U N I T 4
Referring expressions
41
Example The
incomplete sentence Laura Bush thinks that . . .
is a genius constitutes an
opaque context, because, even in a conversation about American politics in
2007, the following two utterances would make di
fferent claims:
A:
‘Laura Bush thinks that the President is a genius’
B:
‘Laura Bush thinks that the Leader of the Republican Party is a genius’
If, for example, Laura Bush believes erroneously that the President is not the
Leader of the Republican Party, then A and B will mean di
fferent things.
Practice (1) In a conversation about a situation where John is standing
alone in the corner, do ‘John’ and ‘the person in the corner’
have the same referent?
Yes / No
(2) 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; could one of these two utterances be true
and the other false?
Yes / No
(3) Is
Dick believes that . . .
killed Smith an opaque context?
Yes / No
(4) The Morning Star is the Evening Star: they are both in fact the
planet Venus. Assuming that Nancy does not know this, do the
following make the same claim about Nancy’s wishes?
‘Nancy wants to get married when the Morning Star is in the sky’
‘Nancy wants to get married when the Evening Star is in
the sky’
Yes / No
(5) Is
Nancy wants to get married when . . .
is in the sky an
opaque context?
Yes / No
(6) 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. Do the following make
the same claim in this situation?
‘Gary took the last banana’
‘Gary took the prize’
Yes / No
(7) Is
Gary took . . . an opaque context?
Yes / No
Feedback
(1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) No (5) Yes (6) Yes (7) No
Comment 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. Note that it was often in the context of
PA RT T WO
From reference . . .
42
such opacity-creating verbs that inde
finite noun phrases could be ambiguous
between a referring and
a non-referring interpretation, as in ‘Nancy wants to
marry a Norwegian’.
Turning away now from the question of opacity, and back to the more
basic notion of referring expressions, we de
fine a further notion, that of
equative sentence.
Definition 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.
Example The following are equative sentences:
Tony Blair is the Prime Minister
That woman over there is my daughter’s teacher
Practice Are the following equative sentences?
(1)
John is the person in the corner
Yes / No
(2)
Henry the Eighth is the current President of the USA
Yes / No
(3)
Cairo is not the largest city in Africa
Yes / No
(4)
Cairo is a large city
Yes / No
(5)
Dr Jekyll is Mr Hyde
Yes / No
(6)
Ted is an idiot
Yes / No
Feedback
(1) Yes (2) Yes, equative sentences can be false. (3) No (4) No, this sentence
does not state identity of reference. (5) Yes (6) No
Comment A feature of many equative sentences is that the order of the two referring
expressions can be reversed without loss of acceptability.
Example
The largest city in Africa is Cairo
Cairo is the largest city in Africa
Comment The ‘reversal test’ applied here is not a perfect
diagnostic for equative
sentences, however. In
What I need is a pint of Guinness,
a pint of Guinness is
not a referring expression, because a user of this sentence would not have
any particular pint of Guinness in mind, but the sentence is nevertheless
reversible, as in
A pint of Guinness is what I need. And the sentence
That is
the man who kidnapped my boss de
finitely is equative, but it is not reversible,
as
The man who kidnapped my boss is that is unacceptable.
Summary At
first sight the notion of reference as a relation
between expressions used
in utterances and people and objects in the world seems straightforward
enough. But stating simple generalizations about when an expression is
actually a referring expression and when it is not, is, to say the least,
di
fficult. Both indefinite and definite noun phrases can be ambiguous
between referring and non-referring interpretations, with the appropriate
interpretation being highly dependent on linguistic context (i.e. the
surrounding words) and the circumstances of the utterance. The existence
of opaque contexts also provides interesting complications to the
contribution of referring expressions to meaning.
Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn: