SEMANTIC

HÀ THÀNH CHUNG
phone: 0904242405
[email protected]
 MAIN COURSEBOOKS
Palmer F.R. (1976). Semantics. Second edition. London and New York,
CUP.
Leech Geoffrey (1981). Semantics The study of meaning. Penguin Books.
J. R. Hurford, B. Heasley, M. Smith (2007). Semantics A Coursebook,
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, CUP.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS
05 lectures: compulsory participation
03 class discussions: each student will present a topic for 15-20
minutes, followed by class discussion
01 final test
01 assignment: 8-10 pages, font 12, double spacing, submission
maximum 2 weeks after the course finishes.
MARKING
No Content Rate

1 Class presentation/discussion 10%

2 Final test 30%

3 Assignment 60%

  Total 100%
 BASIC IDEAS IN SEMANTICS
SEMANTICS is the study of MEANING in LANGUAGE,
specifically Word meaning and Sentence meaning
The term semantics is a recent addition to the English language.
Although there is one occurrence of semantick in the phrase
semantick philosophy to mean 'divination’ (bói toán) in the
seventeenth century, semantics does not occur until it was
introduced in a paper read to the American Philological Association
in 1894 entitled 'Reflected meanings: a point in semantics’. One of
the most famous books on semantics is The meaning of meaning by
C. K. Ogden and I. A. Richards, first published in 1923.
 SEMANTICS AND LINGUISTICS
Semantics is a component or level of linguistics of the same kind
as phonetics or grammar, within a linguistic model in which
semantics is at one 'end' and phonetics at the other, with
grammar somewhere in the middle.
Linguistics is the 'scientific' study of language, semantics as part
of it must be no less scientific. Linguistics is concerned not with
specific instances, but with generalisations. And the same is true
of semantics. An individual's meaning is not part of the general
study of semantics.
 UTTERANCES AND
SENTENCES
There is a distinction between UTTERANCES and SENTENCES.
An utterance is an event in time - it is produced by some one and at
some particular time, while a sentence is an abstract entity that has
no existence in time, but is part of the linguistic system of a
language. In order to talk about an utterance, we have to treat it as
an example of the generalised, more abstract, entity, the sentence.
Semanticists are not concerned with the meaning of utterances, but
only with the meaning of sentences, and it equally follows that we
cannot study semantics without assuming a great deal about
grammar and other aspects of the structure of language.
 THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE
One important characteristic of the linguistic approach towards the study of
language is that it is not concerned merely with the written language, but also
(and usually with greater emphasis) with the spoken. There are at least four
ways in which the spoken language is 'prior to', or more basic than, the written:
(i) The human race had speech long before it had writing and there are still
many languages that have no written form.
(ii) The child learns to speak long before he learns to write.
(iii) Written language can, to a large extent, be converted into speech without
loss. But the converse is not true; if we write down what is said we lose a great
deal.
(iv) Speech plays a far greater role in our lives than writing. We spend far more
time speaking than writing or reading.
 THE SPOKEN LANGUAGE
The spoken language has far more striking characteristics that cannot be
easily shown in the written form. In particular it has what are known as
PROSODIC and PARALINGUISTIC features. The prosodic (giai điệu)
features include primarily what is usually handled under intonation and
stress. The term STRESS is used for several phenomena including the
differences between e.g. the verb convict and the noun convict.
The semantics of intonation and stress is a major subject in its own right.
But meaning is also carried by paralinguistic features such as rhythm,
tempo, loudness (shouting and whispering are very meaningful).
The semantics of these features are not discussed here.
 HISTORICAL SEMANTICS
Historical semantics is the study of the change of meaning in time. There are
numerous reasons for the changes.
The word money is related to Latin moneo 'warn' (cf. admonish), because
money was made at Rome in the temple of the goddess Juno Moneta. The tanks
of modern warfare are so called because of a security decision in the 1914-18
war to deceive the Germans into thinking that water-tanks were being
dispatched. Other changes arise from new needs. The word car was an obsolete
poetic word for 'chariot', until the motor-car was invented. Most scientific
words have acquired specialised meanings that have no close relationship to the
non-scientific use; mass and energy in physics are not what they are to the
layman. A cause of fast change is taboo - a word that is used for something
unpleasant is replaced by another and that too is again replaced later. Thus
English has had the terms privy, W.C., lavatory, toilet, bathroom, etc.
