 Semantics is the study of meaning in language.

 Signs are associated with meaning.

 The same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to mean different
things.
 Native speakers of a language are the primary source of information.
 The aim of serious semanticists is to explain and clarify the nature of meaning.
 It’s not in the domain of semantics to lay down standards of semantic correctness.
 Theory is a coherent and economical framework of interdependent statements and
definitions.
 To discover some system and pattern about the meanings of individual words, sentences, and
utterances, move from particular facts to generalizations about whole classes of times.
 Conceptual meaning is the meaning of concepts and ideas. Dictionary meaning and literal
meaning.
 Many basic facts about English have exact parallels in other languages.
 There are also differences in the basic semantic facts from one dialect of English to another.
 It is possible to make some very general statements about all languages.
 The basic facts about meaning in all languages are parallel.
 There are interesting differences between languages, and semantic concentrates on the
similarities between languages.
 Sentence meaning is influences by both the meaning of words and their order.
 Components of language: sounds, morphemes, words, sentences and meaning.

 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. It is tangible and can be heard. Utterances are physical events.
 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 is a
grammatically complete string of words expressing a complete thought

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 A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence which
describes some state of affairs. It exists before the sentence and before the utterance.
 The state of affairs typically involves persons or things referred to by expressions in the
sentence and the situation or action they are involved in.
 Event = verb\ Entity = anything (noun)
 Action requires agency. Happening doesn’t have agency.

 By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are
being talked about. Pointing to them.
 The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things.
 In fact, there is very little constancy of reference in language. In everyday discourse almost
all of thefixing of reference comes from the context in which expressions are used.
 The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language.
 Sense refers to words in language of things that do not exist in our run, yet they have
meanings, or to abstract things.
 We can talk about the sense, not only of words, but also of longer expressions such as
phrases and sentences.
 On the relationship between sense and reference: the referent of an expression is often a thing
or a person in the world; whereas the sense of an expression is not a thing at all. In fact, it is
difficult to say what sort of entity the sense of an expression is. Intuitively, it is sometimes
useful to think of sense as that part of the meaning of an expression that is left over when
reference is factored out.
 Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every expression has reference.
 The relationship between reference and utterance is not so direct as that between sense and
proposition, but there is a similarity worth pointing out. Both referring and uttering are acts
performed by particular speakers on particular occasions.
 By means of reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are
being talked about.

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 So we have two things: the English expression this page (part of the language) and the thing
you could hold between your finger and thumb (part of the world).
 eference is a relationship between parts of a language and things outside the language (in the
world).
 The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things. (my son differs
from a person to another).
 There are as many potential referents for the phrase your left ear as there are people in the
world with left ears.
 There are cases of expressions which in normal everyday conversation never refer to
different things, i.e. in most everyday situations that one can envisage, have constant
reference. (The moon, the red sea)
 There is very little constancy of reference in language
 Almost all of the fixing of reference comes from the context in which expressions are used.
 Language is economical = we can’t have one defined word for each existing entity.

 A word is polysemous if it can be used to express different meanings. The difference

between the meanings can be obvious or subtle.
 Two or more words are homonyms if they either sound the same (homophones), have the
same spelling (homographs), or both, but do not have related meanings.
 Every word that has meaning has sense but not every meaning has reference.
 a proposition corresponds to a complete independent thought.

 A REFERRING EXPRESSION is any expression used in an utterance to refer to

something or someone (or a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used with a
particular referent in mind. In other words, it is a word or set of words that point to an entity
in the real world.
 The same expression can be a referring expression or not (or, as some would put it, may or
may not have a ‘referring interpretation’), depending on the context.

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 whether an expression is a referring expression is heavily dependent on linguistic context and
on circumstances of utterance.
 definite noun phrases of various kinds, proper names (e.g. John), personal pronouns (e.g. he,
it), and longer descriptive expressions (as in question (4)) can all be used as referring
expressions.
 Indeed, definite noun phrases such as these most frequently are used as referring expressions.
But, even with definite noun phrases, there are examples in which they are not (or not
clearly) referring expressions.
 a speaker must have a particular individual in mind in order to refer.
 But note that in the case of definite noun phrases also, the question of whether they are used
as referring expressions is very much dependent on the context and circumstances of use.

