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Content
a. If the person speaking is Sam, and the place of utterance is Paris, and
the time of utterance is January 1, 2010, then the content of the
utterance of (56a) is Sam is in Paris on January 1, 2010.
b. If the object being demonstrated is Al Capones car, then the content
of the utterance of (56b) is Al Capones car is a nice car.
c. If John Adams is the person being referred to by
John
, then the
content of the utterance of (56c) is John Adams is tired.
The status of this additional contextual information is currently an open
question. Is it semantics, or have we moved on to pragmatics? (See Special Topics: Impliciture and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics in chapter 9.)
Study Questions
1. Give two reasons for including a representation of semantic information in a
grammar.
4. What is the Mentalist Theory of meaning? What two versions of it are discussed in the text? Discuss the problems with each version. Las expresionas
6. What is the Use Theory of meaning? Discuss its major weakness. The meaning of an
expression Is use the language community
Discuss its major weakness.:
7. What semantic properties and relations of words and phrases must a semantic
theory account for?
Meaning
ambiguity
polyseny
anomaly
the major moods of English are traditionally said to be the declarative imperative, and interrogative
12. What is sentential mood? Conjunto de las palabras y como se modifican para expresar
modo, es el conjunto de las plalabras
13. What are the major moods of English? Give examples. No
14. What are some minor moods of English? Give examplesno
17. What force is standardly associated with each of the major moods?NO
18. What are some purported counterexamples to these forces?NO
19. What conditions must an adequate theory of mood meet?NO
20. What is the general dierence in the way deictics, proper names, and descriptions work?
have?
25. What is the Nominal Description Theory of proper names and which problems of the Description Theory does it avoid?
26. What is the distinction between referential and attributive uses of definite
descriptions?
27. What are the two major theories about what determines reference?
28. What problems do natural kind terms pose for the Concept Theory of meaning? Discuss.
29. What is the tension between sense (or truth-conditional) theories of meaning
and the typical uses of referring expressions?
Exercises
1. Think of a reason, not given in the text, why semantics might be considered a
part of a grammar of a language.
2. Can you think of a reason why semantics should not be included in a grammar
of a language? Discuss.
3. Think of five words, write down what you think they mean, then look them
up in a good dictionary. Is your idiolect at variance with what is recorded in the
dictionary?
4. What is
ambiguity
on the Denotational Theory of meaning? How might this
semantic property be a problem for the theory? (Hint: Think of the number of
possible referents.
(58)
Content
a. If the person speaking is Sam, and the place of utterance is Paris, and
the time of utterance is January 1, 2010, then the content of the
utterance of (56a) is Sam is in Paris on January 1, 2010.
b. If the object being demonstrated is Al Capones car, then the content
of the utterance of (56b) is Al Capones car is a nice car.
c. If John Adams is the person being referred to by
John
, then the
content of the utterance of (56c) is John Adams is tired.
The status of this additional contextual information is currently an open
question. Is it semantics, or have we moved on to pragmatics? (See Special Topics: Impliciture and Neo-Gricean Pragmatics in chapter 9.)
Study Questions
1. Give two reasons for including a representation of semantic information in a
grammar.
2. What is the Denotational Theory of meaning? Discuss at least one objection to
it.
3. On the Denotational Theory of meaning, if an expression has a meaning, it has
a denotation. Give at least one example of an expression for which this is false.
4. What is the Mentalist Theory of meaning? What two versions of it are discussed in the text? Discuss the problems with each version.
5. What is the Sense Theory of meaning? Why did Frege think referring expressions have a sense as well as a denotation?
6. What is the Use Theory of meaning? Discuss its major weakness.
7. What semantic properties and relations of words and phrases must a semantic
theory account for?
8. What semantic properties and relations of sentences must a semantic theory account for?