It´s time to remember that you must bring a concept map for next class.

On the other hand:

It is important that you master these notions from the outset as they will keep recurring throughout the course.

 

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,

of a piece of language, such as a sequence of sentences, or a single phrase, or

even a single word.

 

 Now decide whether the following could represent utterances. Indicate your

answer by circling Yes or No.

(1) ‘Hello’ Yes / No

(2) ‘Not much’ Yes / No

(3) ‘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’ Yes / No

(4) ‘Pxgotmgt’ Yes / No

(5) ‘Schplotzenpflaaaaaaargh!’ Yes / No

 

 

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.

Comment This very traditional definition is unfortunately vague, but it is hard to arrive

at a better one for our purposes. It is intended to exclude any string of words

that does not have a verb in it, as well as other strings. The idea is best shown

by examples.

Example I would like a cup of coffee is a sentence.

Coffee, please is not a sentence.

In the kitchen is not a sentence.

Please put it in the kitchen is a sentence.

Practice Which of the following utterances are tokens of whole sentences (S) and

which are not (NS)?

(1) ‘John’ S / NS

(2) ‘Who is there?’ S / NS

(3) ‘Mine’ S / NS

(4) ‘It’s mine’ S / NS

(5) ‘Where shall I . . .?’ S / NS

 

A PROPOSITION is that part of the meaning of the utterance of a

declarative sentence which describes some state of affairs.

Comment 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.

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

Rule The notion of truth can be used to decide whether two sentences express

different propositions. Thus if there is any conceivable set of circumstances in

which one sentence is true, while the other is false, we can be sure that they

express different propositions.

Practice Consider the following pairs of sentences. In each case, say whether there are

any circumstances of which one member of the pair could be true and the

other false (assuming in each case that the same name, e.g. Harry, refers to

the same person).

(1) Harry took out the garbage

Harry took the garbage out Yes / No

(2) John gave Mary a book

Mary was given a book by John Yes / No

(3) Isobel loves Tony

Tony loves Isobel Yes / No

                                                         Taken from: semantics  2 a coursebook/Hurdfor,R et all/Cambridge.P/