 HISTORICAL SEMANTICS
Historical change is properly an area of comparative and historical
linguistics, or what is more commonly called COMPARATIVE
PHILOLOGY, which attempts both to reconstruct the history of languages
and, via their history, to relate languages apparently coming from a
common source or 'ancestor'.
One of the aims of the subject is to establish 'sound laws', to show for
instance the correlation of p in Romance language with f in Germanic
languages (this is an aspect of what is known as Grimm's Law). This can
be illustrated in English where pairs of words come from Romance and
Germanic, e.g. father/ paternal, feather /pen, fish/piscatorial.
 HISTORICAL SEMANTICS
Apart from the scientific study of the change of meaning, it is an obvious fact
that people are interested in ETYMOLOGY (từ nguyên học), the discovery of
earlier meanings of words.
Etymology for its own sake is of little importance, even if it has curiosity
value, and there really should be no place for a smattering of it in dictionaries.
The chief difficulty is that there can be no 'true' or 'original' meaning since
human language stretches back too far.
Linguists have generally come to accept the distinction made explicit by de
Saussure between DIACHRONIC and SYNCHRONIC linguistics, the first
being concerned with language through time, the second with language as it is,
or as it was at a particular time.
Linguists have in recent years concentrated on the synchronic study of
language.
 THE SCOPE OF SEMANTICS
NAMING
Language might be thought of as a communication system with on the one
hand the signifier, on the other the signified. But a basic problem is to establish
the nature and relationship of these two.
One of the oldest views, found in Plato's dialogue Cratylus, is that the signifier
is a word in the language and the signified is the object in the world that it
'stands for', 'refers to' or 'denotes’ . Words, that is to say, are 'names' or 'labels'
for things.
There are, however, many difficulties with this view. To begin with it seems to
apply only to nouns; indeed traditional grammar often defines the noun, as
distinct from the adjective, verb, preposition, etc., as 'the name of a person or
thing'. It is difficult, if not impossible, to extend the theory of naming to
include these other parts of speech.
 NAMING
We cannot also retain the theory of naming, applying it to nouns alone.
Some nouns e.g. unicorn, goblin, fairy relate to creatures that do not exist;
they do not, therefore, denote objects in the world. There are other nouns
that do not refer to physical objects at all. Thus we cannot identify the
objects to be named by love, hate, inspiration, nonsense.
Even where there are physical objects that are identifiable, it is by no
means the case that the meaning is the same as its denotation (the object it
'stands for' or refers to). One of the best-known examples to illustrate this
point is that of the evening star and the morning star. These can hardly be
said to have the same meaning, yet they denote a single object, the planet
Venus.
 NAMING
Another difficulty is the fact that even if we restrict our attention to words
that are linked with visible objects in the world around us, they often seem
to denote a whole set of rather different objects. Chairs, for instance, come
in all shapes and sizes, but precisely what is it that makes each one a chair
rather than a settee or a stool ? Often the dividing line between the items
referred to by one word and those referred to by another is vague and there
may be overlap. For when is a hill a hill and not a mountain? Or a stream a
river? In the world of experience objects are not clearly grouped together
ready, so to speak, to be labelled with a single word. This is a problem that
has bothered philosophers from the time of Plato.
 CONCEPTS
According to de Saussure, the linguistic sign consists of a signifier (sở biểu)
and a signified (sở chỉ); these are, however, more strictly, a sound image
and a concept, both linked by a psychological 'associative' bond. Both the
noises we make, that is to say, and the objects of the world that we talk
about are mirrored in some way by conceptual entities.
Ogden and Richards saw the relationship as a triangle.
Thought or Reference

Symbol Referent
 CONCEPTS
The 'symbol' is, of course, the linguistic element -
the word, sentence, etc., and the 'referent* the object,
etc., in the world of experience, while 'thought or
reference' is concept. According to the theory there is
no direct link between symbol and referent (between
language and the world) - the link is via thought or
reference, the concepts of our minds.
