Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
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particular occasions. Practice Imagine that a friend of yours says to you, ‘John is putting on weight these days’, and imagine that a friend of ours (i.e. the authors of this book) happens to utter the same sentence to us one day. (1) Would this be a case of one utterance or two? .......................................................................................................................... (2) Would the John referred to be the same John or two di fferent Johns? .......................................................................................................................... Feedback (1) two (2) almost certainly, two di fferent Johns Comment In the two separate utterances above, there are two separate acts of referring. In fact, most utterances contain, or are accompanied by, one or more acts of referring. An act of referring is the picking out of a particular referent by a speaker in the course of a particular utterance. Although the concept of reference is fundamentally related to utterances, in that acts of reference only actually happen in the course of utterances, we will find it useful to stretch a point and talk about reference in connection with sentences, or parts of sentences. What we are really doing in cases like this is imagining a potential utterance of the sentence or expression in question. In everyday conversation the words meaning, means, mean, meant, etc. are sometimes used to indicate reference and sometimes to indicate sense. Practice What is intended by the word mean, meaning, etc. in the following examples, reference (R) or sense (S)? (1) When Helen mentioned ‘the fruit cake’, she meant that rock-hard object in the middle of the table R / S (2) When Albert talks about ‘his former friend’ he means me R / S (3) Daddy, what does unique mean? R / S (4) Purchase has the same meaning as buy R / S (5) Look up the meaning of apoplexy in your dictionary R / S (6) If you look out of the window now, you’ll see who I mean R / S Feedback (1) R (2) R (3) S (4) S (5) S (6) R Comment The study of sense demands, as you may have noticed, a degree of idealization of the facts about meaning. In other words, sometimes we claim to be more certain than we perhaps should be about questions like ‘Does this expression have the same sense as that one?’ It is worth going along with this idealization. We will not let it lead us astray unduly. In later units we will deal with some problems with the notion of sense. Summary The notions of sense and reference are central to the study of meaning. Every further unit in this book will make use of one or another of these notions. The idea of reference is relatively solid and easy to understand. The idea of sense is more elusive: it’s a bit like electricity, which we all know how to use (and even talk about) in various ways, without ever being sure what exactly it is. Even semanticists aren’t sure exactly what sense is, but you’ll find that your grasp of it and your appreciation of the usefulness of the concept will grow as you study more. (The importance of the sense/reference distinction was most in fluentially demonstrated by the German philosopher Gottlob Frege.) tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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