UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION TO
ENGLISH SEMANTICS
For 3rd year Student

Chapter 2

2019
UNIT 2
SENTENCES, UTTERANCES & PROPOSITIONS
A. Utterance:
1. Def. p.15
An utterance is a complete unit of talk,
bounded by the speaker's silence.
 An utterance is a string of speech found
between breaths or pauses.
2. Characteristics:
 physical events/ objects, ephemeral
 realized by accent, phonetic factors and by
double quotation marks in books, novels
 utterances of non sentences: short phrases…
PR. P.15
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Definition *
•A SENTENCE is neither a physical event nor a physical
object.
•It is, conceived (partial) 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.
•A SENTENCE is a grammatically complete string of
words expressing a (partial) complete thought.

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 B. Sentence:
 Def.

 Characteristics:
- conceived abstractly
- grammatical
- not associated to any phonetic characteristics
- expressing a complete thought

Subj Pred
Fred is handsome
Who What about who
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 C. Proposition:
I. Def. p.19
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.
E.g. Anh đi. Purpose not clear
Anh đi à? Question
Anh đi ư? Question with surprise
Anh đi nhé. Informing
Proposition : P (Anh đi)
Illocutionary force: F
F (P)
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II. Characteristics:
- proposition describes the state of affairs
that involves person and things
- in uttering a declarative sentence a speaker
asserts a proposition
- truth condition:
S1: true proposition 1
S2: false proposition 2
- Speaker’s commitment to the truth of the
corresponding proposition

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D. The interrelationship between P-S-U
I. Proposition vs thought:
1. Thoughts: private, personal, mental processes
2. Propositions: public: the same proposition
is accessible to different persons
3. Proposition is an object or product of thought,
an abstract semantic entity
II. Sentences vs utterances:
1. S: a linguistic entity
2. U: an action of communication
3. A sentence is realized by an utterance
III. Propositions-Sentences-Utterances
1. The same proposition encoded various sentences
2. The same sentence various utterances
uttered
3. The same proposition various utterances
uttered
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 P: an abstract P
semantic entity P
it - rain

S: a linguistic S [It rains]

entity

U: an action of U “It rains”

communication

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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
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 utterance sentence proposition

Loud/quiet + - -

Have regional + - -
accent
Be true or false + + +

Grammatical or + + -
not
In a particular + + -
language

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 The End of Chapter 2

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