 THE TERMS SEMANTICS AND
MEANING
The term meaning is, of course, much more familiar to us all. But the
dictionary will suggest a number of different meanings of meaning, or,
more correctly, of the verb mean, and Ogden and Richards were able to
list no less than sixteen different meanings.
The most relevant use of the terms for our purposes is found in such
sentences as What does 'calligraphy’ mean? 'Calligraphy’ is beautiful
handwriting. The reply to such questions is in terms of other words that
the speaker thinks the hearer can understand.
 SPEAKER MEANING VS
SENTENCE 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 distinction is useful in analysing the various kinds of
communication between people made possible by
language.
 SPEAKER MEANING VS
SENTENCE MEANING
The same sentences are used by different speakers on different occasions to
mean (speaker meaning) different things. Once a person has mastered the
stable meanings of words and sentences as defined by the language system,
he can quickly grasp the different conversational and social uses that they
can be put to. Sentence meaning and speaker meaning are both important,
but systematic study proceeds more easily if one carefully distinguishes the
two, and, for the most part, gives prior consideration to sentence meaning
and those aspects of meaning generally which are determined by the
language system, rather than those which reflect the will of individual
speakers and the circumstances of use on particular occasions.
The gap between speaker meaning and sentence meaning is such that it is
even possible for a speaker to convey a quite intelligible intention by using a
sentence whose literal meaning is contradictory or nonsensical.
CONVERSATION 1
1 A: ‘Nice day’
2 B: ‘Yes, a bit warmer than yesterday, isn’t it?’
3 A: ‘That’s right – one day fine, the next cooler’
4 B: ‘I expect it might get cooler again tomorrow’
5 A: ‘Maybe – you never know what to expect, do you?’
6 B: ‘No. Have you been away on holiday?’
7 A: ‘Yes, we went to Spain’
8 B: ‘Did you? We’re going to France next month’
 CONVERSATION 1
9 A: ‘Oh. Are you? That’ll be nice for the family. Do they speak French?’
10 B: ‘Sheila’s quite good at it, and we’re hoping Martin will improve’
11 A: ‘I expect he will. I do hope you have a good time’
12 B: ‘Thank you. By the way, has the 42 bus gone by yet? It seems to be
late’
13 A: ‘No. I’ve been here since eight o’clock and I haven’t seen it’
14 B: ‘Good. I don’t want to be late for work. What time is it now?’
15 A: ‘Twenty-five past eight’
 CONVERSATION 2
Husband: ‘When I go away next week, I’m taking the car’
Wife: ‘Oh. Are you? I need the car here to take the kids to school’
Husband: ‘I’m sorry, but I must have it. You’ll have to send them on the
bus’
Wife: ‘That’ll be nice for the family. Up at the crack of dawn,
(ironically) and not home till mid-evening! Sometimes you’re very
inconsiderate’
Husband: ‘Nice day’
 SPEAKER MEANING VS
SENTENCE MEANING
The meanings of words and sentences in a language can safely be taken as
known to competent speakers of the language. Native speakers of
languages are the primary source of information about meaning. The
student (or the professor) of semantics may well be good at describing
meanings, or theorizing about meaning in general, but he has no advantage
over any normal speaker of a language in the matter of access to the basic
data concerning meaning.
It is not the business of semantics to lay down standards of semantic
correctness, to prescribe what meanings words shall have, or what they
may be used for. Semantics, like the rest of Linguistics, describes.
UTTERANCES, SENTENCES,
AND PROPOSITIONS
An UTTERANCE (lời nói) 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 may consist of a single word, a single phrase or a
single sentence. They may also consist of a sequence of sentences.
It is not unusual to find utterances that consist of one or more
grammatically incomplete sentence-fragments. In short, there is no
simple relation of correspondence between utterances and
sentences.
SENTENCE
Utterances are physical events. Events are ephemeral. Utterances
die on the wind. Linguistics deals with spoken language and we
will have a lot to say about utterances. But we will concentrate
even more on another notion, that of sentences.
