UNIVERSITY OF DANANG

UNIVERSITY OF FOREIGN LANGUAGE STUDIES

FACULTY OF ENGLISH

INTRODUCTION TO
ENGLISH SEMANTICS
For 3rd year Student

Chapter 5

2019
 Chapter 4 REFERRING EXPRESSIONS
A. Referring expression (RE):
I. Def. P. 35
Fred or no Fred?
Mr Hung came
here yesterday.

This word refers to a

particular man or the
image of that man S1
Mr Hung? There is no Mr.
Mr. Hung or anyone Hung?
by that name here. Who?

For me, this word is

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just as a name S2 2
 II. Linguistic realizations of RE
1. Proper names
2. Personal nouns
3. complex noun phrases
III. Characteristics:
1. The same expression can be a referring
expression or not depending on the context,
e.g. A/ an + N
I’m a man. (sex) (character)
I met a man yesterday. (a particular man)
2. The linguistic context often gives a vital clue as
to whether the indefinite noun phrase INP is
a RE or not
3. The ambiguity caused by INDEF NP & certain
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 IV. Unclear cases of general type
Who? Which one is being talked about?
every/ any/ what/ whoever/ all/ & modal
expressions
E.g. any man who got married to Nancy has no clear
reference to a particular man in the set of men
B. Opaque context Def. P. 38
The Prime Minister of Britain
The Leader of the Labour Party
The Prime Minister of Britain or
the Leader of the Labour Party ?

I just want to see ……………………………….

(I don’t want to see ……………………….)
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 II. Characteristics:
The reference in an opaque context depends on the
speaker’s goal of utterance & the use of Opacity-
creating verbs: want, believe, think, wonder about
I mean The Prime The Leader of the
Labour Party is a
Minister of Britain bad name

Tam Nguyen Yen Do

Tam Nguyen Yen and Nguyen Khuyen
Do wrote “Thu Vinh” are 2 different authors
, not Nguyen Khuyen

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C. Equative sentence: Co-reference
I. Def. P. 40
II. Characteristics:
1.  The use of to be: A is B
2.The use of definite noun phrase as Subject
complement
3.    The use of proper name
4.    The use of superlative
5.   The order of the two referring expressions can
be reversed without loss of acceptability
BUT: a pint of beer as subject or complement in
What I need is a pint of beer
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is not a referring expression 6
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D. DEIXIS & DEFINITNESS

Words with constant interpretation and words with

variable interpretation
I. Words with constant interpretation
Most words mean what they mean regardless of who uses
them, when and where they are used, e.g. man
II. Words with variable interpretation
Small set of words whose meanings vary
systematically according to who uses them, when and
where they are used:
deixis ( pointing)
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 III. Deixis:
Deixis is reference by means of an expression whose
interpretation is relative to the (usually) extra-
linguistic context of the utterance, such as
• who is speaking, eg. I - You
• the time or place of speaking, e.g. Now - today
• the gestures of the speaker, or the current location in
the discourse. Here - There
Location Temporal
deixis deixis
Here-and-Now world

Orientation Person
deixis deixis
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 IV. Deictic word: HERE-AND - NOW WORLD
1. Def. P. 63
2. Characteristics:
a. Deictic words as indication of the speaker’s
location/ time of event to help the hearer to
identify the referent of a RE through its spatial/
temporal relationship with the situation of
utterance
b. Words that have deictic ingredient: Personal
pronoun , time expressions, verbs of movement
Speaker COME
GO
c. Psychological shifting of the speaker’s viewpoint:
the speaker anticipating his future location
E.g. I’ll come to see you.
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Come over there.
 E. Definiteness
1. Def. P.71 PRESUPPOSITION
2. Characteristics:
a. THE to refer the ONLY entities of their kind
(person, animal, thing) in the context of an
utterance
b. Contexts are constructed continuously during
the course of a conversation, e.g. INDEF a or DEF
the
c. DEF RE as narrative stylistic style to draw the
reader into the narrative fast with shared
contextual assumptions.

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 The End of Chapter 4

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