Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
particular language, although one cannot talk of a proposition being in
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particular language, although one cannot talk of a proposition being in a particular language. Practice (1) Fill in the chart below with ‘ ’ or ‘’ as appropriate. Thus, for example, if it makes sense to think of a proposition being in a particular regional accent, put a ‘ ’ in the appropriate box; if not, put a ‘’. Utterances Sentences Propositions Can be loud or quiet Can be grammatical or not Can be true or false In a particular regional accent In a particular language (2) Can the same proposition be expressed by di fferent sentences? Yes / No (3) Can the same sentence be realized by di fferent utterances (i.e. have di fferent utterances as tokens)? Yes / No Feedback (1) (2) Yes (3) Yes Comment It is useful to envisage the kind of family tree relationship between these notions shown in the diagram. For example, a single proposition 23 PA RT O N E Basic ideas in semantics 24 could be expressed by using several di fferent sentences (say, Prince William will inherit the throne, or The throne will be inherited by Prince William) and each of these sentences could be uttered an in finite number of times. A proposition is an abstraction that can be grasped by the mind of an individual person. In this sense, a proposition is an object of thought. Do not equate propositions with thoughts, because thoughts are usually held to be private, personal, mental processes, whereas propositions are public in the sense that the same proposition is accessible to di fferent persons: different individuals can grasp the same proposition. Furthermore, a proposition is not a process, whereas a thought can be seen as a process going on in an individual’s mind. Unfortunately, of course, the word thought may sometimes be used loosely in a way which includes the notion of a proposition. For instance, one may say, ‘The same thought came into both our heads at the same time.’ In this case, the word thought is being used in a sense quite like that of the word proposition. The relationship between mental processes (e.g. thoughts), abstract semantic entities (e.g. propositions), linguistic entities (e.g. sentences), and actions (e.g. utterances) is problematic and complicated, and we will not go into the di fferences further here. Summary These comments are impressionistic and simpli fied, but we believe that they will give a beginning student in semantics an idea of the kind of motivation behind the semanticist’s careful distinction between utterances, sentences, and propositions. We have introduced a notational way of distinguishing between sentences (italic typeface) and utterances (single quotation marks). Note that we have as yet shown no way of representing propositions. One possible way will be shown in the units on logic. tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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