2) A gangster caused the man to die.
Speaker meaning
Sentence meaning
Utterance
Sentence
Proposition
GOOD LUCK!