Semantics: a coursebook, second edition
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(2) Take the schematic utterance ‘X hasn’t a hope of winning the next election’. If we replace X by either ‘the President’ or ‘the Leader of the Republican Party’, will the two resultant utterances be equivalent in meaning, i.e. both describe exactly the same state of a ffairs? (Assume still the context of a conversation about American politics in 2007.) Yes / No (3) Assume a situation in which John is standing alone in the corner. Would John and the person in the corner refer to the same individual in a conversation about this situation? Yes / No (4) In the conversation about the situation in which John is alone in the corner, would the following two utterances make exactly the same claim? ‘John looks as if he’s about to faint’ ‘The person in the corner looks as if he’s about to faint’ Yes / No Feedback (1) Yes (2) Yes (3) Yes (4) Yes Comment Normally, one expects that utterances which di ffer only in that they use di fferent expressions referring to the same thing (or person) will have the same meaning, as in the above examples. Indeed, this normally is the case. But there is a class of exceptions to this generalization. This is the class of examples involving opaque contexts. Definition An OPAQUE CONTEXT is a part of a sentence which could be made into a complete sentence by the addition of a referring expression, but where the addition of di fferent referring expressions, even though they refer to the same thing or person, in a given situation, will yield sentences with DIFFERENT meanings when uttered in a given situation. 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. tải về 1.74 Mb. Chia sẻ với bạn bè của bạn:
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