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.
PROPOSITION (định đề)
A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a
declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.
In our definition of ‘proposition’ we explicitly mentioned declarative
sentences, but propositions are clearly involved in the meanings of
other types of sentences, such as interrogatives, which are used to ask
questions, and imperatives, which are used to convey orders.
Normally, when a speaker utters a simple declarative sentence, he
commits himself to the truth of the corresponding proposition: i.e. he
asserts the proposition. By uttering a simple interrogative or
imperative, a speaker can mention a particular proposition, without
asserting its truth.
 REFERENCE AND SENSE
The SENSE (nghĩa) of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships
with other expressions in the language. The first of these semantic relationships is
sameness of meaning, an intuitive concept.
The term ‘word’ is used in the sense of ‘word-form’. It is convenient to treat anything
spelled with the same sequence of letters and pronounced with the same sequence of
phonemes (distinctive sounds) in a standard dialect as being the same word. For
example, the word bank in the following sentences can be considered a single word
with many senses.
I have an account at the Bank of Scotland
We steered the raft to the other bank of the river
However, some semanticists would regard bank as several different words. In an
ordinary dictionary there are several different entries for the word bank, sometimes
distinguished by a subscript, e.g. bank1, bank2, etc.
 REFERENCE AND SENSE
By means of reference (tham chiếu), a speaker indicates which
things in the world (including persons) are being talked about.
‘My son is in the beech tree’
identifies identifies
person thing
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 classic example is the Morning Star and
the Evening Star, both of which normally refer to the planet Venus.
 REFERENCE AND SENSE
Palmer:
Reference deals with the relationship between the linguistic elements, words,
sentences, etc., and the non-linguistic world of experience. Sense relates to the
complex system of relationships that hold between the linguistic elements themselves
(mostly the words); it is concerned only with intra-linguistic relations.
Sense relationships have formed an important part of the study of language. For
consider the words ram (cừu đực) and ewe (cừu cái). These on the one hand refer to
particular kinds of animals and derive their meaning in this way. But they also belong
to a pattern in English that includes cow/bull, sow/boar, etc. There are other kinds of
related words, e.g. duck/duckling, pig/piglet (involving adult and young), or between
father/son, uncle/nephew (involving family relationships). They are a part of the
'semantic structure' of English.
There are many other kinds of sense relations, too, e.g. those exemplified by
narrow/wide, male/female, buy/sell.
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. It is much easier to say whether or not
two expressions have the same sense. The sense of an expression
is an abstraction, but it is helpful to note that it is an abstraction
that can be entertained in the mind of a language user. When a
person understands fully what is said to him, it is reasonable to say
that he grasps the sense of the expressions he hears.
RULE
Every expression that has meaning has sense, but not every
expression has reference.
None of the words almost, probable, and, if, and above refers to a
thing in the world. Nevertheless all of them have some sense.
There is something grammatically complete about a whole sentence,
as opposed to a smaller expression such as a phrase or a single word,
and there is something semantically complete about a proposition, as
opposed to the sense of a phrase or single word. A proposition
corresponds to a complete independent thought.
 SENSE AND PROPOSITION
REFERENCE AND UTTERANCE
The senses of the following expressions are propositions:
(1) Johnny has got a new teacher.
(2) This is the house that Jack built.
To the extent that perfect translation between languages is possible,
essentially the same sense can be said to belong to expressions in different
languages.
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.
 WORDS MEANING, MEANS,
MEAN, MEANT
In everyday conversation the words meaning, means, mean, meant, etc. are
sometimes used to indicate reference and sometimes to indicate sense.
(1) When Helen mentioned ‘the fruit cake’, she meant that rock-hard object in
the middle of the table R
(2) When Albert talks about ‘his former friend’ he means me R
(3) Daddy, what does unique mean? S
(4) Purchase has the same meaning as buy S
(5) Look up the meaning of apoplexy (trúng gió) in your dictionary S
(6) If you look out of the window now, you’ll see who I mean R
SUMMARY
The notions of sense and reference are central to
the study of meaning. The idea of reference is
relatively solid and easy to understand. The idea of
sense is more elusive: it’s a bit like electricity,
which we all know how to use (and even talk
about) in various ways, without ever being sure
what exactly it is.
REFERRING EXPRESSIONS
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.
Example :
The name Fred in an utterance such as ‘Fred hit me’, where the
speaker has a particular person in mind when he says ‘Fred’, is a
referring expression.
Fred in ‘There’s no Fred at this address’ is not a referring expression,
because in this case a speaker would not have a particular person in
mind in uttering the word.
REFERRING EXPRESSIONS
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.
When a speaker says, ‘A man was in here looking for you last night’, a
man is used to refer to a particular man. So, a man is a referring
expression.
When a speaker says, ‘The first sign of the monsoon is a cloud on the
horizon no bigger than a man’s hand’, a man is not used to refer to a
particular man. a man in this example is not a referring expression.
OPAQUE CONTEXT
An 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.
Opaque (mơ hồ) contexts typically involve a certain kind of verb,
like want, believe, think, and wonder about.
OPAQUE CONTEXT
Consider the following two utterances:
‘Dick believes that John killed Smith’
‘Dick believes that the person in the corner killed Smith’
Assume that Dick does not know that John is the person in
the corner, one of these two utterances can be true and the
other false
And Dick believes that . . . killed Smith is an opaque
context.
OPAQUE CONTEXT
Imagine a situation in which the last banana on the table is
the prize in a game of charades, but that Gary, who came
late to the party, is not aware of this. The following
sentences make the same claim in this situation
‘Gary took the last banana’
‘Gary took the prize’
And Gary took . . . is not an opaque context.
EQUATIVE SENTENCE
An 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.
The following are equative sentences:
Tony Blair is the Prime Minister
That woman over there is my daughter’s teacher
While the following are not.
Cairo is not the largest city in Africa
Cairo is a large city
GENERIC SENTENCE
A GENERIC SENTENCE is a sentence in which some statement is
made about a whole unrestricted class of individuals, as opposed to
any particular individual.
The whale is a mammal (understood in the most usual way) is a
generic sentence.
That whale over there is a mammal is not a generic sentence.
Language is used for talking about things in the real world, like
parrots, paper-clips, babies, etc. All of these things exist. But the
things we can talk about and the things that exist are not exactly the
same. We shall now explore the way in which language creates unreal
worlds and allows us to talk about non-existent things.
 GENERIC SENTENCE
The basic, and very safe, definition of reference was as a relationship
between part of an utterance and a thing in the world. But often we use
words in a way which suggests that a relationship exactly like reference
holds between a part of an utterance and non-existent things. The classic
case is that of the word unicorn.
Semantics is concerned with the meanings of words and sentences and it
would be an unprofitable digression to get bogged down in questions of
what exists and what doesn’t. So that any entity in the real world or in
any imaginary world can be called a referring expression.
The English conjunction and, for example, could never be a referring
expression.
 ABSTRACTIONS
So far we have mainly kept to examples of reference to physical objects, like
John, my chair, the cat, and Cairo. The expressions like tomorrow and the
British national anthem cannot possibly be said to refer to physical objects.
However, we can call these referring expressions also because language uses
these expressions in many of the same ways as it uses the clear cases of
referring expressions.
Even though expressions like tomorrow, the British national anthem, eleven
hundred, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, etc. do not indicate
physical objects, language treats these expressions in a way exactly parallel to
referring expressions. We call them referring expressions along with John, the
roof, and Cairo. We say that the British national anthem is used to refer to a
particular song, that eleven hundred is used to refer to a particular number, one
o’clock to a particular time, 93 million miles to a particular distance, and so
on.
 UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE
Language is used to talk about the real world, and can be used to talk about
an infinite variety of abstractions, and even of entities in imaginary, unreal
worlds.
The UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE for any utterance is the particular
world, real or imaginary (or part real, part imaginary), that the speaker
assumes he is talking about at the time.
When an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth
revolves around the Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the
real world (or universe).
