Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
Party have the same referent?
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| Party have the same referent?
Yes / No (2) If we are talking about a situation in which John is standing alone in the corner, can John have the same referent as the person in the corner? Yes / No Feedback (1) Yes (2) Yes Definition To turn from reference to sense, the SENSE of an expression is its place in a system of semantic relationships with other expressions in the language. The first of these semantic relationships that we will mention is sameness of meaning, an intuitive concept which we will illustrate by example. We will deal first with the senses of words in context. Practice Say whether the pairs of words in the curly brackets in the sentences below have approximately the same meaning (S) or a di fferent meaning (D). (1) I fell over S / D (2) It is that Raymond will be here tomorrow S / D (3) Your gatepost doesn’t seem to be quite S / D (4) He painted the fireplace S / D (5) I’ll see you on S / D Feedback (1) S (2) S (3) S (4) D (5) D Comment We can talk about the sense, not only of words, but also of longer expressions such as phrases and sentences. Practice Intuitively, do the following pairs mean the same or nearly the same thing? (1) Rupert took o ff his jacket Rupert took his jacket o ff Yes / No (2) Harriet wrote the answer down Harriet wrote down the answer Yes / No (3) Bachelors prefer redheads Girls with red hair are preferred by unmarried men Yes / No Feedback (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (You may not have agreed, but it’s not too important, as we are dealing with a quite rough-and-ready concept at this stage. Try to see the ways our answers fit the questions.) U N I T 3 Reference and sense 29 almost nearly likely probable aquamarine vermilion Wednesday Thursday vertical upright Comment In some cases, the same word can have more than one sense. Practice Does the word bank have the same meaning in the following sentence pairs? (1) I have an account at the Bank of Scotland We steered the raft to the other bank of the river Yes / No (2) The DC-10 banked sharply to avoid a crash I banked the furnace up with coke last night Yes / No Feedback (1) No (2) No, we say that bank has a number of di fferent senses (at least 4). Comment We use the term ‘word’ here in the sense of ‘word-form’. That is, we find it 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. Thus, for example, we treat bank in the practice above as a single word with many senses. This is the way most non-semanticists use the term ‘word’. We mention this because some semanticists, including almost all compilers of dictionaries, would regard bank, for example, as several di fferent words. In an ordinary dictionary there are several di fferent entries for the word bank, sometimes distinguished by a subscript, e.g. bank 1 , bank 2 , etc. No confusion will arise from our relatively non-technical use of the term ‘word’. This matter will be taken up again in a later unit, when we discuss HOMONYMY and POLYSEMY (Unit 11). One sentence can have di fferent senses too, as the following practice section illustrates. Practice (1) Write down two sentences bringing out clearly the two di fferent meanings of The chicken is ready to eat. .......................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................... (2) Write down two sentences bringing out clearly the two di fferent senses of He greeted the girl with a smile. .......................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................... (3) Do likewise for He turned over the field. .......................................................................................................................... .......................................................................................................................... PA RT O N E tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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