Semantics Assignment
Summary of Utterances, Sentences,
Propositions and Meaning
Utterances
Utterances are the most concrete and noticeable among those four terms
which are used to describe different levels of language. An utterance is
produced by speaking (or writing) a piece of language. For example, when I say together, we are invincible. This
categorize as one utterance. If another person in the same room also says together, we are invincible, and then we
would be dealing with two utterances.
Sentences
Sentences are abstract grammatical elements obtained from utterances.
Sentences are abstract because if a first and second person in the room say together, we are invincible with the
same intonation, we will want to say that we have met two utterances of the
sentences. Therefore, sentences are abstracted, or generalized, from actual
language use. One example of this abstraction is direct quotation. If someone
reports He said “Together, we are
invincible”, she is unlikely to mimic the original speaker exactly. Usually
the reporter will use her normal voice and thus filter out types out certain
types of information. Speaker seems to recognize that at the level of the
sentence these kinds of information are not important, and so discard them. So
we can look at sentences from the point of view of the speaker, where they are
abstract elements to be made real by uttering them; or from the hearer’s point
of view, where they are abstract elements reached by filtering out certain
kinds of information from utterances.
Propositions
Propositions can be described as the way of capturing part of the meaning
of sentences. They are more abstract than sentences because the same
proposition can be represented by several different statements. Moreover in
non-statements like questions, orders, etc. they cannot be the complete meaning
since such sentences include an indication of the speaker’s attitude to the
propositions.
Further step of abstraction is possible for special purposes: to identify
propositions in trying to establish rules of valid deduction, logicians
discovered that certain elements of grammatical information in sentences were
irrelevant. For example, the difference between active and passive sentences;
Israel invades Palestine and Palestine is invaded by Israel. From a Logician’s
perspective, these sentences are equivalent. Thus the grammatical differences
between them will never be significant in a chain of reasoning and can be
ignored. These sentences seem to share a description of the same state of
affairs. If one is true all are true, if one is false all are false. To capture
this fact, logicians identify a common proposition. Such a proposition can be
represented in various special ways to avoid confusion with the various sentences
which represent it
Some semanticists have borrowed from logicians both this notion of
proposition and the use of logical formulae. As we shall see, some linguists
employ this notion of proposition in their semantics analysis, often to
identify a description of an event or situation which might be shared element
in different sentences. For example, the statement Harry kicked the ball, the question Did Harry Kick the ball?, and the command Harry, Kick the ball! Those sentences might be seen to share a propositional
element: HARRY KICK THE BALL. In this view, these different things with the
same proposition: to assert it as a past event; to question it; or to request
someone to bring it about.
Meaning
In linguistics, meaning is what the source or
sender expresses, communicates, or covey in their message to the observer or
receiver, and what the receiver infers from the current context.
According to Herbert Simon, Simon's basic
thesis is that the meaning of a word, phrase, or sentence is to be found in the
pattern of activations between neurons (rather, "symbol structures"
at some aggregate level of analysis) that reading or hearing the expression
induces. From the side of the originator, the meaning is that pattern of
activations which induced the production of that particular expression. This
point of view has some interesting consequences for interpretation and pedagogy
that perhaps have been underappreciated. It especially makes clear that the
linguistic, historical, and environmental context within which a phrase is
received has a direct impact on the meaning of the phrase; furthermore, what
follows the phrase is also part of the context, also helping to fix its meaning
(disambiguate its interpretation).
Many descriptions and definitions are delivered
by many linguists. The meaning of meaning
is still debatable, because meaning
has no concrete form. Meaning is more abstract than sentences and even
propositions. One utterance may have more than one meaning. Sometimes, the meaning
beyond one utterance depends on each of every people perspectives. However, the
real meaning of meaning is still
unrevealed by any linguist experts.
Name : Hari Subagyo
Student’s No : D05209036
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