When in a bedtime story it is read ‘The dragon set fire to the woods with
his hot breath’, the universe of discourse is not the real world but a
fictitious world.
 UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE
Assuming the same universe of discourse is essential to successful
communication. The participants in questions (1) and (2) are in a sense
talking about different worlds.
(1) A: ‘Did Jack’s son come in this morning?’
B: ‘I didn’t know Jack had a son’
A: ‘Then who’s that tall chap that was here yesterday?’
B: ‘I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure Jack hasn’t got any kids’
A: ‘I’m sure Jack’s son was here yesterday’
(2) Time traveller from the eighteenth century: ‘Is the King of France on
good terms with the Tsar of Russia?’ Twenty-first-century person: ‘Huh?’
 UNIVERSE OF DISCOURSE
Assuming different universes of discourse is not the only reason for
breakdown of communication: there can be other causes – both
participants’ assuming that exactly the same entities exist in the world, but
referring to them by different words (an extreme case of this would be two
participants speaking different languages) – or, of course, sheer
inarticulacy.
In the course of a sequence of utterances, speakers use referring
expressions to refer to entities which may be concrete or abstract, real or
fictitious. The predicates embedded in a referring expression help the
hearer to identify its referent. Semantics is not concerned with the factual
status of things in the world but with meaning in language. The notion of
universe of discourse is introduced to account for the way in which
language allows us to refer to non-existent things.
DEIXIS AND DEFINITENESS
Most words mean what they mean regardless of who uses them,
and when and where they are used. Indeed this is exactly why
words are so useful. Nevertheless, all languages do contain small
sets of words whose meanings vary systematically according to
who uses them, and where and when they are used. These words
are called deictic words: the general phenomenon of their
occurrence is called deixis (trực chỉ, chỉ định). The word deixis is
from a Greek word meaning pointing.
A DEICTIC word is one which takes some element of its meaning
from the context or situation (i.e. the speaker, the addressee, the
time and the place) of the utterance in which it is used.
DEICTIC WORDS
The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. When Ben Heasley
says ‘I’ve lost the contract’, the word I here refers to Ben Heasley.
When Penny Carter says ‘I’ll send you another one’, the I here
refers to Penny Carter.
Deictic terms like you, here, and today, or modifiers which can be
used with referring expressions, like the demonstrative this, help
the hearer to identify the referent of a referring expression through
its spatial or temporal relationship with the situation of utterance.
There are also a few predicates which have a deictic ingredient.
The verb come has a deictic ingredient, because it contains the
notion ‘toward the speaker’.
DEICTIC WORDS
In addition to deictic words (such as here, now, come, and bring),
there are in English and other languages certain grammatical
devices called tenses for indicating past, present, and future time,
which must also be regarded as deictic, because past, present, and
future times are defined by reference to the time of utterance.
Although tense is definitely deictic, as illustrated above, the issue
is complicated by the fact that there are a variety of different ways
of expressing past, present, and future time in English, and these
different methods interact with other factors such as progressive
and perfective aspect.
 DEICTIC WORDS
A generalization can be made about the behaviour of all deictic terms in
reported speech. In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original
utterance (the utterance being reported) may be translated into other,
possibly non-deictic, terms in order to preserve the original reference.
John: ‘I’ll meet you here tomorrow.’
Margaret (reporting John’s utterance some time later): ‘John said he would
meet me there the next day.’
In this example, five adjustments are made in the reported speech, namely:
I → he, ‘ll ( will) → would, you → me, here → there, tomorrow → the next
day
SUMMARY
Deictic expressions are those which take some element of
their meaning directly from the immediate situation of the
utterance in which they are used (e.g. from the speaker,
the hearer, the time and place of the utterance). Examples
of deictic words are I, you, here, now, come. The
availability of such expressions makes language a much
more ‘portable’ instrument than it would otherwise be: we
can use the same words on different occasions, at
different times and places.
CONTEXT
The CONTEXT of an utterance is a small subpart of the universe
of discourse shared by speaker and hearer, and includes facts about
the topic of the conversation in which the utterance occurs, and
also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes
place.