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Definitions:

1. OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete

sentence by the addition of a referring expression, but where the addition of different
referring expressions, even though they refer to the same thing or person, in a given
situation, will yield sentences with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given
situation. It must contain an opaque verb.
 The term ‘opaque’ is especially appropriate because these contexts seem to ‘block
our view’ through them to the referential interpretations of referring expressions.
 Notice that opaque contexts typically involve a certain kind of verb, like want,
believe, think, and wonder about.

2. REFERRING EXPRESSION is any expression used in an utterance to refer to

something or someone (or a clearly delimited collection of things or people), i.e. used
with a particular referent in mind. In other words, it is a word or set of words that point to
an entity in the real world.
A word or group of words used to point to an entity in the world.
 The same expression can be a referring expression or not (or, as some would put
it, may or may not have a ‘referring interpretation’), depending on the context.
This is true of indefinite noun phrases.
 Whether an expression is a referring expression is heavily dependent on linguistic
context and on circumstances of utterance.
 Definite noun phrases of various kinds, proper names (e.g., John), personal
pronouns (e.g., he, it), and longer descriptive expressions (as in question (4)) can
all be used as referring expressions.
 Indeed, definite noun phrases such as these most frequently are used as referring
expressions. But, even with definite noun phrases, there are examples in which they
are not (or not clearly) referring expressions.

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3. By reference, a speaker indicates which things in the world (including persons) are being
talked about.

 in talking of reference we deal with the relationships between language and the
world
 The same expression can, in some cases, be used to refer to different things.
 In fact, there is very little constancy of reference in language.
 In everyday discourse almost all of the fixing of reference comes from the context
in which expressions are used.
 Two different expressions can have the same referent (the Morning Star, the
Evening Star, and Venus.

4. The SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other
expressions in the language.

 In talking of sense, we deal with relationships inside the language.

 In some cases, the same word can have more than one sense.
 The relationship between reference and utterance is not so direct as that between
sense and proposition, but there is a similarity worth pointing out.
 Both referring and uttering are acts performed by particular speakers on particular
occasions.

5. 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.

 It is tangible and can be heard.
 Utterances are physical events.

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6. 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 is a grammatically complete string of words expressing a

complete thought.
 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,
 Not all utterances are actually tokens of sentences, but sometimes only of parts of
sentences, e.g. phrases or single words.

7. A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a declarative sentence

which describes some state of affairs.

 In uttering a declarative sentence a speaker typically asserts a proposition.

 True propositions correspond to facts, in the ordinary sense of the word fact. False
propositions do not correspond to facts.

8. SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE.

 The aim of serious semanticists is to explain and clarify the nature of meaning.
 SPEAKER MEANING is what a speaker means (i.e. intends to convey) when he
uses a piece of language.
 SENTENCE MEANING (or WORD MEANING) is what a sentence (or word)
means, i.e. what it counts as the equivalent of in the language concerned.\\ the
word or sentence that the language community uses in other contexts.
 Native speakers of a language are the primary source of information.
 there are also differences in the basic semantic facts from one dialect of English to
another.
 Semantics concentrates on the similarities between languages.

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9. A THEORY is a precisely specified, coherent, and economical frame-work of
interdependent statements and definitions, constructed so that as large a number as possible
of particular basic facts can either be seen to follow from it or be describable in terms of it.

10. Opaque Context

 Normally, one expects that utterances which differ only in that they use different
expressions referring to the same thing (or person) will have the same meaning, as in
the above examples. Indeed, this normally is the case. But there is a class of exceptions
(opaque contexts).

11. EQUATIVE SENTENCE is one which is used to assert the identity of the referents of two
referring expressions, i.e. to assert that two referring expressions have the same referent.

 Example: John is the person in the corner, Henry the Eighth is the current President of
the USA, Cairo is a large city (not an equative sentence).
 A feature of many equative sentences is that the order of the two referring expressions
can be reversed without loss of acceptability. (reversal test)