According to the definition of context,
(1) The context of an utterance is a part of the universe of
discourse
(2) The immediate situation of an utterance is a part of its context.
CONTEXT
If some entity (or entities) (i.e. person(s), object(s), place(s), etc.)
is/are the ONLY entity (or entities) of its/their kind in the context of
an utterance, then the definite article (the) is the appropriate article to
use in referring to that entity (or those entities).
When someone carries on a conversation with a friend about the time
when we first met: ‘Do you remember when we met at the
university?’
The appropriateness of the definite article is dependent on the context
in which it is used.
CONTEXT
Contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a
conversation. As a conversation progresses, items previously
unmentioned and not even associated with the topics so far discussed
are mentioned for the first time and then become part of the context
of the following utterance. Eventually, perhaps, things mentioned a
long time previously in the conversation will ‘fade out’ of the
context, but how long it takes for this to happen cannot be specified
exactly.
When something is introduced for the first time into a conversation, it
is appropriate to use the indefinite article, a. Once something is
established in the context of the conversation, it is appropriate to use
the. But the definite article the is not the only word which indicates
definiteness in English.
 DEFINITENESS
DEFINITENESS (xác định) is a feature of a noun phrase selected by a
speaker to convey his assumption that the hearer will be able to identify the
referent of the noun phrase, usually because it is the only thing of its kind
in the context of the utterance, or because it is unique in the universe of
discourse.
That book is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker
assumes the hearer can tell which book is being referred to.
The personal pronoun she is definite. It can only appropriately be used
when the speaker assumes the hearer can tell which person is being referred
to.
The Earth is definite. It is the only thing in a normal universe of discourse
known by this name.
 DEFINITENESS
The three main types of definite noun phrase in English are (1) Proper
names, e.g. John, Queen Victoria, (2) personal pronouns, e.g. he, she, it,
and (3) phrases introduced by a definite determiner, such as the, that,
this (e.g. the table, this book, those men). By contrast, expressions like a
man, someone, and one are all indefinite.
It follows from the definition of definiteness that all definite noun
phrases are referring expressions. But not every noun phrase with the
so-called ‘definite article’ the is necessarily semantically definite. In
generic sentences, for example, and in other cases, one can find a phrase
beginning with the where the hearer cannot be expected to identify the
referent, often because there is in fact no referent, the expression not
being a referring expression.
 DEFINITENESS
In the sentence The whale is a mammal, no particular whale is being referred
to, the whale is not a referring expression.
In “Every man who owns a donkey beats it” it does not refers to a particular
donkey and is not semantically definite.
I am working in the garden, and accidentally stick a fork through my foot. I
tell my wife, who knows I have been gardening and knows the fork I have
been working with.
(a) ‘I’ve just stuck the fork through my foot’
I telephone the doctor, to tell him of the accident. The doctor knows nothing
about my gardening tools.
(b) ‘I’ve just stuck a fork through my foot’
SUMMARY
Definite and indefinite referring expressions may be more or less
appropriate in different contexts. But utterances which differ only in
that one contains a definite referring expression where the other has
an indefinite referring expression (provided these expressions have
the same referent) do not differ in truth value. Considered
objectively, the referent of a referring expression (e.g. a / the fork) is
in itself neither definite nor indefinite. The definiteness of a referring
expression tells us nothing about the referent itself, but rather relates
to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned (or taken
for granted) in the preceding discourse. The definiteness of a
referring expression gives the hearer a clue in identifying its referent.
 SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR
ASSIGNMENTS
Palmer
1. The role of context in semantics
2. The origins and characteristics of synonymy in English and
Vietnamese
3. Polysemy and homonymy in English
4. Hyponymy in English
5. Relational opposites in English and their equivalents in Vietnamese
6. Semantics and grammar
7. The origins and characteristics of synonymy in Vietnamese
SUGGESTED TOPICS FOR
ASSIGNMENTS
Hurford and Heasley
1. Reference in semantics
2. Sense properties and stereotypes
3. Sense relations
4. Logic in semantics
5. Interpersonal meaning
6. Non-literal meaning
7. Predicates in semantics
8. Words and things: extensions and prototypes